"Some of us were playing golf on Wednesday night and discussing the Thursday forecast - one hour of rain at first then dry was the consensus- so we all left in good spirits including an enthusiastic Les ( no show on the rainy Thursday)
8 of us showed up at 9 am - Iain W , Ian D , Ian Sh ,
Alan W , Mike , Dick , Jeff and myself . We decided to go to Potarch via
Craiglash and set off in the rain which got heavier on the climb through
Burnett Park towards Home Farm . On the Craiglash straight we split with Jeff ,
Dick Alan , Iain Sh and myself turning left on the farm track before the quarry
and the rest taking the tarmac route .
The off-roaders searched for the parallel track down to
Potarch in head high ferns - not as obvious as earlier in the year . Down the
(rocky ) track to Potarch I heard Dick shout 'man down' just behind me -
looking back I saw a bike but no man ! Alan had hit the central rise in the
track and shot off into the only place with a
metre drop into a ditch -luckily with a mainly soft landing . He emerged
with grass in his cycling helmet and a sore leg but no other obvious damage .
Rest , coffee and scones were taken at Potarch then we
set off up to Shooting Greens taking the second left ( high track) towards the
river . The first batch headed off under attack from black fly swarms -
thinking Alan was with us . The last 3 - Dick , Iain W and myself noticed that
we had not seen Alan - a bit worrying as he had recently crashed . Iain and I
went back down the path and road to the lower turn off - no sign and we
correctly concluded that Alan had turned
off early on the lower track ( note to group - look behind to stay together ) -
but Alan then compounded the error by missing the right fork and heading down
to the river in area with no proper path .
Iain and I returned up the hill to the route and found
the others at the viewpoint by which time Iain Sh had emailed Alan and had a
response that he was OK - we then saw him far below in the area with no path !
Phone numbers for all are indeed useful . Alan
climbed back up to our main track to get back and we met him at the GH.
The rest of the ride was uneventful with a nice cruise
via Blackhall and out through the arch - the weather cleared into quite
pleasant conditions.
Mike also supplied the following photo:
That's ride number soixante-neuf on this year's database and the FW's group rides have now exceeded 2,200 kms, with over 21,000 m of climbing.
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