First Bike and Camp of the Year

The forecasts were right....the weather last weekend turned out to be just right for our first 'Bike and Camp' weekend of the year....

All set for the weekend

 Peter Calcutt and I had arranged to meet at the Church Farm Camp site at Sixpenny Handley on Friday afternoon.
As it was to be a road bike weekend we decided to use the cars to get there rather than load up  the touring bikes.... There will be plenty of time to use those later in the year when we cycle to Holyhead and back....

Red Sky at night....Campers Delight

 We had a lovely red sky in the evening, so all looked good for some nice sunny weather for our day rides on the Saturday and Sunday....
We had  planned some fairly straightforward cycling loops covering some of the routes that we used at last years Ten in Ten training camp week...... 

Lots of  Spring Flowers

 We found that some of the roads had deteriorated very badly with lots of deep potholes and lots of dirt, gravel and mud all left behind following all the flooding over the winter....
One of the country lanes we wanted to ride was still flooded...bad enough for me to refuse to take my bike through it..... If the truth be told I just didn't fancy having to clean up the bike after the days ride.....
One thing that did brighten up each of the daily rides, was all the Spring flowers dotted along the sides of the roads......

Getting the bikes ready for Sunday's ride..

For most of our chosen route on the Sunday there was a sportive taking  place, the UK Cycling Events Wiltshire Wildcat sportive.......
We seemed to be travelling the same route as the sportive riders but in the opposite direction....
Initially we started saying hello and giving a wave to riders as they passed us by on the other side of the road, but after the first couple of hundred riders had gone by in groups of any thing from 2 to 20 we gave up . 
From then on, we only acknowledged those riders that said hello to us first..... we weren't being rude, it's just that there were too many riders to keep saying hello to.... they only had to do it once....we were doing it every few minutes.........

The moon showing itself above a group  of tress on a distant hill....

It really was a cracking weekend.....
We decided to camp over until the Monday in order to make the most of the weekend and on the Sunday night it was great to stand outside of the tents and reflect on how lucky we had been with the weather....
As we watched the darkness extinguishing the last remains of Sunday's daylight, the moon appeared  over a group  of trees on a distant hillside....what a great end to our first bike and camp of the year....