I have posted this here retrospectively (May 28th 2015) as I forgot to do it at the time. This is copied from the post I did on Facebook at the time.

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Went out with the Airedale Olympic Cycling Club on an 11 mile mountain bike ride today. There were 6 of us altogether with me bringing up the rear. I’d not met them before but they invited me to join them via Facebook. They were very friendly and made me very welcome. I was amused when I found the young woman that accompanied me most of the time was the club Welfare Officer! I thanked her for her pains by accidentally knocking her off when I hit a large boulder and stalled right in front of her. The pace was brisk at times, especially as it was quite windy. I was last through obstacles and crossing roads so spent a fair bit of time catching up but someone always hung back if necessary to make sure I could see where the route changed. I was familiar with most of it as I’ve been walking these tracks for several years now so there was never any fear of getting lost. I dealt with the slippery and muddy conditions OK and only opted out of one rather technical detour more through tiredness than being particularly concerned about the difficulty. Two of us stayed on the bottom track while the rest took to the hills in Jerrison Wood and we all met up again at Esholt. I got home feeling quite shattered but pleased I had managed OK. I’ve not done as much cycling this last year as I’d hoped (more walking and racketball) but I will start doing a it more now, probably mostly mountain biking through the winter but in the new year I may start going on the club’s social rides on Saturday mornings on the roads. These are between 30 and 40 miles so I’ll need to check on each route before I decide. Then later in the year I hope to go on the Leeds Cycling Campaign’s Sunday intermediate rides as these are about the same length I think. By picking appropriate rides from these two schedules I hope to able to do one decent ride every weekend.