Despite false memories to the contrary, it seems that no adequate ride report was written at the time, so I have been forced to elaborate, distort and invent the truth to produce a coherent account of these events. Business as usual.

The chit-chat leading up to this ride revolved around how hard the main climbs would be compared to more familiar hills, and how we would cope with the step up to the full “A” distance. There was also the question of how the notoriously disruptive O’Dirty would fit in with the coherent bunch melded in the fire of Chidlow.
I’d ridden from Toodyay to Chittering along the Julimar Road a couple of times before, and my main recollection was of a long drag that started out seeming easy but got to you eventually. On paper the real climb was after the turnaround - basically a full ascent of the Darling Scarp over about five kilometres.
Enough trepidation… Zippy, the Chicken and I had trucked up a few bikes in the Hilux and stayed overnight on a small farmstay just out of town. Stuey, Paddles and Blinder arrived suitably early in the morning and the four of us rode back into town to meet up with the remaining Coglioni. We’d been blessed with another fine day for riding and the crowds of Cyclosportifers brought a festival atmosphere to the delightful town of Toodyay.

Having made our final preparations adjacent to O’Dirty’s car boot we were soon on the road. The pinches we’d feared on the outward leg seemed to pass without notice, and the first significant recollection I have is getting a wave from Zippy and the Chicken as we passed by the turn-off to our accommodation. Zippy even managed to get a stylish shot of our butts climbing the ensuing hill in fine formation.

My next significant recollection is of Stuey struggling to keep up at a point in the ride where you would’ve expected him to be struggling to hold himself back. O’Dirty showed his true team form by giving him a helping hand on the steeper bits while I wondered how things could be going wrong so early.

Rural roads in Western Australia are often surfaced with a mixture of bitumen and chunks of blue metal that would pass for small boulders anywhere else. Somewhere up the road The Doctor’s bike computer sensor succumbed to the juddering induced by these chunks of rock and decided to detach itself from his fork. I had cause to wonder how good the nurse at the district hospital in Toodyay was at re-attaching fingers as he fiddled with the thing at speed. Somehow he managed to stabilise it and maintain a double-digit finger count.

Before long we were descending to the turnaround and somehow sooner still we were climbing back up again. It’s a trait of the Coglioni that they love a good climb. Well, sort of… But I think everyone was climbing well that day and Stuey had come good so we were soon over the top and on our way back through the dip in the profile again.

It was on this section that O’Dirty spied a fallen Campagnolo bidon on the road, and was unable to resist the temptation to stop and retrieve it. This breaking of ranks brought a harsh curse down upon your humble scribe, whose similarly branded bidon cage rattled disturbingly loose a while later. Fortunately the resourceful O’Dirty was able to redeem himself by producing an allen key and the fated pair were soon swapping turns to get themselves back to the bunch.

The run home proved that the starting stretch had indeed been uphill by providing a rollicking finish to the ride. The handicapper had obviously put in extra effort for this one, because it seemed that everyone and his mate were arriving back at the same time, and all at fifty clicks. The last few turns into town were an anti-climax as traffic became a consideration, and we rolled into the side-street finish at a gentle pace.

The real mark of success for this ride in a way was that we were there at all. Not only had my redoubtable companions come back for punishment after Chidlow, they’d driven further to do it and leapt enthusiastically into doing the A distance. Chapeaux my friends. Now all we need is some matching jerseys…