Alright, Goats on the Roof

Yesterday we met at 9:30 ish for a nice little trot out to Fontburn to visit a recently opened cafe. (http://goatsontheroofcoffeeshop.blogspot.com/) I have to admit I was expecting quite as many people though I had erred on the side of caution and told the cafe to expect 15 of us I wasn’t expecting to be right! There was a lot of us hanging about at Anna’s with 6 people turning out for the sunday clubrun to Elsdon too.

We set off eventually for a lovely and not too lumpy considering the destination, trot across to Fontburn, of course the other 14 very kindly waited at the top of every hill for me. The company was fab, the weather was pretty good too. I’m glad I hadn’t put too many layers on. We arrived at the cafe before the classic car rally that was also visiting the cafe and I’m glad we did. My god, you should have seen the portions of cake! big fat gooey brownies and giant flapjack fingers. I ordered a bowl of broccolli and stilton soup that arrived in a bin lid and was so thick you could almost slice it, proper soup. Ok, the service was slightly slow and they ran out of milk jugs and teapots but these are small things for  very pleasant service and quality food plus the cup of coffee was very well made too. The only suggestion I would make would be to maybe change the bread buns but hey, you can’t please everyone can you? Halfway through my soup (which was gone before I looked down, it was that nice, oh my poor stomach) the classic cars started arriving, thanks to lots and lots of big windows we had a lovely view and soon everyone toddled off outside to look at pigs and goats and classic cars.

Then we went home, the weather held nicely though my stomach was uncomfortably full and we stopped at Anna’s for far too long gassing in the sunshine before Cakeface and And escorted me partway home. I took a fairly circuitous route home through Cramlington partly for the strong wind, partly for the sunshine, partly for avoidance of Stakeford bank (cmon, I’d done enough UP) but mostly because I just felt like it. The most amusing part was joining the cycleway at the Bebside roundabout where I got to observe two idiots blocking traffic so they could have a testosterone fit, fer chrissakes grow up man, so one guy waved his arms at you, what the hell can you achieve by getting out of your car and in each others faces? Oh well, on I pootle. I think it may have been the march of the stupid afternoon as I came up East Hartford hill I had the joy of almost running into a cyclist (bingo, a charva,bike too small, no helmet, full blast headphones too.) on the wrong side of the road. He didn’t hear my pleasant warning either. One bonus of coming this way? I get to swing into my Mam’s to fill my water bottle. Luckily my sister and niece were there too and I was furnished with Sunday lunch. Yay. Off I went for home5 miles in along the cycle track and nearly home and things started feeling a little bumpy. Oh joy, puncture. Now half a mile from home I’m thinking that it’d take longer to fix it by the side of the road than to walk home in the sunshine so now I have a puncture to fix.

so yes, 60 miles of niceness, 96 this weekend. All of them fun fun fun. What did you do?