3* Ride to West Hoathly led by Nick Wells
Posted on Tuesday 30 January 2007 by Ken Peters
This was definitely a ‘not-the-usual-suspects’ ride as many of the regular 3-star crowd were absent today. I know that there are lots of good reasons for that happening but it was nice to welcome, at least for me anyway, three new riders and to see an old face that has been missing for a very long time.
Before starting I am pleased to report that the milder weather had persuaded me to dispense with one upper body layer compared with the day before and I had reverted to shorts. Mind you my early start had me regretting both until I warmed up as I rode briskly towards central London.
Well, we had seven meet at Victoria as advertised, they were newbies; Paul and Jean-Paul two young guys who are both structural engineers, Angela, Denise, Bob, Nick who was leading and myself. I say that we met at Victoria but I did meet Denise and Nick in Holloway as I wending my way down from the far north, well, Winchmore Hill. At Purley we were joined by three others; Monica, who I had not seen on a ride for what seems like ages, Chris who is another new rider to Central London DA and the ever-reliable Roger Cline. O.K if there are any female readers of this the new boys probably represent reasonable eye candy but don’t blame me if you disagree.
Once on the road it would be nice to say that not a lot happened, which is the norm for a CTC ride but soon after we had turned off the A23 there was a distinct navigation/translation mix-up. This resulted in seven overshooting a junction while Nick was waiting for people who had been held up by traffic signals. I say overshooting a turning but as I ended chasing them and I have the requisite technology to trace the route that I took to recover them, which was nearly 7Km, it was a rather large overshoot. As they stay what happens on the ride stays on the ride so in the interests of harmony I will not name the guilty parties but can say in their defence it was not an obvious turn-off that they missed but as I was unaware of the instructions that they had received from Nick they are forgiven, this time.
After chasing the group down there was a flurry of phone calls and eventually after a lengthy climb we regrouped well into the lanes somewhere between Coulsdon and Merstham. Subsequently not a lot happened apart from the usual hills that were dealt with and eventually we arrived at Turners Hill for lunch. Before sitting down for lunch I managed to throw myself a dummy as I had not spotted the bikes of the people who had got to the pub ahead of me and assuming that they had overshot again did another two or three kilometres down the road and back before I got a call from Denise to tell me that they were safely sat in the pub.
After lunch we were reduced to nine as Angela had found she was suffering from a lack of cycling fitness, that had been exacerbated by the hilly terrain, and was going to return via the nearest station, Three Bridges, I think. The reminder of us continued and did a loop that took in West Hoathly as well as zipping past the front entrance of L Ron Hubbard’s country pile at Saint Hill which I always call “Scientology Mansions”. After that we had a lovely run back from Turners Hill on some relatively busy but, mainly, downhill roads before taking once again to some lovely quite lanes .
Eventually at Bletchingley we lost two more when Monica bailed out to get a train back and I think that Roger pressed on while the rest of us had a lengthy faff and rest. Soon after a very nifty piece of route finding by Nick took us along an off-road bit of National Route 21 and later a lovely short cut over the M25 at Quality Street in Merstham. I especially liked the latter and appreciated the fact that it cut out some of the inevitable climbing back over the North Downs.
We later stopped for tea at Fanny’s Garden Centre and Tea Shoppe where we lost another when Chris pressed on to complete his riding in daylight. I’m afraid that you missed a lovely tea stop, Chris, as I had the most enormous slice of chocolate cake that I had seen for a while. The remainder of the ride consisted of a short climb to the top of a ridge and then about nine or ten kilometers of swooping downhill followed by the flat and fast stretch of A23 back to Purley.
can’t give any details of the distance as my borrowed bike had a malfunctioning computer but in the afternoon I recorded 105K by the time I got home but the ride would have been about 90K and my ride to and from Victoria will have taken the day’s total to about 130k which is pretty close to what I had done on the day before.
Some additional words from Nick Wells:
The welcome faces on the ride were: Angela, Bob G, Chris, Denise, Jean-Pierre, Ken, John, Monica, Nick, Roger C.
Very Good to see. Spotted a few of the usual, ye olde Churches on way, couple of Towers, ditto ponds, 3 pub dogs, and one white horse/pony having a mad minute - chasing sheep. Plus I spied a Lake, passed “The Cat” pub (last years stop), and we flew past a Windmill on spinning wheels of air. No sharp pointy things managing to breaching our defences to expel it either. Hurrah! A day for experiences on my 5th ride. Especially in the case my never to be seen again tyre pump.
p.s. Lastly but no way least, praise indeed on the day, for one so bold as to chase down the pack.