Ride report on Falmouth Wheelers Cornish 100 on Sunday 14th April 2019

At last I’ve ridden the club’s Audax ride! After a broken spoke at my first attempt and three years of helping Phil Conroy with the entries I woke on Sunday to a pretty miserable forecast and rain outside hoping to ride the Falmouth Audax for the first time.
Trevor S had offered to take my place at the entry table for the day so that I could ride. He greeted me with a laugh and a “you picked a good year to ride it!”
Entries were well down with many deciding to stay at home. There were 31 for the Cornish 100 and nine for the 50k Bunny Hop, with twenty entered who didn’t come.
I joined a large group of ten or more as we followed the route around Pendennis Head.
As we headed to the Lizard Fred stopped at this house to get his rain jacket which he’d forgotten and we rode on. This meant the large group separated and I ended up riding with Fred, Neil, Raymond and Kiwi Dave.
On and up a long hill past Gillan and towards the Lizard we rode, stopping for coffee at The Three Tuns, (thanks Fred).
Amazingly the roads were dry as we continued to Lizard village where Dean was waiting at the control point to mark our cards and give us refreshments. The other group didn’t stop for coffee or breakfast as they were cold, but we did both and enjoyed eggs on toast and more coffee at Fat Jacks.

Now we were heading home and we kept up a good pace as we sped back along the main road.

The route made a detour through Mullion and the pleasure of Poldhu hill to Cury where Raymond and I discovered perhaps the most difficult question: the name of the church- St Corentyn. Rejoining the traffic, we circled past Culdrose and around Helston. Then it was Muddy Lane to Wendron where we had a ten minute wait in a queue of cars as a local farmer eventually coaxed his cattle across the road into the farmyard. We counted the points of the Star Inn sign and carried back the usual way.
By now the drizzle returned, mixed with odd spatters of hail, so we rode on until we reached a warm welcome back at the cricket club.
We wolfed down the tea, including sandwiches, cakes and flapjacks, that Sonjia and her team of helpers had prepared.
A great day out, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a great shame more had not made the effort.
The fastest time for the 100 was 4hrs 10min, definitely not us!
It was great to see five riders from Wadebridge Coasters CC who made the journey and braved the conditions.
Around 67 miles for me.
Phil Samuel

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