Slightly weird placenames
Posted on Monday 21 January 2008 by John Snuggs
SWTrains decided we couldn’t start from Basingstoke, so we ended up on the very slow train to Liphook. Perhaps Farnham might have been a better option, but then we’d've missed out on some of the better bits of the ride.
Nine decided to place their Sunday in my hands - Nick, Camille, Linus, Roger Cline and Kate, plus Chris and Julie, Sophie and Omar from Serpentine CC.
When we finally got to Liphook, we headed north and west at a wind-assisted pace, after couple of wrong turns, via Whitehill and our first steepish hill to Selborne, where Nick was persuaded we didn’t really want to stop for coffee (especially since the coffee shop was closed).
From there it was onward and upward, but not too steeply and without too much of a crosswind, to Four Marks, our first hilltop of the day, at 215m. Then further north and down a bit - still with a gale behind us - to Bentworth for lunch (where the pub was all a pub should be).
On via Lasham airfield to climb, with spectacular views to our north (on a clear day, you can see Basingstoke if you really want to) to Golden Pot at 225m, pausing only to let Chris get back on his bike after an embarrassing moment involving a kerbstone and some mud at the B3349 junction.
From there down to Lower Froyle (Wheeeee!) and Bentley and across to the A325. “Navigation will get tricky from here,” I told the others - so they promptly dropped me and took the next wrong turning up a one-in-10 (except Kate, who was saved by a minor chain faff at the next junction). When we’d all got back together (except Roger), the navigation was tricky, and involved steep, narrow lanes through woods with a plentiful supply of mud, gravel and tree gunge - excellent!
We got back onto more major roads to find ourselves riding up the B3002, which went up…
And up…
And up…
And up, and dead straight to Hindhead.
Then it was payback time. 5km of screaming downhill into Haslemere at 55-60kph past the non-functioning temporary traffic lights (at least, non-functioning in our direction), to get to the station with 10 mins to spare before the next train - which was the slow one, but nowhere near as slow as in the morning.
Thanks to all for coming. I’ll be doing something similar (but longer and with even better views) on Easter Day (SWTrains willing).