Back on the bike

I went out on a club ride today with the cycling club from work, and realised I've not been on the bike since the last club ride 4 weeks ago - oops! We had a different starting point this time so actually had to load up the bikes on the car and drive, to Glendoick Garden Centre on the road to Perth. It was quite a blustery morning, though thankfully not as windy as it's been lately, and the forecast was for sun with occasional showers, which proved to be accurate. As with the last couple of rides we've done we split the group into the more serious riders who headed off for a hilly ride, whilst I led the slower group on a flat ride. One of the other group members had planned the route, and none of us had actually ridden it before, so it's probably no surprise we ended up off track for the second half of the ride - I just ended up taking us the way I've been before not realising that wasn't the plan. It actually took 3km off the total distance so I don't think anyone would mind if they knew, which they don't 😉
I forgot to take any pictures of the ride. but this is the wrap I had for lunch at Alibob's Cafe - spot the loyalty card:

And this was the route we actually ended up doing:



Getting fancy, embedding a link there....

We got back to Glendoick before the serious riders, partly because of my accidental shortcut, but also because they had an eventful time of it after lunch, with one person coming off his bike on a bend, and a two rider crash, resulting in injured riders and damaged bikes - not so good.  There'll be some stingy cuts and bruises after that!

We have an activity challenge running at work for the next two weeks so I should hopefully have a couple more rides to report on, though we won't be splitting the group for those so  I'm going to have to up my game a bit 😬

We drove home via Arbuckles soft fruit farm so I'm looking forward to strawberries and cream with raspberry and white chocolate meringue for pudding!

No trips to the pub this week - just a couple of beers from Asda and a couple from the Brewdog AGM stash, which is the gift that just keeps giving.
Friday's supermarket pick was an American White Ale, not as good as the best Belgian white beers, but easily a match for Blue Moon, which would be the closest comparison. The sticker on the bottle says UFO is imported to the UK by Adnams, who make some decent beers themselves and seem to have a pretty strong presence on supermarket shelves.
The AGM beer we shared was one of the Wicked Weed's we ordered from Brewdog. Recurrant is aptly named. It's like a very grown up ribena, and is almost closer to a fruit wine than a beer in flavour - not surprising when it's aged in wine barrels!
On Saturday I started off with a beer I've been drinking since before the whole craft beer scene really took off, Fraoch by Williams Brothers. I still can't remember how you pronounce it, but it's a Heather Ale, a style they claim has been brewed in Scotland for over 4000 years. Whether or not that's true I don't know, but it's a lovely, sweet, lightly spiced beer.  My second beer was another one I've had before, Moose Mousse from Fierce.  This is a really easy one to describe, as it tastes like a Cadburys chocolate mousse in beer form!