At 8:58 it looked like we might have a Sunday ride consisting purely of Dave’s as Dave B, Dave S and I stood in a cool but sunny station car park.  However within 5 minutes we were up to 7 with Gupral, Lesley, Michael and Dan joining us.  We decided to take a steady course to Twyford aiming to keep together as a group.  Not long after Twyford we found a traffic jam in Sonning caused, not as usual by the queue for the bridge, but by a marching band heading down the street presumably heading to a Remembrance Day service.  After Sonning we took the hill up from Playhatch which Dan comfortably ascended first.  However as we approached Sonning Common, he had to demonstrate how quickly he could repair a puncture.  Fortunately he had lots of practice recently having had to cope with 3 flats on the St. Crispin’s Day ride.  Our aim had been to get to Nettlebed Church by 11am where there was a service that we had stopped by last year to pay our respects, but after this delay we instead had to make do with a church at Stoke Row that looked rather deserted.

At the top of Pishill we decided we would head straight down to Henley rather than, as we often do, head on to Christmas Common and Stokenchurch.  On what was a fairly busy day for groups of cyclists we passed the Thames Velo group coming up, amongst which Anastasia and Lucas were spotted going strongly near the front.  Going further down into Henley we met another familiar face as Sarah appeared from the Marlow direction.  She had just returned from a week away and admitted the secret of how she managed to bag a large number of Strava QOM’s on an exotic island many miles away.  So now there were 8 who went on through Wargrave, Twyford and home. 

On what started out rather chilly but turned into a nice Autumnal day, I made it 43 miles at just over 15mph.  Next week I am off trying my hand at a duathlon at Dinton Pastures, but Gurpal has promised to be there complete with partner on tandem.