Early Bird Road Ride- Heathfield Circular

Paul And Colin, Worse For Wear!

Great to get Paul k back out again with us after nearly a year. Paul had made a special effort to join us even though he was nursing a bad hangover as indeed  was Colin (but that's not so unusual!). Also great to see Metin, Mike and Nathan. Paul asked me not to do a ride with any more than 50 miles but what I hadn't told him was that this ride had almost three and a half thousand feet of climbing! Despite their hangovers, Paul, and Colin set a rapid pace up Harley chute with me falling some way back from everyone else despite me setting a strava pb for this segment. Lots of climbing followed through Crowhurst and on to Penshurst where we all safely negotiated the famous 'dogs leg'  by the tower.I was nicely warmed up by now and enjoying riding my recently acquired Giant Defy. Paul was still suffering from his hangover but you wouldn't know if from how well he was riding. There was a fabulous two mile decent down into Burwash which would have been even better had the road surface on this lane not been in such a terrible state, the council really should be ashamed.Heading west we soon reached Heathfield before heading south for home. This meant we were were cycling parallel to the way we had rode up and would now have to climb up the Burwash valley. This wasn't as bad as we expected and we made good time to Chilley farm and a rendezvous with bacon sarnies. Parked outside the farm was a Giant Defy almost identical to mine, I was just wondering who it belonged to when out popped our very own Joe Jenner. He had missed the departure of the bacon butty boys and said he would tag along with us on the way back.All that was left was the ride back along the Weds chaingang route. Everyone except Paul (who was happy to ride with me and have a chat), shot off at their own pace and were soon gone and out of sight. It felt strange but enjoyable being back on a long road ride again after all the recent mtb riding, Paul has persuaded me to do another (longer) one next week.