The Albert Watson Memorial Hut.

The honour of leading today’s run somehow fell upon my shoulders, though it wasn’t really an onerous task leading 15 of the more sensible members of the local cycling community, while the prospects of one of the more serious climbs in the area – Talla, which rises 500 feet in a mile, an average gradient of 1:10 though it’s 1:8 for the first three quarters of a mile - with the reward of a pint at the Gordon Arms a few miles down the road probably helped to keep them in order.
 
The ride was to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the opening of the hut. It was probably fitting that I should be leading on a trike as Albert was a great exponent of the “not falling over machine.”
 
Having warned the assembled crew of the hazards of the fast descent down the other side of Talla, along a single track road littered with lambs and hidden bends, we found that the wind was a considerable problem and we needed to pedal to avoid grinding to a halt. Slow moving cyclists are no fun at all for the sheep so they just carried on grazing instead of playing “chicken.”
 
The extras include a picture of the man himself, a potted history of both him and the hut copied from a thirty year old press cutting and a few riders at the top of the steep section of the climb.