By Paul
With Nigel now, thankfully, on the road to proper recovery but still some weeks from venturing out on a bike, I prepared myself for leadership. The schedule had us down to get to Garsons Farm but with sub-zero temperatures when the sun is not up we did not believe that with a two-o-clock start we could get there and back and have coffee before the ice formed on the roads; two-o-clock really does not make much sense as a start time at this time of year. Therefore I concocted a shorter route in the same direction.
Surprise, surprise, there were no Beginners at Nonsuch; merely a collection of regulars old enough to know better than to assume that in this weather the cannon balls would not remain frozen to the brass monkey; Colin, Steve, John, Kasumi, Tony Hooker, Alan, Maggie and me, and since no-one could hatch a better plan than mine through chattering teeth and Maggie, disconcerted by a slippin' an' a slidin' through Sutton, opted to go home, I ended up leading the seven of us.
In the tradition of British expeditions through the ages, however, our trip was plagued. The weather itself was fine, though the wind on the chest was sufficient that we could have done with some newspaper to stuff down our fronts, but we got no further than Horton Golf Park before the first of our team was struggling. John caught us up when we stopped, saying he had a puncture but none of us could see that his tyre was flat and in the cold I cut short the conference and continued on our way. It was when we got to Chessington North that Steve told me there were only three of us left, and there we waited and waited and waited until Steve said he would go back. Then Tony and I waited and waited until the icicles grew on our extremities and decided that everyone had been told the route and the ratio of leaders to non-leaders in the missing group was 1:1 so on we went to prevent total annihilation of the party. By the time we had turned off Clayton Road and reached Squires at Woodstock Lane our toes and fingers were pretty painful.
Never mind, there were vittles and warmth available. Or were there? At the entrance we met Colin and Alan (how had they got there? They refused to say!) who announced that the restaurant was not open to the public. And that John and Kasumi were making their own way home. And that Steve was lost. Brave soul, I clearly heard him say "I might be some time" as he left us. Nobody has seen him since.
The rest of us reformed as a team of four and completed the greater part of the ride, through Surbiton and Berrylands and back through Worcester Park, tea-less and coffee-less and, worst of all, cake-less. Still, losing three out of seven riders in twenty five miles must be some kind of club record.
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