St Albans Ride 2nd Nov 2023

There is NO escape!

I arrived at Berowra 7-11 to find a gaggle of bikes so slotted neatly in front of them. Turns out it was ladies day so a number of the bikes disappeared early on in the piece as the rest in of the parking filled with bikes and the time was fast approaching 10am.

Problem - the allocated ride leader was no where to be seen and no-one had heard from him in any attempt to arrange an alternate leader.

At 9:58 Peter of the committee stood up and said “right we need a replacement ride leader”, I kept my counsel and buttoned my lip. He roamed through the crowd of 20 eager riders making pronouncements like “morning tea is at Spencer” so I foolishly assumed (and we all know what that does) it was sorted. He headed back in my direction so I was expecting a “so and so has volunteered so all is good” but instead I got “morning tea is at Spencer and since your bike is parked in front of all the others you are ride leader for today”.

 

Not happy Jan! So much so that I completely forgot to ask whether a TEC had been arranged and to offer any form of briefing to the ride group. I just mounted up, waited until everyone was on their bike, and rode out of the forecourt. I didn’t even note the time 🤬 I was told, in no uncertain terms though, that the Berowra Waters Ferry was out of action.

Anyway, we all trundled out up the old road and I wasn’t game to deploy corner markers cos I didn’t know we had a TEC and thus leave people permanently waiting for Goddo! However volunteer corner markers magically appeared all the way to Calga (thanks guys) where I stopped for a regroup and to ask Peter of the committee whether we had a TEC. Just then the TEC arrived, blaring his air horns and leaving no-one in any doubt that the leprechauns had arrived.

The run through to Spencer was relatively uneventful and we maintained a good pace despite a lot of obviously quite recent road surface damage and numerous roadworks. Everyone parked themselves at the long bench and the new host from The Anchor (ex-Spencer cafe) made a couple of appearances and seemed great improvement on the original cranky git.

After coffee and snacks were consumed we set off once more but minus a couple of riders who had “other things to do”. I had agreed with Peter of the committee that he would lead the Settlers Rd mob and I (even though I would’ve been happy to do the dirt) would lead the tarmac lovers.

At the ferry it became clear where all the road damage was coming from as Settlers Rd was a hive of activity. The Wiseman’s Ferry promptly arrived and we all boarded apart from the 3 riders that followed Pete. We were quickly over the other side and headed off to the Webbs Creek Ferry with another batch of riders bailing out and stopping in the Ferry park for their lunch.

At the Webbs Creek Ferry we found a queue with tail back and some parked cars - or so I thought. So I led the group to the back of the tail only for a fanfare of car horns to advise the parked cars were actually waiting for the ferry too - doh 🤭

…and we waited … and we waited … and we waited 

Turns out they were refuelling the Ferry, hence the tail back on the queue. So we sat and boiled in the sun for 20 mins with a couple more riders bailing out during the wait.

Eventually service restarted and having let the cars we had preempted on the ferry first we got on the ferry and endured a hot slow crossing before disembarking, the ride group distributed amongst a host of cars.

Having finally made it past the cars up front I headed for St Albans with eventually only one rider in tow. The road was a bigger mess than recent experience showing the trucks from Settlers Rd were using St Albans Rd as an exit as well as The Wisemans Ferry Rd. But eventually we arrived at the pub only for me to discover my remaining rider wasn’t part of the group at all but a Café Racer on a Yami.

The dirt group had already finished lunch before I reached the table and regaled me with stories of the mess Settlers was in with hardcore gravel and regrading leaving a road the top 10cm of which was soft and sandy. Kinda glad I didn’t do that road today I thought! They had even dynamited through the cliff face to remove a sharp corner making a bigger mess and the grading machines didn’t seem worried about whether a bike got graded as well.

The rest of the remaining group finally rolled in meaning 9 riders made it to the planned destination. Lunch was consumed and then one rider left for Bucketty via 35km of dirt, two stayed behind chatting, 2 shot off early leaving 4 to head back to Webbs Creek ferry and 3 back to Sydney and only 2 making it to the Pie.

Thanks for the company today and apologies for any lack of grace in accepting the ride lead 🫣

My thanks to the Lanky Leprechaun for TEC duties.

Until the next time

Andy