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Back in the day and you blagged a Brixton Rec 5-a-side game each evening by simply turning up and seeing who wanted a ringer. It was a selection process that always worked well for the tricky dude wearing the Forest replica.

Fast forward some eighteen summers and knackered knees have finally killed off my boyhood ambitions of Trentside glory. Plus there’s only so many seasons that the tricky dude wearing the Forest replica can rely on a Brixton Rec ringer team place by dining out on past European glories.

I was reminded of this liberal approach to leisure association early on Sunday morning as I rolled out on the roadie. The plan was always to lodge myself in the middle of the peloton with the lovely CTC riders.

But in the fifteen-minute sprint down towards the ramped roll out (true!) I clocked five other lycra-clad groups heading out for a spin on Sunday morning. Friendly offers were made to do domestique duties for the day. Are you pleased to see the tricky dude wearing the, um, Brixton Cycles replica, or is that a LARGE water bottle stuffed down yer lycra shorts?

Cycling is the new football.

Hurrah!

The world is surely a better place for this. In the end it wasn’t the faded glory of Munich ’79 that brought a close to my fanciful alternative football career. It was the elbows in the face, the FUCK OFFS from your teammates and the constant bruised egos and big toe nails.

Bugger this for a game of football.

And so instead I latched on to the charming CTC crowd for a day of more reflective leisure activity. Teamwork in cycling has even more significance than the one man star show that sometimes characterised those Brixton Rec evenings.

Which is just as well, seeing as though a peloton of seventeen riders rolled of Leisure World shortly after 9:30am. It wasn’t quite enough to constitute a Critical Mass, but you need every extra pair of thunder thighs to get you round the 60 plus mile circuit on the hottest day of the year.

This was a day for not un, deaux or even trois bidon. The back of my Brixton Cycles top was laden down in SUPER domestique mode. Early morning cricket nets were being taken in Castle Park. The seamers seemed similarly in need of the water as the scorched turf as we tackled the first climb of Hilly Fields.

The constant hum of the traffic around Tollgate was soon displaced by the hypnotic cacophony of the cogs as we rolled into Copford. Most of the CTC crowd had various tech devices on board / in the back of Brixton Cycles top. But you can’t beat the barometer of a crankset in motion to gauge how well a particular ride is going.

You also can’t beat Perrywood Nurseries of Tiptree for your mid-morning coffee break. This was the final feeding station before we tackled the Col du Kelvedon. It may have lacked the lung busting exerts that the Big Boys were being put through in the Pyrenees, but never underestimate the up yer arse attitude of some car drivers as you pass trough Kelvedon.

A tandem passed us on the outskirts of a Cressing country lane. This was no Sunday morning leisure ride on a bicycle made for two. Lycra and cleats are the current Cressing cycling look. The pace of the passing two seater made it tricky to see who was Arthur and who was Martha. It appeared as though a Pyrenees attempt on the tandem was part of the training schedule.

The CTC pace also picked up as we descended down New Road in Terling. The architectural magnificence of All Saints was a blink and you’ll miss it opportunity as the peloton picked up the pace. I made a mental note to return, although probably not a Sunday morning wearing lycra and dripping with sweat.

It was at this point of the ride that the first painted road signs started to appear. This may have been in homage to Le Tour tradition of showing your appreciation for a particular rider. I struggled to make sense of some of the markings, concluding that they were probably not fan scrawlings for the domestique dude in the Brixton Cycles top.

Luncheon was taken at Paper Mill. The road sign approaching the lovely lock read: Beware Weak Bridge. Beware Weak Bicyclists more like. It was nothing that a homemade flapjack and a milky cup of tea couldn’t resolve though.

Team Sky took over the Mill, just as the CTC crowd was cleating up for the next stage. A couple of riders with the lycra livery of the metronomic obsessed Team Sky checked in for whatever energy replacement is required for riders wearing the Team Sky lycra livery.

Paper Mill serves up a superb Pie and Chips.

We had many rivers to cross for the afternoon leg of the ride. Failing that then there was a tricky fjord with a depth of around half an inch to navigate in the mid-summer sun. I’d be buggered if my beautiful road bike is going to get wet.

The climb towards Great Braxsted was classic King of the Mountains territory. Nervous looks punctuated the pack, only to be replaced by a couple of punctures before the Race Face got the chance to play poker with the other riders.

Such silly games would of course be incredibly out of place on a lovely CTC ride. Etiquette is to wait and lend assistance to any punctured peloton pal. I ‘helpfully observed’ from the curbside, fearful of my last puncture repair operation that ended with a big bang.

Every lane in the run in appeared to be called Station Road - which suited the mood as I lined up my lead out train ahead of the bunch sprint finish. Or maybe that was just the mid-summer heat starting to go all hallucinogenic on my much confused Race Face?

102.4km after Le Grand Depart and I was back at base and bonking big time.

Don’t worry - it’s a cycling thing, Comrades.

I passed a couple of part-timers, asking if I fancied a leisurely evening roll out as a ringer?

The response was similar to the language of my Brixton Rec football friends after I ducked out of yet another 50-50 ball.

Um, Chapeau!