It’s been a while since I cycled anything like a long distance in one go – and this weekend I tested my knees, lungs and new bike in aid of getting kids in Uganda through school.

I posted a couple of images while on the road, and will dump a couple more once I can get them off my useless phone.

It was a very rewarding day – a long ride, through some beautiful parts of Southern England. The weather was kind, and we had a lot of fun. As well as burning many calories I’m pretty sure I consumed a fair number due to all the energy bars and drinks I sank – and the pub lunch of course.

Discovery of the day for me was Dark Star Hophead. A delicious beer. Brewed only a few miles from the excellent pub in Wineham where we stopped for lunch.

The route we chose meant that we opted for a climb around Devil’s Dyke rather than Ditchling Beacon. This was chosen in order to make the last section of the ride less daunting – but it was still quite a challenging bit of hill, believe me. I’d definitely do the ride again, and I’d use that route again too – once we were past the M25 it really came into it’s own. Beautiful.

All in all we’ve now raised over £3000 for Action Aid. It definitely makes the sore knees less painful knowing that. Thanks to everyone who pledged support.

Some excellent photos on IndyMedia this month (including one shot of the cricket moment), as well as some interesting comments on the behaviour of the massers. Respect for pedestrians and intelligent corking is a massive part of what makes CM good, and fluid. Personally, I go for a ride, not for a “stand around and wait” and things that enhance the former and reduce the latter are fine by me.

Another Month, another Mass. The Met winning their appeal against the high court judgement meant some midweek publicity before the ride and guaranteed a large number of riders, as well as legal observers, press and quite a lot of cycle cops too (although little change there). Bumping into a couple of mates at the start made this a less solitary ride than it could have been. It did seem to be full of aggro this month though. Angry cabbies are par for the course, but we had limo drivers, diplomatic police, all sorts.

High spot of the ride was an impromptu over of cricket which took place on Charing Cross Road outside the NPG while we waited for the mass to reassemble after a pretty chaotic attempt to cross Trafalgar Square.

With many more cycle police on the ride than usual, they made a pretty ineffective job of policing intersections from what I could see – although being in the front phalanx for most of the ride means I got no impression of how the rear end were progressing. I often wish riders were more pro-active when riding in corking the intersections in the body of the mass and not corking unnecessarily near the front. Having said that there were only a couple of instances of vehicles in the mass this month which was encouraging(apart from the messiness at Trafalgar which is kind of unavoidable given the state of that junction). They also did their bit in diffusing a couple of flashpoints I saw, so its nice to see that despite the appeal win, the same good-natured police presence is continuing for the moment (although I did see a couple of stressed newbie coppers who could have done with a nice cup of tea and a sit down rather than deal with 3-500 happy cyclists hehe). Meeting Steve at Buckingham Palace was also a bonus, and he rode with us all for quite a while on his lovely home-built fixie, until we both peeled off the mass at Tottenham Court Road and headed eastward and home.

I do love a CM in the Summer.

Radio 4 this morning (Download – 24′20″ in to the hour) has managed to remind me of an amusing discovery I made last year while wandering around the web. It’s just the sort of tangental wander that I wish I had time to make more of, and one of the reasons I love the web.

While working for a great agency, I began discussing the EINE letters with one of the staff who like me, lived in that part of East London scattered with them. He had purchased a poster of the entire alphabet, and though I had seen a lot of them, I realised I had no idea where to find all 26.

So I went surfing. Flickr being an obvious first call I dropped in and hit paydirt almost immediately. Fellow East Londoner Dave Gorman had collected his own load of letters over 3 nights and uploaded the results to his quite popular photostream. And then I noticed the username; “dgbalancesrocks”. It occured to me that the latter part of the username must be fairly significant if it had relegated his name to simply initials.That’s how I found out about rock balancing.

Aside from the fact that I think Dave has a fantastic eye for detail, and takes some really lovely photos of things around and about my area (I’m liking the collection of dscreet owls, many of which cover the same parts of town as the EINE letters), and further afield, he also, it seems, balances rocks. I fear have neither the patience nor the sense of balance required for this most zen of pass-times. From street art to beach art, via Bethnal Green, a journey in a lunchtime remembered.