Well what a lovely day for a ride over hills and valleys along lanes and gravel tracks, past runners & riders, tractors & JCBs! I hope you all made it home safely.

Chippenham marathon was a surprise to me. SupeRDel mentioned it at the start and we thought we would be ok – WRONG! They had closed the wretched road we had planned on using! This meant we had to do a bit of frantic thinking on our feet (wheels?) to get round the closure and then mix it with the marathon runners for a few miles before we managed to get clear.

As well as being well split up by the marathon marshals, we also seemed to lose our own marshal where we rejoined the route and met up with the runners so a few of the classic boys ended up going into Chippenham before realising and back tracking and then they got mixed up with the modern bike section. Doh!

Back on track and everything was going well apart from an increasing vibration from the Ajay’s engine and a lack of power. I stopped at one point as I had run out of marshals and had a look only to see the barrel was coming loose! I limped on for a while but stopped at Rockley and waited for a man with a spanner. I sent the rest of the riders on and they followed the route to the pub ok. Don arrived and he whipped out his adjustable, tightened some nuts and I was happy again!

Back on the bike and follow the route to a packed Royal Oak at Pewsey. We had 89 bikes register which with pillions and hangers on meant probably 100 people hit the poor old pub. The landlady there was sorry if anyone had any delays when ordering food but gave me a telling off as I had told her there was normally only about 50 bikes on the run. Oops! Fortunately the supermarket over the road was open and they were soon cleared out of pasties etc…

Talking of telling off, I must apologise to those who, shall we say, disliked part of the afternoon section. In particular the Byway with such fantastic views which ran along the edge of the ranges. (This included views of a very distant 5th horse at Alton Barnes) It was naughty on my part to include it but the Bath Classic mob never worry about that type of excursion so I simply never thought it would really bother anyone else. Familiarity makes the route easy for me so a big apology to those who hated it. In the future, I won’t include anything like that in a run with non BCMCC riders or modern bikes without warning.

Back at the Three Magpies, after representations from a couple of people; I had to have a word with a WB guy who had apparently been enjoying himself a little too much flying past people and kicking up stones/dirt etc on the byway and worrying some riders. I appreciate that everyone has different abilities and expectations of behaviour and the route was perhaps unsuitable for some bikes – although passable with care – I have to leave it to individuals to behave with courtesy and respect towards each other. I have spoken to the people concerned and shall say no more on the matter.

I was really pleased to see smiles on the faces of the L plate riders who I spoke to at the end – they seemed to enjoy themselves.

We had 89 bikes register and have £460 to donate to Dorothy House in memory of Sue, landlady of the Three Magpies. I suspect BCMCC will round the figure up to £500. Well done and many thanks.

Finally, I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who took their turn at marshalling, it was much appreciated. You will also be pleased to hear that Don has managed to wrest the Triple back from Dabz!

Thanks to one and all for a great day out! [smiley=thumbsup.gif]

BB