Burst of activity

With the poor weather earlier in the week, it seems everyone wanted to get out again when conditions improved again as the weekend approached. There was only one officially advertised, multi-rider event this week, reported on by Mike:

"John M, Ian S, Jeff, Chris, Jack, Pete, Bob and me set off from Guide Hut as usual and headed up Tilquhillie in the sunshine, at the top of the hill we decided to turn right and join the road down past Knock burn rather than the Garrell climb. Here we stopped for a photo but disappointingly it started to snow and several cars were determined to thwart us.

As we headed towards the AA Box some of the company forked off to try the Bogendriep path whilst John, Jack, Pete and me decided to use a favourable wind to blast down to the Finzean Road. The Bogendriep path was a bit muddy at the moment but all arrived safely.

Coffee and scones (bacon rolls) were taken in Finzean after which the group split up. Bob had to dash home, followed by Ian, Pete, Jack and Jeff with some talk of going via the Shooting Greens, I trust they made it back safely.

Chris, John and me went over the Monument Hill down past Potties, over Craiglash and home via Inchmarlo.

A fairly long and pleasant ride was had by all."

Mike's Strava shows an impressive 50 kms with 632 m of climbing.

The photos of this outing that I picked up from Strava are pretty low quality:

 

That was ride number 48 on this year's Freewheelers database. There have been another 13 solo/non-advertised/with wives rides on Strava since Tuesday - it's getting hard to keep this database up to date. There are now 136 such outings this year. Since Tuesday alone, Mike Reilly has been out 4 times, covering 87 kms and climbing 759 m.

In the same time period as Mike, John Meaden has been out three times - 78 kms and 766 m - and put the following photos on Strava:

The remaining 6 recent "others" rides came from Les Gray (3), and me, Iain Wright and Peter Renwick one each. The latter was particularly notable - down in Scarborough, Peter rode 90 kms with an amazing 1,211 m of climbing.

I had a nice ride out to Feughside via Bogendreip and back via Shooting Greens yesterday. It was a glorious day for cycling, with fine views of the snow-capped Deeside hills:

To close, Jeff sent me this amusing graphic: