Author: Admin

Club Clothing

To the Lighthouse:

Mark, Graham J, Neil S, Brian and Harvey formed the group for the Sunday run, starting from Gresham church in some overdue warm weather, with a strong southerly moving SSW. This was very much an impromptu event, following a lot of lanes via Sustead, Hanworth, Thorpe Market, Gunton station, Trunch, Dead Man’s Grave, Edingthorpe Green, Bacton Woods, Ridlington and Happisburgh to Smallsticks Café at Cart Gap, where the bunch spent a short while gawping at the large crowds before pushing on up the coast by way of Ostend to the Lighthouse Inn to the south of Walcott. The beer garden was very busy, but there were lots of tables served by an army of staff.

From the break it was straight inland to Witton then a loop south to Honing and Dilham, before picking up more favourable winds by way of Worstead, Westwick, Swanton Abbott, Skeyton, Tuttington, Banningham, Ingworth, Erpingham, Aldborough, Bessingham and back to Gresham church for the split.

Distances: 60 miles to 67 miles.

A lot has been said recently (by me) about trying to revitalise the club runs as a lot of the older cohort continues to ‘mature’. A lot of people like operating with the downloadable route files, which enable realistic splits into two fairly loose and flexible groups. I am now convinced that there is potential for up to a dozen in the Strava-driven group and half a dozen or more in a more laid back bunch – (I haven’t included myself in either of these groups). Not everyone is available every week of course, but even if 60% turn out these are functioning groups, riding the same route to the same destination. This is also complicated a bit by the inevitability of some riders’ uncertainty as to whether they prefer the van or the rear in any given week. These are not ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ groups and frustrated Strava followers need to accept that riding the network of lanes won’t produce the same data as banging up and down the B1145, B1110 etc etc.

Anyone who feels that this is all rather complicated compared to some imagined halcyon days of NNW club runs 20, 15, 10 years ago needs to sit down with paper and pencil and compile a list of who they were riding with then and consider where all those people are now or what age they now are.