Wed 31st Dec 2014 - Ride?

Anyone riding on Wednesday?
9am at Priory?

I will be out Martin. Sam should be as well. It's likely that there will be others too.

It turns out some people do ride on a Wednesday :-) and 10 of them turned up for a ride to Sweet's. With the thermometer exceeding 5 degrees we headed south - toll road, Bleadon, Lympsham and BoS. As we were leaving Highbridge we took a departure from the normal route and headed east along New Road towards East Huntspill. Apparently there is a Secret World along that road but we were sworn to secrecy. Eventually we appeared at the corner where the house with the flag and the site of one of Pete's many crashes. On to Westhay and Sweet's. Unfortunately they were closed. After a few sighs and a comfort break for Jim we headed North to Wedmore. Just as we were reaching Mudgley hill were were overtaken by 3 cyclists who thought they'd have a go up Mudgley. For some reason Ivan didn't want to chase them down so left that to Chris and Nick (who set a new PB up Mudgley). We followed them into Wedmore where we regrouped and then continued on towards Cheddar in search of sustaince. As we were minding our own business we were overtaken again but this time it was by a moped. Some mad fools gave chase and caught the moped. Jim then decided he was going for glory and overtook it and as he did so he looked over at the rider and gave him a Lance stare. Myself and Paul were content to use him as a gurney and followed him for a couple of miles doing 28mph. In Cheddar we stopped at the Mousehole and enjoy the diet friendly full english. The return leg was to be up Cheddar Gorge. As we left the cafe Ivan was ready first and set off with a few minutes lead. We gave chase and caught him about half way up. Chris took the poka dot jersey hotly pursued by Nick, Paul, Jim etc. Just over the top Ivan got his second puncture in two rides. He took his time as usual :-) with several spectators, see photo:-
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/sGIYj_ofenqDqsgXOsQGpfnw0nKs8dxosfNiv-siOJg?feat=directlink
The decent down Burrington Combe was very sketchy with riders all over the place but despite that the red mist decended again when a mountain biker was spotted. We all made it back to Weston in one group and had a good day out.

TTC - 3/5
OJC - 0?
KF - 4/5
http://ridewithgps.com/trips/3923179

To be honest, I only gave the poor person on the moped the Lance stare, because I thought it might be a good looking woman under that helmet, but I was hugely disappointed to find out she had a full grown beard! I should of done the wise thing and got a slip stream, but I couldn't resist the urge to over take her! I then sat up and waited for a tow from Nick and Ivan and then was hilariously-shocked to see Paul come past in the slipstream of the moped doing a million revolutions a minute! Man, he was in the zone and was seriously tanking it. I then had to dig real deep to get on his back wheel to get a tow into Cheddar, but I found doing 30 mph plus was seriously, seriously hard with the giggles!

apparantly the Cheddar open top double decker tour now includes a trip along the Wedmore Cheddar road to see if they can spot the mythical bearded cheddar moped lady sucking cyclist along the road. You may or may not have spotted the hordes of Chinese tourist taking pictures from the top of the tour bus along the straights.