Club run reports - 8th January

Category 4 ride led by Lisa Ridoutt

The first run out of 2023 saw seven Wheelers starting out from Ware for a run up to Royston. Little did we know that problematic Garmins, the number 13 and torrential rain would be the dominant forces of the day.

The lead rider’s Garmin was being difficult and kept going to sleep. In order to test out the concentration levels of the rest of the group she purposely sailed past the first major left turn; they all passed the test with flying colours, politely shouting out her assumed mistake. 

The majority of the ride north was sunny and enjoyable.

The return journey was neither of these.

After a good cafe stop at The Cafe on the Heath, we noticed it was spitting with rain. Hey, no worries - Phil checked his weather app and reported there was only a 13% chance of rain. Oh how we laughed at that report as we battled up Therfield Road, in torrential rain whilst being battered by gale force winds. At this point Ian decided to stop and try to reset his Garmin, which was telling him he was on a mountain bike ride, but he then lost the route completely. I took the decision there and then to jointly award 'Wheelers of the Week’ to myself and Phil for patiently waiting with Ian whilst he faffed around in a biblical storm. Problematic Garmin no. 3 was owned by Enzo as his incident detection alarm kept going off.

For the last 20 miles it was a case of heads down, try to avoid the floods, ignore Enzo’s Garmin and very squeaky disc brakes and head for home as quickly as possible.
If ‘winter miles equals summer smiles’, then there will be a lot of grinning from cat 4 in July.

Category 3 ride led by Graham Knight

In 2018 the BBC's weather service switched from the Met Office to MeteoGroup. Today the Met Office warned darkly of flood and tempest, while the MeteoGroup said "nah, probably OK". Either way five gathered in Hertford for the first Cat 3 of 2023 (actually Brian gathered in Ware but caught up later). The weather hinted at its disapproval of privatisation by sending us a few spits of rain as we left Hertford then, finding we had ignored this warning, delivered a short, sharp shower when we were just shy of Lilley. As we proceeded through Hexham and Pirton it settled for a steady drizzle. Not nice but we could take it.

Once we had settled in to the Four Leaf Clover at Hitchin, the drizzle had eased and there were hints of brightness in the sky. Gary assured us that the rain was now over for the day. Two of us were sufficiently encouraged by this news to try the Avocado Breakfast, which seemed to be a normal English fry-up with a some squashed avocado on one side of the plate.

As we set off for home the drizzle was still apparent and the contrast with the warmth of the café made us keen to get legs moving quickly. The climbs up towards Great Wymondley helped a bit but the now steady rain did not. By the time we had reached Weston the steady rain had become a downpour and the Met Office's triumph was complete. Muddy floods of varying colours washed across the road, passing cars dumped sheets of water on us and on one occasion the wash from an oncoming coach provided some breaking surf for us to ride through. Descents were nasty with stinging rain impeding vision and hurting the eyes. Legs became cold (except possibly Gary's which were encased in waterproof tights).

Andrew left us near Cromer to nurse his sciatica back to Buntingford, while the rest ploughed on via Watton. Strangely, I felt energised by the experience. Possibly some primitive survival instinct had cut in pushing me onwards towards the shelter of my cave before I succumbed to hypothermia or some sort of generalised trench foot. That's the trouble with primitive instincts, they don't come up with more sensible ideas like going to a pub and phoning for a lift.

Category 6 ride led by Tony Dos Santos

The first official category 6 ride out this year. 

Much Hadham was the start venue, making this sound like a classic novel. There was an air of trepidation, I had ridden from home, waiting (suspense, drums rolling) for the others, sitting at the bus stop when Claire rolls up. She thought the start time was 9.  I ate my snack, and had a drink, until at 9.15 Ian Bailey, Amanda S and David Smith rock up. Later than normal, well 9.16, Carolyn and Pete arrive.

The clock was ticking but nothing biblical (this could be the word of the day) was happening. We had a nice chat and then the countdown began. At exactly 9.30 we rode off, according to Ian’s watch, which apparently is set to the atomic clock - well it is an Apple! 
We went through Winding Hill and round the lanes. Claire was getting anxious as the Garmin said “off course” as I had a last minute change of route. Goodness, this is boring!  We were about 10 miles into the route and who should turn up, yes, the one and only Valdis. He missed us because we set off exactly on time! Nothing really eventful happened en route to the Polo Club.

We (well, Carolyn) had booked the polo club for 11.45. We turned up 25 minutes early! Category 2 turned up about 5 minutes after us. Who can believe it,eh? - Chris, Laura and Kev were in awe of the cat 6 as we had beaten them. Nothing to do with the fact that they had started at 10 and they had covered 40 miles! No issues as the orders were taken, and the food arrived in good time. 

The clouds were looming as we looked outside. The heavens looked like the apocalypse was imminent; I’m sure I saw four horsemen. It started to spit a little. After setting off, the wind picked up, and yes, the rain started to fall. It was truly biblical. Then the inevitable happened as we had a puncture, well David did, with a 10 inch gash on his tubeless tyre. It then became truly biblical, and hail started crashing down. Pete the tweak jumped into action and eventually repaired the tyre with two thingys (technical term) that go into it. 

The ride bike back was truly horrible, as we got absolutely soaked. The wind was picking up and must have been at least 59 mph (obviously below the speed limit on single track roads out in the sticks, if you didn’t know). We arrived back in Much Hadham, all too aware that we had managed to ride through the “storm of 2023”! 

Nothing else much to say really. A nice ride and I haven’t seen weather like that on a club run in years.