Following a cracking set of rides in January, the quality was certainly maintained by Steve Hart, who led out eleven Moos on the first ride of the new month, incorporating a lot of singletrack we hadn’t ridden for a while, punctuated by Chrissie Watkins’ on-trail commentary. It was just the ride to allow February rider of the month hopefuls to stake an early claim.

Good to see a first ride for Beaker look-alike Jeff Singlespeed, who had been avoiding the mud.

The pace has certainly increased this year. This was confirmed by Scrippsy the ex-captains regular cries of ‘Wait for me…. Man’

Our mandatory re-fuelling stop at the Maenllwydd Inn produced an excellent selection of ‘Indian titbits.’ The only deviation from this being Jocks offering of an Indian salad, which had been decomposing at the bottom of his fridge for the past six weeks! But at least he made an effort….Gollum!

The quality of the ride was exemplified by Hartys choice of track on the home-leg. From the chair Scrippsy set off like a whirling dervish. No doubt buoyed by the mid ride refreshment he was riding like a man possessed until met an unfortunate end, landing head first into a fir tree! Perhaps he should have a couple of ‘swifties’ before setting off next week.

We were met at the Oak by ‘Ryan the Steam,’ who had been on afternoon shift (apparently he was on the Wednesday tea urn cleaning rota), and the Chief Umpa Lumpa Option who had been guiding minor celebrities on a tour of Willy Wonkas Chocolate Factory. All was not well though as the celebs should have been given a free bar of Mr Wonkas special chocolate as a momento of their tour, but mysteriously it all disappeared. Option, the master of deflection, tried to blame Johnny Vegas (the obvious choice of culprit!) for the deed, but it became all too apparent who scoffed the dairy delicacies, when Option walked into the Oak with a sticky brown mess around his lips!

The obvious choice for next weeks ride is the Chief Umpa Lumpa Option as he now needs to lose an ‘extra’ few pounds following his finger lickin' excursions. But apparently he can only do half a ride again so Tom will have to step into the breach. Bets are now being taken on when Option will finally complete a full ride, I’ve got the last week in May!

The theme of next weeks ride will be ‘pickles.’

Regards,

Cap