Sunday, 20 February 2011
Nigel writes: Our goal this afternoon was to ride to Jim's house in Newnham, about a mile from our starting point at Brookside, and to spend two and a half hours doing so. I phoned Jim from the start to tell him that there were six riders on the afternoon ride, but no sooner had I finished than two more turned up.
I led the eight of us south out of Cambridge to what is now grandly referred to as the Addenbrooke's Biomedical Campus, and along the DNA path to Great Shelford.
We took the road to Little Shelford and then continued south through Whittlesford and Duxford to Ickleton. It was a dull, overcast day, and quite cold. But although there was no trace of sun, there wasn't any rain either, and only a slight wind.
Ickleton was as far south as we had time to go today, so here we turned west, along the appropriately-named Grange Road to Ickleton Granges and Chrishall Grange.
We then turned north. Just north of Chrishall Grange we turned left onto the road to Fowlmere and immediately stopped to allow Mike Sl, who had stopped at the previous junction, to catch up. However when he did so he sailed straight past our ride road without stopping, despite my shouts. Manquan sprinted after him but was unable to catch up with him, and so we carried on without Mike to Fowlmere.
At Fowlmere we turned left to Shepreth and Barrington. Here we climbed Chapel Hill, our sole hill of the ride, before dropping down to Haslingfield. We continued to Barton and then joined the A603 cycle track back towards Cambridge. Just after we crossed the motorway we turned right to Grantchester, from where we followed the path across Grantchester Meadows to Newnham.
At Jim's house in Newnham we found Jim, Val, four riders from the day ride and two others who had ridden there directly. As always the food was excellent and we had a cheery and pleasant gathering. After tea I only had a mile or two back home, which I reached at about 5pm after having cycled about
32 miles.
View this GPS track on a larger map