Team Super Six’s Tour of Snowdonia - Day 0, The Team Gather (LGD - 219 Days)

Friday 6 October 2017, 0 Miles

Today had been a long time in the planning. Following our success on Lejog in 2015, the Tour of the Lakes and the Pyrenees Coast to Coast in 2016, Team Super Six regrouped in God’s Country for another weekend of bikes, beer and banter. And not necessarily in that order. After coming back from the Pyrenees last year, we had pondered our options for our next outing together and I had floated the idea of going to North Wales for a weekend. I used to live in Snowdonia in the 1970’s and 80’s so I knew that there was some outstanding riding to be had. After bigging up the riding possibilities and playing down the weather risks (October on the west coast) the team agreed and I was charged with organising the weekend.

The small seaside town of Porthmadoc was our centre for the weekend and the Royal Sportsman Hotel was home for three nights. Unfortunately, Andy had to cry off due to a serious bout of man flu so we temporarily rechristened ourselves the Famous Five (Team Super 6 doesn’t do modesty!). Andy was with us in spirit though for the whole weekend and to ensure we couldn’t forget him, he had sent some of his legendary home-made beer with Geoff.

Team Super 6 reduced to the Famous Five for the weekend

Over an excellent dinner in the Hotel complete with industrial quantities of pork ribs we quickly caught up with each other’s news. It was almost one year to the day since we had ridden in to Canet-en-Roussilon at the end of our Pyrenees Coast to Coast tour. The banter and the beer flowed freely and we were all looking forward to lining up in the morning in the splendid new team jerseys that Nick had produced.

Common sense (sort of) played its hand and realising we had a challenging ride the next morning we adjourned to bed at an allegedly sensible hour. What struck me was that it really did feel that we simply picked up the conversation and friendship as if we had only been apart for a day.