Just case all the fine weather of the past few weeks was in danger of making us soft, we were served up a real stinker this Saturday, a constant, miserable Rain that didn’t so much as pour as drift down all around us soaking through everything. As I looked out the window my plans shifted from no jacket, to light jacket to full on rain jacket. I dug it out and pulled it on as I stepped out of the door and it never left my back until I was home, some six hours later.

I slipped down the Heinous Hill as slowly as I could, trying to minimise the spray being kicked up by my tyres, but nonetheless my socks and shoes were soaked by the time I reached ground zero and turned west with the rain now being driven into my face. This. Was. Unpleasant. Maybe I should have just stayed in bed?

Still, once you’re wet, you’re not likely to get any wetter, so I pressed on to the meeting place and took temporary shelter under the eaves of the multi-storey car park.

There, a fine collection of orange rain jackets slowly coalesced, much to the amusement of Mini Miss, who wondered if we’d all been burning up social media like needy teenage girls, just so we could present a co-ordinated look. We hadn’t. Honest. Meanwhile a vaguely recognised, so not really FNG watched a council workman (also nattily dressed in orange) unlock some kind of footlocker just along from where we were gathering.

“I thought he was getting out the salt to grit the road there,” he observed and I have to admit, it felt like one of those grey winter rides when ice was a distinct possibility. Indeed there was a good smattering of winter bikes out and Both G-Dawg and Crazy Legs had gone back to their fixies for the ride.

Another FNG arrived and peppered Crazy Legs with questions about ride length, timings, group sizes, speeds, return times et al. Crazy Legs told me later that he’d naturally wanted to know what level of experience we were dealing with here, so asked the obvious question, “have you ridden in a group before?”

“Extensively,” the FNG had shot back. Oooooh! Extensively!

OGL arrived for the predictable, regular and splenetic vituperation around slights real or imagined. I don’t know which because I’d switched off and wasn’t listening anymore. Then we split into two groups of about a dozen riders each and away we merrily went.

I found myself alongside James III, each taking turns to moan about the horrible weather. He admitted he’d left the house, prevaricated, turned around to head home, paused, prevaricated, turned back, hesitated and then reluctantly dragged his sorry carcase to the meeting point, all the while debating the wisdom of riding in the rain. This, I suggested was one of the reasons to belong to a club, the opportunity to share misery and the encouragement to ride no matter how bad the conditions. Peer pressure, I concluded was a terrible thing.

We’d just exited Brunton Lane and started to climb toward Dinnington when route-planner and leader for the day Richard of Flanders drifted back after a very truncated spell on the front.

“I’m going to lead from the back,” he declared cheerfully, invoking some of those great British generals of Somme-era offensives. “Leading from the back” struck me as almost as good an oxymoron as military intelligence, but I dutifully filled in the gap, going “over the top” to partner Goose on the front and have my ears aurally bombarded for the rest of the day.

Not much further along , Buster’s incredibly weak and leaky bladder got the better of him and he called for an early pee stop. We pulled over and subjected him to some very restrained and refined ribbing, which was still going on as our second group caught and passed us.

Then I was back on the front for an extended spell with Goose, which was fine as the pace wasn’t high and the wind fairly light too. We were on a standard, tried and tested club run, out to Stamfordham, past the reservoirs (where we passed our second group again and restored the rightful order) then climbing up through the plantations toward Stagshaw. Then it was Matfen, the Quarry and on to the café at Belsay, where, by good fortune, they’d just opened up the indoor seating area. Just as well as camping out in the garden in the rain would have been truly miserable and no one likes soggy cake.

I’d finally dropped off the front just as we took the turn for the Quarry and was sat at the back chatting with Mini Miss as we zipped through the Wallridge crossroads. As the road began to descend, things started getting frisky upfront, the speed was ratcheting upwards and gaps starting to grow. I hung back until we hit the grind up toward West Belsay, then started to chase, surfing the wheels, both literally and metaphorically and making it up to third place before running out of road and having to slow and ease into the Snake Bends.

From there it was just a short skip to the café, coffee and cake and a welcome opportunity to wring my seriously water-logged mitts out.

At the table with Goose, Carlton and the Big Yin, discussion turned things that you might find in the city of Norwich. I wish I knew why we were discussing Norwich, but I missed that part of the conversation. “Norwich City football club is in the city of Norwich,” the Big Yin suggested confidently. Then, tongue firmly lodged in cheek, “And Delia Smith, probably the greatest cook the world has ever known and probably the best football club chairman the world has ever known too.”

That was when the Big Yin’s Norwich-Knowledge faltered, which was fine, he’d already far surpassed mine.

At the next table, Crazy Legs was fantasising about developing a bike-sized stinger, spike-system to prevent any and all undesirable’s from joining club runs. I think he actually had a specific person in mind, too. He mimicked repeatedly deploying this device with an under-arm bowling motion, complete with “wick-choo!” sound effects. He was convinced he could organise a cadre of highly trained, volunteer ride-prevention ninja’s to deploy this figment of his imagination and stop unwanted cyclists in their tracks , although he noted that some people ride so slow, you might only ever be able puncture their front tyre with it.

Then G-Dawg confessed that the combination of continued rehabilitation of his broken leg and big-geared fixie had put him in so much pain trying to scale the Quarry, that he’d ended up getting off and walking up. I was going to suggest his dark secret was safe with us and it never happened, but Crazy Legs had different ideas and declared he would bear witness to this extraordinary moment.

“But, your not a credible source,” I argued.

“I have photographic proof!” he countered.

“He’ll obliterate your phone.”

“The photo’s are already uploaded to the cloud.”

“He’ll destroy the Internet!” we both reached this conclusion at the same time, worrying that we’d unwittingly set events in motion for a Skynet type Judgement Day and a Terminator Apocalypse. We decided to head for home before the machines took over.

Outside, into the miserable cold and wet again, sensibly the main bunch didn’t hang around, but I stupidly hung back and asked what the rest of us were waiting for. Buster, apparently. He was off seeing to the needs of his weak and leaky bladder.

We finally got moving and once again I found myself on the front with Goose and we drove the pace up on the road along to Ogle, trying to bring a little warmth back to shivering limbs. We took on the short climb out of the village at an increased pace only to have to ease back as we split the group. We then pushed along and reached Kirkley Hall before someone noticed Buster and the new girl were missing.

We stopped at the junction to wait and let them catch up, chatting somewhat idly, until Mini Miss dropped in a provocative and divisive question about whether we liked tyres with tan sidewalls. This must rank about third on the contentious cycling list, just behind the Shimano vs. Campagnolo and disc vs. rim brakes debates. I nailed my colours firmly to the black sidewalls only mast, others naturally differed.

“Would tan walls look cool on my bike?” Goose wanted to know.

“Nothing would look cool on your bike,” Captain Black instantly responded. Harsh. But then they are practically a married couple, so…

Ten minutes of waiting, with no sign of our errant riders and the chill starting to creep up on us again, tradition dictated we’d waited a sufficient amount of time, but we were still uncertain about what to do. Then, Captain Black played his self-effacing Captain Oates card – “Oh, I’ll just go back and look for them.”

Aagh! Peer pressure again.

So…

Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno, or un pour tous, tous pour un, if you prefer. (Perhaps even WWG1WGA, if you’re not of a classical bent, and just so happen to be a swivel-eyed, bizarre conspiracy theorist completely unmoored from any sense of reality.)

More simply, back we all went.

“You’re alive!” boomed Goose, as we found our lost companions just outside Ogle. Apparently the new girl had suffered a puncture and, as Goose speculated, Buster hadn’t been much help fixing it as he’d been to pre-occupied looking for somewhere to pee.

Reunited, we pressed on and I found myself following Goose and Captain Black as we stormed up the hill and through Dinnington. When I looked back we’d managed to split the group again, but this time there was no waiting and no turning back. Time to head home and get out of this miserable weather. Hopefully it’ll be better next week.