Five riders, making two groups possible, or was it 6 riders allowing 3 groups? I’m not sure, but I do know that 5 riders set off as one from the town hall at just after 10am. It had been my intention to ride part of the way to Coots (now Relish) in the Water Park and peel of early, at Minety, on my own if necessary, and complete about 20 miles. The furthest I would have ridden since my comeback! The full ride was due to be around the 35 mile mark, to much for me at this stage.
The peloton proceeded in fine formation in the tradition of many cycling clubs. ‘Attacks’ did happen but were soon chased down or ignored and either way the riders regrouped and rode at a pace that the slowest rider, i.e. me, could manage. However, in time honoured fashion, rises (not really hills) in the road were ridden at a pace comfortable to the individual and the pack regrouped as the road levelled out. At an average pace of between 10 – 12 mph Minety was soon reached and the group of 5 split in to two. In fact 3 elected to do the shorter distance and two, the hard men of the bunch!, pushed on to the café.
For now I am unable to comment on the rest of the longer route due to the fact that I haven’t spoken to either of the riders, but I hope that they had better luck than did one of our riders.
Still at a comfortable pace, we headed through Upper Minety and up and over Flisteridge and on to Eastcourt where we turned left and headed towards Hankerton. It’s funny (and not in the ha, ha sense) how these things work. All along the route there had been various mutterings about the state of the roads surface. It was damp and in places the roads were liberally splattered in mud. Not wet, sloppy mud you understand or very dry mud but gloopy, slippery mud. The sort that the professional peloton refer to as ‘Belgium Toothpaste, (see how informative these blogs can be?). It is true, the state of the mud is critical to the well being of riders. Very wet mud can pretty much be just ridden through, no problem. Dry mud likewise can be ridden over, no problem. It’s the sticky, gloopy stuff that causes the problem. And it was one such patch that was to have its way with us this day. One of the main purposes of the social ride is to swap stories and to exchange tales of woe, usually of a cycling nature. As fate would have it, one of our riders went down just as he was relating the tale of a crash in similar conditions. It has to be said that the road surface was like ice and it is a wonder that the 3 of us didn’t slide off in unison. But with consummate skill (read luck) the other two riders stopped rubber side down and hurried to the aid of the stricken rider. Luckily the damage to both rider and bike appeared minimal and we were able to proceed. No head bashed. All three of us agreed that we needed to proceed with caution and continued on foot pushing our, um, push bikes.
As luck would have it the mud slick soon petered out and bikes could be remounted. I’m pleased to report that the rest of the ride was completed without incident.
In total 20 miles was covered and hospitality provided courtesy of Ken, Thanks.
The existence of a third group was made evident via a Strava report. In it Simon reports that he did in fact make Coots and completed 55 kilometres. Whether or not he met the ‘hard man’ group remains a mystery.
Mention should also be made of John, our associate Clarion from Swindon. He set out from Swindon with the intention of intersecting the route and, hopefully, joining the others along the way. Was he successful, I don’t know, but hopefully he was. Please let us know, John. If not I hope you enjoyed the ride and that we will see you again.
Howiecycles
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