Freewheeling round the world

Another Freewheeler on an overseas cycling holiday was Robin, who sent me this short report and photo:

"Cycling down the Muhr River in Austria this week It is meant to be all downhill but we shall see Today was first day and we did 40 km thru beautiful mountain scenery but got soaked in long downpour on way back Rest of week scheduled to be 210 miles with average of 35 miles per day so plenty of time for regular refreshments"

Lots of local Deeside solo activity this last week - especially from Mike, who even went up Cairn o' mount again. John M has been making valiant attempts to match the quantity, distance and altitude of Mike's rides - both solo and with Carol, who herself is covering distances most of us can only dream of - but I fear John is f*****g against thunder here.

There have been 2 main Freewheelers group rides since the last blog posting. On Thursday, John M reported as follows:

"Freewheelers on Thursday 2nd June were Dick , Mike , Ken P and myself .

Dick arrived promptly with Macan and 3 slot bike rack for the potential Ballater run . There were a few late call offs so we were on the grid with 3 rack slots and 4 bikes . It seems like a distant memory as we bask in the sun but the northerly wind was brisk and we were cloud covered. The view was that Glen Muick would be pretty windy and cool so we opted to go local.

We went out through the arch , along the Dee and up to Shooting  Greens . About 400m down the road towards Feughside Dick took us right down a farm track which eventually came out on the Finzean road . We stopped for the team photo by a field of cows and bullocks all of which showed much interest in Mike's camera . Apart from the camera there was plenty of other mounting going on so we decided it was time to move on .

A swift descent and run into Finzean farm shop followed and we enjoyed the usual excellent coffee and scones .
Over coffee there was a fairly unanimous agreement to head up to the Monument - which we did in a nice steady formation in highest gears . Then it was down to the phone box at Ballogie and along the minor road to Potarch . On this road we were all nearly taken out buy a Freezer van who gave us about 0.5m at 30mph+ - either he or she had no spatial awareness or did not like cyclists .

We then had a couple of flat ks on the Deeside way and another steady drag up to Craiglash then home via Glassel and Home Farm via the golf course .

39k and 573m. There may have been a yellow card but can't recall who issued it . "

Today (Monday), from Strava I gleaned that 3 Freewheelers were out - Les, Jeff and John M -  and that they went to Drum, covering 36 kms and 222 m, but I'll await the match report and better quality photos than I can get from Strava before posting these on the blog.

We arrived here last night from our brief stint in Canada and I decided to go out early this morning on a short test run on my son-in-law's new hybrid:

Nice bike - look forward to using it over the next month and a bit.