Please note that we are planning a very sociable ride next Wednesday, all rides (groups 2, 3, and 4) will ride along the Thames Path after the start at Woodham, and there will be no led group 2 ride from Pirbright Green. It is also worth a reminder that this ride is most suitable for mountain bikes or hybrids, and particularly if there is rain between now and next Wednesday ( and heavy thunderstorms are forecast), then narrow tyred road bikes are unlikely to be ideal.
click image to see ride details
A good number of riders turned up at Petersfield for the start of this week’s Wednesday ride. Car / train assisted rides, where you get the chance to ride some different roads to those in our immediate vicinity, are popular with many and Petersfield, whilst not too far away, gives access to some quiet and potentially lumpy lanes in north Hampshire.
After coffee in the Square in Petersfield, the group split into a couple of groups; the fast boys and girls disappeared up the road and your scribe, having climbed no more than two short hills in the past month, decided to opt for an easier day with the Group 3 riders. The weather was lovely – summer has definitely arrived – and the countryside was looking quite delightful as the photos below amply describe.
Laurie was our leader so thanks to him for this – never an easy job, particularly when your satnav decides not to work properly. Neither did the track when loaded on to Garmin’s website, so it’s not pssible today to show what route we took, other than to say it meandered east from Petersfield into Sussex. We lunched south of Midhurst at the White Horse at Graffham, before heading north to by-pass Midhurst before heading west and so back to Petersfield, passing through Milland and Hollybourne School which benefited from a generous donation from us at the annual dinner in February. A comfortable 70kms in total and a thoroughly good day!
To view the route on Ride with GPX, click on this link: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/5327747
William Lowries’s trip to the Ardèche (click on the video link to view):
