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.
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