Managed to get out with @
Rickshaw Phil and his brother Doug for a much needed ride to de-stress a bit from the current trauma we are going through in our family.
Headed out in nice sunshine, with bit of a breeze blowing and through the Sundorne estate to the Sports Village. As we crossed the main road into the Sports Village car park I thought I heard Phil utter the words "OH NO" from behind me and sure enough, as we proceeded towards the track down towards the river, Phil came to a halt and informed us he had a flat tyre!! We were only about 1 & 1/4 miles into the ride, which seems to be a common occurrence on rides the 3 of us go on!
Phil spent the next 20 minutes fixing the puncture, whilst Doug and I very helpfully took photo's and organised our activites for this evening
It turned out that Phil had picked up a small piece of glass somewhere on the journey through the estate and so he carefully pulled that out of the tyre and we were on our way again.
We continued down to the old canal path, which was quite muddy and slippy and then out onto the road at Uffington. We came up behind a young girl on a horse, with a small box van providing her escort from behind and we overtook and turned onto the Upton Magna road. We came up behind another horse, but they galloped off into a field and so we climbed up to Upton Magna and then up Haughmond Hill, which didn't seem too steep this time!
By now the wind was picking up and when passing gaps in the hedges it was blowing the bikes around a bit. We proceeded down the lovely mile and a half straight, cruising at 20 mph and passed our third horse of the trip. The roads were very wet with lots of puddles about and a few small floods across the roads.
We continued on into Rodington, Longdon on Tern and then Isombridge. The road at Isombridge is quite rutted and there was more and more water appearing on the roads and we came to this:-
It didn't look too deep........and so @
Rickshaw Phil went 1st.......................... and it was DEEP!!! He expertly managed to get through without wet feet and then Doug and I went through, dipped our feet well below the water and I had to bail out my shoes
It was then route 81 back up to Upton Magna, Uffington and along the canal path, through an ever increasing strong headwind. About 1 & 1/2 miles from home the
that we had seen approaching over the Stretton Hills arrived, in exactly the same spot as my last ride!
We donned waterproofs and @
Rickshaw Phil headed home whilst Doug and I headed back to mine, as Doug had brought his bike over in his car. It was like climbing a steep hill for the last mile as the wind was so strong we were struggling to reach 5 MPH on the flat.
We arrived home and about 20 mins after we got back there was a flash of lightning, big rumbles of thunder and monsoon rain and hail!! Good timing to miss that!
A very enjoyable and much needed ride for me.
21.16 miles at 10.1 mph avg speed (badly affected by the headwind)
.
Not a club member at the moment - mostly ride on my own.
) and bonked on last saturday's ride with @Hacienda71 which was a real schoolboy error. So, I wasn't sure how I'd get on today and didn't want to feel any pressure of keeping up with the lads.
Twenty minutes later though all was fixed and we were back on the road to Upton Magna.
While they emptied their shoes a couple in a BMW X6 drove gingerly through the flood - it was up to the sills.
. I managed to rip my rain cape on the way back too - not happy about that.
