Saturday was one of those days you could not be sure of the
weather; rain covers or not? Extra layer or not? Eight of us met for the Beddington Park Ride
and though a few familiar faces were missing, like Sharon and Ken, we had a rider
new to the club, Stephen.
With no real beginners on the ride we elected to go for a familiar ride up to Streatham Common.
We have all experienced being led through unfamiliar streets, discovering new places we did not know and suddenly emerging and thinking “so THAT’S where we are”, and it is fun to take a new member like Stephen through it.
We took him past Beddington Church and Waddon Ponds, through Waddon Park and the
slightly less pleasant bit negotiating West Croydon, through the back streets
of Thornton Heath, past St Andrew’s church and the bowling club towards Norbury
to cross the London to Brighton railway at Manor Farm Road.
Up the narrow path by Norbury Manor College to Green Lane.
Then for most it was down Green Lane a little
and up Gibson’s Hill (one show-off chose to ride up Norbury Hill and back down
Covington Way). The rendezvous was at the foot of the upper part of Gibson’s Hill, which is a bit of a challenge no
matter how you look at it; the first part a rough, stony, unmetalled private
road on an incline and the second part a narrow tarmac path short (300 yards?) but as steep as almost anything in the Surrey
Hills.
The reward is the panoramic view
of Croydon and the Shirley Hills from Norwood Grove, which is mentioned in one
of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and which was once owned by one of the founders of the P&O shipping line. The blue plaque tells you
that Mr Nettlefold (of Guest, Keen and Nettlefold) also made it his home in between
running steelworks and making the fixings to screw a nation together.
From there it is only a short roller coaster through the woods to coffee and
cake at the Rookery Café, where Ray could take Stephen to see The Rookery itself, charming and quaint
Victorian gardens and rockery (once a part of the Norwood Grove estate), while the rest of us got on with sampling the
impressive array of cakes.
The return trip was downhill in more ways than one,
introducing Ray and Stephen to the less than quaint
glass, graffiti and litter under the railway bridge in Norbury, to the Saturday driving of all
those folks in such a hurry to get back to their homes in suburbia that they overtake on the wrong side of the bollards and
suddenly slow to below cycling speed to negotiate the sleeping policemen.
Through Streatham Vale across Northborough Road, where Derek Bentley once lived. He was infamously hanged at the age of 19 for the murder in Croydon that his accomplice, too young to be hanged, actually committed. A dark tale from South London's Hobbiton.
From there we went to Mitcham Common, which we crossed on the lane where an Asian man was taking photographs of what we think of as weeds but what in fact are quite delicate blue flowers and where was strolling a large, handsome fox;
exactly the same one, I’ll wager, as met me last Saturday around that time in the same spot as I
made my way back from the all day Greenwich ride. Perhaps we’re striking up a relationship, Foxy and I.
The path across Hackbridge Marshes is closed again so we
enjoyed a further experience in working class social history, through the
architectural and cultural desert that is the Beddington Lane industrial estate
on a Saturday afternoon. I showed Colin
the new way through Asda Car Park and the gap in the fence to the car park next
door, thus avoiding much of cycle-unfriendly Beddington Lane before the
labyrinthine journey past the filling station into the “back door” of Beddington
Park, a convoluted route negotiable only with Colin as your guide or if you left a ball of
string to mark it on your way out. A
pleasant way to spend the hours before the Cup Final; and the rain held off and
the sun blessed us occasionally.
Paul and Maggie, Roger, Anna and Roy are the riders I have
not mentioned yet, and we very much hope Stephen comes again.
