Three intrepid (or read really stooopid) GDW riders, Charles Rees, Chris Thomas and Daryol Laws denied themselves the fun of Stourhead today and chose instead to do battle with the elements instead of the muddy trails, though there was plenty of mud and grit on some of the roads Charles chose to go down.
The idea was to be a 50 miler beginning with a hard-ish push into the wind heading out through Motcombe Hollow, through Shaftesbury (Charles had somewhat of a large ‘tank-slapper’ to use a motorcycle phrase rounding the Best Western roundabout as a gust took his rear wheel away) then up Zig-Zag before turning to run with the wind back to Semley via the lanes of Ludwell and Donhead St Mary. So hills galore to start with and funny enough the theme continued climbing up past Pythouse and on into Hindon via Newtown, though turning at Hindon for East knoyle meant running back into a headwind, or at least it felt that way as we climbed out of the B3089.
Rolling through East Knoyle Charles decided to go for the ‘pig’ climb to Clouds House but Daryol took the sensible route past the church only to hear roars of derision and insinuations of cowardice as the others u-turned and caught up……ahh the power of positive thinking, “I’m positively not climbing that blinking road in this weather”.
Onwards into Mere and the ascent of the club hill-climb Mere Down which strangely felt ………… ‘orrible, until just near the top when the wind gusted again and pushed our intrepid idiots heroes upwards and onto the Deverills where they turned to run back towards Maiden Bradley.
The normal ‘blast down into Kilmington was still a blast but this time it was the wind doing the blasting and Charles “Wheelsucker” Rees (don’t blame me, he christened himself) shot past the tri-bar tucked Daryol to take a well deserved, if un-contested sprint point.
On the turn for Stourhead the wind decided it had had enough and really let rip causing mayhem once onto the isolated crossing of the airfield. It was like cycling into something very very windy (!?!!? ran out of descriptive words). But by the junction at Zeals our group had certainly had enough and Charles called it a day and turned for Mere, whilst Daryol went towards Wincanton, Chris unfortunately was still crossing the airfield, sorry but when every bit of you is soaked through and there is no feeling in most of your body parts, sod discretion its time to get home. Not fully true I believe Charles did wait, or I hope he did 🙂
Anyway a grand day out …. honest, so if you want to push hard and enjoy the British weather then Sunday rides from Wheels 9AM is the place to be, so were where the other riders who’d promised to come out and play??
And why or why didn’t we just go to Vince’s MTB race instead??
