Mark’s Kentish ride.
Posted on Monday 20 November 2006 by Nick Bloom
Global warming has well and truly kicked in, which meant the start of autumn delayed by four weeks to coincide with Mark’s spectacularly pretty trip through the North Downs. The weather was sunny, if chilly, and the trees were putting on a show of leaf colour of New Hampshire proportions.Seventeen riders was the eventual tally, and there were plenty of the promised hills, although none too long. Mark led the ride perfectly, with David Kurtz a very patient whipper-in, despite most of us having some very long waits (in the cold) at junctions.
The pub was excellent, with several different beers (including three local ones) on offer and a wide menu. The management sounded terribly worried when Mark phoned then to warn of 17 cyclists approaching (would it have bothered them if five of us had phoned up saying we were each coming with our extended familes in five cars?). Despite dire warnings of enormous food delays by the serving-wench-in-chief when we arrived at about 12.25, we still managed to be back on the road by 2pm.
Eventually the Very Slow Person who’d kept us waiting at junctions was persuaded to head off to the closer station at Shoreham, where we started from, and the rest of us continued more or less together towards Eynsford for the train home.
At the last junction but one, Mark let slip those of us who wanted to get on with it, and Nick, Camille and I were treated to a spectacular 5km descent into the valley, where we caught the 16.24 train by the skin of our teeth. We hope the others managed to get on to the 16.54.
It wasn’t a long ride, or a fast ride, but it was a Grand Day Out.