Sunday, 09 December 2012
Nigel writes: After last Sunday's freezing temperatures it was a pleasant change to return to more typical December weather: relatively mild and intermittently sunny. less welcome was a moderate but steady westerly wind, though nothing like as bad as
three weeks ago. There were nine riders at Brookside for today's all-day ride. The runs list didn't show a leader, but Ian offered to lead us as far as coffee.
Ian suggested we take a direct route to the coffee stop in Waresley, and led us west out of Cambridge along the Barton Road cycleway to Barton. The sun came out and it was really quite mild and pleasant, though the headwind made things rather harder work than we might have preferred.
We turned onto the B1046 which we followed through Comberton to Toft, where we took the customary diversion past the church.
We turned right off the B1046 into Bourn where we turned onto the road to Caxton. This took us past Bourn Mill.
After Caxton there was just one more village: Great Gransden, before we reached Waresley, where we stopped for coffee at the garden centre. About half a dozen members were already there waiting for us.
Waresley is one of the club's favourite coffee stops. This was my first visit since the restaurant area was expanded several weeks ago. A friendly member of staff explained the new layout and proudly told me about the three coffee machines - which will hopefully speed things up at busy times.
After coffee Adrian and several continued west to Lunch at Old Warden. However on this occasion I joined those who were returning to Cambridge. We returned by a rather nicer route than our outward journey, via Gamlingay, the Hatleys, Croydon and the grounds of Wimpole Hall.
As we passed the stables at Wimpole Hall I spotted the members of
March Veteran and Vintage Cycle Club, who were proudly displaying a variety of vintage bicycles, and we stopped for a friendly chat.
We carried on through Orwell, Barringon and over Chapel Hill to Haslingfield before retracing our outward route along the Barton Road. I arrived home at about 1.30pm, having cycled a modest but pleasant
37 miles.
View this GPS track on a larger map