LEADON VALE CYCLE CLUB RIDE 359 Sunday 16th July.
After 40+ mph winds yesterday I didn’t know what to expect this morning, but apart from a bit of a breeze it was dry and the sun was trying to shine. With the urn on and everything prepared it was time to group up into rides, the sporty boys had encouraged Chris to join them and Steve would ride the Advanced with us he was going to cut the ride short due to family commitments.
Leaving the club we kept the sporty ride in our sights until we hit the climb up the Downhouse hill with its new tarmac surface, no potholes but you found yourself looking for them and the roads were nice and dry. Maggie set a strong pace up Redmarley hill which certainly warmed us up and Steve discovered he couldn’t get his lowest gears and didn’t know why, but up he got and we made good time on the run down to Bromsberrow passing the ever deepening quarry before pushing on through to Greenway cross where we were safely seen over the road by Gary who then led us around Leddington lanes to Ledbury Cricket club, feeling a bit warm now so the arm warmers went in the pocket in preparation for the climb up through town, a good pace was set and we all stuck together over the lights and up to the little lane which takes us up and past cut throat lane and over the back of the Malverns now that bit was behind us this has to be one of my favourite roads undulating through past the Colwall turning where we said goodbye to Steve, and now Ken was retell in the story of his time in the nets at the cricket club to Julie who admitted she knew nothing about cricket and Ken complaining that no one commented that he managed to hit the last 5 balls, I asked if he had shown his wife the video which he said he had and she thought he was very brave and put an extra spud on his tea as a reward. Julie was still none the wiser what we were talking about but Gary and Maggie had opened up a gap which we closed just as we turned towards Mathon and the rain. Stopping to put on our rain jackets the rain now quite heavy and as we pushed on the roads were very wet. Mathon and the rain looked set in as we climbed through to Colwall and now rain and a headwind greeted us through to the British camp road making the decent down to Eastnor challenging, but the rain was easing and we all knew we had the Holybush climb ahead of us but as we passed the castle Andrew flew passed us on his way up, but we all made a good effort up the climb the wind not hindering us too much, and soon the nice bit the drop down to Rye cross a little bit hairy passing the gateways with the cross wind. But now it was the push for home through Pendock the wind not as bad as I thought it was going to be. We said goodbye to Gary at the Moat lane turning so the 3 of us pushed on home where Adrian Di Gill and Andrew were already enjoying a brew. Before I could make a tea the sporty boys arrived and Andrew told us about his training ride including 6 climbs of Holybush from the Rye cross side, the hard side making our climb up once seem a little easy.
Thanks everybody for riding and helping out today.
Yellow leader.