Wednesday, 07 May 2014
Nigel writes: Tonight The weather turned cool for tonight's evening ride, with a strong cold wind from the south-west, though the forecast rain never arrived and the day ended with an hour of pleasant sunshine.
Despite the colder weather seven riders turned out for tonight's ride: Gareth, Mike K, Jim, Tracy, Neil, Conrad and me.
Our route tonight was our standard clockwise loop around the hills south Ickleton. From Brookside we set off south our of Cambridge along the busway and DNA path to Great Shelford. This took is directly into what was quite a cold headwind. We continued from Great Shelford to Little Shelford and then south to Whittlesford. We crossed the A505 and consinued south through Duxford to Ickleton, where we paused to allow everyone to catch up.
Ickleton
We climbed Coploe Hill to Catmere and and then dropped down the other side before climbing up once more to Littlebury Green. A steep descent then took us down to the B1039 which we followed for half a mile before turning back north for the climb back up into Elmdon. At Elmdon we turned north-west towards Chrishall Grange from where it was just a few more miles to Fowlmere and Thriplow.
We arrived at the Green Man in Thriplow at 8.30pm exactly. This was our first visit to this pub since it changed to its current management, and we were pleased to discover that it was a friendly and pleasant pub serving a good range of beers together with bowls of very welcome warm chips.
After half an hour we set off back towards Cambridge. The temperature was not dropping rapidly - time to put on an extra layer of clothing. Our route back in the dark took us first to Newton and then through the Shelfords back into Cambridge along the DNA path and busway. I arrived home at 9.50pm, having cycled
34 miles.
View this GPS track on a larger map. Download GPS track (GPX).