Turbo Trainer

Elite Novo Power Mag 

Due to the vagaries of shiftwork, the constraints on my free time mean that I cannot always afford the dilly-dallying of my usual training rides around the park. Marginal incremental dilly-dallying soon adds up to a good deal of time wasted on faffage in the hour I spend 'training'. Firstly there is getting ready - not only the actual getting ready itself but the also the thinking about getting ready. Once I have spent ten minutes deciding on whether to go or not - and having had to choreograph all my other very important activities - I then proceed with the getting-the-clobber-on, the getting-the-water-bottle, and finally the getting-the-bike-to-the-road. Then there is the traffic on en route but before that there is the embarrassing wait as my Mickey Mouse Garmin 810, which couldn't find Sputnik in a satellite shop, finds a GPS fix. Being stationary at traffic lights is not a feature of a training regime. Highly fit cyclists working out on high-end training ride are usually photographed riding up a mountain road and not stopped on the high street behind a number 16. Likewise, any other kind of involuntary stopping is also a detriment. Zebra-crossings, more traffic lights, right turns etc all add up. All in all I reckon I can spend 10 minutes of a 45-minute cycle ride not actually cycling or moving at all. There will another five minutes of slowing down and speeding up as a approach and leave the particular stoppage. This statistic is usually borne out by my strava. In spite of bombing around and breaking personal bests, I get home to find the average speed is something a beginner on a chopper in flip-flops would be happy with. The 'time spent moving' also shows that grim reality of useless stoppages as it a good few minutes less than the 'time elapsed'  - and does not take account of the slowing down and speeding up, as mentioned above.

Of course, if it is tipping down outside I am going to cave altogether.

So, it is not just the quantity of time spent not cycling, it is the time spent not cycling very effectively that means I have had to look at the alternative of cycling indoors.
My only concern about the darned thing that would cover my last remaining floorspace was the racket would make. One review of a device said the sound it produced was no more than a conversation. I've known some dull talkers before but none that sounded like a wheel going round. Many products were advertised as being quiet and so that became less of an issue. Once past that, the devices fall into three types: the direct drive style that you swap for your back wheel, the type to which you attach your back wheel, and the simple rollers. The direct drive was out of the question budget wise and also required more faffing about withe the removal of the wheel, the second type broke down into two styles - one with in-built sensors that covered speed, cadence and power, and, one that didn't have any gadgets at all. The rollers didn't appeal as they looked likely to be the noisier. After thinking about this and wondering about that, I eventually chose an 'entry-level' (polite way of saying cheap) machine by Elite from Wiggle. The Novo Power Mag (very similar to the Novo Force) is currently £129.99 (April 2018).

The Mag Power Elastogel is a sturdy basic trainer that allows you to attach and detach the bike easily - once you have installed the QR skewer that is supplied in the box. The set up instructions are quite easy to follow and takes ten or so minutes to complete. The machine is a wee bit cumbersome and may suit being positioned somewhere permanently rather than being moved about every time it is used.

The machine is not 'quiet' quiet as the wheel whirrs around along with the grinding of the chain upon the cogs. There is also a low frequency vibration that I couldn't locate. This may be related to the bike and its heavy wheels. There is a related issue of tyre wear. A normal tyre, it is said, may wear out faster as well as being inherently noisy. A trainer tyre will last longer and be quieter. Such a tyre will scupper the quick fit of your bike from road to turbo. But if you already have skinny tyres they will probably suffice.

There is a lever with eight settings to increase/decrease the magnetic resistance via a cable to the 'Mag' device. This requires attachment to the bike and negates the easy removal/install of the bike as it a fiddly bracket job akin to a light fitting. I have been using the lever on one setting without attaching it to the bike.

As this model has no sensors, to get an idea of my power output, I emailed the manufacturers about the 'power curves' or data of the various speeds vs resistance levels - and they duly sent me a handy table of figures. From this table it is easy to calculate your approximate power output - once you have ascertained your speed. One things to remember about indoor cycling is that your weight and that of the bike no longer inhibit your speed as you are not actually moving - obvious, I guess. Though if you have either a very light or very heavy rear wheel, its weight would be a slight issue.

Garmin Speed and Cadence sensors

Speed can be determined by the trusty cyclo computer, with its spoke magnet. This 'simply' calculates or counts the number of revolutions of the wheel. I point this out because the other option is a speed sensor and the method it uses to determine speed has something to do with the earth's magnetic field: (From Garmin's FAQ) The BSS (Bike Speed Sensor) contains a magnetometer that measures the three dimensional components of the ambient magnetic field (similar to an accelerometer measuring acceleration). As the wheel rotates, the magnetometer measures its own rotation within the surrounding earth's magnetic field. The earth's magnetic field does not vary much (if at all) over the course of a bike ride.
Yes, it really is as simple as that!

While the humble cycle computer does not retain data for an upload to a device, the sensor does. How the various brands and models do this and with what type of data will require lots of browsing. There are Bluetooth models and there are those that use Ant+ and there are some that use both. I plumbed for a Garmin that simply attaches to your rear hub and activates once the wheel rotates. It then connects with my Garmin 810 (once you have paired the devices). Once you have distance and time, you can get your stats and the 'ride' will head over to Strava and the like as per a normal ride. Of course, with Garmin being Garmin, you'll find you managed 49ft of elevation from the comfort of your over-sized broom cupboard.

The big question that has yet to be answered is how much the turbo trainer ride resembles a real ride.
I have no intention of buying power pedals/cranks and so does the turbo and its resistance levels replicate going up a hill and the effect of the 90kg of combined cyclist/bike weight? Over the eight levels of resistance I am sure it will. You can get a rough idea by browsing and checking the stats of riders who have power meters on their road bikes. This will give you enough of an idea of what settings and average speed you need to be using and attaining. What you don't want to do is over-do it - and knacker your muscles. There are volumes of advice on how to warm up and turbo-train out there on the webernet. When all is said and done if you are sweating and breathing fast as you'd be doing out on the road then you are pretty much there. That brings me to the one drawback of these machines: sweat. Out on the road, some perspiration will evaporate in the breeze, some will wick away and some will stay in your clothing. Indoors it will be on you or the floor. So be prepared to do a wee bit of housekeeping after each session.

Trip list as of 2018

Trip list as of 2018 - get planning!

Toulouse Barcelona - hilly medium effort
Geneva Alps Provence - mountains tough
Calais Dieppe - hilly medium effort
Malaga Rhonda - hilly tough 
Ardennes - hilly medium effort
Le Mans Marseilles - hilly tough
Cevennes Ventoux - hilly tough
Geneva Monte Carlo - mountains tough
Pyrenees - mountains tough
Western Front - flat with hills easy effort
Calais Vimy - flat with hills easy effort
Ypres Holland - flat easy effort
Dieppe Dunkerque - hilly medium effort
Hook Vlissingen Dunkerque - flat easy effort
Stelvio Milan - mountains tough
Somme Albert - flat with hills easy effort
Annecy Nice - mountains tough
Dieppe Caen - hilly medium effort
Hook Antwerp Dunkerque - flat easy effort
St. Malo Cherbourg - flat with hills easy effort
Alps 2016 - mountains tough
Roscoff Caen - hilly medium effort
Somme Arras - flat with hills easy effort
Groote Orlog Ypres - sportive - up to you!
Hook to Groningen - flat easy
Col d'Iseran and Alpe d'Huez - mountains tough

North Cornwall and Millook

With some semblance of reasonable weather, this is an opportune time to get to Devon and Cornwall for a weekend before both counties fill up with car and caravan loads of holidaymakers. Why Devon and Cornwall? To be precise, I am referring to West Devon and North Cornwall – border country. Much of this area sits 500ft or so above sea level – except for the rivers. Rivers and their valleys are everywhere and, so are the hills that separate them. Go cycling up a Col, Pico or a Passo and you have a pretty good idea what you are in for: cycle up one steep side slowly then fly down the other. It’s all there for you – climbbybike stats, gradient markers, simple distance over height calculation. The hills of Devon and Cornwall – like any other hills - don’t get the same press as those showboating mountain climbs! Pick up an OS map and you’ll see one chevron for a 15% and two for a 20% or more. Fair enough, but there are plenty of 10-14.999% hills that go unmarked on an map and so, unless you painstakingly investigate contours, you are going to be in for an abundance of pleasant surprises.

I took a train to Exeter St David’s then changed to the quaintly named Tarka Line, a reference to a book and a film called Tarka the Otter, which were about otters in the neighbourhood, one of which, erm, was called Tarka. There are request stops – in my case Umberleigh – and, to add to the excitement, the driver must give or receive a token from a signalman to show there isn’t another train on the single line. The driver must also stick his arm out of the cab window to a pull a cord to change the points.

Trains run every hour or so to Exeter from London from Paddington. There is also a service from Waterloo. Trains also run from the north. Remember to reserve the bicycle. The Tarka line runs hourly to Barnstaple. Check National Rail Enquiries for more accurate details.

The train eventually joins the Taw river as it hurtles north. Britain’s rivers are not long and so they don’t hang about. The line picks the Taw up as a small but exuberant river in its youth then follows it as it widens and meanders until it reaches the oversized Taw estuary at Barnstaple, little more than twenty miles on. By the time the train reaches Umberleigh, the line is nestled amongst hills casually reclining either side. As you leave the entrance to the station, you are immediately faced with a 25% climb next to a pub, though it is not clear if the road is still in use, so I detoured. The roads don’t dilly dally in Devon – there’s no zig-zags – just straight up the side. The first of these joys is just after Eastacombe on the B3227 and is marked with a double chevron on an OS map. Once you have got to the top of that hill, it is simply a case of going down the other side for another, also worthy of a double chevron being, as it is in places, a 25% gradient.

Great Torrington has a petrol station with a store for stocking up and enjoying a coffee and a bun. And after the heady heights the road zips down to the Torridge valley, close to sea level, where, as you veer off the A386 to Frithelstock you are met with a short and sweet 20% in Rakenham Hill. The road rises back up to 600ft with more steepage as you pass by Smythacott, Hankford Barton and Bountis Thorne before arriving at Bradworthy, seemingly in the middle of nowhere but a good watering hole.

Devon has over eight thousand miles of roads, the most of any county in the UK. Roads are not a convenient afterthought, they are built simply to get stuff to market be it labour or goods. So, the quaint backroads of Devon, of which there are many, are there to link farms with market towns. So, as you try to make up for the time lost going up a steep one, you hurtle down the other side – but be warned, road surfaces are on the whole too shoddy for fast descents and the potholes and everything else are often covered in slurry and other farm gunge. On top of that there could always be a slurry lorry – in fact, in my case, a red and yellow slurry lorry - general useage tractor, or milk truck trundling around the bend at the bottom.

A few miles beyond Bradworthy, there is the border into Cornwall – the River Tamar and the steep rise to West Youlstone, topping out at nearly 700ft. Nipping over the Atlantic Highway, otherwise known as the A39, you can catch sight of the Atlantic Ocean. There is no Bristol Channel or Irish Sea in the way here - this is a bonefide ocean – 3000 miles of water to the US. So, if you think you can make out some land on the horizon, you can’t! But, you might catch sight of something else.

The road to Morwenstow allows a nice glide down from the heights behind. Passing through the imaginatively named hamlet of Shop, where you will find a shop, the route veers south-west to tackle the coast. There was an airfield upon the cliffs of Morwenstow during the war from which submarine patrols took off. There are a few remnants of the airstrip and bunkers that can be seen from the SW Coastal footpath. On the OS map there are some buildings marked above Lower Sharpnose point. When you get there, you find that these buildings and the dozen or so satellite dishes and sinister Dr Who style golf-ball like structures are **** Bude. Until a few years ago this installation didn’t officially exist – although you can see it for miles! But, don’t push your luck – keep the camera and phone in the bag as happy snaps are verboten.

Straight away the road descends into Coombe Valley. Don’t try anything fancy as the road is narrow, bendy and high-hedged and very steep at 15% with a nasty hairpin at the bottom. In the summer this road is busy (check streetview in Google maps) Change gear quickly as you pass the dead-end – an appropriate name – to Duckpool. This is not a quaint pool full of ducks but the place, way back when, in which women were submersed if they were thought to be witches. If they drowned, they were innocent; if they floated they were guilty then hung. It’s 15% up the other side as well – just what you need after 35 miles!

The road rises up for a good view back across Coombe Valley to **** as you pass an old manor. It’s then a pretty quick ride into Bude.

The Next Day
Bude used to have a railway, now it has a cycle track. This follows the river and canal as far as the turn off to Maramchurch where the road suddenly rears up. From the little village I headed south to Week St Mary. 

In blazing but nippy sunlight the road rose 450 ft in three miles in ups-and-downs to the hill-top hamlet that was once home to a Cold War Observation station housed in a nuke-proof bunker. 

an ex-railway station near Tresmeer

From there I made my way to the northern fringes of Bodmin Moor – the somewhat unfancied neighbour of the two larger National Parks of Dartmoor and Exmoor. The area is very remote and high, reaching 740 ft on Laneast Downs before dropping abruptly down to Gimbletts Mill and its quaint bridge then rising again to Lower Tregunnon, passing near Treneglos and Egloskerry. 

These Hobbit-style place names epitomise Cornish identity. ‘Tre’, ‘Pen’ and ‘Lan’ are Celtic prefixes that are found in place names in Wales and Brittany but not a few miles away over the border in Devon.

Cornwall is a strange county. For most it is viewed simply as a holiday destination combining quaint Doc Martin/Poldark locations. However, it has at various times been the biggest tin, copper and china clay producer in the world and at one time possessed the deepest mine. Much of this output of Cornwall was shipped from Falmouth, the world’s third deepest natural harbour. Wealth creation in the county has also come from salvaging shipwrecks and smuggling and rumour has it that some charmers drew ships onto rocks by lighting bogus beacons just so as to get the cargo. The Methodist church is big in these parts and most villages and hamlets offer some sort of chapel. 

The austere Methodist church has been a harbour for marginalised Christian populations and so its simple chapels feature in the bleak marginal lands around Bodmin Moor that seem very distant from the idyllic views of St. Ives and the fish restaurants of Padstow (also home of the pre-Christian Obby Oss May-day celebration).

At 1000ft the road hits the wide-open space of Davidstow Moor and its airfield. 

Davidstow airfield

This was also WW2 installation that was home to RAF sea patrols. Over seventy years on it is still pretty much as it was. The airstrips are there as are the barracks and the control tower, albeit a wee bit derelict. On the north west edge is an RAF museum, detail of which can be found in webworld. Just behind the museum is the very unattractive Davidstow cheese factory that looks more like a small oil refinery.

I took the A39 north to Wainhouse Corner. This road was OK on an early Spring Sunday but in the summer, it will be hairy with holiday traffic. It was a good stretch of road with roughly a metre of hard shoulder that was free of the usual flotsam and jetsam of broken glass, road kill, miscellaneous engine parts and the ubiquitous oily rag.

I had a coffee in the delightful surroundings of a petrol station forecourt and availed of a banana in anticipation of the impending climb. I took the left to Trelay and the next left that signposted Dizzard and Millook. This is part of National Cycle Route 3. 

This not a route I would want to do fully-loaded unless I was happy getting off and pushing! NCR 3 starts – or finishes - at Land’s End. Its 338 miles to Bristol could form part of a very roundabout segment of LEJOG. More about this route – and a very handy online interactive map – at: https://www.sustrans.org.uk/ncn/map/route/route-3.

Once through the tiny hamlet of Dizzard – place names often refer to the name of the main farm – the Atlantic burst into in view in brilliant blue under a vivid cloudless sky. The view of Bude Bay extended north as far as **** and Lundy, the barely inhabited island at the mouth of the Bristol Channel. The three-mile long, slab of granite that rises to nearly 500 ft, is home to a variety of birds and has also been the final resting place for hundreds of ships, wrecked on its fang-like rocks, plus a couple of German WW2 bombers.

The road dips down ferociously after the 30% warning sign. During the 60s this slice of coast road was used for training by many cycling teams, including Raleigh. Millook is well-known, justifiably, among hill-hunters, appearing, as it does, in many Greatest Climbs lists. I had opted for the northern route as it possesses a particularly steep corner. Beware of this road’s traffic at any time of the year but particularly from April to October when the tourist cars also come to have a go. In parts it is barley wider than a car and being so steep, as you hurtle down (not a good idea at all) you might find a stricken car stuck on a corner, its gears screaming, after the driver failed to get into first at the crucial moment.

Gingerly descending the southern hill, I was able to take a snap of Millook’s other well-known feature - its cliffs. If you have time, take a walk along the pebbled beach and have a gander at the contorted layers of rock. The strata of rock have been folded over like pastry due to some gargantuan seismic event way back when to create and amazing zig-zag effect.

Down over the bridge at the bottom and there is inevitable 30% sign for the north side’s ascent. 

Get into the lowest gear and up you go. It is a tough start, with 15-20% for 500 yards, then there is the impossibly steep camber (estimated at 35%) of a left hairpin. I avoided this and went around to the right and stopped as cars were coming up behind me and down. 

Once that bend is dealt with the gradient relaxes but the road is at its narrowest and somehow put your foot down while keeping your ears open and your eyes peeled for traffic (all perfectly do-able at the same time!).  

Then it’s back to Bude – stopping off for a stunning view of Widemouth Bay before taking the coast road north. 

Widemouth bay is famous for its wide beach – hence the name – but lurking among the cul-de-sacs of holiday lets is a perfunctory sign indicating that there are telephone cables beneath the ground. These, however, aren’t just any old cables, these are the transatlantic telephone cables that link the UK – and Europe - with the US and other continents. A big scandal a few years ago revealed the location of **** in Bude and was that it was ‘listening in’ on the calls and other media being transmitted over these cables. The history of the attempts to lay transatlantic cables is fascinating –  especially on a rain-filled afternoon in the summer! One of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s greatest designs, the huge Great Eastern ship, laid one of the many cables across the Atlantic that emanated from Porthcurno, further south at Land’s End. Once these cables and the web of others were linked in the late 19^th century, the All Red Line - the first global communications network - was complete. It took only a few minutes to contact far flung corners of the British Empire via telegram – emails are only marginally faster, though they are a little easier to use. Once back in Bude, head to Pengenna’s for a pasty. 

Bude Canal from Rodds Bridge

The Last Day

Getting out of Bude will involve a return to 500ft, whichever way you head east-ish. The A3072 is not a good option with its slow, narrow climb from Stratton. I took an unclassified road out through the back of Stratton, passing Hersham Farm and across the B3254 to head east to Shebbear. I was very much in getting-back-before-the-rain mode but still enjoyed the route in nice sunshine.

There is not much to see en route – though between Moreton Mill and Broomhill Farm the road crosses the disused and dry Bude Canal or Aqueduct as it heads north. Bude Canal was used to transport sand into North Devon and Cornwall to improve the soil. Three miles of the canal still exists at Bude, complete with water and is occupied nowadays by rowing boats and anglers and, with the adjacent river, makes up a nature reserve.

Rumour also has it that the Foot and Mouth outbreak of 2001 that took off in nearby Highampton spread due to a farmer who moved unmarked sheep between farms to make up the numbers so that those farms could (illegally) claim farm subsidies. Not really the stuff of tourist info!

Once past Shebbear, the road is up and down. Between Sheepwash and Winkleigh it is one hill after another, perhaps five in a row of 10-15%. 

There is a big one out of Hatherleigh then a 15% from Monkokehampton followed by more of the same with the peak at Bude Hill. Once past Wembworthy it’s a nice downhill to Eggesford and the train back.

I stayed at the very reasonably-priced Brendon Arms, located by the canal and which provided a hearty breakfast.

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