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SideshowBob
Jonny69
A Fairly Easy Day in June
Ride Report.
Anidel's incident has rather overshadowed the rest of our ride; there are a couple of things that maybe worth telling.
We had an almost idyllic day, with good weather, good roads and scenery and a fairly well matched group. I have no qualms about admitting I was the weakest rider, but that is one of the benefits of being old - there's no problem about not being fastest.
It was necessary to abandon the original route because it involved descents which might have been problematic to those a bit challenged in the braking department. I did say early on that I did not wish to commit to one particular route beforehand because I wanted to consider the weather and riders on the day, and I feel this proved to be the right decision.
So we went with Plan B, which didn't really involve any difficulties (up or down) before the climb at Playhatch where Johnny 69 showed that even a moderately high single gear (72") is no handicap for a rider who is not stricken by age.
Shortly after this we had a cafe stop at The Herb Garden at Sonning Common and then followed a route through leafy lanes back to Henley, from there we took the back road through Aston village to avoid the unpleasant main road climb up Remenham hill. You still do exactly the same amount of climbing this way, but without the heavy traffic and diesel fumes. On our way back to the Windsor - Twyford road we stopped briefly to admire the cold war site of RSG 6 (Regional Seat of Government) at Warren Row. This was to have been a centre for running a military government after the devastation of a nuclear war fought to preserve democracy. Its presence was exposed by the 'Spies for Peace' group during the 1963 Aldermaston march, much to the annoyance of the authorities. It is now a commercial wine cellar.
On a lighter note, we progressed pretty rapidly back towards Staines and as we approached Windsor at a steady 20 mph, I was being towed along at that point by Falcon Vitesse and it struck me that I was jolly pleased that his Simplex TdF would not engage the top sprocket; we were going quite fast enough as it was!
We had a pleasant debrief in the London Stone pub (same as HDin J). We'd covered just about 59 miles from Staines back to Staines, which I'm ashhamed to say made this my biggest mileage day of the year so far.
So in a nutshell, we had a good day out, Johnny 69 and Falcon Vitesse rode well and I hung on. It's a pity the ride wasn't a bit better supported because I'm sure there are plenty of others who would have been easily capable of enjoying this outing. Tomorrow I'll post some thoughts about organising rides in the hope we can do better in the future. It's all very well owning these desirable old machines, but if they are not used there seems to be less point in having them.