Central London CTC blog

The Stevenage Start of Summertime Special has acquired an almost ritual status in the Central London CTC calendar. So it was no surprise to find Roger and Kay, Steven, Richard and a newcomer, James, already sitting out front of Costello’s Café at the départ. Despite the promise of a fine day, it was winter-chilly, with not an ankle in sight. more »

Back at Shoreham Station after the ride

There were 14 of us on today’s 2* ride through the lanes from Shoreham to Henley Street and back.

Although the ride was only 69km (37 miles), they were hilly miles.  We did 962m of climbing.

As leader, I couldn’t also take photos on the ride, but you can see that everyone was still standing when we got back to Shoreham!

The ‘Honey Pot’ tea shop is open in Shoreham village on Sundays until 16.30.  Unfortunately, it was completely full, so we took the train home.

Map of the day’s ride here.

Some photos from Michael Belcher’s sunny two-star ride in Essex today (map of the route here): more »

What does George mean by ‘Old-School’? Answer at the end. (Please don’t skip.)
Our rendezvous was a pretty relaxed 9:30 outside Saint Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. With no ticket finagles, we were able to loaf around in the sunshine, drinking cappuccino and deafened by St Martin’s Sunday morning peal of bells, until George arrived at about a minute before the published start time. A mere five us had shown up: Roger and Kay, Linus, Keith, and your scribe, a different proposition from the last old-school outing when, on a far less promising day, some dozen or more had shown. more »

A perfect 10 showed up at High (really Low as every way is up from there) Wycombe and it never rained all day, nor did I or anyone get lost, and the pub had not shut down by the time we reached it for lunch. The pub we went to three months ago has closed, along with a host of other places we cycled by, tough times.

We found some great hills, especially the hill up past Luxters brewery and Vineyard, and a great decent off the Chilterns reaching about 60km an hour on Britwell hill, and then we found Sue and Simon at the pub for lunch, before spinning back to do about 80km for the day without getting wet.  It did rain ferociously, but we were all safely sat around a big wooden table eating good lunchtime  food at the time, so that doesn’t count — next time we will look for some really evil hills to climb to keep Rory happy, since he loves to zoom up the toughest of climbs.

This ride captured the true meaning of CTC (cafe to cafe).   We started at Welwyn Garden City due to engineering works on the East Coast main line.  I had arrived early and managed a coffee.  Then Paul said he was taking us ‘for a bacon sarnie’ in Hertford because it would be a late lunch.  The Rose Cafe in Railway Street, near Hertford East station is well known to many cycling groups.  On to lunch in Standon.  Tea at Leader’s in Tewin, and back to Welwyn.

In between these significant events there was some cycling along quiet lanes, some tracks.

These pictures were taken in the afternoon between Puckeridge and Great Munden — map of the day’s ride here.

This was to be a Charlie Keep ride, but our Secretary heroically stepped up to the breach (or whatever the cycling equivalent is) to lead instead when Charlie couldn’t. He was to be partnered by Ken Peters, who cycled out to Princes Risborough with Angela Dale (although Angela didn’t make it there by the time the main body left). So Rob Saunders, Bob Davis, Linus, John Snuggs, Roger Cline, Nick and Rory set off from Marylebone and waited at Princes Risborough until Ken arrived, with him agreeing to take the quicker route to Benson with Angela while we took the longer one. John Snuggs lasted about 3km before he decided that he was still too ill for a ride and went back to the station. more »