Sunday 27th December 9.50am -
Civilisation North of Watford
Joint ride with Central London CTC. Route via
Whippendell Wood and through the villages of Belsize,
Flaunden
and Sarratt.
Central London CTC - see
http://www.centrallondonctc.org.uk/
CTC / Spokes Ride Report 27th December
2009
I wouldn’t have been surprised if no one had turned
up. It was cold. It was two days after Christmas and Spokes
had had a ride in the same area the day before. Normally, if
you are leading a ride you tend to get a little flurry of
phone calls and emails beforehand asking how long the ride
is, how long will it take etc.. But this time there was
nothing. However, to my surprise, there were seven on the
ride. One from Spokes, five from the CTC and one rider who
belonged to both.
We started with coffee at a café near Watford Junction
Station. Here we hit our first problem. One of our number
clicked her cable lock shut and when we left the café found
that she had left her keys at home. While the ride went on
its way she went off to Homebase to find something to cut
the cable. Twenty minutes into the ride we got a phone call
saying that a kind assistant at Homebase had freed her bike
and I rode back to collect her and Jon while Andy led the
remainder to The Plough at Belsize.
Watford was snow free but we had to be careful as we
gradually climbed into the Chilterns as there was still a
certain amount of packed snow on the roads. Car traffic had
created clear snow free ruts but the verges and the centre
of the road were often slippery. From Belsize we climbed up
to Flaunden and then we headed back through Sarratt. Spies,
real and fictional, seemed to a theme of the ride. Guy
Burgess was a frequent visitor to The Green Dragon in
Flaunden while Sarratt is the home of the training school
for agents in John Le Carre’s novels. We had teas and
coffees at The Clarendon [very posh] on the way home. I let
the side down by having a rear wheel puncture a mile or so
short of the station, proving that even Specialized
Armadillo tyres are not totally puncture proof. The ride
finished without me.
My thanks to Andy Duffy for being Backstop and temporarily
Ride Leader and to John Toplis to staying with me to help
with a difficult puncture.
Riders: Andy Duffy [Backstop, temporary leader], Charles
Harvey [Leader] Laurent Lagasse, Liza Raney, John Silvertown,
John Toplis, Jon Zukor.
Report by Charles Harvey (CTC)
