Hack Bike Ride- December 29

Yesterday was our second hack bike ride of the season. Pete had planned a hilly ride going us far as the 'Three Cups Inn' before looping back via the hard riders route.The weather forecast was a bit dodgy with showers forecast and heavy rain later. Despite this there was a good turnout (see photo) including Dave HH on his first ever hack bike ride. We were disappointed not to see Malcolm but need not have worried as he caught up with us at Winchelsea. At Winchelsea we headed up 'Dumb woman's lane' which took us onto the road up to Broadoak (well known from the friday chaingang) .From here we headed up towards Watlington. At this point it was raining quite hard and there was another 15 minutes before our first pub stop at battle.We decided to have an extra pub stop at the 'White heart' pub at Cribb's Corner'. This was a good call as by the time we came out the skies had cleared and we proceeded to our pre arranged pub at battle with no rain. At this point Colin announced that he had had enough of the cold and didn't like having a wet bum.Despite our protests he refused to budge from the pub and said he would meet us later. We proceeded up the long climb of Netherfield hill. At the crest of the hill it started raining quite heavily and the sky was completely grey with rain clouds. I was all for cutting the ride short but was (thankfully) outvoted by the others who wanted to press on to the the 'Three Cups'. Fortunately the rain did reduce soewhat. It was starting to get dark by the time we reached 'The Swan' pub at Woods corner.Pete had forgotten that this pub existed and had never been in there before, so we decided to abandon the last bit of the ride to the 'Three Cups' and make this our furthest point. This was a great pub and we all get rather too settled there. By the time we left it was pitch black and with no moonlight I was finding it difficult to see in the dark and with the wet roads the long (mainly downhill) road to 'The North Trade Road' was pretty scary.To make matters worse my chain came off and got tangled around the chainring, much to my suprise I managed to untangle it before proceeding gingerly down the route with Derek beside me who was also struggling to see in the dark due to his light. Eventually we met up with the others. All that was left was the big climb up 'standard hill' , this proved to be extremely easy as we had a strong tail wind behind us. After one last pub stop at a friendly pub in Ninfield we headed straight down to the 'bay spice' where we met up with the freshly showered Colin for a well deserved curry. thanks to Pete for organising the day and all those who came along S.C