A cold but sunny morning for the 7 of us who decided to recce the reliability ride which we will redo later this month - Dave D, Hewan, Dean, Taran, me, new member Simon and a guest appearance from Rob O Keefe from the Birds Hill group. On leaving the station to head towards Twyford a split occurred early on with Rob, Dean and Hewan powering off trailing the rest of us - Dean was supposed to be taking it easy with a chest infection but the temptation to ride with Rob was just too much!

We regrouped regularly and all was well until the turn off just before Eversley - Dean and Rob had steamed off ahead and the rest of us didnt know whether they had turned off past St Neots school or gone straight on. We assumed as they hadn't stopped that they must have gone straight on - incorrectly I think as we didn't see them again - we sent a whatsapp to let them know where we were and knew they would be OK to go on (they managed to fit a coffee stop in we learned later - lucky devils!)

So we were down to 5. Taran was really struggling today so abandoned in Crowthorne...down to 4!

I just about managed to stay on Hewans tail along 9 mile ride past the lookout, and we stopped to wait for Dave and Simon - for 10 mins or so due to Simons tyre needing air....turns out it may have needed more than a bit of air as it punctured properly a few miles later. Whilst stopped for the puncture Angela and Gillian - 2 ladies ho have just joined the club - rode past and stopped to say hi.

The tailwind we had had for the first half of the ride, was now a rather nasty headwind, but we sort of took it in turns to take the wind (OK Hewan did most of it!)

So, perhaps not the most 'reliable' of rides with so many lost - but at least the puncture got mended! It did mean a 3 hour ride took 4 hours - but hey, look at it this way - always best to have a bad rehearsal! Means it will go well on the day!

47 miles, 16mph average speed, 1500 feet climbing.