the annual scout bike ride ride

summer riding, a photo by rOcKeTdOgUk on Flickr.

my mate is a scout leader and asked me if i could help him out on the annual scout bike ride as they were short of adults to supervise the youngsters. there were a group of teens on assorted bikes all with gears apart from one on a BMX, the route was mainly on sustrans bike routes using quiet roads when possible. i played sweeper at the back looking out for stragglers, the younfg chap on the BMX was way out front though, none of the hills were troubling him at all. we had torrential rain the day before during some very intense thunderstorms and the river in the park had burst it's banks and we had to ride through axle deep water, good job the temperature was warm as my feet got a good soaking! the turning point oif the ride was to be the ford at Coughton, this because of the floods was hugely swollen with a fast flowing river in the middle, the footbridge to one side was almost submerged, this didn't deter the boys though and they had great fun riding over the bridge to the other side and mucking about in the shallows (not shallow enough to almost completely submerge the BMX though) even a Landrover made an attempt to cross and then gave up!. we returned a slightly different route as i wanted to show Andy a way to avoid a quite nasty junction we had crossed on the outward journey. the scouts were a great bunch and they seemed to enjoy the ride.
ride 92
17 miles4
total 1635
commute 487
#turbolejog 567-34=533 remaining