Central London CTC blog

Saturday in the Chilterns was a gorgeous clear autumn day. Copper leaves carpeting the woodland floor, not a breath of wind, warm in the sun and cool in the shade.

The area just north-east of Princes Risborough has some great off-road riding, mostly wooded bridleways which seem very under used - we only encountered a couple of other cyclists and one or two walkers and horses. As suggested on the rides list it was muddy, more so than I had expected as there had only been one day of rain in the previous week, but not so much as to hinder progress much. There were a couple of decent climbs and one bit just after lunch which a mountain goat with crampons would have struggled on and even Marianne had to push for a bit.

The Sun Inn at Little Hampden is a good pub for lunch, even though the management have clearly got a bit of an obsessive-compulsive thing about mud going on; to the extent that you have to put little blue bags on your shoes like a forensic pathologist. Although to be fair they must get a lot of muddy walkers and cyclists coming in, and the carpet is beige (but then again, was this the best choice of floor covering given the location.

We suffered a puncture cluster near the end of the ride, bringing the total to an annoying four (two for me), all from undiscovered sources weirdly. But aside of this the ride went very well, we had a good group made up of a couple of familiar faces in Robert, Marianne and Paul and three new riders in Penny, Laura and Anita, all of whom are training for a charity ride in India early next year.

We were a bit unlucky with the trains on the way back and ended up with almost an hour’s wait during which Robert went off for a bit more riding, Paul sunned himself on the platform, Marianne fixed a final puncture and the rest of us went for a pint.