Wednesday, 21 August 2013
Nigel writes: I discovered this week that the American author Elmore Leonard (who died recently aged 87) listed
ten rules of writing, of which the first was "never open a book with weather". Nevertheless I'm going to start by reporting that the weather this evening was dull and overcast but dry and warm, with virtually no wind. Nice conditions for a short evening ride, and the pleasant weather brought out a good turnout for tonight's evening ride: John, Neil, Klaas, Paul, Gareth, Tracy and me.
Our route this evening started with a ride down Hills Road to Addenbrooke's, where we turned left for the climb over the Gogs to Fulbourn. With the group now warmed up, we continued to Great and Little Wilbraham and from there along the long, straight road that leads to Six Mile Bottom.
Unfortunately Paul had forgotten his lights, so when we reached Six Mile Bottom it was time for him to turn around and head for home. Meanwhile Gareth, in another energetic mood this evening, sped off ahead of the rest of us and we didn't see him again until the pub. The rest of us crossed over the main road and continued up the hill towards Brinkley, as far as the cross-roads by the woodland cemetery.
Here we turned north for Dullingham, along possibly the nicest road of the circuit, and where we were overtaken by a faster group of riders from another cycling club. After Dullingham we turned north-west to Swaffham Bulbeck (and were overtaken a second time by the group that had passed us earlier) from where it was only a few further miles through Bottisham and Quy to arrive at The Plough in Fen Ditton bang on time at 8.30pm. We ordered drinks and bowls of chips and sat outside by the river chatting for a longer-than-usual 45 minutes. The sun had set at 8.15pm, so by the time we were ready to set off for Cambridge it was completely dark. Fortunately this short journey only took about 15 minutes, and I arrived home at 9.45pm, having cycled
29 miles.
View this GPS track on a larger map