The autumn colour seemed late this year, but last week on the Remembrance Day ride from Stockbridge to Winchester the autumn colours were in full display on Windmill Hill near Crawley so I thought we had left it a bit late for our ride to Burnham Beeches the following week. However, sixteen of us assembled at the Arboretum car park at Dorney Lake for the ride to Burnham Beeches - DavidB, Siobhan, JohnM, Rod, DavidC, Lin, Mick, Carol, Clive, Vanessa, JohnR, Helena, Keith, PeterH, Brian and me. Peter led the first group with Keith, JohnM, Vanessa, Clive, David B and Siobhan whilst the rest of us formed the second group, aiming for a more leisurely pace.
We were very fortunate that one of our members, Keith Vaughan, who used to do this for a living, ran two first aid courses for the group. The courses were held at the Old Basing Bowls Club on 21st October and 1st November when eighteen group members received training in first aid with a focus on cycling, each course lasting 4.5 hours. We were all impressed by Keith's professional approach and gve it rave reviews afterwards.
Make sure to have these three apps on your phone when out riding - what3words for giving your location to the emergency services, St John Ambulance First Aid - Android or St John Ambulance First Aid - Apple and Save a life - find your nearest defibrillator
There were 12 of us on this tour. Alistair was still unable to cycle so could not join us cycling despite having done all the planning and route research. So it was Brian, David and Sue, Graham, Keith, Len and Lin, Mark, Mick, Peter, Rod and Sue P who set out for the Cotswolds summer tour.
Although all the other trips for this year have been cancelled due to the Covid pandemic, the Devon C2C trip went ahead. Some of the original group opted to give the trip a miss, reducing the participants to SueP, Lin, SueC, Carol, Mick, David, Peter, Rod, Graham, Brian and Ray. I was not fit enough to do the full ride so provided luggage transfer and backup. Three of us chose to travel down to Barnstaple on Sunday 16th August with Peter taking the train whilst Mick and I drove down. On the Monday, David, Rod and the ladies travelled down to Barnstaple by car, then David and Rod continued to Plymouth to leave the cars there. Graham drove direct to Plymouth whilst Brian and Ray drove to Exeter, all then taking the train to Barnstaple.
The Lon Cambria is a cycle route starting in Shrewsbury and crossing the Cambrian Mountains to Aberystwyth on the Welsh coast designated as National Cycle Network Route 81. Those taking part on the trip were to be Mick, Mark, Peter, Rod, Richard and Alistair with Laurie and Chris, who now live near Shrewsbury, joining us for parts of the ride. Richard's wife Sylvia was driving along the route, providing luggage transfer and emergency backup.
In the week before the trip, the weather forecast for the Mosel valley was rain all day every day, but as it got closer the forecasts generally improved. We were all going by car to Trier and mostly taking our bikes with us. Carol did not fancy the long road trip and flew Heathrow to Luxembourg with a taxi transfer to Trier instead. When we woke up early on the Wednesday, the persistent rain of the last few days had stopped. The bikes were loaded and we were on the road nice and early.
Page 2 of 4