Club run reports - 4th July

Category 6 ride led by Tony Dos Santos

Ware do I start! I turned up a little earlier to say hello to a couple of new riders and good banter was had with the Cat 3ers. All on a high about Three Lions on our shirts (It’s coming home, It’s  coming home) and the England 4-0 win. 
The riders started filtering into Allenburys and a big hello to the new people: Carolyn Kelleway (don’t call her Caroline), Gary Johnston and Martin Phillips. We all had a nice long chat. PP (Puncture Pete (Eldon)) and RR (Rapha Rogers) came rocking up. Kate “bottled it” and came with us instead of going with the 3’s.  Also, Steve Gershon and Lee Cutler were there, with their usual wit (is that how you say it). David Smith turned up, as dapper as ever. 
So we are 10, not a hard number for me to remember is it? I kept counting and could only count 9, but being somewhat confused I realised I forgot to count myself (back to school for me). 
Off we went with the time being 9.31 - I know, I was late!  We were off like dogs out the traps. 
Riding along, with 3 new riders, we were all having lovely banter and the weather was light drizzle. 16 miles in and, yes, you guessed Peter had a puncture, hence why we call him PP. This time, we weren’t worried about changing his tyre, more about how to get the skewer out of his rear wheel. We tried everything to unscrew the damn thing, but who should come along, the one and only Crazy Cutler (sorry Lee, I can’t think of anything to rhyme with your surname lol) and brute force did it. 
Tyre changed and we were off. We got to Thremhall Park at 11:30ish. As usual, reasonably priced and good food and it came out quickly. 
With all the riders having fuelled and rested, we rode off into the sunset, with Carolyn saying to me “looks like we’ve beaten the heavy rain” and yes, you guessed it 20 minutes later we got soaked! 

No more mechanicals, a nice steady pace today and only one P from PP. 
Thanks all for coming, a really enjoyable ride and some new additions (well I hope they might be) to the club. 
Oh, and did I tell you: It’s coming home, it’s coming home....

Signing off from Dos Santos Towers!

Category 3 ride led by Paul Henderson

Despite England progressing to the semi final of Eurovision or something the previous evening, 11 cat 3’s departed in good spirits from Ware in very slightly damp murky conditions, but due to exceptional route planning hardly any further rain interrupted progress to the Riverside cafe in Ickleton, or the return. Indeed, refreshments were taken outside in very pleasant warm conditions. The ride leader even suffered some colouring of the arms, poor delicate flower.

Hold ups on the way there included a dropped chain, David M on his first Wheelers ride suffering a puncture, followed by Dennis B suffering the same fate, the latter having serious issues with the tubeless tyres he uses. Here we left him and Alex to sort the problem, with them later joining us at the cafe stop.

As we left them the ride leader made a basic error of not counting the number of riders, a very large number, and managed to lose Andrew completely, who subsequently made his lonely way home. Apologies Andrew.

Fortunately no incidents on the return journey. Total of 56 miles, just over 800m climbing at an average of 14.5 mph.