We haven’t seen rain on the Lizard and Camel, Red River Blue Sea, and Peter’s Point rides since 2017, so the on-off weather forecasts running up to the weekend were a bit of a surprise. Come the day, the forecasts had settled on short, sharp, and quickly moving showers, which was indeed the experience. There were those who took a sudden bucket load – luckily short-lived – and those who arrived at the control 10 minutes later having seen “just a sprinkle”. The showers seem to have added piquancy to the riding rather than dampening the spirits, with an excellent Audax atmosphere and camaraderie amongst old hands and new faces alike.
The finishers lists are on the Audax UK website – links below.
Another Tandem Tail
The AUK rules give the organiser and helpers the opportunity to ride their calendar event anytime in a window of two weeks before and one week after the event date. We just made the cut off by choosing to ride the Red River Blue Sea on the following Sunday – a lovely dry day. It was the first outing for a long time for our Cannondale tandem, and a test of its newly serviced transmission and slightly lowered bottom gearing.
The Community Shop at the Perranwell Centre provided a nice cup of coffee for our Départ. We had a minor detour through Baripper when the captain forgot his own instructions, but made it to Gwithian for a late lunch at the Red River Inn. Rather later than planned, as it turned out, as the aftermath of a wedding the night before seemed to have caused a bit of a delay in the kitchen, but our tofu and sweet potato chips were delicious when they arrived.
No time to digest, so we were pleased the next section of the route was the relatively easy run down through Hayle and on through St Erth to Long Rock and Gulval. We made slow progress on the long climb through Madron, but eventually Lanyon Quoit came into view and we were fully immersed in the strange rock-strewn landscape of the Far West. A distant sea mist heightened the other-worldliness as we rode on to the western info control and turning point. As usual I had forgotten the relentlessness of the climbs on the northern section, and was very glad of the lower gearing even if it reduced us to a snail’s pace. A couple of young cyclists on e-bikes sped past us and cheekily asked if we wanted a tow. I lost count of the number of repetitions and was both relieved and surprised when we reached the turn to Towednack. After the remoteness and timelessness of the Penwith Hills the glorious descent from Balnoon to Lelant returned us swiftly to modern life and closing the loop at The Saltings.
With little time in hand and well past teatime there was no chance of a café stop, but we finished off our malt loaf in the evening sunshine at Hayle and pushed on to Gwithian. Checking our time against the control close we found we were still in time with just an hour to spare. We continued our return on the route via North Cliffs, Portreath, Mawla (another crawler gear), Skinners Bottom, Twelveheads and Cusgarne, not surprisingly taking the option to avoid Hicks Mill. We made our Arrivée at Perranwell with 1 hour 40 mins in hand – by far the slowest of the Red River Blue Sea entrants, but happy enough to have completed the hat trick of this season’s 100km Audax Kernow rides.
Perranwell Finishers
This year saw new organiser Jonathan Butt take over from Simon Jones to run the Mines and Minerals on-road and off-road audaxes. The old hands were on hand to help, the format and food basically unchanged, but we saw a number of riders new to the event and Jonathan’s introduction of on-the-line card payments helped keep things running smoothly at base – and allowed for some last minute pasty and cream tea sales.
