Wenvoe Wheelers 10th Birthday!
WENVOE WHEELERS 10th BIRTHDAY!
Well, who would have believed that we would be celebrating 10 years as a cycling club back in 2016? I remember thinking I had better join since someone had gone to the effort of setting up a club where I live. There aren’t many of us who live in the village who are members, but we are now a club of around 200, most of whom live in Cardiff, Barry and surrounding areas. Most of our rides start at the Wenvoe Arms which is of course, our unofficial HQ and where we always have a warm welcome from Jenny and Digby. Indeed, on some Saturday afternoons you’d be forgiven for thinking it was our own clubhouse, with so many of us in the bar or the garden
We’ve been very busy over those last 10 years. We grew from a club of about 20 to 30 people, running two groups going out each Saturday morning to 4/5 groups now and around 60 plus riders. We have a social group who are the slowest and chattiest who do about 35/40 miles; our intermediate group who do about 40/50 miles; then our inbetweeners (so called because they are in-between the pace of the intermediate and steady groups) who do about 50+ miles and then the Steady group (speedsters) who will do anything over 60 miles at an average speed of 20 mph. Every group stops for coffee – otherwise there would be a mutiny, and we are always on the lookout for good coffee stops. Recent good finds are Colliers Rest just off the A472 and the Ynyswen Farm Shop just outside Treorchy where you can get a sublime ciabatta sausage sarnie. One of our favourites is Coffee Co at Ogmore which has a great cake and savoury selection, good coffee and a view! Our ride leaders are trained to lead our groups which involves a day in the classroom and on the road with British Cycling or Welsh Cycling and gives you a level 1 certificate.
Saturday morning rides can be a trip out to Llantwit Major, Ogmore, Porthcawl through the lanes or perhaps up to Llanwonno, Caerphilly via Draethen, or maybe out east starting from Newport Road to go to Usk or Monmouth. Further north, we can ride up and over the Bwlch (3 different ways) or the Rhigos which are significant climbs or something even tougher such as the Tumble just outside Abergavenny. We usually have a club weekender once a year which involves a 100ish mile ride on the Saturday an overnight stop and then a shorter ride back on Sunday. Recent destinations have been Hay-on-Wye via the Bwlch, Rhigos and Penderyn; Gloucester via the Gospel Pass; Portishead via Cheddar Gorge; Bath; Worcester; and the Mumbles. This year we are heading to the Isle of Wight for a complete circuit of the island but only the Steady group are riding there – as they are a bit mad.
We try and ride every Saturday morning but sometimes the weather defeats us and believe me there is nothing more miserable then fighting against a headwind in a downpour or hail (which is what we had for our 10th birthday ride on 11th April). What we really love of course is a nice sunny day with a gentle breeze.
We have a lot of members who ride abroad, whether just for fun or in a sportive event. A few are really intrepid: one of our members has done Paris-Brest-Paris – 1,200 km which has to be completed inside a certain time. Two of our members regularly do 400km plus events, last year’s mega ride involved starting in Italy and finishing in Finland inside the Arctic Circle.
One of the best things about the club is the friendships that have been made. It’s quite unusual I think to find ‘blokes of a certain age’ making new friends but that is definitely a thing in our club. We also have a healthy number of ladies in the club riding in all groups who have made lasting friends to the extent that many of us do stuff together outside of cycling, in actual clothes not Lycra.
And talking of Lycra, I guess you will have seen us in our blue and white kit. We get our club kit from Pactimo who make it to order and over the years we have had several design refreshers with subtle variations on the previous design. We are very pleased with our 10-year anniversary jersey which is a colour reversal i.e. blue on white, we think it looks great.
So, Happy Birthday to us! Here are some pictures of our recent birthday party at the Church Hall with one of our members providing the pizza – thank you very much to Backyard Dough Co. Absolutely fabulous pizzas, if you want to know
