Photo: Abbreviated route planner for the The Shark, a 200k audax

Do you remember what you were doing on Monday at 05:30? I do. I was watching the Met Office’s video forecast for the South East. It showed strong winds and rain all day. I had signed up for The Shark, a 200km audax from the Cutty Sark to Seaford and back. That forecast, fellow ICCers posting on our forum that they didn’t fancy 10 hours in the rain so were dropping out, plus the rain lashing against the window convinced me to get out of my cycling gear and head back to bed. Water had got the better of me, not for the first time this week.

Do you remember what you were doing at 04:30 on Wednesday? I do. The alarm went off for our day long drive to Italy. We had to slow right down approaching the Mont Blanc tunnel as the heavy rain turned the road into a shallow river. It meant we arrived at 00:20 on Thursday morning after 1,675km of driving.

Unloading the car I heard a strange noise coming from our shed. The closer I got the more fearful I became. On opening the door I discovered:

We shut the water off, went to bed and feared the worse for our water bill. We were right to be worried. After the plumber fixed it later that day we dared to look at the water meter. Gulp. We had lost over 1,000 cubic meters of water. To put it in context, that’s twice the amount of water we have used since the water meter was installed in 2004. To put it another way about €2,500 worth of water. I’m going to put my arm around one of my Italian cycling club members on Sunday as he works for the water company. I’m hoping we can come to an Italian arrangement.

The upshot of all this H2O this week is that I have no cycling to report. A poor show for a cycling blog. To make matters worse, having never touched it before I managed to clip the outside shower water pipe with the lawnmower this morning.

It never rains, but it pours.

Year to date

3,520km / 35 rides / 101.5km average per ride

30,456m elevation gain (3.4 Everests)