WSW blog saddles up...

We'll initiate this blog of roving ride reports with last week's efforts. Please feel free to add comments below by clicking on 'comments' below (duh) and forward reports, photos, and videos (of appropriate content, of course) of everyone's efforts to Steve as usual. Also, if you know any other interesting bike blogs or sites, please send links.

KF

now on to Steve's last gripping ride report......


Mark, Justin, Julian, Nathan, Graham, Deane, Ron, Paul Rooke, Andy Davison and Me (SJH) set off in the sunshine on a route to include tea at Wicken Fen, where last week's ride refreshed itself.

Now Deane, ever impressive at any time, had put in a few extra miles last week and thus missed tea at Wicken. He went to Edinburgh. From London. And back. By bicycle. 903 miles in (I hope I've remembered correctly) 107 hours or, 3 days 9 hours. The weather was atrocious, in fact apocalyptic according to another rider. Pedalling hard to go down hill the wind was so strong sort of weather. Of course, Deane being HARD he travelled light, just taking what he could carry in his pockets. So he got cold as well as wet. Very cold. Very wet. He mentioned "the last 200 miles" and I realised the enormity of this ride - he'd done 700 miles by that time. I do 500 a month at the very most. Anyway, for all the difference it made to Dynamo Deane's performance Sunday's Club run could've been a light training ride.

As with the last ride we took to Anglesea Abbey, Mark took us on an excellently circuitous circuit skirting around Wickambrook. We met a group of (I think) three horses with riders, and waited for Mark's input (in fact Justin, with impish good humour, loudly asked for Mark's opinion as we passed) but it wasn't required. In fact he confided that the riders had done the exactly correct things in the proper order. Our route then took us across the old A11 and the old A45 (see earlier reports for more on 'old') to Swaffhams Bulbeck and Prior where we descended onto the Upware Fen Road for a section that was utterly exposed to a brisk breeze on our left shoulders that had us in echelon from verge to verge. Because the road is narrow, there was only room for four riders at the most - leaving the other 7 to scramble to organise a second echelon. The subsidence, which I remember well from Cambridge days, seems to have deepened, and at 23-24 mph felt more like an off-road switch-back [Old Fart's corner; I get very annoyed that there is an increasing use of "Switch-Back"

to describe a hairpin bend. Switch-Backs go up and down. I think that it may be a US usage - which might lead some to use it in the belief that this will make them appear in some way modern. Don't misunderstand me, I approve of most US usages for their briskness and pungency. ]. (an American replies: switchbacks are the hairpins on mountain roads; this corruption in usage has nothing to do with us...) We arrived, gasping, at the A1123 (The Huntingdon to Fordham road. Just one question; Huntingdon to Fordham, why?) and were dragged at 25mph by Steve Newman doing an impression of a demented egg-whisk in a successful attempt to beat himself to the Wicken sign. Then a right turn to tranquillity, nature and nourishment. Slow service exercised a few, and there was muttering about not returning. However, the sunshine calmed every one down, and we'll be back. Maybe after the wasp season.

Fast blast (but not as fast as last week) back via Fordham, Chippenham, Herringswell, Tuddenham and Risby (got dropped in the surge up Poor Man's Heath again). When I say that someone stole the Risby sign, sadly I mean just that. It's gone. It is no more, an ex-sign a non-prime.

No punctures. No incidents. Paul Rooke mastered the tricky difference between riding ON the front and riding OFF the front just in time for the tailwind home run, most of us confused ourselves while riding in allegedly echelon fashion; which maddened Mark, briefly.

As I reached home I'd clocked 76miles at 17.8mph. An excellent ride; if only they'd go slower up to Poor Man's Heath.

SJH