Nonsuch to Epsom but home by train! Saturday Dec 5th

 From Ian Prince

So what did yesterday bring....

.......the delight of once again being (legally) allowed to group ride, even if our group dissipated to four, even before we left Nonsuch Park for Epsom. No challenges for the Brompton on the short ride to Epsom, even though our accompanied junior member found a hill too much even though he had a lot more gears than I did. Really good to see his Mum dealing out good roadcraft to him at the age of nine. 

I recall doing my cycling proficiency test at the age of eight and my own mum had to accompany me, as the instructor said if I crossed a busy traffic light junction on a main road by myself, I probably didnt need cycling proficiency. 

Mum therefore came along each week and I passed with flying colours, I think losing a point for doing a trackstand waiting for traffic lights to be changed.(I should have put my foot down!). 

Anyway, it did me no harm although it wasnt until much later and the need for independence before I could drive, did I get more seriously into cycling. 

When I started work away from home though that was the major breakththrough. I even bought my first long term girlfriend a bike, but she never caught the ‘bug’ even if she did come along when I had persuaded Yorkshire TV to film us and twenty others for National Bike Week. 

Strangely though she still has that same bike and rides it regularly so it cant have been a bad investment in the 1980s! 

Back to Saturday....after a food and coffee stop at I think it was “Esquires” in Epsom, sad to say our accompanied enthusiastic nine year old was a bit over enthusiatic on the down escalator (ironically a favourite song title of mine from a band I knew well in Manchester where I lived there in the 1980s...”up the down escalator”). 

Still you are only young once and on this occasion, I luckily went and summoned first aid from Epsom Library staff who were great and brought down two first aid boxes of gear to patch the poor lad up. 

Once outside, my Brompton seemed sluggish as I wheeled it through the pedestrianised shopping centre......ah ha, a flat. 

Obviously a problem with CTC rides as I sustained on in the back tyre in the summer at East Molesey boat club. 

This time it was the front. How anyone gets a puncture in a shopping centre carrying the bike is beyond me, but it must have been sustained earlier in the day on the way to Epsom. 

So default to Epsom station for a train ride back to Sutton (our little wounded soldier and his Mum deciding to do similar but to Worcester Park). 

Upon getting back to Sutton, it was straight down to Balfes (the erstwhile Pearsons) for the usual entertaining chat with Jim and a new inner tube. Unfortunately they had a special offer on a very powerful front light, so being the king of every possible lighting combination for nearly fifty years, I succumbed. Well 1600 lumens isnt bad for a bike (I hate bikers without lights), and cheaper than Amazon too.