It was a bit of a gamble resurrecting this ride, which was last done 3 years ago. Having initially made contact with the organisers of Garthorpe Village Hall before Christmas, I made a possibly bold prediction to them that we'd get 35 riders, which with their £7/head charge was the minimum they felt would be viable to raise funds for the hall and for their volunteers to open up at silly o'clock in the morning.
Having done the traditional route a number of times in earlier years, I wanted to try and improve things a bit, as in the past, some of the roads around Elvington towards Howden had been spectacularly bad, although I knew they'd done some re-surfacing locally. In addition, I felt the first section was a bit boring only enlivened by the odd boy racer buzzing us. So that's why I decided to incorporate a section of the York to Selby cycle path, so even though that does have a bit of tree root problem on the tarmac, it gives you a different perspective of the countryside, but more importantly gets you further south which then enables you to experience some of the local wonders, such as the rich smells of the Rank Hovis flour mills near Selby and the ominous cooling towers of the Drax power station which we first see in the distance and then as we zig and zag on the quiet country lanes, they grow in size, to eventually tower above us. Unfortunately with the drizzle, it wasn't possible to stop at that point. Unfortunately, unlike Simon's cat, neither of my two cats have any weather forecasting abilities:
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So the Norwegians let us down on that score with their predictions of a warmer night and no wetness. I blame Brexit, but unlike the effects of that, fortunately the drizzle was only for a short time.
Then there was the long straight of the A645 which by day is a very unpleasant road due to the volume of large juggernauts using it, but at night there was only a couple of vehicles, who gave us plenty of room. And going that way then let us use the Goole Services which I know came as a great relief for some riders, as at that point there was still another 10 miles to the village hall. Coming in on the Old Dock road to the south of Goole then misses out some of the nasty bits, but still allowing you to appreciate some of the port, which is in fact 50 miles inland. By then, we could see the eastern sky slowly lighting as we tracked the River Ouse, even going below sea level at one point, to then get to Garthorpe just before 4 am, to see a nice spread for us, which was rapidly demolished:
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Some riders then decided to engage in the Zen art of eyelid inspection
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Setting off again, then we did have some negative slopes to contend with, so chapeau to those on single/fixed, especially
@GrumpyGregry who decided not to bail but to finish the ride. Then it was over the Humber Bridge
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and onto breakfast
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All of my photos can be found
here. Special thanks to
@User10119 for hosting most of the riders beforehand and to those who helped out at the front and back, especially
@McWobble and
@CharlieB who seemed to end up doing a lot of the waymarking, so hopefully next time they can have a rest as the more who help out, the better!
As the Village Hall seemed very pleased with us, we'll definitely try and run this again next year.
And that's what the Friday Night Ride is all about