I suppose I ought to think of this is a miracle. For the first time it as long as I can remember the blue ride had as many riders as the red ride. Admittedly and, regrettably that was because there were only four turned out for the red ride. And that may have had something to do with the terrible weather forecast and the prospect of a cosy, warm zoom ride. But we, Graham Varga, Robin Heyward, Rob, Drohan, and me, Martin Crapper ignored the prospects of impending doom and were there looking for a decent ride.
As always, we watched the red ride set off and then wandered off along Sunderland Street towards the Stripe Road junction. we were a bit spread out, but that was fine and once we were around the junction, we all clumped together and headed towards. It was cold, but there wasn’t much of a wind and it was in our faces. So we knew we were going to have an easy ride home. Oddly the clouds seem to be going in the opposite direction!
Once over the double roundabout ready to turn left into the industrial estate, I suggested we slow down a bit to make sure we didn’t hit any slippery patches. We made it round the corner okay!
The planned plan was to carry on through Serlby on to Scrooby Top and turn right towards Retford. We followed the plan and turned left along Daneshill Road, went into Lound and Sutton and back across the Great North Road to queue at the level crossing. Once clear we set off again until we reached the Straight Mile and then across onto Mansfield Road. Graham seemed to be having energy problems and was getting left behind. By the time he and I reached the A1 there was no sign of Rob and Robin. When we got to the entry arch we found Rob waiting, Robin had taken a track and would obviously take a while to arrive.
Graham and I carried on, Rob waited for Robin! They caught us up before we got to the visitor centre. Three of us went in for snacks, Graham sat outside. It seems he had been for a ride the day before and hadn’t really recovered. We fed him an energy jel, sat him in the warm and let him recover n the warm. We had been heading into the wind so the journey home was going to be easier.
We aimed for Worksop , speeding down Sparken Hill and struggling to keep up with Graham! Our journey was straight along to Carlton, by which time Graham was dropping back so I stayed with him. The others stopped to wait just before Langold and we discussed briefly the way ahead with Rob telling us he would leave us at Oldcotes. There was another wait at the temporary lights in Langold but no other problems and we made our way back to Tickhill safely.
Graham still had 10 miles to cycle home. Note to self: don’t take on too much!
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