Benson Rendezvous
Posted on Tuesday 28 July 2009 by Charlie Keep
On a day of swirling cross winds, a decisive intervention by Bob created a split in the peleton before the train had even arrived at Princes Risborough. It was decided that he would take the headbangers off for some punishment in the hills whilst those of us less in need of pain cruised over to Benson under the escarpment. We started off with a nice loop up to the north west before swinging back towards Thame, where we found oursleves interlopers in what was either a time trial or a triathalon – people in very tight, usually sleeveless and generally unpleasantly revealing outfits came past us one by one. Gimacing in pain, pelting along a busy road – never seen the fun in it personally but each to their own. John pointed out that triathalon is a sport where you wear the wrong clothes for three different events. I fear we shaved a few seconds off some of their times as we made a group right turn off the main road and into Oxfordshire – this is the nicest part of the route and a notably different, gentler landscape from the flatter, windier area to north.
People started to asked how far it was to lunch at this point, interestingly at exactly the same juntion at which such a hungry chorus struck up last time I did this route. I advised snacking as I couldn’t really remember how far it was and didn’t want riders getting grumpy – David’s estimate was 20km, short enough to avoid general despair among the group, but long enough to steel them to the task.
We got to Benson before Bob’s group, (which presumably means we went faster than them?) and found the one and two star groups. I had a slightly inaccurately named mushroom burger, which was in truth a large mushroom on a bun, and not a burger in any reasonable sense, but quite decently done with stilton and tomato salsa. As so often I resisted the temptation of a pudding only to be consumed by crumble envy when the puddings of others arrived in their custard drenched glory. We donated one rider to the two stars and one to Bob’s extreme pain crew after lunch and followed the same route back except for a diversion onto the Pheonix trail at the end, rolling up at the station with just a five minute wait for the train – which then picked up Bob’s group at High Wycombe - lovely ride, nice logistics.