Neil and I have a little ride that we are doing in October so for this month's BRRBT we decided that we should get in a little seat time and run the ride fairly closely (in terms of stops etc) to how we will need to do on the big day.  What we were unsure of was how many of the other BRRBT crew would be keen enough to join us...

As it turned out I got quite a few positive replies and even though the weather forecast was not stunning, 12 of us turned out early Sunday morning for an 8am departure from Feilding.

Terry was the last to arrive and while we were waiting for him to gas up the skies started getting darker as some weather approached from the South.  Riders started getting nervous so we skedaddled as soon as we could and took off towards Halcombe.  From memory we only got a few tiny spits as we made our way across to Wanganui.  The roads were wet in places though and Wanganui looked like it had been hit by a good downpour not long before we arrived.  We picked up Russell just out of town and carried on up through the 'naki to our first stop in Stratford.
The stop took a bit longer than I would have liked (but hey, not everyone was practicing for an endurance ride) so I took off without the rest of them to give them a bit of a hurry up.  They soon caught up to me on the still wet roads of the Forgotten Highway.

The wet roads tempered our riding styles a bit and we couldn't quite have as much fun over the Saddles as we normally would...