Now, now chaps - I well remember
prison life the world of conventional work!
I worked a 55-60 hour week doing hard physical labour in a factory for 4 years before I went to university and I did a 5th year on nights to save up enough money to go (four ten hour shifts didn't earn me enough so I worked five eleven hour shifts).
While a lot of you were out having a fantastic time, I was often working overtime, or recovering from it!
After university I did a few years on a fixed salary. I was frequently expected to work 4+ hours unpaid overtime in the evenings and/or work whole weekends for no extra pay, and I was only on about £10k at the time too, so hardly raking the cash in.
I can safely say that many entire summers came and went in my 20s and 30s without me spending a single day out in the sunshine.
One year, my June summer holiday was put back so many times due to pressure of work that I ended up taking it at this time of year and our caravan in the Yorkshire Dales got snowed in during blizzard conditions!
Eventually, I'd had enough of my crappy work-life balance so I chose to pack in my career and try to go it alone on t'Interweb. The fact is that (so far) this has been largely unsuccessful and has plunged me into poverty, so please cut me some slack and allow me to occasionally take up the kind offer of a mid-week ride in the sunshine with a couple of friendly CycleChatters!
Anyway, enough of that - what about the cycling?
I met Calum and Bokonon as arranged, and we dropped down into Haworth, climbed up to Stanbury, then plunged down to Ponden reservoir. The sunshine was hitting the north side of the valley so we climbed back up towards Oakworth and then turned left and headed over to Scar Top.
We decided to stop at Moor Lodge tea rooms rather than going on to the cafe at Wycoller.
It was so warm that we were able to sit out on the balcony in comfort and enjoy great views over the moors.
We had a bit of a debate about which way to ride back to Hebden Bridge. In the end we did a tour of the local hills via Trawden, Clarion House, Coldwell, Thursden, Haggate, Worsthorne and Mereclough, and then dropped down onto the A646 and did a quick blast down to Todmorden and along the valley road to HB.
We headed straight round to the station for Will (Bokonon) and Calum to catch the train back to Leeds.
I had done 43 miles and they had already done 23 miles from Leeds to Oxenhope when I met them so their total was 66 plus a few more miles to get home from the station at the other end.
Thanks for the company lads, and for dragging me away from my computer for a while - sometimes I feel like I'm married to the damn thing!
