Round Beds
Posted on Sunday 8 November 2009 by Stephen Taylor
The day didn’t start promisingly. The weather looked dull and there was a chance there might not be any trains. First Capital Connect were having trouble finding drivers to cover their shifts today but luckily this seemed to be confined to their services from Kings Cross. We were next door at St Pancras where the problems seemed to be less severe. In any event we managed to catch a East Midlands Trains train.
This got the five of us (myself, Keith, Charlie, Rory and 3 star virgin, Terry) out to Bedford and on the road in record time.
Lunch was booked for one o’clock so we put most of the mileage in during the morning. And gradually, gradually, the weather improved, with the clouds drifting away and the sun breaking through. The autumn sunlight brightened everything, even a massive field of purple cabbages. Before lunch we visited the tiny village of Souldrop as Keith was keen to see what such a grimly named placed would like. It turned out to be extremely pretty with a little village green. Appropriately for Remembrance Sunday we also went through the village of Newton Blossomville with a tiny gunslit in the churchyard wall designed for the Home Guard to defend the village against the Nazi army if they had succeeded in invading in the 1940s.
Lunch was at the Bell Inn, Odell where somehow we managed to o/d on chips as each of us, unbeknowst to the others, had bought a side order of them to go with our baguettes. Luckily we managed to eat almost all of them!
Previous attempts at this ride had been thwarted by the weather and after lunch we had headed straight back to the station. This time, in the sunshine, we managed to put in almost another forty kilometres before we got back to the station at Bedford. The final run-in to Bedford was along a cycle track. When I had recced this route a couple of years ago I seem to recall the route being a bit of a maze. This time though it seemed to work and, magically, we found ourselves back in the middle of the town and only a couple of streets from the station.
After an unpromising start it had turned into an excellent bright and cheerful day.