It was a lovely sunny evening in the Market Place and for a moment I thought there might be four of us. However, Pete dropped by at the end of his MTB ride only to wish us well.

So three of us set off for the hilly section of the ride. First up, the steady rise to Challow and Childrey Cricket Club. We then tackled Sincome Hill up to Sparsholt Firs, where we tried to take close up photos of the lambs - but Dave, in full club kit, frightened them.

What goes up must go down so we whooshed down down to Sparsholt. Our last climb was the bump back on to the spring line road and by the time we got to Fawler we were done with climbing.

The rest of the ride was flat, steadily paced and without incident. We got back to Wantage with the sun still visible in the sky.