Thursday, 28 September 2017
Nigel writes: Despite sunset taking place only fifteen minutes after the start of tonight's ride, and a forecast of rain from mid-evening, four other riders turned out at Brookside for tonight's ride: Yasmin, Sophie, Tom and Andrew. We set off east along the river to Fen Ditton and Quy and then along the long straight road to Six Mile Bottom.
Ditton Meadows just before sunset
By the time we reached Six Mile Bottom it was completely dark for the climb up past Wadlow Farm to West Wratting. This is a rather undulating climb, with varying gradients and short sections of downhill along the way. Several riders remarked that it was surprisingly difficult to judge the gradient in the dark, so I gave regular updates on our progress ("short steep section coming up", "nearly at the top" and so on) using the elevation profile displayed on my Garmin.
When we reached Balsham it started to rain. It was fairly light, but since the rain was expected to persist for the rest of the evening we stopped to put on waterproofs before the long descent to Hildersham and Abington.
I didn't fancy taking the group over the A11 footbridge and across the fields to Babraham, so we took a rather longer route via the A505 cycleway to get to The George Inn in Babraham, which we reached at about 8.25pm.
Afterwards we returned to Cambridge via the cycleway through the Babraham Institute (very good) and the cycleway along the Babraham Road (less good). Just before we reached the Addenbrooke's roundabout Sophie sustained a puncture, but since she lived a little over a mile away she announced she would simply wheel her bike home and fix it at the weekend. So we dispersed and rode home. I arrived home at 10pm, having cycled 50km (
33 miles).
Nigel Deakin
Download
GPS track (GPX).