Ultimate shoulder rides

This afternoon (Friday 31st October 2014), because it was such good weather there being a totally blue sky, no wind, and a temperature of 20 degrees, I decided to go for a ride on my mountain bike. My usual route was from the little New Forest harbour of Keyhaven to Lymington Yacht Haven and back. This is a round trip of about six miles. The sea along this part of the coast is The Solent and the western part of the Isle of Wight is opposite.

On the way back along the wide ridgeway/seawall the sun was huge and low but, in the distance I could see what appeared to be three shoulder riders riding along three abreast. As I rode nearer to what turned out to be a group of several people who were walking along all bunched together, I thought at first I must have been wrong to have imagined I saw three shoulder riders walking along three abreast and, instead, what I’d seen were three horse riders.

But no, as I rode nearer to this group of people there were indeed three shoulder riders coming towards me. I was totally astounded! This just doesn’t happen. Yet it did today. 

Obviously I slowed down to observe this phenomenon. For a shoulder riding enthusiast like me to see three shoulder riders coming towards me was like an ordinary person bumping into their favourite movie star or a famous singer. Seeing one shoulder rider is a rare occurrence; seeing three together is virtually unknown.

But the best part of seeing this amazing spectacle happened when I rode slowly past this group. Luckily, I had to slow almost to a standstill because the group consisted of about 10 people all occupying the width of the ridgeway.

Passing by the group, I saw that the three shoulder riders were teenage girls. 
The most intriguing part of this shoulder riding extravaganza is that the part of the ridgeway I passed them on was at an equal distance between Keyhaven and the yacht haven – some 45-60 minutes walk to get to ‘civilization.’ So were these girls being carried on these guys’ shoulders for the next 45-60 minutes? If so it would have been a remarkable shoulder-riding experience for these young ladies. There again, it would have been an equally remarkable shoulder carrying experience for the guys who were the beasts of burden for these girls.     

All sorts of questions filled my mind afterwards. Who were these girls? Who were the guys? How did the guys persuade the girls to get up onto their shoulders? How long had they been riding along on the guys’ shoulders? On that last point, I first spotted them a ½ mile ahead of me. How long were the guys going to carry these three teenage girls?  Because the girls were teenagers, their weight would have been in the range 7 to 8 stones (98 to 112 pounds or 40 to 45 kilos) so they wouldn’t have been particularly heavy. The last point is that they all had naked legs because, being a warm day, they were wearing shorts of various kinds. I have to say that this spectacle made my day!