Out with the Kingsway crowd again this morning, for a pleasant ride out to the Black Shed (cafe) at Slimbridge via Haresfield, Standish and Whitminster. A nice cup of tea and a cake down by the canal in pleasant company. Horrible head wind to contend with on the way out, but sailed back along the lanes through Frampton and Longney with the wind at our backs.
Then for the second part of our ride
@Dark46 and I, along with a couple of others went along with @Largie to support his friend's cycle awareness/cycle safety ride around the streets of Gloucester. It turned out that this was a practice ride/feasibility study for a bigger, (possibly annual) event, and there were only about 12 of us doing it - and 2 of those turned out to be on holiday from Wolverhampton. I have to say I had more scary moments riding into Gloucester city centre today than in the whole of the rest of the year put together. Some of the cycle lanes are just deadly - running directly to the right of lines of parked cars, where you are completely at the mercy of any twonk who throws his car door open.
For a safety awareness ride, it was rather amusing that 2 of our crew (who shall remain nameless) had clipless moments today - one of whom did it at the only corner of the whole ride where the local newspaper photographer was waiting for us on one knee on the opposite pavement with his telephoto lens trained right at us! I'm sure if someone talks nicely to him he could see his way to deleting that shot? A couple of the ladies who had joined us were overheard wondering why we were all laughing instead of asking if he was alright. We have no case for the defence........but it was bloody funny.
46.9 miles today, taking me over 1,900 for the year - new territory for me.
Cheers.
Donger.
Bike went from being shiny and clean to caked in mud but it can stay that way as will be out on it again tomorrow.
