Thank you to the 13 intrepid individuals who came along. It wasn't actually as cold as I expected, although possibly that might have been due to the brisk pace. In fact at times I was trying to slow things up a bit and found myself at the back.
Due to the fortunate mistake of taking a wrong turn off the A10, this managed to delay us getting to Liverpool Street Station until 7am when the Wetherspoons opened. So apologies to
@User10571 if you rolled up after 8, as we were all gone by then!
No mechanicals, although due to the cloud cover, no stars or meteors to look at. Very quiet roads - a few taxis, a police car and an emergency ambulance mainly. Generally we rolled together as a bunch with no need for long stops to re-group, so possibly Charlie's nicotine intake might have been reduced compared to a normal night ride.
There had clearly been a lot of rain earlier as some of the roads were very wet, and we even had a mini ford to go through, which 2 weeks earlier had been dry.
Once back into London, despite cutting out as much of the unpaved sections of the tow path as possible, there was still a bit of mud splattering (sorry Ian......) and the road alternative was busier than I expected so realistically the route probably wouldn't work with a bigger group. I think some people might also have an issue with the narrow bits of the tow path! Having said that, the whole bit from Cambridge to Ongar really is nice, as you can go for miles without needing to make a turn.
Mulling things over, it would work better in reverse, but simply following the Dun Run route out of London, which has the advantage that being after midnight, unlike south London, people in the north seem to go to sleep earlier, so heading out of London, there's very little traffic, and the Epping Road is very quiet by 1 am. And that's a plan I've used before for the
Dun Run Lite rides. It's 39 miles to Stansted which is OK, and would mean far less climbing and in fact from Stansted to Cambridge is almost all downhill. So something to ponder........