2010.01 January

Sat 2nd January 7.30am ride
CB, FL, RT & Philip Thomas.
Route was up to and past the tank and round the gallops towards Arundel. Just before the CB point of digital dislocation, we took a right turn up a steep bridle path and then a left turn onto a road down to the road to Burpham. Then headed up past Burpham along the track to the SDW by which time PT was showing the effects of not having ridden for some time (in fact only once since his fall at Steyning Bowl). Back to Findon by the required time of 11.00am, where we were surprised to come across Mr Hobden on two wheels – he was challenged to join us the following week at the appointed time.
17 miles.

Sat 9th January 7.30am ride
FL and RT met outside the butchers at the appointed time, expecting both CB & KBS, and just as we were about to set off KBS arrived but with problems with a broken rear-mech cable. To much derision he manually placed the chain on the granny ring at the front and pedalled off back home to acquire another steed. Meanwhile FL & RT crawled up Church Hill which had been made passable by some vehicle, though in some instances with such deep ruts that one had to walk.
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By the time we got to the top KBS had struggled up the snowdrifts from Tolmere to meet us there, an ideal spot for a photo stop – this was the location where KBS had taken his photo of himself on skis:

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As can be seen the snow was a bit deep.

Francis

The plan was to do the Cote Street route starting off along the ridge above Long Furlong, but the drifting made this impassable and so the plan was changed to going along the bridlepath towards Salvington and to go down Cote Street instead. In a change of character, FL decided to go off piste:-

Francis off-piste

…and KBS decided to walk on piste!

Kim on piste

A reasonable ride to the top of Cote Street, but then we found trees littered across Cote Street due to the weight of snow, so the plan was changed again to continue towards Salvington. Even this path had some trees across it:-

Bridlepath to Salvington

There followed an interesting slide down the path to the Findon Valley Gallops, Path down to Findon Valley gallops

after which we returned to Findon by the path through to Rogers Farm (losing Kim to Church street and return to Tolmere, and then FL/RT going up Nepcote return to Nepcroft to permit TM to perform his first bike maintenance on FL’s brakes. KBS, true to his viking spirit, couldn’t help but release a victorious proclamation at the end of the ride – I think he was saying “we did it” “ich”.

– a mere 4.6 miles in one and a half hours!

Sat 16th January saturday morning ride

Sat 23rd January saturday morning ride

Sat 30th January saturday morning ride

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