Alun said:
Colin, thanks for sorting yesterdays ride, it was excellent.
Everyone, thanks for waiting for me.
I'm off to get some slicks now.
No problem. It was nice to meet you and longers, and see andy_wrx and Frustruck again. Oh, and also the brief encounter with Rigid Raider who popped over from Blackburn to collect some Sora STI shifters from me at the start (RR - I bought the beer, but was too tired to drink much of it last night
).
As for the slicks - yes, definitely get some for your road rides, preferably on a spare set of wheels so you can swap 'em over quickly! Alun did the ride on his new cyclo-cross bike which was clad with knobbly tyres and that must have been hard work. He asked how much difference it would make to use slick tyres. I demonstrated the difference by flying away him from downhill without pedalling (we are the same weight, so other things being equal, we'd have freewheeled at about the same speed).
We were really lucky with the weather. There was lots of sunshine and blue skies. From time to time black clouds scudded overhead, but somehow they didn't drop any rain on us.
I'd like to thank the others for waiting too - they were waiting for me as much as for Alun. They were quite cheerful about it and never made it a problem.
It was really windy yesterday, but fortunately the wind was in our faces on the way out, but helping us on the way back on the toughest climbs.
We bombed down off Waddington Fell to try and catch the cafe in Waddington before it shut. There were a couple of scary moments when we were caught by gusty crosswinds on the long, fast descent, but we all got down in one piece. The staff at the cafe said that it wouldn't be a problem to stay open until we'd refuelled and rested a while.
It was a good day out. The Forest of Bowland looked as lovely as ever. It'll be nice to do the route again in August.
I thought that I'd get a 'century' in with riding from Hebden Bridge to Whalley and back again after the ride, but it only turned out to be 98 miles. I thought about riding round the block a few times to add the extra couple of miles but it seemed a bit artificial to do that. I was feeling pretty tired and hungry so I just went home, had a quick sandwich and a long hot soak in the bath.
Okay, that's yer lot for a few weeks. I'll bump the thread back into life in August to remind everyone about the 'rerun'.
