Dear all
Greetings from Lockdown 3.0. It somehow feels very important to have got through January. I am on my bike ‘commuting’ from home to home every morning and there is noticeably more light on the horizon all of a sudden. Despite the extraordinary amounts of water and even snow on the ground and falling from the sky, it has been great to see so many of you out and about in ones and twos around the Vale in recent weeks.
The Committee met last week to review things and to think about ways to encourage community and support each other as much as possible. One thing we decided to do is to re-introduce our social virtual pub nights on Zoom on a weekly basis for the time being. These started last week and will be every Wednesday evening unless we decide to change things around as we go along. Every other week will be a themed event, whilst the in-between weeks will be for general social chat. This week we are presenting a quiz, with each question round set by different club members. Last week we had a bit of trouble with a slightly crazed ‘Zoom bomber’, so we will not be putting the joining details on public view. These have been sent separately by email.
We also hatched the idea of advertising a snowdrop ride and Steve Swanton has produced a simple circular route taking in the two Wantage-local ‘hotspots’ of Letcombe Regis churchyard and Sparsholt churchyard and woods opposite: Snowdrop Ride. Similar to the White Horse Challenge, the idea is to invite you to undertake your own snowdrop ride (anywhere) over the next two weeks or so and post your pics on our Facebook page or send to info@cyclingukwantage.org.uk. For those in West Berkshire the mecca is Welford Park, although the grounds are closed of course and the carpets of flowers can only be seen through the fences and gates. Those of you who use Facebook will see that we have a few entries posted up already!
We are aware that many of our older members have received their first vaccine doses and we are cautiously optimistic that we will be able to return to group riding sometime in the next few months. It is purely speculative, but who knows – we might even be able to start up again with our normal April Tuesday evenings? Please don’t hold us to that, but we are travelling in hope! We know how much the social side of club riding means to so many of you.
In the meantime, please keep safe but also keep cycling.
Best regards
John
