Today the ACG sallied forth once more, with a couple of new folk – well, new to me – making up a peloton of 8 – a nice relatively manageable number.

We had great weather for it – hot and sunny.  No layers required – just the bare minimum – which is always nice.  You feel lighter, and therefore clearly faster.   GB kindly created us a route, which took us to the seaside at Burnham, via Brent Knoll as he’s unable to conceive of a route without at least one hill in it.  We passed the Burnham Run lot basking outside the cafe on the promenade, looked at the boats along the coast path to Highbridge, before making our own stop at Rich’s Cider Farm.   We sat outside in the sun, and clearly started a trend as the place rapidly filled up with people in many colours of more or less co-ordinated lycra.  We really must get team kit in order to compete.  I reckon every cyclist in Somerset was out on the roads today..and who’d blame ’em?

On the way back John’s hill had been patch resurfaced and I dropped off the back of the group, being cautious as ever (and you should see the hole in my rear tyre made by one of those chippings 🙁 I’m hoping it didn’t make it through the tyre wall…).  I didn’t catch up until Cheddar, and the effort of doing that nearly killed me!  Dropped by my own group…it’s just not cricket *grin*.  I’ve created a monster!

Cycling time: 1:57:37
Distance: 32.81 miles
Avs: 16.7 mph
ODO: 4316 miles

See that average speed?  There’s a very good reason for that.  Solar powered cyclists?  No.  New cyclist.  Note to self.  Do not cycle with those who are young enough to be your son.  You’re more than twice their age, and have spent a great many of those years doing things that he’s not legally allowed to do yet.  I think we’re all going to spend most of the day recovering from keeping up with him and his equally impressive Mum and trying to make it look like we always go that fast.  It would be wrong to do otherwise – cyclists have very fragile egos you know.  And obviously, if we’d started at his age we”d all have been just as good.  Honest.  Besides which some of us can’t resist a challenge.  So, we kept up.  OK, it was maybe a little too hot for such over exertion but I’m not complaining.  I expect it was good for us.  At least I can sit in that sun with a cold beer later…he can’t! *grin* 😉