Club run reports - 17th July

Category 3 ride led by Graham Knight

Seven riders today - Hurrah! The route to Café 19 in Duxford was from the club's RWGPS archive, at least it was until I decided to give it a little tweak to include a favourite road. Sadly the tweak also routed us down an apparently notorious piece of road which seemed more suitable for a tank proving ground than a bike route. Don't tweak!

Whether due to the battering received due to my tweak, or some other cause (I think the latter), I suffered a spectacular puncture about a mile from Duxford. The tyre's sidewall was slashed and I had to disinter a tyre boot which had been in my saddle pack since some time in the last century. Miraculously, with the help of Alex and Ian, this did the job and, despite the alarming appearance of the tyre, it got me home.

Apart from all that the ride was incident-free and we all enjoyed the open vistas around Duxford. Café 19 did us proud with excellent service and good value. They even tolerated Alex occupying one of their seats without spending any money. We managed to practice our group riding skills on the way back from Hare Street with intermittent success. Sadly a failure of our numeracy skills meant that there were only six of us involved - Barry had been left behind and had a long chase. Still that did prove that riding together and taking turns really is faster. Throughout the ride Bruno demonstrated a novel meaning of "new man" by shooting up the hills and riding strongly to the end - impressive!