Early Bird 5/1- Cloud Busting

"You Said The Weather Was Going To Be Dry!"

None of us bothered to check the weather forecast this morning as we had been promised good dry weather all weekend. We were therefore very disappointed to arrive at STAMCO in mist and drizzle. We kept hoping that the sun would clear it up but the drizzle continued throughout our ride, Derek said it felt like riding through a cloud. Good to have a rare appearance from konrad on an early bird. Steve D was with us but was quite a different rider to last week as since then he has had the pleasure of the Nora virus and its recovering from two days of illness. We rode one of the oldest early bird rides' Dallington' . This may be a short ride (30 miles) but it does pack in a lot of hills. The condition of the main roads were OK but some of the minor roads have really deteriorated this winter with all the rain , so we had to take it easy on many of the descents. In particular, the worst piece of road is the cut through between Ashburnam and Marlpits, the road surface was so bad we were holding on for dear life trying to avoid not just pot holes but whole sections where the top surface had peeled off and was full of gullies and mud. Steve punctured on this road , it was surprising that more of us didn't get pinch punctures, unfortunately I will have to remap this section of the route to avoid this unpleasant stretch.The road surface improved considerably after this and as we climbed up towards turkey road we saw a large group of cyclists descending on the opposite side of the road, this turned out to be Chris P with what looked to be a record number of bacon butty riders (should they be called the butty boys?)