Avoiding Harlow – January 18th 2009.
Posted on Tuesday 20 January 2009 by Ken Peters
Usual winter ride stuff; midweek was spent watching weather forecasts and trying to work out the prospects of a decent turnout or whether it was going to be a ride for the hardcore only.
Oops, I almost forgot that there was the all too frequent email from Richard about rail engineering works so a little reworking of the route was done. Once that had happened all that was left was to do the ride but not before suffering some kind of drastic upset which caused me to warn the Hon Sec that I may not be able to lead.
Saturday evening saw the forecast heavy rain which was good as it arrived when expected so Sunday morning was looking good as it was apparent that the rain had cleared away and eventually I met Nick and Martin in Winchmore Hill and rode out to the amended start at Cheshunt.
Things looked promising as when we arrive there was a train in so I thought the rail-assisted contingent had arrived and we would be away immediately but that proved to be illusory. However, there were already another three at the station who had ridden out, namely, Gerard, Jon and Richard who had emerged form various parts of north and north-east London. Before the train arrived David turned up having emerged from hiding in a Wetherspoons where he was having a coffee so there were seven who had ridden out to Cheshunt.
Now to the train saga! I had already been in contact with Rob Saunders and had been informed that there were 6 on the train but shortly after the expected arrival time another message was received that they were on the 09:21 which was when they should have arrived at Cheshunt. Eventually about 40 minutes late they did appear with tales of a train that never was which meant that Plan B was already taking shape.
Once on the road, about 45 minutes late things went reasonably well until the curse of wet roads struck and the dreaded call of “hold up” was heard and on stopping it was clear that a puncture had been suffered. The brains trust soon had Rob back on the road but the delay meant that Plan A was definitely abandoned and Plan B was to be followed which meant that lunch was going to be at Hatfield Heath rather than Aythorpe Roding. At least there was going to be a good lunch as we had used the White Horse before and there is also a nice shop there which welcomes cyclists and, in fact, the observant among us noticed that there were a group of cyclists already there. If I had been one of those I would have checked them out as I knew that Southgate CC, which I had recently joined, were planning their lunch stop at Hatfield Heath.
Despite no advance warning the pub was happy to see 13 cyclists and the service was remarkably speedy. Portions were enormous, or at least mine was and eventually I had to give second best to an enormous roast pork dinner.
During lunch the usual afternoon ride discussion took place and rather surprisingly nobody defected and we all headed towards Epping and home. Ah hah, I almost forgot to say that having had the benefit of a tailwind for almost all the morning it was very clear that the entire afternoon was going to be a struggle against a very stiff breeze.
Nothing very much happened after lunch although we temporarily lost Roger and Martin, at Matching Green, when they took off ahead of the rest of us and made assumptions about the route. We caught them up just before getting to the A414 at North Weald and shortly afterwards had a brief stop about options for the last part of the journey.
Benevolent dictatorship was the order of the day and apart from Roger who took the Central Line option at Epping we all carried on towards town until turning off towards Upshire, in the middle of the forest, at which point Monica, Gerard, Jon and Richard carried on as they were all heading into east London.
A brief stop at Waltham Cross ensued where we discovered that there was only an hourly service meant so I was the next to depart, at Winchmore Hill, as everyone else was happy to ride back in to central London.
Thanks to all who turned out and followed uncomplainingly on a surprisingly pleasant day, if you ignore the wind. The ride distance was 69.3Km back to Waltham Cross but much more depending on whether people rode out or continued back into central London
Riders:
Emma-Jane Burley, Monica Licthner, Nick Bloom, Roger Cline, Martin Hayman, Richard Ireland, Charlie Keep, David Kurtz, Jon McColl, Rory Rhodes, Rob Saunders, Gerard Veglio and leader Ken Peters