I am pleased to say although the weather wasn’t good , we still got out.
On Thursday the local CTC had invited us to speak on touring with E-bikes so we put together a talk explaining our years of cycling and how we got to using E-bikes. One of the chaps , David, kindly set up the power point on his computer so I could go through the photos with his clicky thing( don’t know the technical term)
I am pleased to say the talk was well received by about 20 members despite the rainy ride to get there.
On Friday , we awoke to pouring down rain and thought that would put a dampener on riding. However by about 10.30am the rain stopped so we got changed and went out.
We headed across Newport Bridge over the Tees.
After that we used the usual route along the north side of the river to Stockton before heading across to Sadberge.
Between Long Newton and Sadberge there are a lot of overnight road works taking place on the A66. This lot was dumped messing up the cycle track.
While they are hopefully making the roads better, it was unsafe to ride across with slippery mud and boulders strewn across the path. I walked it.
Unfortunately, by the time we got to Sadberge the cafe was closed, so we carried on and continued along and then under the A66 to ride down to the bridge to Darlington. We turned left on the cycleway and once in Middleton St George stopped at a new to us cafe. Probably won’t go there again as the food was no better than the community cafe at twice the price. Still it was somewhere to go. I did brighten the day for a young mentally challenged young man who took a shine to me- bless him.
We carried on through Middleton one Row and climbed up once past Low Dinsdale. We came to my friend C’s field and turned in to sit an have hot chocolate we had in our flask.
Then it was straight home on the school run traffic which was a bit daunting.
On Saturday , we were all ready to leave, opened the door to find it was pouring down. As DH said , if we never rode in the rain , we couldn’t tour. So pulling on our waterproofs we headed out on a circuitous route to try and buy some pearl barley. Couldn’t get any!!
So this weeks riding was 45 miles YTD 164 miles
cyclinginthesixthdecade 
Funnily enough husband and I have just both been chatting about getting out in bad weather. We just watched Wiltshire Man on Youtube, a cyclist/motorcyclist/camper who gets out in all weathers. I finally got out on my bike this week as the nasty patches of ice on my route to go shopping had finally almost disappeared. What a good idea your local CTC had in inviting you to speak. If I was still a member of ours I’d be suggesting they had talks like this.
By: Lizzie on January 29, 2023
at 7:34 pm
I have noticed before that those doing road works don’t always respect cycle tracks. It is very annoying. Well done for cycling in the rain. I tend to walk in the rain these days.
By: tootlepedal on January 29, 2023
at 11:03 pm