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Walkers, the return leg was similar but took in the Steeple Bumpstead Road, just as we were coming into Finchingfield Gary had to take pretty severe action to stop in time to miss a deer, it was followed across the road by at least 30 of its close relatives, it was genuinely a scary/thrilling sight. A second later we would have been right in the middle of them.” One minor incident he failed to mention was that Sue Saunders had an ‘off’. Despite the recently established grand old social ride tradition of falling off your bike when travelling in a straight line, this was on a right-hander when turning into the low afternoon sun so blinded her that she hit the verge. Happily neither Sue nor the bike sustained any irreparable damage. This is a very unsatisfactory thing for a writer of event reports, and I feel this is how the incident should have been:… By the final stages of the run as they approached the infamous chicane the pack was led, as usual, by the lovely Zoe Zaunders; instantly recognisable in the tight scarlet leathers which left few details of her lithe body to the imagination. Alas, danger lurked round one of the bends. Hidden from view an overturned petrol tanker was leaking its deadly load onto the road. Zoe’s lightning reactions enabled her to flick the bike through the tiny gap between tanker and bank (no mean feat at triple-digit speeds) but the fuel covered road then offered no grip, and only a superbly executed eighty degree lateral drift enabled her to bring the bike to a standstill. Unfortunately a spark from her titanium elbow sliders triggered a massive fuel-air explosion. As the initial fireball rose up towards the heavens Zoe could be seen through the flames raising her beloved race replica Honda above her head to cast it into the waterlogged ditch, and then leaping over to ensure
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