I enjoyed that, it had all the important things that a good social ride should, apart from one, which I will come to in a little bit.
It had COR
It had lovely weather
It had banter
It had a pub (well, actually, two)
It had food (again I'll come to that in a minute)
It had ~30 miles of cycling.
Firstly the thing that was missing, was OTHER PEOPLE. This is not a criticism of Deano, whose company on bike rides is always good, but it would be nice to see more people heading out on these.
We set out from THoFC at about 18:30, as we knew we needed to get a move on to get to Rainton before 21:00, the time most pubs stop doing food. Down to Maunby, over the old railway bridge to Pickhill, onto Ainderby Quernhow, under the A1 and down the service road to the junction with the A61. A short hop down the A61 saw us turning left onto the back road to Rainton (over the bridge that crosses the A1) and into the village itself. The first pub we came to had a slightly cryptic sign outside saying "Sold Out", no indication of what it had sold out of, and it looked busy, so we went onto the next. This turned out to be a good move as they had their "Feast for a Fiver" Wednesday offer on, chish and fips! The fish was the size of half a whale, fresh and lovely. A small accumulation of chips and a puddle of mushy peas completed the plate. Having only had a sandwich and yoghurt, earlier in the day, I was starving and virtually inhaled mine! Of course the meal was washed down with beer, in this case it was York Guzzler.
After food we decided we needed to get a move on to get back. This was when we discovered that Deano's front light had failed! We managed the route back using my light, having to stop, of course, at South Otterington for one last pint in the pub with the grumpiest barmaid in the world (to be fair we turned up at about 22:00 and I think she just wanted to go to bed (as shown by the fact all the lights were off when we left the pub!)
A "quick" blast along the road to NTR saw me lending a light to Deano to see him home, I went into the house and was quickly asleep.
A great night, I think