12/10 Opportunity Knocks

The Original 'Men In Black'

Having had to reluctantly cancel the extra long early bird ride due to a wet forecast it was an added bonus that the weather forecast improved enough in time for me to organise the much shorter 'Jack Frost ride' at a not so early bird time of 10:00. Great to see Nick out with us on only his second ever early bird and also great to see Paul K again who doesn't get much chance to ride with us at present due to all his commuting. With Steve D and myself this made up a compact group of just four riders. Very pleasing  to see that the top half of battery hill has now been properly resurfaced , hopefully they will do the bottom half as well? Weather was much colder than we have gotten used to but with the bright sunshine it felt good to be out. I really do love doing this ride as although the ride takes in some relatively major roads they are all very quiet which makes for fast yet  safe riding. On riding up the A268 we were joined by Mark Ingram who by coincidence had just set off from Home for a ride. Mark stayed with us all the way to Cribbs corner before branching away on his own. After lots of fast flat riding it was a bit of a leg burner having to do the long climb past Pestalozzi up to Westfield and beyond. Nick had been riding very strongly throughout the ride but lack of food energy caught him out on the climb up Rocks lane where he really suffered to get past me and arrive at the end not too far behind Paul.The whole route took just over two hours so this ride is ideal when time is short. With the newspaper headlines declaring " Britain about to face the worst winter in 100 years" and "heavy snowfall in November", it seems the next time we do this ride it really will be 'Jack Frost'.