Group Sunday Ride - Crieff 25th April

Twelve of us arranged via many, many emails to meet up at Crieff Leisure Centre on Sunday morning for a 100 mile group ride. Through fear, drunkeness & shopping for bathroom fittings we were whittled down to the final 8 by Saturday night & that's the way it stayed.... Colin 'The Freebster' Freeman, Genevieve 'Lovin' It' Freeman, Neil 'The Boy' Crookston, Graeme 'Thunder Thighs' Allan, John 'Bleedin' Legs' Irish, Dawn 'Dirty Dawn' Buchanan, Michael 'Wet Leisure' Martin & Race Ride Organiser Trevor 'Trevor Blackburn' Blackburn.
The weather forecast was looking favourable so it was a bit of a suprise to look out the window at 7.00am on Sunday to see the rain bouncing off the car roof. We optimistically assumed that by the time we got to Crieff we would be bathed in sunshine like those Lucky London Marathoners. No such luck - it was hammering it down & the thought of riding 100 miles was horrific, as was getting out of the car.
After waiting 20 minutes for Graeme to arrive having had trouble negotiating the complicated? road system of Crieff City we headed off into the freezing rain.

Out of Crieff toward Loch Earn on the following route...

Route_Map

Once we had got going it was VERY wet but not too bad other than if you were on someones wheel & tried to speak then your mouth immediately filled with water & you just gurgled.
We had one food stop for Michael to get some fried food on board, the rest of us were just being polite ...

Dawn had the first puncture - apparently the guage on her track pump is faulty hence riding her tyres at 200 psi. Trevors wheel bearings sounded like a bag of nails in a washing machine, Dawns cassette rattled like a shopping trolley. The Boy changed Colins first puncture but refused on the second 'Cattle Grid Bunny Hop' puncture so I changed it myself only to somehow unscrew the entire valve afterwards so Trevor sorted this one out for me. I don't get many punctures :-/
Other than some long climbs & lots of sheep the ride was fantastic, everyone survived without any further problems & at some points some people even managed a smile....

Despite consuming large portions of Genevieves Birthday cake, some of us decided to stop off for a pub dinner on the way home. Having driven loops round Dunblane looking for a great pub that Dawn knew its turns out that that great pub was in fact in Dunkeld so we went to a not so great pub instead. Nice food though.

Thanks everyone for a fun day out & some good hard miles & we look forward to the next one.

C.