London to Cambridge - 2nd Edition
Posted on Sunday 27 April 2008 by Ken Peters
Last year when I did this ride we were blessed with glorious spring sunshine but this was not to be repeated. OK, well that is what the weather forecast said. I had spent the whole of the week leading up to the ride looking at forecasts that said rain and was expecting the worse. Others were similarly afflicted by the impending deluge so I lost a few who had expected to ride. Nevertheless there were 10 hardy souls who were prepared to join me and defy the elements.
As ever, well so it seems to me, for these slightly different rides there are a few new faces who are attracted by the thought of something a bit different or it may just be that the prospect of riding to somewhere like Cambridge will attract people from outside the usual CTC catchment area. As a result we had newcomers in David Colussi and Chris Lovitt. I almost forgot this little bit. I was very surprised to see that a Brompton was present among the assembled masses. The rider was Chris and not wishing to be seen as a “CTC old fart” I simply stated to him that he must be aware of the distance we are going and the likely speed so that he must be confident in his ability to keep up given his choice of ride. Little did I know!
Swiftly we went to Tottenham Hale to pick up the north London posse of Naomi, Keith and Stephen and then battled my usual un-scenic route into the industrial, eastern, heartland of Enfield before heading for more pleasant roads on the outskirts of town. From then on the ride was pretty pleasant despite the amazing amount of traffic on Crooked Mile, north of Waltham Abbey. It was there that we had the only incident of note for the day. Well, it was, in fact two incidents as immediately after I heard a call from behind that someone had punctured, there was a loud and aggressive horn sounded by a motorist and my rear wheel was hit by one of the group behind me. Once I had stopped, I can’t coast as I was riding fixed, I was able to ascertain that Amy had fallen and presumably she had been the person hitting my wheel, but she appeared to be OK apart from some very minor road rash and some rear derailleur damage that Naomi helped to fix. I think now that it is OK to mention that I was a bit concerned about the fact that I had been hit as I was still sporting a considerable amount of road rash to my scalp that I had collected a week earlier while having a fixie crash at Butlers Cross. That crash caused me to definitely take a bunch of gears out on Angela Dale’s ride the following day. Oh, I suppose it also had a lot to do with the fact that I had struggled on some of the finer Chiltern slopes with just the one gear. Medical bulletin over!
After a leisurely puncture repair we proceeded rather rabble like as The Flandrian Three aka Norf London Massive aka Naomi, Keith and Stephen were rather too keen on keeping the pace high, following their recent Belgian experience, and were joined by David and at times our Brompton riding warrior, Chris. It turns out that he is hoping to do a 5 day E2E on the Brompton which leaves little else to be said apart from the fact that he has also done another pretty challenging feat on his small wheeled steed. He is completely bonkers (a bit rich coming from a fixed wheel, non-helmeted rider) but a very nice guy in reality. The rest of the day went exceedingly smoothly. We had a late coffee stop at Hopley’s Garden Centre, Much Hadham and then an excellent and leisurely lunch at The Cricketers, Clavering by which time we had done about 2/3rds of the route. Most of us had a leisurely lunch apart from the aforementioned pacesetters who used the feeble excuse that they thought we were riding directly to Cambridge and having lunch there so they pressed on with only seven of us enjoying one of the better lunches on a ride.After lunch it was then an easy afternoon ride into Cambridge followed by a return on the train. Thanks everyone for turning out on a day that was distinctly unpromising, even by Metcheck standards, but we remainder pretty much dry as there was no appreciable rain until we were on the train.
Riders
Amy Haddon, Helen Seyb, Erica Stuart, Naomi Wolf, Keith Butcher, David Colussi, Charlie Keep, Chris Lovitt, Adam Ray, Stephen Taylor.