Reading the Bird Hills group write up of Sunday mornings ride, I thought I had better write the Clock Tower version up - as it was somewhat slower. Having said that, we were not hanging around too much...

It certainly was one of the most amazing September mornings - hard to believe that it was the last weekend in September! We met at the clock tower as usual, had a quick chat to Brain, Malcolm and Les who set off for Dinton Pastures and a bacon sandwich, whilst 5 of us (John, Dave D, Daniel, myself and new guy (another John) decided to do the usual loop, as we had not done it for while.

Dave set a lovely pace to Twyford - I thought it was going to be a nice easy morning on the bike (we had a tail wind I think!), but once through Twyford and Sonning Dan picked up the pace going up Playhatch. Turns out he needed a comfort break - but we didn't know that! The pace stayed reasonably high through Sonning Common and towards Nettlebed, where we saw the Birds Hill group whizz past, heads down. We all took our turn on the front - but John sped past and about half of us could not keep up at this point - he says he is not doing enough exercise and need to get his heart rate up, but if thats him not doing enough I would love to see how fast he could go if he was!

The route, as always, took us to Christmas Common - a good pace along there, and then through Stokenchurch where new John also showed is what he could do as he took Dan and John off down the descent leaving Dave and I trailing behind. I am not a good descender - not sure how long they had been waiting at the bottom in Marlow, but got there to find Dan had been stung by a bee/wasp on the way down just under his eye - ouch.

Dave I think was up for going up Quarry Hill at this point- but the rest of us were feeling lazy (or knackered) so we did the easier loop through Bourne End and Cookham.

47 miles, average 17.4mph for me. And then I went to Swinley Forest mountain biking in the afternoon!!

Talking of which - would anyone be up for a Saturday ride on Mountainbikes at Swinley? Was chatting to Dan yesterday and we thought it might make a fun change.....if there are enough up for it I will see if I can arrange something....