Early Sunday morning gravel ride on the Norco Search

Well the forecast was lashing rain yesterday from 10ish so I decided to go out and do a 5k trail run, god that was hard work! got back and took a while to cool/calm my body down. The rain never started until 1pm so could have got out on the bike after all, not to worry I prepared the Norco Search ready for an early morning ride today.
The sun never came out until 7am so set off just after 7.15am. I had no route planned so headed down to Brasside then over to Lambton Estate / back of Penshaw way to Cox Green to pick up the C2C route up to Consett. The weather was cool but had a strong headwind nearly all the way from Cox Green up to Consett junction. My legs were feeling the climb to say the east. A quick drink then turned left and headed down to Lanchester / Broom Park then back home.
The tracks were very quiet early on but by the time I hit Lanchester they started to get busy and had a couple of near misses with other cyclists who were two a breast heading towards me and would not go into single file then a mouthful of verbal abuse from a rather nasty gentleman at Langley Park who would not move from the middle of track and had both his elbows out wide and refused to go to one side. Apart from that it was a cracking 43 miles with 2000+ft of climbing. Below are a few photos from the ride and hopefully more soon.