It was a fine ride indeed.
It wasn't a very long ride, time wise but it was a fair journey for myself as I drove the couple of hours down to Brians on the Saturday evening then we were up at 4am for a 4.30 or so departure. Arrived Dalkeith around 8.30 or so. Afterwards we left around 3pm and I arrived home around 9.30pm. A long day but well worth it.
It was quite overcast and we had had some rain on the way down so knew we may well be getting wet before the day was out, though it didn't seem too bad as the temperature was 18 degrees at the start so it was nice riding weather.
Brian was on his titanium Ragley and I was on the LHT, we figured that being an Audax run that even though it was off road it wouldn't be mtb type singletrack so the usual do it all machines would be more capable on the tarmac sections, of which there was about 20% or so.
Unfortunately Velo couldn't make it, which was a shame as hadn't seen him for a while. We were scheduled to leave with the fourth group just after 9.
The course was a nice mixture of cycle paths, dirt roads, some just tyre tracks between fields, singletrack sections through woods etc. All were doable even with a bit of mud about. Some bits were pretty rocky but it was just a case of watching your speed, even one of the long tracks that turned into a path that had a downhill set of stairs that we were warned about beforehand and had also been added to the route sheet. We had some heavy rain about halfway through but once it stopped we quickly dried out and then just as we finished and were trying to get changed and packed it was coming down hard. I was fine on the course as my mudguards kept the muck off me, maybe getting old is not too bad
I had the route sheet in a map sleeve on top of my handlebar bag so could check it easily on the go. We did, notice I said we, make a couple of wrong turns which were quickly corrected, though they did start to screw up the milage and distance calculations to the next turning etc. The worst was when I turned right through some barriers and waited for Brian to follow, then rode about 400 metres up the road to only realise I should have turned left. There were no barriers to ride through on the left, after much deliberation we rode to the left and about 400 metres along the track realised, that the farmer must have moved his barriers along the road. A bit of relief when we ride where we think we should and things with the route sheet start lining up. The route sheet was a bit more complicated due to the nature of being off road. Its only a new thing for Audax UK and Audax Ecosse to run these off road since last year.
Due to the nature of it being off road the time allowance was more than generous and everyone I think made it easily without getting lost.
It was nice to ride in an area where I hadn't ridden before and meet some new people. Its a social ride for sure and would recommend it to all macretros. It was like one of Brians road rides but in a different area.
Thanks to Brian as usual for looking after me and keeping me company not only on the ride but on the long drive to and from.
Washed the bike today at work and there was a lot of mud on it, Trucker looked like it had done some work for once. Nice and clean now, serviced and ready to roll.
Didn't take many pics but here is a couple, Brian might have some more.
Jamie
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