Jamie and Chairman Whelan
20th December route
Another day: another Xmas dinner ride. This time with those who take their pleasure on the more effete side - The Cafe Racers, who owing to illness, misunderstandings, hangovers and childcare constraints, were reduced to a trio. In a windy carpark in Masham at the unearthly hour of 9am, Simon, Jamie and myself faffed about for half an hour before capitulating to unspoken peer pressure and setting off in a generally upward direction, unfortunately generally against the wind too.
The ride passed without incident apart from Simon ‘arms of steel’ managing to snap a Presta valve as he assisted Jamie pumping up a tyre. Our payback for the gruesome ascents the Chairman had factored into the route was marred by the wet, greasy roads which made the descents somewhat challenging especially for a confirmed coward like me.
Lunch break in Pately Bridge confirmed our pace had been leisurely, as befits a christmas dinner ride, although 3 hours to do 25 miles might be considered a little too languid in some circles. Reality kicked in leaving Pately Bridge, ascending Old Church Lane, a seemingly unending bank with so many false summits the actual top was undetermined, somewhere in a parallel universe we may be still ascending like three Sisyphus’s with bikes instead of boulders. At some point we were able to change out of the big cog at the back and there ensued a fantastic few miles of actual cruising, on a decent road across Lumley Moor, propelled by a tailwind. A bunch more easy riding took us back to Masham for the main event of the day - Xmas dinner. Although we had not really done enough cycling to justify the abundant calories ingested, we had done more than the assorted non-cyclists who joined us for dinner. Except for Pete, who, owing to a calendar related cock up, thought the ride began a whole twenty four hours later, so he rode to Masham to join us for dinner.
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