Easy Riders to Greenstead Green 12/03/2025

Easy Riders assembled as usual in Weavers Park, with the long group heading to Braxted Bakery; the medium heading to Greenstead Green; and the short group going to The Stores. It was a bitterly cold day with a north wind. According to the weather forecast, this was because the UK has had sudden stratospheric warming, which is when, 6 miles above us, the air temperature has warmed from -75C to -30C. This usually means that the temperature at ground level plummets a few weeks later. As we had had the warmest day of the year last week, we really noticed the sudden drop in temperature while riding our bikes!

We’ve had sad news in the Easy Riders recently, as we learned that one of our riders, Geoff Farrow had died while on his annual holiday in Tenerife. This was unexpected as he was fit and well before departure. His sister notified us and informed us that there will be a memorial service for him at St Andrews church in Halstead on Friday 21 March at 12 midday, for anyone who would like to attend. Ann Reilly and I will be attending, and there may be people attending from his rambling group too. Geoff regularly rode with the medium group, was a strong, experienced rider and was often to be seen riding directly behind the ride leader. We raised a cup to him, in memory, at our tea break.

Interesting snippet of conversation for this week was my conversation with Dave at the tea break. He told me of his career as a pilot and some of his stories about interesting incidents with specific airports with interesting flight paths between mountains, and annoying things that customers do. My background is railways, and there were significant parallels between train/plane approaches to station/airstrip, and customer behaviours!

The ride home was equally cold, but slightly easier as we had the northerly tailwind to push us home. Peter had planned us a mercifully short ride. It was good to get home and back into the warm!

20 miles, at 9.4 mph

Cathy MacTaggart