Central London CTC blog

Arriving at Victoria I thought to myself, “There’s an awful lot of people getting tanked up in the Wetherspoons considering its 8.30am, and they’re all singing and wearing blue shirts.” I’d never considered a Portsmouth cup run as being a significant enough possibility to incorporate into ride planning, but we live and learn.

Once we’d extricated ourselves from this melee and travelled down to Lewes we were found to have a team of seven, and, joyously, nobody had turned up without knobblies.
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Saturday in the Chilterns was a gorgeous clear autumn day. Copper leaves carpeting the woodland floor, not a breath of wind, warm in the sun and cool in the shade.

The area just north-east of Princes Risborough has some great off-road riding, mostly wooded bridleways which seem very under used - we only encountered a couple of other cyclists and one or two walkers and horses. As suggested on the rides list it was muddy, more so than I had expected as there had only been one day of rain in the previous week, but not so much as to hinder progress much. There were a couple of decent climbs and one bit just after lunch which a mountain goat with crampons would have struggled on and even Marianne had to push for a bit. more »

My own stupidity amazes even myself sometimes! Although I’ve caught the train to Box Hill many times before, always from Victoria, on this occasion my autopilot took me to Waterloo! Fortunately I noticed a missed call on my mobile, rang back and spoke to Charlie at Victoria who was wondering where I was. Jumped on the next train to Clapham Junction in the hope of meeting the Box Hill train but at Clapham there are too many platforms and not enough information (and I’d probably missed it anyway!) so I caught one to Leatherhead and cycled the last couple of miles to Box Hill. Only 20 minutes late in the end, half of which would probably have been lost to faffing anyway!

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Well, a magnificent sunny November day brought the “Magnificent 7” to Boxhill Station. It would have been the magnificent 8 but Marion missed the train, we did try to link up latter but it did not work out. Marion did let me know later that she had quite a good if lonely morning anyway.Our ride today was a sort of figure of 8 based around Boxhill. Paul, Kerryn (first timer, welcome Kerryn) Marieanne. Tim, Mark and Ailan from across the river, (thanks for joining us gents) and I, made up the magnificent 7. “Ah” a grand site as we first headed off to the toilets at the nearby car park!

Then up to the North Downs ridge, but this time by an easier more scenic route than on my last ride, through Denbies vineyards which looks out over the valley, Dorking to our left and on the other side of the valley to the right Leith Hill Tower could just be seen by the naked eye if you know it is there, the autumn leaves giving a magnificent array of colour in the bright sunshine.

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