Xmas lunch

Another really mild morning for the pre-Xmas lunch ride - our third. 20 of us were booked in to the golf club for lunch, but Aidan couldn't make the ride beforehand as he was hot-footing it up from Edinburgh, but 19 cyclists was still another new record.

Dick set the tone for the day:

No sound on the blog so you have to imagine the ring of the bells as Dick cycled along

Time for a team photo then:

Standing l-r: John McWhinnie, John Meaden, Jack Simpson, Robin Brodie, Scott Hunter, Keith Gray, Dave Williamson, Dick Taylor, Chris Low, Jeff Dickens, Ken Black, John Larkin, Drew Leslie, John Morton, and Ian Stewart
Kneeling l-r: Bob Elder, Ian Sharp & Rob Pollard

 Only 18 in the photo? Yes - Mike Reilly was late again!

There was a master plan to split in to two teams - one led by Ian Sharp and the other by Rob Pollard. It wasn't quite an even split - Ian and his followers numbered 11, whilst Rob's team had just 8. There was apparently a prior agreement to meet up at Drum, so off we set.

Rob led his team of 8 straight up Corsee Road - a bit early in the ride for some and a yellow card was threatened. Down towards the dump and across the road past the brewery, after which there was another mini-rebellion when Rob decreed that we turn left and head towards the farm at Drumshalloch and up the hill there.

On past the recording studio and straight out east to the junction at Couper's Road. It was now 11 am and the plan was to get back to Banchory by 12:30 pm. Drum seemed awful far away at this point, diminishing the prospect of a relaxing coffee/scone stop, so the vote was to head down towards the Way and have our break at the Milton instead - and it turned out to be the right decision in the end.

When we got to the Milton, I texted the other team to tell them where we were. I needn't have worried, as we found out later that they, too, didn't make it to the Drum - in fact, they had stopped a little earlier at Buchanan's.

Mike sent some photos taken on their "mystery tour" ride:

We all made it back safely to the golf club in good time for pre-lunch drinks. Strava shows that the "B" team of 8 completed 29 kms, whilst the "A" team of 11 did 2 kms less.

Here's the tables at lunch:

The missing 4th person is, of course, me

Crackers were pulled and party hats worn, but there was a bit of a shortage of seasonal wear. John Morton had a proper Xmas sweater on - as seen in the table 3 photo above - but there's no record of my Santa tie, nor can you see Drew's Xmas socks, but, apart from these 3 contributions, the apparel was very bland - think Man at C & A, or M & S. More effort next year please.

I did a stats show afterwards, the "highlights" of which were:

• 37 participants (21 on Strava) – 10 more than last year
• 21 more group rides than last year
• 30,387 kms – more than twice as much as last year
• 285,025 metres of climbing

In addition, there were another 534 solo rides recorded on Strava, including Freewheelers cycling in Australia, Austria, France, Greece, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, South Africa & USA, amongst other places.

The longest individual (non-group) ride was John Meaden's 163 kms when he took part in Etape Caledonia in September. The individual (non-group) ride with the most climbing came from occasional Freewheeler Malcolm Lodge in Cape Town in March, when Strava showed an amazing 2,452 metres.

The Top 10 stats from group rides were then displayed, but here's the full list:

Rides Kms Climbing Sharp Ian 67 2339 22832 Taylor Dick 65 2255 22855 Dickens Jeff 54 1849 17664 Perry John 53 1794 17781 Simpson Jack 52 1766 16871 Hunter Scott 50 1740 15108 Meaden John 47 1643 16282 Stewart Ian 46 1418 10909 Page Ken 43 1415 12442 Reilly Mike 40 1452 15311 Wright Iain 33 1106 10870 Gray Les 30 991 9534 Larkin John 30 1005 9389 Elder Bob 28 1012 9774 Leslie Drew 27 859 8492 Low Chris 24 847 8102 Morton John 21 676 6913 Pollard Rob 19 630 5452 Meehan Aidan 18 598 5320 Black Ken 17 563 5269 Gray Keith 17 498 4065 Brodie Robin 16 587 5551 McWhinnie John 15 466 3879 Williamson Dave 15 496 4032 Kilgour Colin 13 397 3053 Riches Hugh 11 388 3402 Seago Peter 10 381 3924 Tyrie Jeb 9 284 2244 de Silva Rufus 8 283 2905 Greenwood Justin 6 204 1335 Cook Archie 4 122 867 Dring Ian 4 138 1187 Grigor Malcolm 2 56 464 Lodge Malcolm 2 56 359 Corbett Dan 1 26 136 Grant Gary 1 31 344 Meres John 1 15 108

Ian was on the greatest number of rides and covered the longest distance, but Dick just pipped him on the climbing stats.

These were the most popular scone stops:

Platform 22		36
Finzean FS		26
Drum		22
Milton		20

That's all folks. the blogs for the previous 2 years' Xmas lunch days can be viewed here:

http://bvetscycling.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/icy-deeside-way-before-first-annual.html

http://bvetscycling.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/xmas-lunch-etc.html