It occurs to me that I ought to do yesterday’s ACG ride, before I do tomorrow’s Dragon Ride, otherwise it’ll never get done, so…
The ACG gathered in the Square at 5:30pm as planned, but with a larger turnout than expected. We had two groups – 4 “slower” and 6 “faster” – which worked out really well and means that hopefully everyone had a good ride.
G had volunteered to do the route, so I and the latter group headed out following him towards Cheddar, round the back and across to Nyland and then Wedmore. We were doing grand until we got on the main road out of Wedmore towards Wells where we all got a bit spread out due to the traffic and hills etc. and started losing people.
Three of us at the front took the planned right turn near Bleadney…and lost the three behind us. One of us went back looking… In the meantime the other three had taken an earlier right turn at Panborough and were doing, so to speak, the other two sides of the square. Fairly shortly we could see them coming across the levels, so we went up and met them at a crossroads. If you’re keeping count, you know that this means one of our cyclists was still missing… After a reasonable while, I and G from the original front party decided to redo the square, one each side) to see if we could find him…and just as we met at the apex, the missing bod appeared on the main road there too…all very formation cycling, Red Arrows type of stuff 🙂 We hurtled back to join the other three where we’d left them.
Only now there were two (this is getting very Agatha Christie), as one had gone ahead, reckoning that we’d catch him up soon enough… Oh dear. Well…we tried…but we got to one of those crossroad things, and he and we could have gone either way, and instead it all went a bit pear-shaped… To got a long story short, we never found him…again, one of our cyclists was missing. (Sorry J!).
The remaining five of us went round Godney way, to Westhay, where we went past the “slow” four, who’d seen our missing bod but didn’t know where he was… Onwards to Mark and back via Chapel Allerton and Notting Hill before coming back up via Cross to the Square all over again.
I have a “new” computer, but I’m not sure I wrote the stats down right before I went fiddling with batteries today – so here’s my best guess…
Cycling time: 2:02:55
Distance: 33.6 miles
Avs: 15.8mph
ODO: 556 miles
It was a good ride – though with a few too many evening bugs for dinner. My legs were feeling pretty good, which gave me hope for tomorrow. The weather and light held out – it was warmer than it looked when we set out, and I’d taken my lights with me just in case, but only put the back one on as a precautionary measure as we drew near home. I’ll tell you something, an evening ride is much more pleasant than an evening gym session 🙂
Right, back to eating pasta, and more pasta, and more carbs and packing, and generally panicking in preparation for tomorrow…
To misquote: “May the road rise up (not literally!) to meet me, may the wind be always at my back, and may the sun shine (not too) warm upon my face”…
PS: in other news – there’s a good reason my tyre developed that bulge – see here. Once tomorrow is behind me, I shall be taking the relevant photos, sending the email, and hopefully getting myself a new tyre. Or two, since I’m not sure I’d trust the front one now!