The club enjoys about a thousand members, and about 120 turned out for the four-day Easter Rally. Many rode their bikes or took trains to the event, camping out on the lawn behind the Plough Inn.
Most days there were three ride options of various lengths and difficulty. The first day, everyone rode together on a 30-mile orientation ride. The idea was to find checkpoints listed on an Ordnance Survey Map and take a mental snapshot of each. Then, after returning from the ride, we matched Polaroid photos from the course with their checkpoint numbers. Darryl and I were psyched to get 26 of 40 right, until we were tactfully told it was the day's lowest score.
Present on the ride were people of all ages. There was a group of adolescents on cyclocross bikes (who apparently bettered our score!). There were dapper old gentlemen, former national champions and record-holders, sporting their finest cycling regalia. One 76-year-old woman, Hilda Fox, had just returned from an 18-day trip from Land's End to John O'Groats, a distance of 1,000 miles. There was a young couple just back from cycling around the world. Stories and tea flowed freely.
| Hilda "End-to-end" Fox | |
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