To Witham! …early on Thursday morning for the 40+ club ride - but not early enough. I missed the rendezvous once again.
Hey hoe.
Witham is a lot further geographically than what I think it is in my mind. I need a good run of two hours to get there comfortably without any stress.
The clock was counting down for the 9:30 am rendezvous. By 9:10 am I had given up and started to ghost along, knowing that I wouldn’t make it.
This soon became the Ride of the Sneeze.
I just couldn’t bloody stop sneezing. Once I break out into a sneezing fit it’s pretty constant for a couple of hours, and then it disappears just like that.
Atishoo.
At least I’m becoming familiar with the route from Weird Wiv over to Witham. It really is quite scenic, and yep, that includes the Pink Palace just outside of Tiptree.
It’s a FUCK OFF Essex mansion where everything is painted pink. At first you think, Oh dear. We’re talking the pink brickwork for the perimeter wall, the pink front door, and even the pink chimney stack.
But I’ve learned to rather like it. I’m sure the neighbours feel the same.
And so I made it to the rendezvous, albeit around 12 to 13 minutes late. By absolute luck I bumped into R, who was also a little behind the 40+ schedule.
He reckoned if we time trialled it together we could catch up with the main group. This involved a rather hellish ride along the cycle path that runs adjacent to the A12.
Most unexpected was an adult shop along one of the sidings of the A12. It looked like it was one of those old roadside cafes that had now been converted into something a little more spicy
‘cos you never know when you fancy some soft porn whilst you’re commuting on a main A-road.
Jeez, some people.
We caught up with the rest of the 40+ Thursday crowd just ahead of the coffee stop. The warmth for the cafe cum pub was most welcome. The customer service was absolutely crap.
“Have you paid for those?”
…came the rather abrupt questioning from a young member of staff behind the counter.
Yep, dude.
A couple of riders then put in a request for a top-up of their coffee. The young assistant took this as a signal that everybody wanted a top-up and went around one by one saying, “What do you want, what do you want?”
He looked right pissed off when I declined to take out a second order.
And then the 40+ ride pretty much split up as we all went our relative separate ways and headed back to base. I tailed behind R once again.
Don’t forget that a 40+ ride is not a 40+ ride until you have ridden down the obligatory Turkey Cock Lane.
I was solo by the time I reached the outskirts of the half town, half city.
I rode along the High Street. There was the loudest sneezing man ever. He was creating something of a scene. I think health issues of the mind may have been involved.
By now my own sneezing fit had come to a close.