A Group ride 19th February

24 plucky souls set off from Redhill to go to Warlingham. Having ridden the route and adjusted it three times I missed a turn within a mile, which extended our time on the A25. However noone noticed and the roads were quiet. Rain drizzled off and on, but we arrived safely at The Horseshoe pub. Ged was the back marker and only scored us 6 out of 10 for gapping. I have to take responsibility as I was the leader and did not remind everyone about the importance of leaving a sixty foot gap between smaller groups of riders. So I will say here that your footprint and position on the road is absolutely vital to keep everyone safe. The problem seems to occur because riders fail to keep to their peleton of 5 or 6 riders with a sixty foot gap between each group. The gaps disappear because riders want to catch up with the next group. This means frustrated drivers cannot overtake and they then overtake dangerously putting us at risk. We must get more disciplined in this skill. Fortunately the roads were quiet and we all got home safely.
At the pub the manageress gave us a third off the price of our meals because of a special promotion. The downside was they wanted us to pay one amount, so muggins had the task of collecting and checking the cash, hence my puzzled expression in the photo. Eleven stopped for tea at June8 cafe in Stoneleigh. Hope you all had a good day despite the hills! Thanks go to Janice for helping with the cash collection saving us a £65 in cash. Thanks go to all the intrepid corner markers and

Ged for back marking.

Author: Steve D

2 Comments:

Fixie-Dave 20 February 2020 at 08:43 GMT

Thanks for the geography lesson Steve, since I had always thought that there was only one
north face of the Eiger. But good fun, a good ride and a good workout.

Simon L 20 February 2020 at 09:25 GMT

Thanks for a nice ride Steve, and well said about leaving gaps. Quite often when you're riding at the back of the group, you can sort of foresee the risky overtaking which is about to happen, and you can also see how much better it all works when there is a gap the cars or vans can overtake into.

Caption for the first photo: "Who had the Prosecco?"