This was the night all hope went west. Steam was rising from the drenched clothes of Mr Rowberry ,who had spent a predominantly liquid 5 hours valiantly preparing the course, while Mike Link was complaining that there was a fat chance of unleashing his secret weapon now that the gun cupboard had been stolen. But hey, why all this gloom? We finished 3rd in the fixture [though still 4th in the Series] and yet again there were some noteworthy performances. Yes, hope curling up in the west….
Perhaps the most remarkable performance of the evening was young Amy Woolfson lopping a cool 35 places off her previous placing to register a splendid 76th only 7 places down on the redoubtable Jayne [again 1st V55] and not far off our great Trojan, Ali, 1st V50 in 63rd. And young Kev had better watch out too as he was only 10 places up the field from our newest recruit.
Among the men [no offence, Kev] there was the usual excellent packing at the top end, with Matt a storming 2nd on Luke Mason’s heels, Eliot 4th and Luke James in his favourite 5th berth [like Kev, Neil and Steve, having suffered the torments of Pen y Fan the previous Saturday]. Mike was disappointed in his 12th having, he thought, not gone hard enough at the start. Richie [13th] again managed to hold off Dave [14th] 1st V50 with a gap then before Neil came in in 26th followed by Geoff, 1st V55 in 31st and Steve, 1st V60 in 42nd.
Consensus was that, in the tough conditions, Westhope was a formidable challenge and, though overall numbers were down, the race had a solid core of decent quality in which Couriers were pretty well represented. So now on to the fair fields of Blenkinsopiana where we must try to wrestle a drubbing from the jaws of outright humiliation.