Apologies for intruding on the ACME Grand dedicated thread.
Five Go Wild in Totham
A cold night in January in the teeth of Omicron was never going to bring out numbers so it was pleasing to arrive at the Swan at Totham and find another four misguided souls. The Famous Witham Peloton had managed to pull together Doc Brown (retd.), OD and Huggy and had been joined by Ravey Davey Gravy - I knew he was there from the moment I arrived, who else uses glow sticks instead of bike lights ?
The Swan was pleasingly busy, no doubt helped by the local lake fishermen having their annual meeting in the other bar. It also remains one of the cheaper venues for sampling decent ales. They now have three taps running but our favourite dessert ale is still in bottles - a fact which somehow escaped the refined palate of head brewer Huggy. An inquorate Quaffers' Choice Committee sampled Crouch Vale's Brewers Gold, St Austell's Tribute, Mighty Oak's Captain Bob and (for dessert) Mighty Oak's Oscar Wilde Mild. Doc Brown (retd.) is finally showing some signs of progress. "It tastes exactly the same to me" he opined while drinking his second sample of exactly the same ale. Such insight ! I had my revenge for his previous failings later on when I accidentally threw a pint of Oscar Wilde Mild at him.
The formal business of inventing the new Epi festival out of the way, we turned our attention to seeing if we could shorten some other potential adventures into something manageable - I had got slightly carried away earlier in the day in this very parish looking at the older boys discussing the ACME Grand and how many hours sleep they could manage before realising I would not have time for anything beyond a quick nap in a ditch while slogging round 1000km at an ever-slower pace. OD's idea of a weekend adventure starting with an overnight ride on the Friday was soon refined into riding somewhere on a Saturday morning to spend an evening carousing in a hostelry somewhere else, sleeping in a hotel and riding back the next day (possibly using the train for most of the return journey). That's the kind of adventure we can all get enthusiastic about. Ravey did suggest adding some COR to make it a bit harder before he got distracted by the beeping till which he insisted was actually a Seb Fontaine remix from the early '90s scene as he shuffled round the pub with his hands very much in the air.
It wasn't long before Ravey was putting his oversized hat on and preparing to leave. He was headed to a field somewhere in Hampshire for an allnighter. The icy blast as he opened the door made us all realise we were in for a cold haul home (if you can call dawdling 9k back to Witham a haul - I bet their Garmins hadn't even cooled down from being indoors before they were home, some of us had nearly 20km of flat roads to negotiate). We all decided the best thing to do in the circumstances was sample another ale and annoy the staff by appearing to call the barmaid the name we use for the person in charge of the kitty. According to her, the correct term is, in fact, wench. Wait until we tell the Hustler.
Naturally the further sample was to have consequences. I still shudder to think how unnecessary the whole episode was but I can't turn back time. Basically, the FWP had synched into their celebrated three musketeers formation but I had engaged Doc Brown (retd.) in a technical discussion so the arrow was missing its point. As soon as I saw OD and Huggy's furious faces, I realised my grave error and sped off into the night leaving Doc Brown (retd.) to face the music. I hope his inevitable ban is a short one but I fear for his prospects of ever making the FWP Grand Circle now.
Despite it being minus 2, it was a beautiful starlit ride home with only two cars for the whole journey. If I had gone to bed straight away, instead of staying up for a while to watch England toiling in the 4th Test, it would have been a glorious end to a good evening.
