Central London CTC blog

… all day, but you never have to go up them”,  was the pitch for this ride, which described a squashed ovoid shape lying in a south-westerly anti-clockwise loop from Princes Risborough with a diversion at the end to take in a section of the Pheonix Trail. It is a very flat route with no serious hills to speak of for the whole day. The lack of gradient however was somewhat neutralised by the headwind in the morning which was brutal and unrelenting. This was a shame because the first part of the ride features two stretches of long straight B-road which are fun to put your head down and belt along in the manner of migrating wildebeest. We were more like pack ponies struggling across the tundra.

I changed the plan for lunch as we had a biggish group and the pub I had recced wasn’t the best anyway. We went on to the cafe on the Thames at Benson which was decent enough, and a nice setting, although still windy. Rory told me that people in Wyoming kill themselves because its so windy all the time.

Our relationship with the wind was instantly transformed into one of friendly cooperation as we turned our backs to it. The second half of the ride really didn’t take very long as a result as we bowled along back north easterly. We lost Roger off the front at this point. There was a technical interlude under a bridge which kept everyone on their toes –- possibly I should have given more warning of this to prevent the group concertina-ing into the back of each other.

The proposed tea stop was binned as it was too early so we got back to the station and instantly onto a train at 3.30 –- a bit of an early finish but overall a good day out, on a route which could profitably be developed into a longer ride, either by going further west in the morning or by taking a more southerly loop into the hills after lunch.