Forty days and forty nights? Nonsuch Beginners 5 August

By Paul

The BBC weather forecast could hardly have been dourer, the news littered with reports of bearded men of Northern Europe constructing large wooden boats while the rest of the earth is on fire, but Saturday in Wallington dawned with only light drizzle, not the monsoon forecast by the weatherman.  By midday it was nearly not raining, the threatened 25 mph winds had not yet materialized, and the doughty diehards of Beginners turned up at Nonsuch Mansion where Colin was waiting, as always.  There was Nigel, Maggie and Paul, and Roger and Anna and then, through the murk, we espied another.  Who could it be?  Tony!  Lo and behold, the unstoppable Steve turned up as well despite having spent the morning putting his chain back on the wrong way.  

Even as we slagged off the weatherman for failing to produce the evil weather he had promised, the wind was getting up and the ominous indigo clouds were gathering to the west in great, towering columns.  Colin suggested The Old Moat as a destination where we would not be too distant should  the waters come and cover all the earth, and we could claim to have had a bit of a ride should they not, so we set off through the park aiming for there.  Only the most obsessive dog-walkers were to be seen.

It began to rain again before we left the park.  We got as far as the path that goes under the railway bridge taking you from Clandon Close to Stoneleigh Park Road when the heavens opened.  We were split up swimming across the Ewell By-Pass because I had stayed slightly behind to make sure that Nigel, bringing up the rear, had not been encircled by a water snake, and one brave soul in reflective gear (impossible to say who it was through the bars of the rain) had marked the corner into Preston Drive where we found the others sheltering under a large tree, despite the thunder and despite the obviousness that its sheltering properties had but seconds to go in a cataract of these proportions.

Cometh the hour, cometh the woman.  Anna, fearing that her electric bike might soon be short-circuiting, pointed out that we had only just passed a coffee shop (on Stoneleigh Parade).  Not wearing spectacles she had been able to see that there were cakes in a window.  The motion to abandon the ride and seek shelter was swiftly passed unopposed and we retreated.  But the Ewell By-pass, which had been but a small stream two minutes hence when we crossed it east to west, was now a raging, alligator-infested torrent.  We made it over, and turned up in this apparently new, rather twee, very welcome coffee shop, seven yellow monsters from the deep, dripping puddles on the pristine floor and blinking through our steamed up goggles at a dazzling array of little cakes.

Steve's gallant gesture

When we entered there had been insufficient seating available, despite Steve's gallant gesture to go out and face the torrent alone so that we could have greater rations, but so threatening was the sight of us that the clientele quickly vanished, preferring drowning to sharing a cafe with mythical creatures.  The fare was splendid and there we dawdled, becoming warm and damp instead of cold and wet, until Colin spotted that the rain had stopped.  It had not really, not altogether, but all things are comparative.

The cake & coffee shop, picture taken on a drier day.  Recommended.

The best bit of the afternoon was putting on our wet gloves and wet coats and wet helmets and though we could have headed east for the Old Moat and all caught pneumonia, we opted to go back to Nonsuch where, of course, the sun came out.

One of the mysteries of London cycling which our homeward journey espoused is why motorists, who are presumably dry (unless they are driving vintage MG convertibles) are in bad weather so especially unreasonable to cyclists, who are already wet and miserable.

Isn't summer cycling such fun?