Suitably depleted with the President's 10 and probaly the ToB finishing up in London, there weren't the usual numbers for the club run. In fact so depleted there were only two VCs, myself and Nick.
Nick kicked things off with a call for a TG but it seemed everyone was either elsewhere or taking it easy so a 19s made the first group to set off, followed by the usual groups. With Nick leaving in the 18s (which I had planned to at least start with) left me organising the remainder and eventually to lead out the last group of 15s.
Bit of a mixed group with a number of late arrivals, it lost and gained members as the faster ones decided to move on together. In fact, Nick and I caught several late arrivals on the back foot as they arrived to find their groups already gone Well, it was a bit fresh to be standing around, seizing up
In the end, I was left with 3 riders, Wayne on his third ride with us, Ian - suffering from hitting a BMW - and Pete who assisted me in keeping the other two on and then leading them back from Charlwood as I needed to get back to Sutton to go out again. Hope you were OK Pete! And thanks for helping out.
I managed to do most of the ride down to Charlwood in top gear which did make my legs ache a bit but I don't think I overstrained any muscles. Coming back was a bit different People were already leaving but the faster boys were faffing around so I left them to it and started off down the road. A slight moment of hesitation about whether I could jump on the back when they came past but then I did and was hanging on as well as I could until Dan G tried to do a DIY vasectomy just down the road as he hit a hole no-one had pointed out and also lost his chain. Paul H and I were behind and, though Dan swerved out of the line out of the way, we had already had to take emergency action to avoid running into him as he slowed down and that did it for me. I didn't have anything to recover and push back on so I just settled down to riding back pretty much on my own.
Caught up with a couple of others including two who seemed to miss the turn just before Hooley (come on, boys, how did you do that - ps if you'd carried on you could've taken the next left and got back on the route and missed that concrete slab road). Dan caught up and then rode on to get to the church regroup in time for the final dash into CSS while I just arrived in time to get on the back group and then drop off again...
The afternoon was spent in that wonderful centre of culture that is Morden, underneath the main road and next to the carpark at Tesco's or whichever superstore it was looking at the remains of one of the largest Austin priories known (before Henry VIII shut it down). Only the chapter house is available to view - the rest being reburied under the retail park having been found and excavated during construction in the 1980s. Also looked around the Abbey Mills - never realised how historic Morden was what with the Priory and the silk mills of Liberty and William Morris being powered by the little old Wandle river. Just goes to show what we can have right on our own doorsteps