Saturday 14th March - Whitchurch Garden Centre

"Gord' ere with the cyclists"... oh the joys of the side gate intercom.

yep, it's time we enjoyed the thrill of the hartcliffe riviera again.

route out will be puxton, sandford, churchill, wrington; before heading through winford and chew magna. then we'll brave gordon's ancient back passages to the garden centre.

route home will be via whitchurch, hartcliffe and dunkery, happy days.

We were greeted with a cold but dry morning. Ivan announced that the start time for the group is going to be 8:45 all year round so no need to remember to meet at different times in the winter/summer. We headed out over Puxton. At Sandford we picked up some riders which boosted our number up to over 20. Continuing on we passed through Langford, up Redhill and into Winford where we were passed by Tom Last from the GCN Youtube channel. We mounted our steeds and chased him down but as the leaders got near he looked around and decided to turn off as he knew he was going to be beat by superior riders. Then at Chew Magna where Ivan sufferend yet another mechanical which was a stiff rear axle the same as last week. We continued on up the hill to Whitchurch.
Ivan had kindly arranged for us to be served breakfast past the usual close time of 11am although this was a bit of an effort for the staff. After we had lined our stomachs with a nice full english we ventured back out into the cold. About 8 of us made our way back via Hartcliffe and then up the main road to Dundry. The climb was very steep. We would gotten the Strava KOM if it wasn't for those pesky lights half way up. The decent was excellent and most of us touched 50mph! After passing through Chew Stoke we were treated to another climb, this time up the Old Bristol road - nice! Some of us missed the shortcut and ended up at the Castle of Comfort. After a hair raising decent for some down Burrington we all met up again.

The club shirt orders have now closed and we have 17 orders.

Scott - can you post the link to the Strava map that shows us all on the same ride.

Stats - http://ridewithgps.com/trips/4219180
TTC - 3.5/5
KF - 3.8/5
Video highlights -

Good ride today, although it felt a lot longer than it was!

Great write up as always Martin, always good to see some footage!

Ride replay:
http://labs.strava.com/flyby/viewer/#267992884,3eP3D7qM+A/ip/gPwrz4D+vL+A/Z7vgPPPD4D+ET+Q++HPkPPV76Dxnf+g8=

Long and hard was hot on the tails of short and soft by the end