Three rides I just did this past weekend... Strava details below: May 1 ride (A1A, Ponte Vedra Beach thru Guana River State Recreational Area) May 3 ride (A1A, Jacksonville Beach - Ponte Vedra Beach - Vilano Beach to US1 N from St Augustine to Nocatee, then Hwy 210 E back to Ponte Vedra Beach) May 4 ride (Baldwin Rail Trail, and environs) Busy last few days on the bike... and this during a period where we had a ton of rain the last few days from a slow-moving, weak springtime cold-front (actually, it finally cleared up Saturday night so Sunday's (May 4) ride was under clear blue skies!). I racked up over 135 miles in this subset of 3 rides.. the first was an after-work sunset ride along the beach (there was a break between the wet weather, so I took advantage of that). Then the big ride on Saturday which took me down to St. Augustine & back - and it rained & rained! Actually the rain didn't start until I hit Vilano Beach, and by the time I finished I was soaked! A couple of interesting stops (see photos in the slideshow-gallery above) - one was an old English medieval castle - the real thing! - or so I was told - it's been there for years, it's part of a private residence in Vilano Beach, the owner emigrated here from the UK back in the 1970's, and as this castle was in his family, he brought it over here, stone by stone, and rebuilt it here in his new Vilano Beach property ( I guess he was able to get all the necessary permits from St. Johns County & US Customs, etc. - anyway if I can find more info about this I'll post a link here). Another was a British-style pub located on US-1 north of St. Augustine that has an old London double-decker bus from the 1940's. When I first saw this years ago (and, like the castle, it's been there for years & years as long as I can remember) it was in much better shape than it is now. It was recently vandalized about 10-12 years ago (either that or some drunk ran into it), and the pub-owner had since gone to some lengths to restore the bus. The Saturday ride was what is called in American amateur-cycling parlance a "metric century" (meaning it was at least 62.4 miles, or 100 km in length). My Saturday ride was 62.6 miles. This in comparison to a "true century" ride of at least 100 miles. The most I've ever done to date in a single ride was 86 miles from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach during an MS-150 ride. And finally, Sunday took me back out to the Baldwin Rail Trail. Instead of doing the simple end-to-end-&-back, I added a couple of off-trail loops. US-301 in Nassau County (just N of Baldwin) is being widened which should make it nice for cyclists to use (one stretch of the new road isn't open yet to traffic so I had it all to myself). Now, if only fucking Duval County would do the same... Comments are closed.
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