vuelta a formentera

Stage one

the vuelta formentera is a 3 day tour of Formentera. We'd originally thought that it was the same format as the vuelta a ibiza ie day one sportif, day two race and day three sportif. But, it's all sportif. So it's a chill out training ride for us, we took lots of pics.

me in the deep sand - arena profunda



the windmill - la molina.



Jane finds the firmer ground.



To the lighthouse - el faro

resfriadoooo -

Jane has a cold so it was just me and Paul today. We did a steady hard ride around the Downs taking in Holmbury, Blackheath and Pitch Hill.




The going was quite tough under wheel, so maintaining a steady pace was fairly hard.
We met Mick and a friend and later we met Gary, Jase, Tony and others near the windmill.

Still very little mud though.

vuelta a formentera

Bartolo and friend pre-riding some the course for next weeks race :)

Tuesday othg ride

Today was to be Dane Hill. As we left Betchworth, I noticed that someone was of the back so I eased a bit. Meanwhile at the front they'd pushed on,we closed the gap to the next group with Andy,Jack and Paul. At the T junction for Leigh we weren't sure which way they'd gone, not sure why they hadn't stopped! Andy's Garmin showed right, so we headed right. Of course they'd gone left :) Andy reckoned that he must have a different route installed, so we pressed on. His garmin indicated a left at Stan's Hill, but everyone said it couldn't be. At Charlwood we turned back to Stan's Hill :) Here we picked up Andy's route.



There have been mutterings recently about the rides starting off too fast. And some of the regulars have stopped turning up. The othg rides started out as a casual steady mid week ride to get the miles in. A similar thing happened a couple of years ago and almost killed off the othg. So some rules were laid down at the time: we were to ride steady until the last 10km or so to the tea stop and similar on the return. Hills could be attacked hard, but we had to wait at the top.Lately this hasn't been happening. This enabled anyone not so fit to get a good ride and if they were up for it, a bonkers bit at the end :) Even Gary went out with the early ride today! :-O It may be time to reinstate the rules.

We rode steady/hard and got to Dane Hill about 20 mins after the others. The return route was tough via Ardingly reservoir. At Colgate I noticed that Paul was off the the back, so I dropped back to see if he was ok and then moved up to the front group only to notice that Andy wasn't there. He wasn't in sight at Rusper I stopped in case he'd had a mechanical, but he'd missed the traffic at the roundabout and couldn't get back on. He was taking a packet so we bit and bitted across to the others.

A nice ride in Ibiza

I might try this one with Rachel next summer :)

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Sunday ride

Classic sundayriders Sunday ride today - Julie and Paul arrived at ten and the four of us rode over to meet Greg at Holmbury. We did lots of singletrack and climbs all around the Surrey Hills.It was a gorgeous day, 14'C at the zenith. It's this time of the year that we think 'this is the last one, this is the last one' and another fabulous day appears. The trails were beautifully dry and fast still - we could find mud if we wanted to :) Because we kept to the main trails we saw hundreds of cyclists,walkers and horse riders. There was also a couple of sportif type events on.

saturday sundayriders ride

Jane wanted to visit Barnes Green to find out why I loathe it so much, so we did the same route as the othg from Tuesday. Jane liked Barnes Green very much, because they serve veggie burgers and chips. But, today we had tea cakes :)

tuesday ride - othg

Today was Barnes Green :( But Cliff had a fabulous and longer route. The route back was the usual over the lumps past Warnham. A fastish ride today. Kay told Matthew off for pushing too hard :)

Tuesday mtb ride

I'd been meaning to ride the to Cripplegate off road for a while, so when roger mailed to see if I wanted to go out on the mtb I got the mountain bike out. There'd been heavy rain recently and it was raining hard up until 10 am when Roger arrived :)

Rather than being muddy, everywhere was splashy and slightly hard going. We made the tea stop in less than 2 hours. - 1.59.59 :)

Andy, Richard and Sabin were at the cafe, having arrived there after an abortive othg ride peppered with punctures and drop outs. they couldn't believe how filthy we were :)