Another Tuesday, another Forty Plus club ride.
Chapeau!
Having clocked up 120 km on the previous ride, I was keen to at least match this. tl;dr my final ride distance came in at 118.5 km. I should have gone around the block a couple of times just to get this up.
There was a slight doubt if I would roll out early on Tuesday morning. Some meticulous weather planning the night before suggested possible rain through until 9 am. My rollout time was around 8:15 am.
If in doubt just fucking do it. You’ve got to get out there and ride, right?
There was plenty of surface water around as I made my way westward over towards the rendezvous meet-up over in Tipperary. I had some slight OCD concerns and made a mental note to get the Mr. Sheen out for my Raleigh electric upon my return later in the day.
My route took me around the side of a half town, half city I wasn’t expecting. It turns out I could have just gone on my usual Abberton route, which is where the new route then threw me out.
This meant going all the way around Abbey Fields and past the barracks. Some of the troops were out on manoeuvres doing circuits. They were all carrying rifles as well.
Blimey.
I had to stop at one stage along the lane to allow a family of young pheasants to pass through. It was most charming. Mother and Father Pheasant were walking together with their kids right behind them.
I reached the rendezvous with 10 minutes to spare. This is better than the effort a few weeks ago when I actually missed the meet up time and had to time trial it to catch them all up. It wasn’t the best of first impressions.
A few heads were turned when the other club riders clocked my Raleigh Electric. You bounder! You cheat! etc.
They’re a friendly lot and I think they got their heads around the idea that a bicycle ride is a bicycle ride, innit?
It turns out that I didn’t actually really need the electric. I was pretty knackered a few weeks ago, heading off with the fast pace group. I just about managed to hold on at the back.
Instead on Tuesday, I opted to go with the slower pace group, who were also then meeting up with the fast riders for the lunch stop.
It was, how can I say, rather slow. I actually turned my motor off for the majority of the morning session. Even with a bike weighing a massive fuck off 27 kg, I could still keep up with the pace unassisted.
We passed one particular house that had a homemade street sign saying “Pothole Heights.” The road leading up to the climb where the house was located lived up to its name.
The route was a little random. At one stage we actually crisscrossed the fast group, who were going a slightly elongated way around to the lunchtime get-together.
Lunch was taken at a fairly remote but rather quaint roadside cafe. It was a type of place that was covered in lots of OH SO FUNNY signs that wouldn’t have looked out of place in my old man’s stuffy old conservative golf club. You get the idea.
A ham sandwich was ordered.
A ham sandwich these days means something a little more than two slices of bread with some meat thrown in.
What rocked up was a sandwich on bread that was as thick as a double CD jewel case. In between was the most gristly ham. The side serving was some fairly average salad and a packet of ready salted crisps.
Yours for £10 sir.
I really should bring my own food to future rides.
I opted to join the faster group for the afternoon session. One of our poor riders had a few mechanical issues with his fancy electronic gear shifting roadie. While the battery said 80% capacity, they weren’t talking between the brake levers and the actual disc wheel. He was stuck in one gear for the entire ride.
We decided to take afternoon tea at a different location than the planned Coggeshall meet up. It just seemed to make sense with dark skies starting to descend.
We all split off on our various ways as we approached the run into the half town, half city.
One of the riders uttered the rather unfortunate words:
“See you next Tuesday!”
I don’t think it was intentional.
