A bit of a busy weekend. Camping Friday night, left the little darlings at early o'clock, rode a few miles home, found a clean pair of bib longs, go to the station. Train was delayed, but the connection to Deepdene had been held for us. Top marks.
Met, umm, mind's gone blank, a bloke from Cyclechat on the train and hooked up with matthew as we nipped up the A24.
Big hello from Simon as we swung into carpark. Lots of familiar faces, but I couldn't name them all. A pair of Pikes, hatler, Charlotte, MacB, Dave whom I met on the old cars run, I'm sure I saw Life of Brian too, plus Mark and Mags from the tandem club. Sadly not on their Flying Gate. Simon mentioned Jurek was running late so I thought I'd hang on. Wow hove into view, and then hove out again, at Wowfactor 1. Simon then confused things by saying he'd seen Jurek signing in. I searched around but no sign, so thought I'd missed him. I hung around for a bit with a view to shooting off, when he and Handbag turned up. We set off about 15 minutes after the bunch.
When I first met Handbag she was making good progress on a nice hybrid on an FNRTTC. She's got an even nicer bike now, and makes even better progress. I did spend a lot of time behind her.
We caught Wow as we left Dorking, having waved to to Suzy and his Leggship. We exchanged a few words and slightly guiltily pressed on. The bits of up we encountered were made more entertaining by having a had time shifting onto the granny ring. A bit of fettling improved, but didn't fix, the problem.
It got hotter as we went on, catching MacB on the run into Holmbury St Mary. He was a bit knackered, but then he had ridden from Farnborough. Madness I tell you. We swept (FSVO swept) up a few more ridrers as we ground up out of Ewhurst and were soon inching up Whitedown Hill. And then my phone went. One of my customers had broken a widget, was working that weekend and could I help. Bugger. A Cunning plan was hatched.
We had a quick chat with matthew who was fettling with a Redhill CC rider and then bumped into Steve(?) and friend by the church on Ranmore Common. They'd misssed the turn, taken the hill down into Dorking and then ridden back up. How pleased they were to hear they could have turned left at the foot of the hill and found their way to Ryka's without busting their lungs.
I said goodbye to Jurek and Handbag as we got to the A24 and of to Deepdene. Then into Redhill, into the factory, into the van, with a widget, to J8 on the M1. Handover widget, back to Redhill, onto train as far as Gatwick, ride to home, ride to campsite at Pease pottage, freeze nuts off in sleeping bag.
All splendid fun.
