Little did we know.....Sutton pod from Beddington Park, 19 December

Meeting Dave the other week on Clapham Common showed me how reachable that common is from Sutton or Beddington for a Saturday ride.  As it has never been on the regular itinerary, I devised, and offered the Sutton Six, a ride there with which to sign off the Christmas break with something different; out along the Northern Line, back along the Thameslink Sutton Common loop.

We prefer to finish rides in the daylight, or near-daylight, so I agreed with Colin that as we already had a full group of six signed up, we would leave the Park before the traditional time.  We decided upon taking sandwiches and a midday departure.

The weatherman had lied again, and the cold rain which his computer model predicted the previous evening would be long gone to the east, was with us right until we left home; most of the ride was in changeable weather.

Ray had had difficulty keeping up before he peeled off to ride to work at the North Pole.  Still, the long ride was good for 'is elf. 

The Wandle Path and Morden Hall Park were slippery with leaves and sticky with mud and I realised that the slightly more ambitious Plan A, which would bring us home through Putney Heath and Wimbledon Common was best abandoned.  We got to Phipps Bridge tram stop before we had to stop being nonchalant about the increasing drizzle and threatening sky and don our waterproofs but in traditional style the rain stopped as soon as we did so.  At Merton Abbey Mills we left the Wandle Trail and used the Cycle Superhighway up the A24 to Clapham Common, where we bought tea and sat on a park bench pretending we were warm and eating our sandwiches.

It's a straight run from the Clapham Common bandstand via Broomwood Road to Wandsworth Common, which has an unhealthy ratio of non-cycling paths but which we crossed legitimately.  Trinity Road proved a mite more difficult to cross until a cycle friendly van driver let us in, and we used the Magdalene Road, Ravensbury Road and Revelstoke Road route to Wimbledon Park.

Home Park Road was steeper than usual but the gradients were in our favour from there to Lower Morden, where the skies began to darken and not entirely because of the impending winter evening.  The dousing began on the way up to St Helier and by the time we got past the hospital into Carshalton the roads were merely tarmac rivers and ponds but it does not matter too much if the last few miles are wet and one has a warm shower and an immediate change of clothes.

We had said our goodbyes at the top of Rose Hill, turning our attentions to our plans for families at Christmas and talking cheerily of our next ride, which would be in the New Year.  Little did we know (though there had been hints in the morning news) that within an hour our Christmases and our rides would be scuppered and that our pleasant, if wintry, Saturday afternoon might be the last time we rode in the group for a while.