Central London CTC blog

A May Day special. Not on May Day, because we now have a politically inexact May Bank Holiday.

Here’s the route (including the two small navigational malfunctions).

We set off from Stortford (after a tour of the back end of the shopping centre) towards Manuden, but were befuddled by lack of signage, so ended up in Stansted Mountfichet.

From there it was plain (but damp) sailing via Manuden to Clavering, on fast, undulating roads with a tailwind and hardly any traffic, thence via Arkesden to Elmdon. Just after Arkesden I was foolish enough to take off my jacket - this resulted in the rain turning from drizzle to torential at Elmdon, where we took advantage of a particularly well-built and spacious Audax Hotel and engaged in quiet and civilised social intercourse (or chatting, as it’s otherwise known) until the rain returned to drizzle status.

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The Hon Secretary reckoned that there would be many people on this ride who cannot be classed as the usual suspects and so it proved with four new riders as well as a few that I was surprised to see so maybe Saturday rides could be successful. There was a flurry of activity during the week as I had several phone calls as well as text messages to deal with from prospective riders and I only had to turn down one person.Saturday morning at about 08:30 as I was riding down Shoreditch High Street I spotted a guy on a road and when we were stopped at the traffic lights he said did I know anything about the London - Cambridge ride. It was fortunate that he asked me as I was leading it so I told him to follow and he then promptly disappeared. Later he turned up by then I had also met Simon Miller on the road and there were already two others waiting at the entrance to Liverpool Street Station. Before we left I had a brief trip to the usual meeting location and found Terry Hanson as well as having to take a call from another rider, Alex Guite, who needed to know which bit of the station we were at.

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