My Community
General Category => Club Runs => Topic started by: RobC on January 27, 2023, 05:03:37 PM
-
Sunday route if there are enough of us to make a Pacers' (plural) ride.
https://www.komoot.com/tour/1019036926
-
Confident that the early drizzle would soon lift Paul, Mark R, Rich L, and I trundled out of Brackla to repurpose a pre-Christmas (Rich B penned) Chasers ride to Barry. With a little warm up through Pyle, and a warm down through Ewenny.
Constant rain until looping back to Coity common but that would probably lift as we got over the top. Through Treos, where Paul manfully resisted the urge to feign a puncture and go home, and onto the series of windy (nah sayers might say filthy, gritty, pot holed) lanes heading East.
Pace was relaxed and we unanimously agreed this was very much reliability ride weather, and warm sunshine would only spoil that kind of event. We also reviewed the current state of mudguard design and Mark and Rich’s faces were in particular a testament to how any guard that finishes above hub height is almost useless to your riding partners, and really a flap 6 inches from the ground is the way to say you care.
Stopping at Romilly’s Café in Barry we looked very much like we’d been advancing at Verdun, and to the delight of the owners took our white-cushioned seats. Sat drinking decent coffee and staring seawards we mused that it was only a matter of time before the sideways rain began to break up.
Setting off home it became quickly evident that the route was running in the wrong direction and rather than riding wide, exposed roads with a tailwind and hiding in the lanes on our return we had 20-30 miles grind to look forward to. A reminder to us all never to trust anything Rich B suggests.
Rich and Mark peeled off at Death Valley. Paul cheerfully offered to ride the Ewenny loop which I felt obliged to join him on and sat tightly on his wheel round the coast.
Felt like a tough one for what was a slow ride but got to start the year somewhere.
-
Totally different weather forecast when I posted that before Christmas, you would have had a tail wind home if you had ridden it then.
-
And you say that as someone who didn't even ride their own route! ;D