The one where: Muffin learnt to order a pint in Welsh, we had to rescue some lambs from a cattle grid, the party tent blew away, we invented bike treasure hunting, we nearly suffered from the meat sweats and our faff to walk ratio hit an all time high.
Last bank holiday saw the hardy souls in the club head up to Bala despite the rather dodgy weather forecast. Some members (*cough* CJ, Sarah and Ben) decided it was going to be too chilly and chose to stay home instead. Little did they realise how nice the weather would actually be and that the extra bodily warmth would have been much appreciated by some. (Muffin and HD in particular were looking for a ‘Gayza’ strip to provide a non-male heat source in their tent.)
Saturday saw us he
ading up Aran Fawdwwy in a walk that involved nearly as much time spent stationary as we were walking! Although as SH pointed out, “It’s not faff as we aren’t actually doing anything.” Fair point and I guess I should be grateful that his plans for the weekend included more standing around chatting than mammoth route marches like last time. 🙂
On route we had to rescue some sheep that had got stuck in a cattle grid and CB only just yanked one poor little lamb out in time before it wriggled through the bars entirely. Luckily, they seemed uninjured and went gambolling back up the field.
Saturday’s bbq was pretty much meat, meat and more meat. As usual, every man had to take his turn at playing with fire and they even let JM be an token male for the night. (Insert suitable joke regarding the lesbian tent here.)
Sunday morning arrived without the promised rain so we headed over to Machnylleth to do some bikin
g. Turns out we made the right choice as while we were out they had rain and hail back at the campsite. Having failed to pick up a map of the route (the bike shop was shut on the very day the town had been swamped by bikers going to do the Enduro race!) we had to do our own navigation. (For that read, “there was a lot more faff”.) It ended up with the lead group leaving trail markers for the second group so that we didn’t get lost.
Muffin, who had only learnt to ride a bike about a month previously and hadn’t been out on one since then, managed the 22km route seemingly without any effort. Mind you, he did fall asleep in the car on the way back so we’d managed to finally tire him out. 🙂
Sunday night saw more meat being consumed: this time at the Eagles pub in the village.
The weather finally caught up with us on Monday and we awoke to the sound of pouring rain and howling winds. The lads valiantl
y rushed out to rescue the party tent when it blew away (well, you can’t expect the ladies to go careering around in their pyjamas after tents in the pouring rain) and that was the cue for everyone to start packing up and heading home.
A leisurely drive back was sound tracked with Radio Cymru and broken up by lunch at the Windmill pub.
All in all it had been an unexpectedly good meet given the unfavourable weather we’d been predicted. Now we just need it to get warm enough to get some climbing in.