Central London CTC blog

Llamas and sheep on the road

This was the last of the Saturday rides for 2007 and a lovely autumn day found a reasonable turn out of riders for a day into a part of the world that we do not visit that often. Among the group was Adam Ray who gets a special welcome as it was his first ride and he had assured me that he was very fit and ready to make a step up in his cycling. He did have a very shiny Dawes Galaxy so at least he made a good first impression but it is not the bike as we all know when it comes to cycling.

So, off seven of us went from Wolverton. Two roundabouts and a ninety degree turn later I stopped and only two were behind me. It took me a few moments before I took the precaution of checking my mobile and listened to a message from Denise telling me that Bob had lost his chain as we set off and they were not sure where the rest of us were. Fortunately Alex had gone back and shortly after we were properly on our way. I can’t even blame it on the fact that despite the cool clear morning it was foggy at Wolverton but within a few hundred yards it was clear so it must have been that the station is in a dip as it was only in the vicinity of the station there was any fog. I must remember to look behind more often but I think leaders could do with a call sometimes as it is not always clear that there are problems.

Little else happened as we made our way towards Olney apart from a brief stop to admire a field of llamas that I had seen the last time I was in the area. Sure enough the llama farm was still there as we went through Weston Underwood which is one of several pretty villages that were to keep cropping up throughout the day. Even better was to come later in the shape of Castle Ashby which is both a house and a village that was built to service the house. It was here that we managed to find the sheep on the road as we went through the village. Not too long after we arrived at Odell where we were met Angela who had, because of domestic duties, travelled out separately, via Bedford and joined us for lunch at The Bell. The weather was mild enough for us to eat outside, sat on the banks of the River Ouse, despite being banished from the nice, but unoccupied, smokers shelter for health and safety reasons.

After lunch we managed to take a short cut as a result of some navigational malfunction by the ride leader. OK, I even believed that the road sign I was reading was wrong, when I arrived at Carlton before expected. As a result we rode about ten kilometres less than expected and were able to finish the ride with quite a lot of daylight remaining. In fact, it was not yet dark by the time we arrived back at Euston.

If you are interested the details are that we rode 77km at an average of 23.4km/h which is pretty fair for a 3-star ride these days.

Riders

Leader: Ken Peters

Angela Dale, Sarah Khedouri, Denise Pugh, Bob Gould, Alex McKinnell, Adam Ray and Nick Wells