It's looking like a tricky one 🤔

After a beautiful day last Sunday, the weather gods seemingly are being less kind this weekend.

So, it makes route choices and even when to put this 'event' up tricky. I do like to (as you'll all know by now) put up the planned route on the Wednesday before just so it gives everyone plenty of time before to have a think if it's something they might fancy doing or not, but as we also all know the forecast often changes from the time of posting - sometimes significantly and I must say typically for the worse! - and this week is one of them, it's showing chance of rain, but the percentage chance of rain keeps fluctuating, once again making it tough to nail down a planned route.

I've decided to put this route up as a 'best case scenario' - if it's not too miserable and everyone is happy to go along with it.

The route is aimed at keeping things together early doors to the café stop which is The Barn at Scorton. If you look closer at the route you'll see it has some unusual road choices - the promenade to Heysham roll out, Gulf lane on the way from Cockerham to Pilling and then Bradshaw lane from Pilling to Nateby. The idea behind this is they are very quiet, low on traffic and in the case of the promenade, a nice way to just roll out. If it's another large group it'll be the ideal way to go South and keep us from the majority of heavy traffic areas.

Post Barn the route has a sting in it's tail. It's very much a route of two very distinct halves. The first half is mostly flat except the back of Garstang going over Barnacre to get to Scorton (but it's not really a hill as such) but the second half hardly any of it is flat, rolling roads from the Barn out, and the rollers of Bay horse road followed by the sting in the tail - Littledale from Rigg lane. I see it as a way to add options and give people choices and variety to the day, but due to the way it's situated in theory anyone not wanting to go over Littledale could carry on down Postern gate and wait for the Littledale crew at Caton.

Caton to Halton, Halton to town and town to Morecambe is the just stating the obvious for the remainder of the run back home...

Now, if it's 'worst case scenario' and we have poor weather I'm going to suggest another option of essentially the same route to The Barn as the Christmas ride and from there we can decide the way home over a bite to eat and a drink, but I'm not going to dwell too much on this one as I prefer to remain hopeful the weather gods will take pity on us and allow option one!

Till then have a great remainder of the week and I'll see you Sunday 👍🏽

• Phill Sharpe
  Organizer
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