Ride 26/12/2023 Boxing day

So it’s the Boxing day ride and given how cold it was to start with and icy, I was surprised to see 7 of us out today. We ditched the planned route and took our own, with Mr Penman saying the Coffee Bothy was open, I had my doubts any cafe would be open today, but we went that way anyway, taking the route we thought would be best gritted. It was a slow start due to the ice, we were being cautious, but this made the ride bitterly cold, my hands were frozen and it was difficult to change gears even with mine being Di2. As I thought when we got to the cafe it was shut so we headed to Tillicoultry and stopped at Costa Coffee instead, for coffee and cake before heading back home. We were able to warm ourselves back up at this point and the temp had risen enough, up to two degrees now, that we were able to not freeze our arses off on the road back. I was looking to do 65 miles today so when we got to Saline I split from the group, who headed home and I carried on to make up the mileage. I basically headed to Kelty and did a loop around Loch Leven before heading back home through Lochgelly and Cowdenbeath. I was feeling ok still at this point so I kept going a little bit longer, almost down to Aberdour before heading back up hill through Fordell and back home. In the end I clocked up 76 miles at an avg speed of 17 mph, which all in all was a good days ride