2026 Cranleigh Carnival
A fabulous write-up from Richard Lloyd on another successful CCC Carnival showing last weekend!
CCC at Cranleigh Carnival – WattBike Challenge!
CCC were up bright and early on Saturday morning — well, Mark, Rob and Simon were — hauling a WattBike (thanks, Alisa!) onto Dougie’s very manly truck (expertly driven by Mark!) before heading to Cranleigh Green to set up the CCC stand in the glorious morning sunshine.
Mike LaCross and I rolled up at 10am, expertly avoiding all set-up duties. After coffee and breakfast we each jumped on the bike to post some benchmark scores on the whiteboard to get things rolling. We won’t reveal the numbers, but they were all perfectly respectable for riders of our advanced years…
Before we’d even managed to entice any members of the public to have a go, reigning two-time champion Will D arrived and promptly laid down 1,000 watts to set the benchmark. His son also posted an impressive score to take an early lead in the Under-16 category.
As the carnival gathered pace and people braved the increasingly warm weather, we chatted to visitors about the club and the joys of cycling with a group. According to Mark, attendance seemed a little lower than previous years, but we still managed to cajole, encourage and occasionally heckle plenty of passers-by into talking about their cycling habits or lack of them!
Several really interesting conversations followed. Two young women heading off to ride the Downs Link to Shoreham were looking for a more social cycling group rather than a fast-paced club ride. However, they were hoping for a group in the 30–40 age range, which highlighted that our social rides currently lean towards an older demographic. Perhaps that’s something worth thinking about in the future. One of them, Jess, also had a go on the WattBike and produced what proved to be the day’s winning ladies’ score of 658 watts.
Other promising conversations included Norman, a regular solo rider in his mid-60s interested in our quicker social rides, and Scott, a former triathlon coach in his 30s who has recently moved to Cranleigh. Fatherhood had rather interrupted his cycling over the last few years, but he seemed keen to get back into it and looked like an ideal candidate for one of our faster groups.
Meanwhile, the WattBike competition was heating up. Will D returned to strengthen his lead with 1,062 watts, while members of the public started edging ever closer. One particularly substantial gentleman who looked as though he’d recently retired from serving as an actual tank produced a phenomenal 991 watts, knocking me off the podium after I’d summoned every ounce of my 17-stone “Dutch sprinter” physique to squeeze out 914 watts.
Mike LaCross and I also persuaded the children’s entertainer, Angie, to have a go and add her name to the ladies’ leaderboard. We paid for this later when she recruited us into her closing performance, where we found ourselves acting as the base of a human pyramid while she balanced above us in a flowing dress, spinning hula hoops.
Later in the afternoon a group of teenage boys wandered over. One of them, 13 year-old Mackenzie, casually mentioned that he “mountain bikes a bit” before producing an astonishing 1,029 watts. Incredible power. He made several attempts to dethrone Will but just couldn’t quite manage it. At thirteen years old, it was a remarkable performance.
Throughout the day many club members stopped by to lend support, chat with visitors and help create a really welcoming atmosphere around the stand. Hopefully we’ve generated enough interest to see a few new riders joining us over the coming weeks.
As the crowds began to thin and we were thinking about packing away, a father and son—Wayne and Theo—wandered over from the Cranleigh scuba-diving club stand (apparently they meet monthly at the Leisure Centre, who knew?).
Wayne is a regular solo cyclist and seemed genuinely interested in joining CCC, while Theo cycles between university terms in Cambridge. Wayne posted a very respectable 943 watts, before 17-year-old Theo casually smashed out 1,040 watts. He didn’t need much encouragement to have one last crack at ending Will’s two-year reign. After a deep breath and a sip of water (later drug-tested and found to be entirely legal!), he put the hammer down and unleashed an astonishing 1,142 watts, snatching victory on the very final ride of the day. “Shall we call Will? He’ll be straight back for another go!” someone suggested…
…only to be physically restrained while Mark quietly removed the flywheel from the bike.
All in all, it was a brilliant day; great fun, a fantastic opportunity to promote CCC, and hopefully the start of several new memberships. It also gave us a few useful ideas about how we might continue growing the club.
Finally, a huge thank you to Mark and Simon, who not only organised the whole day but also handled the early morning collection and evening return of the WattBike. Their commitment—from dawn until dusk is exactly the sort of dedication that keeps our club thriving
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