big maggy's blog

Day 11 – To Grantham

Starting to hurt a bit now. I think we all got up this morning and realised that various parts of each of us are not in as good condition as they were ten days previous. Greg is nursing his knee and first thing this morning we had a bit of reminiscence of our first race together as I encouraged him up the first rises of the morning. Luckily for us we were soon into Lincolnshire, which is not known for being too hilly, and our average speed was up to the 34kph mark again. The group has been helped along today by riders from O2 who obviously know their bikes and enjoy riding them.
By the time we had met the motorhome for our morning coffee we had made up enough time for a 90 minute sit down and some good banter. The guys from O2 gave as good as they got as the Mickey taking escalated. Dry, quiet roads took us to the UK Youth Achievement Centre near Scunthorpe which Nigel had opened a few years ago. The familiar face of Andy Crinson from AI was a surprise as he had driven from Blackpool to support us – you should have ridden Andy. Lunch in front of the Grand Prix and then a demonstration from some of the youths and children in the martial arts centre followed. In what seemed like no time at all we were back on the bikes and off again. Swift progress was being made so the last stop of the day was at Waddington as we decided to press on towards Grantham instead of the intended stop in Lincoln. The last few miles of today suddenly hit all of us. If it is possible to have a mass hunger knock then that is what we managed. With about 10 miles to go the speed dropped and we were all reaching for ‘Happy Gels’ and calling the car for some SIS drinks – mine is a double strength.
Eventually we rolled into Grantham and as we pulled into another Premier Inn Susan arrived with my parents. It was absolutely fantastic to see her (and them) and she still looked fresh despite an early morning, a TT win and a flight from Jersey. None of Maggy’s snoring tonight will be a bonus. We rounded off the evening with the realisation that tonight was probably the last night we will all have dinner as the group because tomorrow is the dinner at Silverstone and then after the finish in London some of us have to go in different directions. Roger the outrider had his birthday today so a post dinner cake with candles was a bit of a surprise.

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