What got missed out over the last two years . . . .

Yesterday I released the Deer encounter account from 2010. On closer examination of the dusty corners of the 'drafts' section of the ramshackle archive of the SJH blog I realise that there are fragments of this and that which could possibly bear the glare of daylight on the screens of those who follow (lately in vane) my accounts of life awheel.
SJH

7th April 2010 Peter H, Darren Fowler, Tom-Tom, Ron Fisher, Gareth Doman John Gould and SJH were joined by Tim from the USA, who is over on a visit - his son is recently returned from Afghanistan, is based at Lakenheath and a keen cyclist. Tim is keen, too, but hasn't done more than a handful of miles since last summer when he first switched to a road bike from ATB. He's done a lot of skiing though, and this kept him afloat for the close to 60 miles of undulating Suffolk that he endured this morning. The picture above was taken by a member of staff at 'Mere Moments' in Diss.

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14 April 2010. USA Tim was back for more, Al MacPherson dipped his toe into the wonder of Wednesdays and Darren turned up for the last Mercredi before a run of unfavourable shifts. Nathan was due back in Bury for a driving lesson, so would be turning back before tea.

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21st July 2010. Tony "Wrong-way" Panting. Two weeks b4 the Lynmouth flood in 1952 had stayed at cottage that was swept away. He could have been a statistic, instead of a legend. Thinking of legends - who else is having a sub-optimal farewell season?

New venue, old attitudes. Peter warns against parking in the car park - 'they' would want to charge, because 'they' wanted £15 for his Rambling group to park there. Also has seemingly-obligatory sign forbidding just about everything, starting with Cycling and including Ball Games except (possibly) walking (though walking too slowly might cause anxiety and suspicions of loitering). Keen to avoid the latter, we moved off at a modest pace pausing only for SJH to nip down to the Bus Shelter and check for riders in the wrong place. I note that the website hasn't been changed yet.

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(date about a week after the above) Justin, Jack, Peter H, Jeff Agricole, Dawn, Richard Muchmore, a guy named Paul on a first-time ride, Glenn Morris (the one who isn't Glenn Grant), Tom-Tom, Tiger Tony and me (SJH).  We met up at our revised venue of NEW GREEN (there is a sign to the New Green Centre, off Station Road in Thurston, on the Eastern side) and had a short but amiable discussion with the lady who looks after the Centre and its car park (we may not use it at present, but possibly at some time in the future we'll cut a deal involving a donation ) during which we tried to project an amiable , approachable impression.

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Thetford Garden Centre - in the grounds of Kilverstone Hall, which used to be the home of the Zoo that achieved fame via those stickers in the rear windows of thousands of ageing family saloons. I knew it well, but only because of the stickers - I never went there. Perhaps that was were they went wrong?

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4th August 2010. How far is it to the far side of Livermere from Thurston New Green? Not far, is how far, and it was the distance that we travelled before the first puncture. As the pictures show, Peter was having quite a tough time even though Tom-Tom was providing assistance. With all the latest techniques acquired at Elmy Cycles' puncture-repair seminar that he attended last winter, and with the aid of my now-famous tool (a putter-on-er-er of reluctant tyres) Peter was all done in a mere twenty minutes or so. Then it was noticed that Paul-on-his-first-Wednesday-ride had a flat rear tyre. This took a little longer. The scenes below took place outside Livermere Village Hall.

After a total stop of  nearly 3/4 of an hour the ride finally got under way. I didn't get as far as describing the remainder of the ride.

Richard sees something

Peter Models his Overshoe modifications

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8th May 2012. The day began with sunshine, then clouded over and then brightened. Perfect tactical weather to get the riders out of bed and into the car and off to the races. The rain came much later and, not for the first time the final race was run on wet roads with grey cloud overhead and pavements now emptied of spectators. The huge amount of snaps and vids I took filled memories and emptied batteries. I was taking the video for Michael Lawson to turn into a record of the day, so needed to begin with the setting-up, against a background of the village waking up. I took most of this with my compact Canon Ixus (nice and discreet) rather than Polly's proper video Cannon Legria  that I didn't yet fully understand. The results looked quite usable. I couldn't have imagined that I would lose nearly all of the stills and video taken . But I did. I got someone to recover most of the data - but there were quite random chunks that have gone forever.

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