A rainy morning saw five brave souls meet up at Rawdon for a ride to the Riverfront Cafe in York. It was a pleasure to have Lee join us for his second ride with AOCC.

A tail wind made the ride out pretty quick and also took the edge off the intermittent showers. John turned off at Tadcaster leaving the remaining four to head to the cafe.

The Riverfront Cafe was a first for AOCC and we were impressed. We were a bit disappointed not to grab a pod, but they were all taken and no one was in a rush to vacate and brave the rain.

We managed to find a table under shelter and enjoyed some decent food. I pretended to not know we had a downhill freewheel competition on the way back as I ordered two hash browns to accompany my sausage sandwich. Hamish only had a tea cake (this proved to be decisive).

Just as we were leaving we found the button to switch on the overhead heaters and we enjoyed five minutes of warmth before heading back in the rain.

The headwind on the way back made the riding hard work, however the rain did stop.

We stopped on the way back have a downhill freewheel competition at Kirkby Overblow. I managed to retain the title, (see hash browns above for the secret to my win).

We arrived back in Rawdon tired but happy after having had a wonderful time. The ride was 74 miles for me with 3800 feet of climbing and an average speed of 15.3 mph.

Cheers, Steve

P.s. no smugglers were harmed in the creation of this blog post.