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 Not quite recovered from my mega man test bike ride and mountain climb yours truly decided to take to the road on a glorious day for the Kington Sportive.

 As Red Kite Fostering provides the venue for the Kington Lions to host this event it would be churlish not to attend despite the fact that long distance cycling has for the time being waned in the what's interesting light and the reward of a bacon sarnie would be wasted on a born again vegetarian. So alongside other bike pilots and Keeef we set off to follow the distinctive yellow signs with black arrows. Ahead lay around 80 miles of country lanes, a lot of hills to climb and lots of sweat and pain.

 Sooner rather than anticipated the massive hill climbs appeared

 and Keeef dug out blind to achieve the summits.

 The weather turned for the worse, a strong headwind made progress even slower

 than the relentless hills would have otherwise done.

 This was a piece of kit I thought I might need at one feed stop, this was the halfway point. The point at which things got very messed up. The heavens opened, it rained, massively. Time dragged on, miles got done but things were not as they should be. Yours truly was counting down the miles to the next tea stop and was surprised to find one 7 miles earlier than planned. The big yellow sign with black writing clearly inviting riders to eat, drink and be merry about how bad it all was. Inside the village hall a rider who had suffered a high speed crash was being repaired until the ambulance got there. I consoled myself with a chocolate brownie and waited for Keeef to catch up. As I waited I studied the map on the wall, it was unlike any map I had seen that day and the route covered areas I hadn't been to, or even wanted to go to. As the nice lady poured me a cup of tea I asked the dumb question, where am I, as in I knew where I was but where was I on this route map. Another rider helpfully explained that if I turned left at the next cross roads following the big black arrows on the yellow background I would soon be in Llanddod. I explained that this was the last place I wanted to be, no offence to any Llandodians. It was then that the nice tea lady and the rider spoke in unison, "You're on the wrong sportive!"

 What seems to have happened some ten miles previously is that the Kington and Llandod sportives arrived at the same crossroads but the Kington Sportive turned right following the big black arrows on a yellow background while the Llandod riders turned left following the erm....the .....big black arrows on a yellow back ground. Seemingly we were not the only ones to have arrived that day in error. So rather than retrace our steps Keeef and I took the executive decision to plan a new route home while drinking beer and eating crisps in  pub along the way.

This plan was a great success and soon we were back home enjoying the fruits of our victory, a vegetarian bacon sandwich. Cheese.

Thanks again to the Kington Lions for organising this event and thanks to the nice tea lady in Hundred House for the freebies.