Saturday 22nd July- wet wet wet

You can wish you were lucky as much as you like but dry weather may well be a sweet little mystery on Saturday.

Wet weather order, route out will be sea front, anchor and... if dry enough, we'll roll around to sweets.

After meeting up on the sea front the bunch set off for Sweets via Burnham. As we rolled along Wick Lane Horatio Hornblower was getting a bit agitated in his car. He clearly did not want to be stuck behind a dozen or so cyclists all the way to Brean. Normally he wouldn't be as we always turn off down Red Road. However today we made an exception for him and continued past the turn all the way to Brean. Ivan even managed a friendly smile as we ambled along.

As we all know, the weather is very unpredictable in this country of ours. This might explain why the weather forecast is unreliable. Forecast was for thundery showers any time from 10 o'clock onwards. It was dry at 9:00. It started spitting at 9:45. It chucked it down at 10:00. Why did Sarah Keith-Lucas have to get it right this time! Keith dived under the first little porch he could find while the others soldiered on into the increasing torrent. Eventually Ivan spotted a small cafe and led the troops under a canopy for shelter. This has to be the shortest cafe stop ever! It even beat the Christmas jaunt to Burnham as I only had 8 miles on the clock. About 6 started queuing for tea, Jeannie popped next door for a quick one and came out with a cheese and bacon something. Then as if by magic it stopped raining. The queuing cyclists hastily retreated outside for a re-mount. A little concerned, the cafe owner came out wondering if she had offended us or something. We explained about the weather and headed off into the sunshine!

Sweets was full of rustic charm as usual, at least that's how I always think of Vicky. It was pretty full which is to be expected on a wet day. A few old faces (almost auto-corrected to faeces) turned up such as Dave and Stu and it was nice to have a quick chat.

Neil and Karl departed for Cheddar via Wedmore while the rest headed directly home for fear of another downpour. It actually stayed dry all the way home and apart from Neil bagging himself a couple of KOM's on the way back it was all pretty uneventful. Might adopt the french stance with regard to the sweep stake. I'm going to 'boo' Steve every time I see him from now on. No-one likes a winner!

Ride: short, Company: acceptable, Food: good.