Oh dear. How childish do you have to be to flick the Vs at the camera with both hands?
Anyway, damn fine ride. It was good last year, and possibly better this year, with highlights including a village hall control rather than [bus stop+pasting table], cinematic action from ESL, and EVEN MOAR BEER at the arrivee.
A wee bit of a late start for me (I was suitably chastised by bhoot) coupled with incompetence at reading the route sheet (I think my first wrong turn was 800m from the start) led to me doing evens up the A10 until I could cut across to the A1010 - that was enough of a shortcut to let me latch onto what I thought was the lead group once they overtook me somewhere north of Waltham Cross. (Of course, it wasn't the lead group at all - zigzag and hippy are clearly much faster than that ...)
Anyway, once I'd been spat out the back of said group I rode chunks of the route with, variously, rob, ludwig, George Hanna, and HowradMichello from YACF, with chats to citoyen and ESL at controls or along the route, and a puncture fettled at the cerise light terracotta salmon PINK post office.
It was mildly amusing to share the road, the rolling road to Puckeridge, with the Women's National 25: I did feel slightly guilty as I passed one of the competitors on a long downhill (I think she was a Youth, hence my feelings of guilt - plus I've got slightly greater body density), but everyone else on the course had shot past me with an appalling rumble of carbon rims.
Tea and cake at Puckeridge, then back into the urban sprawl leading us back to Harringay. I quite like audaxes that end up by letting you play with the traffic: it was a fun little finish back to the arrivee, no further scolding from bhoot, and more beer than I should have drunk before the ride home.
The only disappointment there was discovering that biermeister Jonah had got confused by the distinction between kegs and casks, so once the cask was finished the promised extra kegs didn't materialise, and we were forced to slake our thirst from bottles and cans. The selection more than made up for it though - and the food offered wasn't bad either.
When's next year's?
(Thanks, of course, to all of ACH who made this happen, and especially to Jonah and family for their hospitality at the end. Chapeau too to the junior barmaids, one of whom told me that she was giving me *this* beer, but that I wasn't to come back for any more because I was silly and so she wouldn't serve me again. With perception like that, she'll go far ...)
