Just posted on Cyclechat:-
Apologies for the late reply; I blame a house move and subsequent lack of broadband.
I didn't have the best preparation for this ride but, despite that, I was fairly relaxed about it. The riders that I'd already met I knew to be competent, the forecast was benign and the time of year meant that we'd have a relatively short period of dark. What could possibly go wrong ?
As it happened, not much did. Two minor mechanicals, my traditional wrong slot after the McDonalds stop and an overturned car.
The car did give me a BIG fright. We'd stopped to re-group at a T junction and the car had turned to go along the route in the opposite direction. I heard the "Crump" from behind me and, when I looked round, I could see it on its side. My 1st thought was that the rest of the group were coming along that lane and, no, surely not ............... My sprint back down the road, all the time looking for evidence of a collision with a cyclist, would have almost got me an Olympic call up.
Thankfully, it was just the car involved; the group came along shortly afterwards and they made ready to slow any traffic coming from their direction while we tried to get the driver out of the car. Cheshire Celt did sterling work in that part of the operation and ChristineE (not OTP) and Kim helped to calm the driver until the ambulance arrived. That was the only bad part of this ride, the rest of it was, truly, magical.
My evening got off to a good start when ChristineE(not OTP) arrived and we set off to Piccadilly at 22.15 to see if there were any arrivals. There were and, after hanging around for a little while, we set off for Albert Square. The rest of the group assembled soon afterwards and the 16 of us were able to set off about 10 minutes early.
We lost ~30 minutes with the 1st mechanical (a troublesome cleat; the eventual solution was to remove it and pedal without clipping in) but the group was moving so well that we made back most of the time before we arrived at the McDonalds.
There was the traditional stop in Bury to prepare for the hills and to leave flowers and remember AlanS/jogler before the drag through Tottington, the roller coasters to Edgworth and the long climb up past Pickup Bank to the Grane Road. According to the OS, we topped out at 334m/1096ft above sea level. Once you're that high, it leads to long descents and we enjoyed (or at least I did) the drop to Shadsworth and on to Whitebirk and McDonalds.
A slightly curtailed stop got us back on schedule, "detour" notwithstanding, and we left Blackburn behind. The 2nd memorable descent of this ride is down to Ribchester and it's fantastic. It was made more memorable this time because there was a lot of mist as we dropped towards the River Ribble.
The group managed the climb to Longridge in fine style and not much time and then we mostly rode together in the swooping lanes towards Lancaster. This, for me, was the best part of the ride.
After the "car incident", we used the coastal path into Lancaster (it was lovely) and we managed to arrive in Morecambe on a glorious sunny morning with stunning views across the Bay towards the Lake District.
After a quick ride back to Lancaster there was breakfast, breakfast beer (stouts of various origins; thanks for pointing me in this particular direction wanda2010) and time to catch up with friends both local and distant.
Some thanks:
•to mcshroom and AndrewC for TECing
•the Waymarkers (various)
•the group for being fabulous company and for making this a very easy ride to lead
•for the very kind comments here and on yACF about the ride
I'm already thinking about next year's ride.
The various options that I'm considering are:-
•same again
•ride to Blackpool
•go through Preswich Forest Park ( off-road, kind of Strada Bianchi with bike gates) to Morecambe or Blackpool
•start in Chester and head to Conway or Llandudno
We'll see.
What matters most is that it appears that everyone enjoyed this year's ride. I certainly did and I thank you all for making it such a lovely evening.
