Sunday, 03 June 2018
Simon writes: Having started riding with the Sunday all day rides about 38 years ago, today was but the 1st time I'd ever led one, so here goes.
It's 8.45 on June 3rd. My route to Brookside takes me across Midsummer common and hence the remnants of Strawberry fair are just waking up to announce last night's event with that lingering characteristic aroma of "Tasmanian tomatoes" – or THC for short.
At the Brookside bench I got taking to a woman who travelled a lot and was busy writing up her journals with her left hand. Ha! We lefties will rule the world one day.
Nigel was the first to arrive and greet us, followed by Susan G and lastly Geoff B on his trusty classic 1970s racer.
Grafham Water is the best part of a fair bit to cycle to coffee, but the wind and sun were gentle, the traffic scarce and I like to start with a leisurely pace to loosen up, rather than hacking off and end up saturating our legs with lactic acid.
Breakfast at the Harbour View Café in Perry developed into an intellectual debate about the anomalously casual treatment of risk to vulnerable road users from some hazardous vehicle drivers, compared with the strictly zero tolerance of acceptable risk to a jumbo jet full of passengers.
Geoff had planned all along to head back to Cambridge after coffee and his decision was in no way influenced by our plans to rewrite the HSE manual. This did however threaten to leave us with only three riders, not an easy number to make pairs of riders who can chat to each other en-route. But, to start a sentence with a conjunction, we were blessed with the appearance of Ian B, (and his metronomic rear wheel squeak) who had made his own way from home to coffee. I still don't know why I call it coffee, I hate the stuff. The only reason why I eat coffee cake and coffee chocolate is because I like cake and chocolate slightly more than my dislike for coffee!
The river path from Bedford's ring road to Danish Camp in Willington was an endorphin rich little adventure in a relaxingly safe traffic free haven. Many thanks to our runs secretary Rupert (also a leftie) for supplying a route suggestion. Susan and I had snacks with us and wanted to stay, but while the queue for served food was too long, Ian and Nigel needed to visit the Blossom Café at the garden centre for a faster service. So as Susan and I sat talking about the evolution of our club's Thursday rides we ate an ice cream each. Ah, no, we hadn't carried ice cream cornets in our saddle bags, we bought them from the - oh never mind.
It was time to catch up with the boys for a cup of tea before picking up this lovely trail that runs from Bedford to Sandy.
This week sees the arrival of a rear facing camera for the bike, so I've tried to grab some still shots from the footage, to show what delightful and pleasant leafy lanes we like to follow.
The one of Susan (below), having just climbed the off road path out of Sandy, I had to run through several times before deciding which shot to use, so Susan, many apologies for making your video avatar climb that hill 5 times. Hope you feel all the fitter for it.
Today's ride was billed as a two stop ride, but given Greg T's afternoon group was headed for Waresley I planned to offer my group the option to steer our way home through Waresley and sneak up on them to meet for a third stop for tea. Susan and Ian opted to head directly home from Gamlingay, leaving me to keep up with Nigel's unleashed 17mph for the remaining 5 miles to tea a la Greg.
Several weeks ago I wrote about Mike CC's front hub motor. In the shot where we're leaving Waresley for Gransden it shows that his motor is missing. Apparently it suffered internal arcing and sparking until it stopped working, but now that he can freewheel downhill in this photo shot for the rest of time he doesn't need it.
Simon Gallaway
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GPS track (GPX).