Restorative qualities of cycling confirmed
Posted on Friday 11 December 2009 by Charlie Keep
I was absolutely certain I wasn’t going out when I work up – shivering, temperature, sickness, the whole business. I was on the brink of just going to the station by tube to tell people they were on their own and would have to elect a new leader for the day. But no, I thought, I’ll ride down there just to show willing and make absolutely sure I’m in no state to do the ride. So with a generous handful of pharmaceuticals inside me I set off in the driving rain. “This is a bad business” I thought as a truck showered me with filthy water on the Holloway Road, “If I get pneumonia, it’ll be nobody’s fault but my own”. But even as I rounded Highbury Corner, the first faint glimmer of enthusiasm ventured tentatively forward from behind the dark clouds of achey sickness, and I began to think I might just be OK. By the time I got to Liverpool Street I’d virtually forgotten what I’d been moaning about just two hours previously, and by the time we arrived at Shenfield and the literal clouds had parted alongside their metaphorical equivalents, I was revelling in the bleak December Essex-ness of it all.
We’d abandoned the Burnham on Crouch plan early on in view of the lack of trains in that direction for possible bailouts and the rather unpleasant thought of being 40km from a working station at dusk if we suffered ill-timed visitations from the puncture fairy. We started off with a loop to the north-east of Shenfield stopping for coffee at Blackmore, then came back to Mountnessing for lunch at the plough, where we ate alongside pink polo-shirted, hair gel wearing Essex men, and met a couple from Lancaster CTC who were very talkative. We’d hoped to go out east and around the reservoir after lunch but only made it as far as Stock, where we took stock, looked at the clock, and decided it was enough. We rolled back into Shenfield alongside flooded grey-blue rivers and the deep brown of plouged winter earth in the fading light of a flame red sunset. Thanks to Keith, Naomi, Nick, Camille, Jon and Olga for a curative day out.