Club run reports - 5th December

Category 6 ride led by Tony Dos Santos

I turned up at Allenbury’s, followed by Denis.  Then Peter Walton turned up,  Ian Bailey and Rebecca Moore. Only five of us. Carolyn Kelleway advised she would meet us at Cold Christmas Lane. 

We set off at 9.30, met Carolyn and had no real incidents. We got to Thremhall Park, as normal, and the food came out swiftly. 

On the way back, yours truly had a puncture, fixed and on our way. I had a minor altercation with a branch and crashed into the soft verge. Nothing else really happened. 

Thanks all for coming.

Category 3 ride led by Graham Knight

One problem with winter cycling is that clothing that is perfectly fine for brisk pedalling is inadequate for standing still. This realisation is not immediately apparent but becomes increasingly obvious as time passes. And so it was as we stood around, making the usual helpful comments, while watching Adam and Gary struggling to deal with Gary's puncture. A tight, wet, cold tyre plus frozen hands made for a long struggle. After a while it began to rain, reinforcing in each of us the suspicion that we might have been better off staying in bed.

We were just past Whitwell. Things had been progressing fairly smoothly up to this point and we were on schedule for lunch in Hitchin. The intended route, though, involved a long loop towards Pirton, much of it into a head wind. On the other hand there was a nice, direct route via Preston with much of it down hill ... Numb limbs and time lost meant we took the course of least resistance and headed straight to Molly's Tea Room in Hitchin. This was our first visit to this establishment which, shall we say, is "traditional"; proper tea cups, floral wallpaper and china nick-nacks. Still the tea was plentiful, the coffee acceptable and the cake was good - and above all it was warm.

Having succumbed to route shortening on the way out there was little resistance to suggestions of a similar approach to the way home. Therefore we enjoyed a high-speed return straight down the B656 to Welwyn and then the B1000 to Hertford towed by Yiannis and assisted by a nice tail wind. The only difficulty was that the B1000 was very definitely closed, by five foot barriers stretching into the undergrowth. This forced us into cylcocross mode across what turned out to be a very sticky clay soil. We made it though, so muddy but otherwise unharmed we made it back.