Central London CTC blog

Sunday 17th June 2007

The ride-out crew, including the fixed brigade, was out in force again as six pedalled to Brentwood to meet Kelvin; on his debut as a 3-star leader. Today’s crew were Camille, Kate, Naomi, Keith, Nick and myself and we had a pretty uneventful ride to Brentwood, arriving just in time for a quick coffee stop before joining the ride. I say, ‘just in time’ but that was not quite right as we were riding down to the station when we met Kelvin leading the remaining riders who had already started. Once Kelvin counted the increased  numbers we were away through the town and quickly onto quiet roads heading towards Doddinghurst.

Once on the quiet roads a keenness for the ride swiftly became apparent as the train-assisted crew were swiftly to the fore leaving the ride out crew who had already put 40ish kilometres into their legs gasping. It was not too long before the Hon Secretary was forced to intervene but with a few people ahead of the leader it was to be some time before full discipline was restored. After that the ride continued at a brisk pace through the lanes of south-west Essex until we had a short break soon after Felsted while the leader phoned numbers through to the pub where we were heading for our lunch. Someone had suggested that we were getting the benefit of a tailwind which may have accounted for the brisk pace but I cannot recall any wind during the day which is usually a sign that regardless of the direction it was coming from it was not assisting or retarding the group greatly.

Lunch was at The Vine, Great Bardfield, by which time we had already recorded over sixty kilometres on the ride or almost one hundred for those who had ridden from north London. Lunch was adequate and after a suitable break we were on our way without too much delay.

The afternoon session was pretty much like the morning as the group was well matched in terms of pace so there were few delays and eventually we worked our way back south until reaching Writtle where we stopped at the college which has a pleasant café in the garden centre. At this point we had just got over one hundred kilometres done on the ride.

After tea all that remained to be decided was whether we finish the ride almost immediately by heading for a train at Chelmsford or press on towards where we had started at Brentwood. Eventually a sort of compromise was reached as we agreed to go to Shenfield where there is a better choice of trains. Considerably less than an hour and twenty kilometres later, we had arrived at the station and had only a short wait for what was supposed to be a fast train back to Liverpool Street.

In all we covered a little less than one hundred and twenty kilometers at a very brisk pace. My computer bore out what I knew that the route was flat as top speed achieved was 43.6 Kph which is very modest. Those that had ridden out had a more than respectable one hundred and sixty kilometres for the day as well as whatever further distance they had to ride home. An almost perfect day with mild conditions and a pretty good bunch for company, just what a Sunday is supposed to be.

A final word of thanks is due to Kelvin who I am sure will feature on the rides list in future. Well the final word is about Jack Sharp, a stalwart of Essex CTC DA from years gone in whose honour the DA reliability ride was named. I think the one time I rode it his widow was there dealing with the administration.

Riders
Leader – Kelvin Dane
Arifa Akbar, Angela Dale, Kate Sandall, Camille Savory and Naomi Wolf
Nick Bloom, Roger Cline, Ant Evans, Ken Peters, Tom Spierling and Nick Wells