'Short and Sweet'

These were the words that came through on a text from Sian on Saturday night for this weeks training. So as we met on Sunday morning and Sian explained the proposed route I thought it sounded fairly 'sweet', that was until we got going!!

We headed off down the hill towards Watbridge, here we headed along the track and took the bridleway accross towards Windmill Farm up on the hill. Once on the bridlepath it became evident that this ride was going to be anything other than 'sweet'!!! Rutted, hard mud covered in longish grass hid a multitude of potential hazards as we all found out at various stages. I rather felt like I was on some sort of torture toning table being jiggered to pieces!!!

Once we ascended the hill we were re-routed onto an altenative bridleway route due to ongoing construction of Waddesdon Farm Centre, this was a most welcome SMOOTH tarmac road, total heaven after the ruts!!! Added to the smooth road were some of the most spectacular views accross the vale and as Sian reminded us if we weren't out training we would be missing out on all these benefits!!!

The bridleway took us down to the main entrance to Waddesdon Manor and into Waddesdon, where we took the route down Frederick street onto a farm track to pick up the Mid-Shires way, however we could not find this Mid-Shires way and after a detour past a very pungent sewer works we ended up asking a lady on a very nice horse if she knew where it was, she did not know but told us if we cycled out of Waddesdon at the cross roads there was a bridlepath that would take us back on to our scheduled route.

Upon finding this bridlepath I took one look at the hill we had to climb and gulped!! We ended up walking it as our bikes kept rearing up it was sooooo steep!

We came out on the lane opposite Waddesdon Stud and continued back to Pollicott on the roads, a welcome relief after all those bridleways!!! Sian's I-phone app told us we had covered 13.18 miles and burned 864 calories!! I like the calories burned bit best!!!

Back in Pollicott we had a much needed coffee and Sian's homemade mince pies (to replace those lost calories!!).