So…. my review of the Beautiful South Cycle Ride Number 1.
After a night spent not sleeping very well due to dreams about huge mountains to climb on this ride, I duly left the house at 7:15am and set off from the wilds of North Essex to The Big Smoke. It was rather perturbing to see my satnav say, after 15 minutes, ‘Sunrise, switching to day mode’. Why on earth was I up before sunrise??
Anyway, when I arrived at Richmond Park two hours later I began to wonder how I would find the CycleChat bods. I hadn’t realised the park seems to be one big mass of cyclists, most wearing fetching matching stuff, many others in fluorescent jackets. The only comments on the thread before the meet were things like “I’m wearing a fluorescent yellow jacket and I have a grey Dawes bike” or something like that which hardly stood one out from the herd in Richmond Park.
Anyway I decided to get the trike out of the car, remantle it (opposite of dismantle?) and see if anyone came up and accosted me. No-one did, so I decided to accost a random member of the group of yellow-jacketed people standing around outside the café. Fortunately I had hit on the right group, it was the CycleChat gathering.
After a rather arduous trek to find the ladies’ loo (which was disguised as a portakabin) the final members of the Glorious South Twelve had arrived and off we went, another group of cyclists amongst myriad others.
Fairly soon we reached That Hill about which I had been warned. I ended up on my lowest gear on my granny ring, I don’t think I’ve used that in about four months. As usual everyone overtook me as I trundled up the hill – at least in relative comfort sitting in my deckchair rather than perched on a hatchet. Of course, once I’m over the brow of the hill it’s a whole different world and I was on my top gear and having great fun zooming down. Overall, though, I think I lose more speed ascending the hill than I gain descending it.
After a lap of the park and a loo stop we set out onto the busy roads of London. Busy and potholey; it was quite a rough ride at times and I had two casualties of the bumpy roads – my cycle computer flew off at one point (kindly rescued by another of our group and still functional) and I lost my new rear light at some other unknown time. Still it was good fun to duck and weave around the traffic and in such a large group I felt we had more clout when going round roundabouts, of which we experienced many large and complicated ones.
The thought was that we’d average 12mph and by the end of the day my cycle computer said we had done 12.1. However there were more stops that we though – we tended to get separated by traffic lights, various bits flew off the bikes (mainly mine), poor Sittingduck broke a spoke and had to retire early, etc etc. I fear I was partly responsible for a Clipless Moment experienced by one of our number; he and I, I fear, were playing an “after you”, “no, after you” game following a brief stop and it didn’t quite work out.
We had a quick fuel stop in Staines where I was rather unimpressed by fairly tasteless lemon drizzle cake and also stole most of the milk before I realised we were supposed to share it. We took the group photo outside the café with the camera on a bollard on the self-timer; I rather hoped it wasn’t one of those magically lowering bollards.
Cycling in the group generally worked really well. Those in the lead changed round at various times – it was a bit odd finding myself leading at some points as I hadn’t a clue where I was going. Fortunately various helpful people would shout instructions at me as necessary.
In fact, I have to say everyone was very helpful. I have minimal experience of going on rides with others but I did go out with a group in Colchester some time ago; cycling with the Glorious South CycleChatters was a much more inclusive experience as people seemed more in tune with the oddities of my bike and how it affected my riding options. For example, people would often point out a dropped kerb to me if we were stopping; in queues of traffic I usually have to take Primary rather than filtering up the left hand side and there were some very gentlemanly people who would stay with me rather than leaving me as Billy No Mates behind you all. I was rather charmed by all this good behaviour so thanks chaps! I’m only relieved that none of you put your eyes out on my flag which is a bit of a risk with this kind of cycling.
We were very lucky not to get rained on (apart from a few spots right at the end). It was a cold day but I felt generally warm enough except for my feet – despite having two pairs of socks and my overshoes. I think there’s a gap in the market for electrically-heated toe-warmers.
Overall it was a great fun day for me. My cycle computer says we did 44.55 miles but of course it was briefly disconnected when it fell off, so we probably did 60 miles really. It was really good to meet everyone although I don’t think I know who everyone is… perhaps you can identify yourselves from the group photo.
I’m looking forward to the next ride – fewer big hills would be nice but I’ll try and struggle up them if it’s necessary.
Auntie Helen
, I simply showed up, eventually
