Here comes the sun

Five of us gathered at Union Corner – PhilC, Paul, Cath, me and, making a guest appearance after resting after his Festive 500 exploits, Trevor.  The sun was making an effort to appear, teasing us with a now you see me now you don’t” game with some co-operative clouds.    Still, we were encouraged, and set off up to the other place.  For some reason, Paul decided to turn on the after-burners and we arrived in what felt like record time, all a bit warm and panting (but not in a good way).  Waiting for us were Fred, Keith and PhilS.  The forecast was looking good, the sky was bright, the wind was from the south-west, so in the absence of Dean to insist on a Poldhu day, we decided to head for Perranuthnoe.  Off we went up to the quarry where we found Jan and Ian.

Adopting the usual route to Porkellis, Nancegollan and Goldsithney, we wended our rather ragged and fragmented way to our destination.  We arrived to find the sun shining and glinting off the waves in the bay.  Half of us remained suspicious of this apparent upturn in the weather and opted to sit inside; the other half made the most of the sunshine in the garden.  All of the usual stuff was consumed in the spirit of fuelling ourselves for the return trip.  Conversation inside revoled around family catch ups and the forthcoming Falmouth half marathon; I’ve no idea what the talking points outside were.  Just as we prepared to leave, Martyn turned up riding a suspiciously clean bike.  He had either kept to the main roads or had been dropped off in a car.  Of course we believed that he had ridden there, but unfortunately he didn’t have time for coffee before we made our way back up the hill to the main road. As usual, we congregated in the car park of the “all you can eat” Chinese restaurant at the junction – probably a bit of a risky strategy, but I think we had all washed, or at least wrung, our hands during the coffee stop.  Jan somewhat foolishly revealed herself as the leader of a Marmite county lines gang, and was openly dealing – isn’t this against club rules?

Once we had placed our orders, we moved off along the main Redruth road through Leedstown to Praze.  This turned out to be another nose to the stem job – does this have something to do with the sun making an appearance?  Once at Praze and realising that we seemed to have lost Trevor, Ian was not at all fazed when he experienced a rear deflation event.  Despite the offering of expert advice such as suggesting he simply rotate the wheel as the flat only seemed to be at the bottom, he heroically told us to carry on without him (I paraphrase here), and we didn’t wait for him to change his mind.

As we journeyed homewards, we briefly experimented with moving off together from one of our temporary halts rather than going off in dribs and drabs to try and avoid the ride becoming fragmented yet again.  Needless to say it didn’t last, but at least we tried to instill some discipline (a word not in the Wheelers’ lexicon).  We debated going via Four Lanes but decided to take the route through Carnmenellis as we would have the advantage of a tail wind around the reservoir.  This worked a treat until we got to the hill, which didn’t seem any easier to me.  At Carnkie we discovered that Paul had also been visited by the P fairy and had gallantly elected to soldier on alone, so as riders peeled off our merry band dwindled as usual to the select few to make a triumphal entry into Falmouth.

A cracking ride, albeit a bit of a leg bender in places.  Just short of 73km for me.

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