Big Practice

Posted by Neil

Andy "kindly" put together an 80 mile loop starting in Mold, up into the Clywdian Hills and then on to Wrexham, Bangor and a flatish finish through Holt, Chester and a sting in the tail up the hill (straight past the Royal Oak pub!) from Higher Kinnerton to Penymynydd and back to Mold.

We all took a day off work and set out just after 8am.  The idea was to get some riding practice together.  Which we probably would have got more of, if I hadn't been out a couple of weekends before and tried to second guess the route.  So with Andy taking his time over the first couple of climbs, I took Stuart and Dylan on the back roads towards Llandegla.  Turns out Andy was planning on the more major roads.  So after a while waiting for Andy to re-join the group, turns out he was well ahead of us.  We caught him again on the final climb up to Llandegla so we were all back together for the sweep downhill towards the next climb to the Ponderosa cafe.  After re-confirming the route Stuart and I made the Ponderosa a bit quicker than the others and then headed down the big descent of the Horseshoe pass.  After about 5 miles or so of descending, Stuart had pulled out a gap on me, a truck went by and nearly choked us with the smell of burning brakes and Andy & Dylan had made up time, so we re-grouped in Llangollen when food and water was taken on board.

We need more discipline to stay together - one mechanical problem and we would've had to re-trace quite some distance.

More rolling roads now - we headed across towards Wrexham then across to Bangor-on-Dee and manged to stay grouped together a little more and more grub was consumed at Bangor.  Temperatures at this point were getting quite serious - certainly 20+ degrees C, which must've made carrying a rucksack somewhat tiresome for Andy.

As we finished off the Welsh roads for now and headed into Cheshire, Andy needed to take frequent quick stops, Dylan was hanging on well and both Neil and Dylan were benefitting from Stuart's generous role as the man making a hole in the air by taking the lead.

So just over 60 miles in and Andy reported a slow puncture.  We stopped to top it up but it was soon evident that it was going to need fixing - particularly when we had to wait a while at a T junction only to be told by a local Bobby that Andy was back a few hundred meters "looks like a puncture".  By this time the warm weather was gone, there was a stiff breeze building up and it looked distinctly like rain.  A quick conflab (more food too) Andy was keen to get the puncture fixed and to head back home to Chester but not for us to wait around, giving the risk of rain.  So (as all good team mates do!) we left Andy to get on with fixing his bike and headed off towards Farndon, Holt, Rossett and Dodleston.

The headwind was a bit of a problem on this stretch, as it often is for my commute home from Chester to Mold.  The climb from Higher Kinnerton to (even higher) Penymynydd was quite hard after 72 or so miles.  We also encountered some light showers on this stretch, but managed to stay pretty much dry.

Back in Mold it was time to freshen up with showers and then consume very large quantities of pasta bake very kindly prepared by Lisa.  Andy rejoined us for the grub.

So that was our first longish distance ride together and we've learnt a bit about each other, about carrying gear, about warm weather and that downhills are definitely easier than uphills!

So we've all got some things to work on before September.  Riding with luggage will be one of them!