Short Report for Short Ride - Leading Leaders 14th December

   

From Karen

Short Report for Short Ride - Leading Leaders

For the short ride to Ashtead Common, Colin was fortunate to be led by not one, not two, not three, but four ride leaders: Colinq, Helen, Steve and myself. So not much chance, hopefully,  of losing Colin or losing our way!  We also enjoyed fairly light traffic and bright sunshine, a welcome break from the dank weather of late.

It was all going so well until we reached Ashtead high street and spied Handleys staff removing the outside tables. That's okay,  we weren't thinking of sitting outside anyway.   Alas, the café was in fact closing.  After some pondering,  the ever-resourceful Colinq was first to make a suggestion, so off we headed to The Woodman (or so I thought!).  Our initial coffee plans having been thwarted, my thoughts turned (obviously) to perhaps my first mulled wine of the festive season.  It was not to be ......Colinq sped ahead and turned in the opposite direction, heading towards a parade of shops. We stopped at the Ashtead Cafe which, contrary to its "greasy spoon" appearance, served quality hot drinks and cake.

                                                                   Coffee at last!

Darkness descended all too quickly as we headed back through Ashtead Common, all of us managing to avoid slipping on the occasional mounds of wet leaves. It was completely dark when we reached the Nonsuch path potholes.  My front light wasn't man enough but Colinq saved the day......

 

A Christmas card from Paul Carpenter

 

 

                                                        Merry Christmas everyone 🎄 

The Customer is always right; Nonsuch 1-o-clockers 14 December

Ten of us turned up for a ride at Nonsuch Park on Saturday, and Roger had walked to meet everyone and remind us he was still alive and recovering well from his pacemaker operation.  Early days, but I have not yet downloaded the App which will remotely control him so I can stop him charging past me up hills and send him to buy the coffees.  Good to see you recovering, Roger.

Despite Wednesday's experience I was game for the scheduled ride up Box Hill but there were those who, for incomprehensible reasons, don't like going up hills and I was persuaded to offer the punters an alternative.

A month ago the Hampton Court area would have offered a sensible target for a decent length ride without serious hills but as we approach the shortest day one has to think about getting there and back before the Christmas shopping traffic in the dark.  Then the light bulb came on; we have not been to L'assaggino in Kingston for ages.  Nice cafe, nice coffee, within winter range.

So that is what we did.

The slow riders discuss shortening the ride 

The faster riders consider how far they can go

Steve took those with a steeper inclination and itching for a bit more pace and I took the rest through Old Malden and New Malden to Ladderstile Gate, down the hill to Kingston Gate and thence to L'assaggino.  It turned out a decent ride, 40km door to door and an enjoyable one in weather that was mild compared with recent days and indeed nearly sunny.

Inside Ladderstile gate

We didn't have the heart to tell him there is going to be a cull tonight.

   

Contributions for Sou'Wester required

 From Paul

I am short of material for the next Sou'Wester which I will be putting together mid January. So if anyone is doing any interesting riding or has a tale to tell about cycling, please put pen to paper, ie fingers to keyboard. Adventures you might think are run of the mill are often of great interest. So share, please.

A four way split; Nonsuch 1-o-clockers 30 November

Saturday afternoon provided cycling conditions as good as you are likely to get on the day before meteorological winter; the temperatures were milder and the drizzle was holding off.  Nevertheless it was a pretty miserable day, yet all-in-all we had twenty one riders turn up at Nonsuch, albeit some of them a bit late!  Six of them chose the 2-o-clock start and the short, roundabout ride to Carshalton, and eventually we had fifteen for the earlier ride.

The destination was Leatherhead and it was obviously sensible to split the group, so Nigel took off with Paul, Karl, Lorraine, Rob and Stuart and Ken, Anna and Karen joined Maggie and me in a more modestly paced group.  By the time I took off we knew that John and Kasumi were going to follow and in the end a group of four, led by Steve, took a ride to Bocketts Farm, a mile or so past Leatherhead.

We had an uneventful trip, though there was a lot of stationery traffic around Ewell, and we ducked in to Lucio's in Leatherhead just as the ominous black cloud came over.  Nigel's group had already hung up their bikes at Charlie and Ginger's.  We did well, finding seats inside and the shower finished by the time we emerged to ride home.

The leader seems to be hiding behind his saddlebag

The consensus was that we needed to go home by a different route and Ashtead and Epsom Commons turned out to be quite passable despite the recent rains.  It was dark just as we were getting home, and Wallington at the moment is a traffic nightmare with Manor Road closed for days because of an unsafe building and impatient drivers clogging up the few alternatives.

A decent, well-timed ride then.  Thanks everyone for the company. 

Storming up to Banstead; Nonsuch 2-o-clockers 23 November

Storm Bertie was battering Wales and Ireland, and South West London awoke to heavy rain and blustery winds.  The meteorological misery scale had not improved as lunchtime approached and Maggie was convinced the forecast would be accurate and conditions dangerous but we were down to lead the shorter ride from Nonsuch Park and you cannot risk people turning up for a Beginners ride and being disappointed, so we arranged a rendezvous with Anna and Roger (the latter not yet allowed on a bike, so he walked) and got the train to Cheam, cycling from the station there.  As the clock made its inevitable progress to two-o-clock we had to leave the sanctuary of La Petite Boulangerie and ride the short distance  to Nonsuch Mansion expecting (hoping?) that no-one would be there except, of course, Colin.  Colin is always there.

I had my suspicions, though.  Helen is a regular sucker for foul weather rides but it was Nigel who had elected for our ride, it turned out.  Colin was there but opting to go straight home and then, lo and behold, the ever cheery Helen rolls up.  I pointed to the darkening cloud and the steadily increasing wind.  I reminded everyone of the forecast.  I even hinted at a shortened route (to the cosy cafe a mile away).  The punters were steadfast in their demand for value for money, the ride as advertised.  So the five of us set off.

Banstead is to the South and these were southerly winds.  From Nonsuch Park the ride is almost all uphill.  Mostly gently uphill, but uphill nevertheless.  At first it was not quite raining but I pulled my beanie hat over my ears and put my head down and rode a short distance ahead of everyone so that I was unable to hear the mutterings and worse from behind me.  It was hard work into the wind and just when I got my first real rebellion, with the steep bit ahead of us up to Nork, Nigel came up with an alternative and less steep route, and the punters were happy.  Well, slightly less unhappy.

Thus, as the rain restarted in earnest, we had got to Park Life Cafe, which has replaced (and improved upon) Pistachio's.  

Temporary shelter from the storm; photo by Maggie

We probably lingered there a bit too long but the wind was theoretically behind us for the descent past the prisons, and the road had not yet flooded much, the wind blasts from the side roads were enough to wobble us but not to knock us off, and the cars travelling at unnecessary speeds all narrowly missed us, so we got home safely and just before dark.

As we sat over a cup of tea at home, we were glad we had persuaded each other to go and convinced ourselves it had been fun.

The end of democracy; Beddington to the Rookery, 16 November

The problem with democracy is that people make the wrong choices, even when faced with the most obvious binary decisions.

There was a time that the Rookery ride was a regular event on the Beddington calendar but since the pandemic the ride leadership has become more democratic, so every month we waste valuable cycling time outside the Pavilion Cafe in a loosely structured "Where shall we go today?" debate.    This is all very well for the followers but not so good for this leader, who if he can't recce the route, however familiar it might be, likes at least to think it through.  This allows him to exude during the afternoon a convincing illusion of leadership, which puts the followers at ease and (he thinks) generally enhances the overall experience.  Moreover, the debate, while earning maximum brownie points for mindfulness, openness, member empowerment and other endoplasmic notions of which Human Relations Departments are fond, ends up with us just repeating rides. 

This month I had no inclination to do same old same old but little energy to devise something new and in a discussion with Maggie about how we might change things a bit, the Rookery Ride came to mind.  It feels as if we have not been there in a very long time.  Gibsons Hill is steep, the coffee at the Rookery cafe is not up to scratch, the loos there score minus 1 on a scale of 0 to 10, blah, blah, blah.  But it's different, and Streatham Common is not an unpleasant space, the woods above it dark and deciduous, Norwood Grove has a fine old house (mentioned in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories) and who could not enjoy a meander through the chocolate box lanes of West Croydon and Fort Neaf?

It had been so long since leading that way that I had had to plot a route on Ride with GPS to take me through the tricky bits, and those who turned up were getting no choice.  Roger is just out of hospital, Colin was otherwise engaged, Ken needed to pack for an expedition up the Amazon, but Anna and Jackie, an infrequent but very welcome visitor, made us a group of four.

Off we set on a cold, grey but dry and windless day, and a jolly pleasant ride it was, too.  West Croydon had lost none of its picturesque charm and Fort Neaf has history (quite apart from Crystal Palace FC); not many people know it is where Dick Turpin, the notorious highwayman, was finally apprehended;  I've always wondered why they did not search there for Lord Lucan.  Nobody has yet tarmacked Gibson's Hill and it has got no less steep, but Maggie and Jackie walked.  Norwood Grove was splendidly autumnal.

Bright colours in the Autumn

The woods are one of those little remnant pockets of the ancient Great North Wood and fully deserving of a mention (which they did not get) in Tolkien.  The Rookery Cafe has reinvented itself, much cleaner and smarter and a smiling, welcoming service, the cakes were superb.  And the loos (which in fairness to the cafe we think are managed by the local authority) have been upgraded by at least two points, to 1 out of 10.  It was good enough weather that we could all laugh when I discovered that Ride with GPS had done what it sometimes does and taken me on a traffic-wise suboptimal route home, but we ignored it, found the cycle paths which Colin showed us years ago, under the bottle-strewn low railway bridges, and got back to Beddington Park before dusk and in good spirits.

So successful was the experiment that (certainly while Colin is away and I have complete control over both houses) I will be doing away with this democracy nonsense.  Beginners First!