Monday river ride

May Day brought a few more bodies out - 11 in all. We thought that Hugh would be joining us to make it up to a round 12, but there was a slight communication breakdown. Hugh thought he had cancelled but the message didn't go, so we headed east past his house with Ian Dring popping in to see what had happened to him.

Routemaster Sharp decreed that it would be a relatively short river run, heading down to the Dee at St. Ternan's ground at Milton of Crathes. A short conversation with some walkers revealed that the crossing that had previously made it impossible to follow the river all the way along to Park was now passable, so we decided to risk it and it turned out to be an easy enough crossing across a fairly narrow stream.

Mike took the following action and team photos:

l-r: Jeff Dickens, Alan Watson, Ian Dring, John Perry, Iain Wright, Dick Taylor, Ian Stewart, Bob Elder, Jack Simpson, Ian Sharp and Mike Reilly

We cycled up to Drumoak village and back along to the little newagents shop and up the hill there and eventually back towards Myrebird and on to Crathes Castle for our scone stop. The delights on offer there presented a bit of a challenge - the Snickers slices in particular were rock solid and had to be attacked by heavy duty hammering. Only Mike managed to crack them successfully. Fortunately no teeth were broken nor fillings removed.

A modest 28 kms/148 m ride - the 45th group ride on this year's database, with the most frequent riders being:

• Ian Sharp - 28
• Dick Taylor - 24
• John Larkin - 22
• Jeff Dickens, Jack Simpson & Iain Wright - 21
• Scott Hunter - 20