Central London CTC blog

Some creative navigation on my part, as well as a reassuringly knackered Metropolitan Line, meant that the Central London team were well warmed up by the time we made it to Amersham Tesco for the rendevous with Rocco’s flame-attired West London crew. I think this must take some kind of record for the longest wrong turn since Columbus mistook America for India, adding around 15k to the planned route, but everyone took in in very good humour – purely by chance it turned out to be a particularly nice stretch of rolling, leafy Chiltern-ness, which probably helped. I had hoped to follow the adage of never admitting you’ve gone wrong, but as I led the group almost onto the M4, this disappeared as an option and a U turn was inevitable.

Some rejected performance enhancing caffeine drinks in Amersham on the grounds that a Starbucks within a Tesco is surely the final circle of the ethical shoppers hell, but the rest of us just felt like having some coffee and got over it.

From here Rocco led us to the top of the hill, and then rolled us off to a fanfare of barking from a local labrador. John triumphed by a good 20 yards, although we await the results from his B sample nervously. Roger came second and Inez completed a podium clean sweep for Central London.

John received the trophy at the Squirrel in Penn Street which was good fun but the food took ages to come. After lunch we rolled back to Beaconsfield, including another U turn which meant we had to unnecessarily go up a biggish hill, but I expect it did us good. By this time the group’s faith in my map reading was audibly fading, not without cause it has to be said – although I would offer in defence that the train situation forced un-recce’d routes into my plan. Some carried on to Northwood for a bit more riding as the sun finally came out, the rest of us, dreaming of hot showers and tea, called it a day and meandered home on via the measly selection of trains actually working.