It was the lunch with a crunch at the Brods so we had arranged an early start with Dave as route-master, it was cold and wet but there was no stopping Dave, Phil, Tim, Mark L and James Preece, I couldn’t help but notice that the rain was turning to sleet as I rode up from Coley to Shelf. Dave’s route was very elevated going up over Queensbury and we couldn’t help but notice the white-out up the road in Queensbury. Chris Horner wound his window down in Shelf and delivered mild abuse from his heated car seat.

Dave was astride a new Felt racer, Philly had made the purchase last year but resorted to an electric bike, Dave had been in contact with Philly and arranged a test ride, the bike looked in good fettle but there were one or two unusual bulky sections on the frame and we had to speculate about whether Dave had acquired an electric bike.

The back road up Cock Hill was interesting to say the least, the road was covered in snow, most of our attention was taken up with keeping the rear wheel from sliding but Phil was fixed on a pair of footprints in the snow, he went silent for a while clearly pondering and gathering evidence. As we approached the main road a jogger came into view and Phil chirped up that he could tell it was a runner from the length of stride! As we made our way towards Deanstones Phil suddenly became capable of identifying cars from their tracks left in the snow, as we marvelled at the comprehensive tracking skills on show Mark started a prolonged slide down an icy section of road, a single Hawthorn bush was the only threat to his progress and he hit it square on. A further series of slides lead us to the conclusion that the main roads would be the safest and we rode on the main road to Queensbury and then dropped to Odsal.

On a quiet section of the Bradford ring road chief “Sitting Bull Horton” gave us further evidence of his tracking skills, at the sight of a snow covering Phil descends into the woods and plays at identifying animals from their tracks. What talent and knowledge we have in our peloton, we drew more tracking tales from Phil as we made our way round the Bradford ring road. The snow had turned to rain and it never got above 1c, it was miserable. At Drighlington we turned right to drop to Birstall, James decided to continue on to Morley, we made a good climb up to Gomersal and Birkenshaw. We delivered our apache friend back to his Shelf home and dropped back down home to prepare for the Brods lunch.

30 miles average pace 12.8mph, wet and miserable but good to get out.

Ship