Awaking to the sound of rain lashing against the bedroom window I turned over thinking I’d give the club run a miss – then I remembered I was supposed to be running the hill climb – bugger!

Oh well with a bit of luck I could just go the Square, find no-one had turned up, and then head back home again. That wishful thinking was ended with a phone call from Gnosall at 09:20. Wolfie had obviously taken a late decision to ride and was begging for us to wait for him...

I arrived at the square to find a solitary Barrie, and a short while later Nick Price and Tim Nelson joined us – and some time after that a strange bedraggled and weather ravaged creature – ½ man ½ wolf.

By consensus we decided to just ride straight to Bishops Offley, get it over and done with, and then straight on to the café.

Curtailing my own ambitions for the day I was persuaded to carry out the time keeper duties (OK, I insisted ), and after synchronising stop watches headed off up the hill at a leisurely pace. Rather too leisurely as it happens as on reaching the top I turned round to see Wolfie barrelling up the hill, and I just had time to drop my bike and extricate the stop watch in time to record his effort at 3:54. Good job it wasn’t someone really fast

 And that turned out to be the winning ride, with a close matched Nick Price taking 2^nd from Tim Nelson by one second.

Barrie nearly pulled off a podium position, coming in a very respectable 4^th .

Results:

Paul Crone 3:54

Nick Price 4:06

Tim Nelson 4:07

Barrie Kay 4:59

And if you’re sitting there thinking I could have beaten that, then why not give it a go next year and help make a real competition of it! Meanwhile the first well-deserved name on the trophy will be Wolfie’s (hopefully it’ll be ready for presentation on Friday night).

I would just like to thank all the faster riders for being scared of getting wet not coming along.

Less than four minutes effort gives me a whole year to gloat