Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Nigel writes: To celebrate midsummer, today's evening ride was to a pub rather further away than normal, in Thriplow. Heavy showers earlier in the day had left the roads damp, but the sun had come back out and the air (and roads) had a humid "just-washed" feel. Fortunately the threat of rain had not put people off, and six riders turned out at Brookside for the ride: Tony, Neil, Andrew (on his first ride with his), Nick (on his second), John and me. Soon after we had departed, we were joined by Ian and Julia, making eight in total.
Our route this evening was the same as had proved popular earlier in the season when riding to Newton. We set of south out of Cambridge to Trumpington and the Shelfords from where we took the long road south to Whittlesford. It was quite breezy, and there was a bit of a headwind.
Just south of Whittlesford we crossed the A505 and continued to Duxford.
I had intended to continue directly from Duxford to Ickleton, but Ian and Julia were a little way ahead and took the route via Hinxton instead, and the rest of us followed. This took us across a ford (which all of us by-passed using the footbridge) and twice across the railway, where the barriers came down as we were crossing and temporarily divided the group.
From Ickleton we continued south up Coploe Hill, at the top of which we stopped for breath and the now obligatory photo.
We contined on to Coploe End and then followed a hilly loop round to the west via Littlebury Green, Wendon Lofts and Elmdon before heading north to Chrishall Grange and the flat countryside beyond.
We arrived at the Green Man in Thriplow at 8.45pm, rather later than I had planned, but the pub was very nice and Tony and I were just in time to order some food.
After about half an hour we returned back to Cambridge, splitting up into small groups as we did so (I hope you got back OK, John). I was at home rather later than usual, at 10.20pm, after having cycled
35 miles.
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