Early Bird Ride- Beachy head Sun 15 June

Great turn out today for a Sunday early bird ride. The weather forecasters had warned of frost so we had decided a few days before that we would play it safe and do 'Beachy'. As it turned out temperatures were well above freezing and there was no sign of an frost so we could have done an inland route after all. Good to see Mike, Matt, Simon G and Alex out with us again, I guess they were tempted as the Beachy run is one of their standard routes. Also good to see Josef making an appearance (we havent seen much of him this season) as well as Simon N on his first ever early bird ride. Just as we were about to leave I had a phone call from Malcolm, he had just woken up and told us he would try to meet us on route somewhere, I was sceptical that we would be able to meet up with him. We were also pleased to meet Edwin who had decided to give an early bird ride a go, he was a bit worried as he had only ridden with Chris P before on a bacon butty ride. We set off at quite a brisk pace with a tail wind behind us, Edwin and Josef were struggling a bit and we waited for them near Norman's bay. They again got dropped somewhere after Pevensey. I waited for them and josef soon caught me up but there was no sign of Edwin, I guess he must have abandoned (lets hope this doesn't put him off!) The climb up Beachy was great with a nice tail wind and wall to wall sunshine, while the decent down to Eastdean was even better with riders moving at 40 mph at some points. Simon G had to pedal like mad on his fixed wheeel to keep in contact with us. With the wind behind us the nasty little climb up from Eastdean was much easier than normal but we had a bus hovering behind our posteriors for most of the ascent which is a bit intimidating. Matt, Alex, Mike and Simon G split off from us at Polegate while the rest of us took the scenic route back. Now the wind was at our faces and it was a long grovel back to Hastings. Much to my surprise Malcolm managed to find us (his wrist is much better now) on the way back but at some point we lost Anthony (not used to longish rides?). A great ride in the sunshine with a good turn of speed.

Distance 45.2 miles Av speed 16 mph