Riding with the girls

So today is Mothering Sunday, the clocks have gone forward, and it's a glorious spring day. What better way to spend it than out cycling with Belles on Bikes Tayside? Five of us met at Grassy Beach at 9.15am at which point it was still definitely on the chilly side - ear warmers would have been handy, but the sun was shining and there wasn't much wind (unlike last Sunday's ride!) so we knew we had some pleasant cycling ahead.  Just look at the smily faces!

Ready for adventure

We picked up another rider in Monifieth - even numbers are nice as you can buddy up on the wider stretches and get a bit of a chat.  Too much chat as it turns out as I hadn't noticed my Garmin wasn't actually recording the ride until we got to Arbroath.  Not sure how that happened as it definitely was when I set off - don't you just love technology? I'm ignoring the 'if it's not on Strava it didn't happen' rule though...





Belles on Bikes is a lovely sociable way to ride - lady cyclists are a pretty friendly bunch! That's not the only selling point though - there's always a decent coffee and cake stop on a Belles ride, and today's was no exception! I've cycled to Arbroath a few times now but this was my first visit to the Old Boatyard restaurant, as much as anything because I didn't realise they had a daytime cafe menu.  The location next to the harbour is great, and we were all impressed with our choice of cakes.  Sadly I couldn't have a Chai latte as they were out, but the cinammon latte I had instead was very nice - my second coffee of the day which may well have helped with the pace on the way back!

Taking advantage of the comfy sofas

This was a faster paced ride than usual for the Belles as two of the girls are training for night ride London, but was still manageable!

Three beers to review this week. Friday night was porter night - Dave found me a can of Viking DNA by Brew York in Asda of all places. Smoked beers can be a bit overpowering but the smoke in this was a gentle background note with the main flavour being chocolate malts - never a bad thing.  My second beer of the night was the last of the beers I got from my amazing colleagues for my 40th last year.  I'd been vaguely saving it for a special occasion, but what's beer for if not for drinking, so drink it I did.  At 14% it's no surprise it didn't really taste like beer and was definitely one to take my time over.  The only way I could describe it would be like a very boozy Christmas cake - sweet and raisiny with a big alcohol hit. Not for everyone, but right up my street for a treat beer!  It's a To Ol collab with an Estonian brewery called Pohjala - I've never yet been disappointed by To Ol, especially when I'm looking for something a bit different. Sadly out of stock, but this

is it!









Got this one in Aldi, purely for the label to be honest, but it was a refreshing change after Friday night's heavy beers!

#Ihaveembraced

I'm kicking off with a film review today, hence the title! I'd heard of the film Embrace the movie a while ago, when Taryn Brumfitt appeared on BBC Breakfast promoting the film and the Body Image Movement behind it but didn't expect I'd get to see it. As it turns out a group of local women had arranged a showing at a cinema 10 minutes walk from my front door for International Women's Day, so I got myself a ticket and headed on down - I actually ended up sitting next to a work colleague, so although I'm not averse to solo cinema trips I was pleased to have someone to discuss it with afterwards. It's the only time I've been handed a tissue and herbal teabags on the way into a cinema!

The tissue was definitely needed - for a documentary, it's a bit of an emotional roller coaster, and eye opening too. Not all of it was new to me - I'd looked into the relationship between media portrayal of women and body image in young women as my honours project back in the 90's (anyone remember the era of heroin chic? Horrid) but alarming to realise if anything, things are a lot worse now that we're well and truly in the age of social media. It's a bit of a shame that a lot of women (and men) who could hugely benefit from seeing the film never will, but I'll continue to recommend it to anyone who'll listen!

One of the film and movement's slogans is 'My body is not an ornament, it is the vehicle to my dreams'. Now I'm not really into the language of self help/self care but I'm going to take the vehicle thing more literally than I think it was intended and say there is no better feeling than when you've got somewhere special on your bike, and you can stop and think 'I did that!', so I guess I'm already on team embrace!
It was really windy yesterday so I probably wouldn't have got the bike out at all had David not pointed out it was the first weekend of Spring/Summer opening hours at one of our fave cafes, Alibob Cafe.  It's 16miles away so is usually a pleasant 3 hour round trip for me. Thanks to the wind it was still 3 hours - it was close to 2 hours there and 1 hour back. Definitely felt like we'd earned lunch! Whilst a lot of my rides involve cake, almost as many involve a toastie when I think about it - yesterday's was haggis and smoked cheddar on onion bread, with home made potato salad, and was as tasty as that sounds!

On the way back I got some more pictures of the V&A. Here's one from a year ago, with some from yesterday - quite a difference!

Finally, I had a decent selection of beers this weekend. On Friday night I had a can of Full Fathom 5, a coffee, coconut porter from North Brewing Co in Leeds. Some people might say that's too many flavours for one beer - they'd be wrong though...

Jumping on the can photo bandwagon 😉

As I'm heading into photo essay territory here, if you like to hear about my other beer discoveries on Saturday evening I've reviewed them all on Untappd, where you'll find me and my porter habit as Cathybabes - don't ask!

Spring is in the air

Since I last posted here I've joined the new cycling club set up by some of my colleagues who'll be tackling the North Coast 500 later this year. They've been on some serious training rides but have also decided to organise some more leisurely rides to try and encourage other people to take up cycling. Today was the first of these - a gentle 14 mile ride around North Fife. The starting point was the Tay bridge car park, so as that's only 4.5 miles away we opted to ride from home. Cycling south across the bridge can be a bit of a drag if it's windy but luckily it was pretty still today - the river was like plate glass actually. I'd given myself plenty of time to get there so I had time to stop and take a picture of the V&A museum, which is finally starting to look like a building, though it's still a long way from being finished.

We had a decent sized group , and Ian did a great job of keeping us together. I've cycled the first part of the route before, but the stretch from Wormit to Tayport was new to me, though I may well ride it again as it's a nice flat route, with only one slightly scary right turn at St Michaels. As you can see, a decent day for a ride, considering we're only just into March.

Hopefully we'll get some more rides like this as the year goes on, and maybe even persuade some more people to join us!