27 Dec- Upon the world dim darkness doth display

Darkness Descends!

Six riders met today for another early bird. We had planned to do a 40 miler but as the weather forecast said heavy rain we decided to do the 'jack frost 30 miler' which is a good choice for wet conditions. I was surprised to see Ivan out again as I know he doesn't like cold and wet weather. When we started there was no rain and there was even some blue sky but as we got nearer to Rye the sky started to cloud over. Suddenly everything went really dark as if it was late evening. We pulled over to throw on our water proofs but Ivan decided to throw in the towel and head for home rather than get a soaking.The rest of us pressed on up the long five mile draggy route up to Beckley. John, Andy and Steve B really gave it some welly and soon dropped me, I in turn dropped Derek so we became very spread out but regrouped at Beckley. From here it became a little easier for a while but Derek again got dropped and decided to make his own way home. John has been really pushing Andy in his training and for someone so new to cycling, Andy has come a long way very fast as is significantly faster than the last time he came on an early bird ride. As the only one heading back to Hastings I had to do the last 6 miles on my own up the hilly climb from Sedlescombe past the vineyard and up to three Oaks, it was quite surreal with the cold wet and darkness but I soon got back to reality on arrival at the back of B and Q.
The wet weather must have taken its toll on us as last time we did this route we averaged 15.8 mph so we were almost 1 mph slower!
Distance 29.2 miles
Average 14.9 mph