It’s quarter to six on a gloomy May morning. I can already feel water creeping through the vents in my shoes as I stand in a wet but bustling field, clutching a cup of instant coffee. The sky: grey. The fog shrouding the start line: grey. The mystery meat filling in the bone-dry petrol-station sausage roll I reluctantly forced down for second breakfast: grey.
‘Lucked out with the weather, haven’t we?’ exclaims a fellow rider without a hint of sarcasm as he trudges past me with his bike. He must be a local.
To be fair to him, the Fred Whitton weekend has so far been uncharacteristically warm. Only 12 hours ago, my group and I were enjoying a perhaps ill-judged pint in the balmy 16°C temperature, watching cyclist after cyclist cruise past on their pre-event shakedown. For once, bikes outnumbered backpackers in the picturesque Cumbrian village of Grasmere, and the fresh Lakeland air was abuzz with
