Day 30 : 52.8 miles

Last day of the #30DaysofBiking and the plan was to have a social ride with my riding buddy Jim. And contrary to what the experts had forecast, the weather was stunning (if a little windy).

On our weekend rides, I always ride more miles than Jim with us meeting at his house 10 miles away and then parting company afterwards somewhere along the route. And today was no different, but as the weather was so nice, decided on the longer 14 mile route to get to his house. This photo of the lane up through Bagnor taken at 9am.

On arrival at Jims, he made me his first ever proper coffee in his new shiny Bialetti Moka-pot. And it actually tasted good for a change (running joke).

As we hadn't ridden together in a few weeks (due to me selfishly holidaying in Wales) we decided on a mid-distance route with a cake-stop. Aldworth was the obvious choice. The route as always was on very quiet almost traffic-free narrow rural lanes. It's perfect cycling country. Most of the ride to the cake-stop involved the two of us trying to out-do one another initially with bursts of pace, and then to see how many of those horrible black flies we could swallow en route. I think I won on the insect front.

At the cake-stop, after a few home-made cakes and mugs of fresh coffee sat out on the village cricket pavilion, we noticed our roadbikes had been joined by a lovely Ridgeback Honey (the bike on the far left in the photo). The rider was just as cute.

Great route, with great company. The legs felt really good today, I'm guessing powered by yesterdays late night curry and Guinness in the pub.

Cheers Jim.

Total mileage for April = 1092 miles