Sunday 10 January 2010. A small turnout

Barry was leading an MTB outing from Brandon Country Park today, and I'm keen to hear how it went. Personally, I don't have a suitable machine in reasonable order, so I skulked indoors. However, I did spot an intrepid group who were certainly not put off by the snow. In fact they carried on, riding in the headlights of their team car. There was a time when I would have done the same. It was 1984, and our club - the VC Free Press brought the Beaujolais Nouveau from Beaune to Cambridge. This has to be done on the third Thursday in November, so not ideal riding conditions. Day one took us from Beaune to Epernay, mostly in pouring rain, and with considerable trouble with the tubs that several riders were using - getting the wheels dry enough to stick the new one on after a puncture was the problem. Our absentee host at a Chapagne Vinyard (we slept in the pickers' dormitory) left us a large fridge FULL of label-less bottles of the house product. The fifteen of us felt duty bound to finish the lot. Day two was Epernay to Calais; 225 miles it turned out to be and for the final 100 there were only four of us still on the road. We reached Calais at 2.30 in the morning having done just what these plucky little chaps have done for the final fifty miles or so, in snow that was over 4" deep. By eight the next morning we were climbing the hill out of Dover, headed for Cambridge. It had felt that this would be the easiest bit, and really hardly any distance at all. By 6pm at the Free Press Pub, we knew otherwise. SJH