It was warm and pleasant, for November, as five of us departed the square on the Tempo ride, but we still moaned a bit about the slight chill as we rode through Highnam and Tiberton.
The climb through Flaxley to Mitcheldean warmed us up, but the climb up Stenders had us moaning about the gradient instead. The descent of Cats Hill was so nice that we enjoyed it in silence. A quick wiz along the B road past Kearne bridge was good fun too. To avoid the traffic on Walford Road we took the back lane into Ross at Walford village, and grumbled at the muddy road surface.
We arrived at the Cafe just before 11am and were able to join the other customers in an impeccably observed minute’s silence before tucking into coffee and excellent fruit cake.
The route back took us through Hole-in-the-wall and up to the cider works in the opposite direction to usual. Plenty of Herefordshire potholes to whinge about though, whichever direction you ride it. From Much Marcle it was home via Newent and Hartpury.
By the time we crawled up the climb on the old road we were definitely complaining of tired legs. Being remembrance day it’s appropriate to put our petty (and self-inflicted) problems into perspective. Triss and I cycled through the French town of Verdun a few years ago, and stopped at the museum that commemorates the battle there from February to December 1916. The picture at the top shows the total casualties, over 700,000 killed or wounded in just one battle of one war. That’s considerably more than the total populations of Gloucester, Cheltenham, Stroud, Tewkesbury, Worcester, Evesham, and Hereford all added together.
We don’t really have much to complain about do we?
