Wednesday, 06 December 2017
Nigel writes: With heavy rain predicted for the following day, and snow and ice forecast for the weekend, it looked (and continues to look) as if tonight would be the last dry, mild evening of the year: cloudy and with a temperature of about 9C all evening. Despite that there were just two of us at Brookside for tonight's ride: Paul and me. I had initially planned to ride our usual loop via the Gogs, Six Mile Bottom and Dullingham, but as we made our way down Hills Road Paul suggested we went in a different direction, and so we did.
Paul on the Gogs
We did the climb over the Gogs as usual, and continued through Fulbourn and Great Wilbraham, but when we reached Little WIlbraham we eschewed the familar Six Mile Bottom road and carried on to Bottisham instead.
A brief sight of the "super moon" over Devil's Dyke near Reach
We then enjoyed a gentle trundle around the edge of the Fens, visiting the Swaffhams and Reach before turning back along the Lodes Way to Lode. At the pub there we were joined by Ian. He had texted me earlier with an update on the progress on the Lode-Quy cycleway, but I wasn't quite certain which Ian it was. Ian B? Ian D? No, it was actually Ian W, riding a rather nice small-wheeled Birdy.
Reach
After food and drink at The Shed we all returned back towards Quy, Fen Ditton and (in my case) Cambridge. The Lode-Quy cycleway looks very close to completion and we were able to ride along it most of the way, though it was blocked at one point by construction vehicles and we got slightly muddy wheeling our bikes round them. The path itself is commendably wide, and behind a thin hedge for much of the way, but is on one side of the road only and doesn't actually go all the way. The path isn't yet finished at the Quy end, and we had to lift our bikes across a muddy verge to get back onto the road. But this will be handy when it's finished, at least in the homward direction.
I arrived home at about 9.50pm, having cycled 47km (
29 miles).
Nigel Deakin
Download
GPS track (GPX).