Central London CTC blog

On a perfect sunny May morning, a disparate bunch gathered at Chelmsford for Michael Belcher’s two-star ride through the Essex lanes – two-star stalwarts, newcomers and a handful of three-star regulars who had ridden out to keep up their weekly mileage quota. The day’s 80km featured two fords (one ridable by all but the most timid, the other a long murky stream of indeterminate depth that no-one dare try…) , a relaxed lunch at the White Hart in Stebbing and the ever-welcoming Jericho tea-rooms in Blackmore …

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A lovely sunny day greeted the 3 riders on my ride: Paul F, Tom and Stuart. This was the third attempt at riding the planned 100 km route to the Vale of the White Horse. After some negotiation with the guard all the riders managed to squeeze their bikes in to guards van which was only supposed to take 6 bikes for ‘health and safety’ reasons. There was another party of 4 cyclists who had managed to get their bikes on first which meant that the van had 8 bikes. By getting on to this fast intercity train the ride started from Reading at 10.30 am a bit later than advertised, but this was due to the rescheduling of the train times.

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My own stupidity amazes even myself sometimes! Although I’ve caught the train to Box Hill many times before, always from Victoria, on this occasion my autopilot took me to Waterloo! Fortunately I noticed a missed call on my mobile, rang back and spoke to Charlie at Victoria who was wondering where I was. Jumped on the next train to Clapham Junction in the hope of meeting the Box Hill train but at Clapham there are too many platforms and not enough information (and I’d probably missed it anyway!) so I caught one to Leatherhead and cycled the last couple of miles to Box Hill. Only 20 minutes late in the end, half of which would probably have been lost to faffing anyway!

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