Tour of Cambridgeshire
9 June 2023
Ian Ryder
Last Chance Saloon
On a sunny 9th of June an intrepid bunch from Horsham Cycling set out from the East of England Showground to conquer the mostly flat roads south of Peterborough in the never-to-be-repeated final 'Tour of Cambridgeshire' sportive.
The sportive had several options, with our folk divided between those riding the 66 mile route, and some adding an extra loop to make up the full 100 miles.
The route was mostly on closed roads, well signposted and with well organised and stocked feed stops. With our characteristic lack of forward planning, we hadn't really discussed who was doing which route and whether they would stop at the feed breaks...
Le Grand Départ
We set off together... but following the usual start-of-ride enthusiastic pressing on from all involved, our little band soon fragmented!
The conspicuous team kit made us stand out, and attracted lots of 'come on Horsham' encouragement from the spectators, along with the occasional 'you're far from home, did you get lost?'.
For once we didn't find the hills too daunting, with the steepest being around 5% and most of them closer to 3% - hardly noticeable by Sussex and Surrey standards - and so we tended to ease past many of the local riders when things turned ever so slightly uphill, rather nice for the ego!
After several hours of satisfying toil we all made it safe and well back to the Showground...
....and (if we arrived early enough) the cheers of our 'adoring' fanbase!
Kudos to all on the ride - Lisa and Debbie, Jim, Chris, Stephen, Illy and Kevin with me tagging along. Special credit also goes to Jim for his magnificent organisation, Kevin for the fastest ride, Stephen for soldiering on while mildly injured, ditto Debbie despite the onset of a prolapsed disc... Illy for riding over 100 miles for the very first time and Lisa for casually chucking in yet another hundred miles after a bonkers 400k just the day before! Also many thanks to Sue for joining us on the trip to add some intellectual firepower and common sense - and Colin for his ever entertaining stream of consciousness.
