3* ride on Feb 4th
Posted on Tuesday 6 February 2007 by Ken Peters
A bright but chilly Sunday morning greeted me as I prepared for another day in the saddle. Unlike the day before when I had to clean my bike there was nothing for me to do apart from prepare my drinks for the day and perform the complex stretching and mobility routine that has become a standard part of my waking ritual.
I made a bit of a mistake as I thought that the day was going to be pretty similar to Saturday and did not put on as many layers as I had not anticipated too much cold weather. Once on the road it became clear that things were not quite the same as Saturday as by the time I had got to Wood Green there was considerable mist and the temperature was cool. By the time I arrived at Liverpool Street I was glad that I now generally ride much faster and the extra effort was keeping me warm.
Once again I was not the first at the meeting point even though I was early. The even earlier arrivals were John Snuggs, Keith Butcher, Naomi Woolf and a rider, new to me, who was introduced as Lee or maybe her name should be spelt Leigh. Apologies if I have got this wrong. Soon we were up to ten and while I was getting coffee I had bumped into Michael Belcher who had arrived early for the 2-star ride led by a long-standing friend of mine Leigh Andrews. Having returned to sort out tickets and other pre-ride rituals we we soon up to ten riders but that became nine as further conversations with Lee revealed that she was very early for the 2-star ride.In fact by the time the departure board had displayed the platform for our train there were several of the 2-star group there including Leigh Andrews and her partner, Joe and also Helen who I had not seen for ages so it was useful in many ways that both rides were leaving from the same station. The full list for my ride was, Angela Dale, Camille Savory, Inez Thorn and Naomi Wolf providing the female contingent. The men were Nick Bloom, Keith Butcher, Martin Freeman, John Snuggs and myself - an interesting bunch.
Much inane chatter, mainly about the Turkey Crisis, enlivened our short trip to Brentwood where we were soon on the road after the short delay for ingestion of performance destroying drugs by the smokers. On the road little happened as we rode out of Brentwood to the A128 where we headed through Ingrave and Herongate before turning off onto quieter roads and Billericay. As is usual not too much happened and I even managed to take the correct turning at the roundabout which meant we avoided going through the built up parts of Billericay. Taking the correct route surprised me as shortly after we came to a ford that I had not realised was on Mountnessing Road as I had missed it on my recce by taking a wrong turn. Fortunately there was a bridge by the side that was easily accessible and took us round the obstacle. This meant that we were going to have two fords on the ride aswe were going to go round the one at Good Easter later.
There was much talk of the advertised coffee stop at Hanningfield as we zipped past the reservoir but I quelled such thoughts by pointing out that we had nearly 50K to ride before lunch and that there was to be an afternoon tea stop to make up for the lack of a morning break. There were, well for me fairly normal occurrences, some slight navigational glitches as we rode towards Danbury where I turned off too early then turned the wrong way shortly after when we had to cross the A414. Those two errors added about 5K to the ride but we arrived at Chelmsford for lunch at 12:30having covered 53K at a brisk pace. I can now apologise for the very tricky approach to Chelmsford as we had to use some alarmingly large roads to get to our lunch stop The Alma at Arbour Lane.
Now the really good bit. I had done the good ride leaders bit and found an excellent pub and had checked it out by eating and drinking there to check the facilities and had even ridden the route a week earlier as well as, most importantly, at a very popular location booked in advance for the group. I even called ahead to give the numbers of riders so a lovely table awaited us on our arrival. Even better was the food but if you don’t believe me then you need to ask my riding companions. I think that I managed to get the Snuggs seal of approval for my choice as he asked how close the pub was to the station in order to gauge whether it is possible to bring his companion there to dine.
After lunch we were reduced to eight as Angela returned home and there was a late decision to ride a more direct route to Blackmore for tea. This detour had not been researched and I was grateful for assistance from a driving instructor and a man out walking with his son for getting us on the right route. The revised route meant that we had only about 15K to ride to get to Blackmore where we had tea at Jericho Antiques. After we had about another 15K to ride to get back to Brentwood but I managed to take us off the quieter routes so the final few kilometres were on the, relatively, busy A128.
A good day in all but I must remember to have Plan B and C for my rides in future and also improve my navigation. I am pretty hopeless and only make up for it by riding routes several times so I know them well.
If you are interested we did 80K on the ride and the maximum speed I reached was 47.0Kph which tells you how flat the ride was.