Welcome to the 1st newsletter from Blackburn & District CTC, your local Cycling UK group.
With 2019 now consigned to the history books and 2020 fresh out of the box, let's take a look at what your club was up to last year.
The new 2020 club magazine is still available from local cycle shops & club committee members. This has a full round up of forthcoming events plus touring articles and other travellers tales. All our rides and clubroom events are available on our homepage.
Apologies if you are seeing this for a second time; a couple of gremlins crept in to the first one.
First there was a great programme of events at the clubroom with presentations of long distance touring, old club photos from Joe Lofthouse's collection, the club's Easter tour from 2018 and Richard John's excellent quiz night. But a real highlight was when Tony & Anne presented their look back at when Ian Appleby & Dave Gabbott time trialled their way into RRA record books on their tandem trike in the Moffat hills in September 1963. Other clubroom highlights from later in the year ranged from Richard Gate's talk on his ride in the Transcontinental race in 2018 to cycle touring in Norway with the Scottish North Coast 500 & New Zealand thrown in for good measure. To end the 2019 season, we had the usual Jacob's join Christmas party with plenty of fun with everyone joining in the party games. The 2020 season kicks off with the Road to Victory with Caz and Dave Collinge
Our Sunday club rides have been visiting some new places as well as old favourites. Pippin Street was one of the unusual rides, not going far but finding somewhere new to ride. Our car assisted ride from Crooklands took us up towards the Howgill fells and Sedbergh, England's book town. Other rides included Lancaster & its canal, Kingsdale & Barbondale plus the standard rides for the old Super Tourist format. Our second car assisted ride, this time from Pateley Bridge just saw two tandems taking on the climb out of Lofthouse on their way to Masham. Ian Appleby led the way and showed us more 'new' routes to the Catlow fords which are only the other side of Burnley. Here we saw riders using some novel ways of crossing the slippery ford! Our pre-Christmas weekend away was a great success even though we only stayed in Garstang. Then the annual Christmas lunch, held at Ferrari's near Longridge was another great social event with most of those attending arriving by bike (or tandem)
We have a new format for the Super Tourist competition in 2020. The first Sunday ride of the month will count towards your score, with 20 points awarded for at least making it to the lunch stop. For full details, please read the editorial of the latest club magazine. This Sunday's ride from Whalley bus station at 9:30 is heading to the Ebbing & Flowing well with lunch in Settle. This is an easy one for the start of the year and to get some Super Tourist points. At the clubroom, we have our annual photographic review of the year on the 16th with the prize presentation the following week. Please book in advance for this with Caroline Collinge or a committee member.
In May several members attended the Blackburn with Darwen Sports Council annual presentation evening. This was once again held at Ewood Park, home to Blackburn Rovers FC. We had no idea just why we had been invited and when the club of the year was awarded to Blackburn Harriers, we really were becoming perplexed. However, all was soon to be revealed as we were awarded their 'Special Recognition' trophy as well as a grant of £250 to go towards funding our annual '2-up time trial' Maybe this year we might be able to win another prize or two.
| Attachment | Size |
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 2020_club_mag.pdf | 7.9 MB |
