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):
There is a Queen Elizabeth Park Residents’ Association event in Guildford on Saturday. The CTC will be running a ‘Dr Bike’ service and just generally chatting to residents about cycling in the local area.
Would anyone be interested in popping along for a few hours and chatting to people about cycling in the local area between 1pm and 5pm?
Located in Stoughton, opposite Budgens and next door to CTC Head Office.
Annoyed by overgrown cycling paths, as we were while en route to yesterdays’ Wednesday ride? After a tip from Rico, I called the Highways Agency (0300 123 5000). Their friendly “Local Area Team will get on with this clearing near Potters Lane along the A3 very shortly…but they are currently also quite busy so it may take a while.
Mimicking the example of an 80 year old Rambler in my area, I thought: why not grabb a pair of secateurs and clear up the worst bits? It took an hour to clear up a 100 meter corridor this morning (about 10% of the overgrown path) and allowed me to pleasantly engage with many commuting cyclists using the paths. I think they’ll also come back with secateurs this weekend! Let’s start a movement, my friends; let’s do our bit in our area to make our paths at least passable to fellow cyclists until the Highway Agency gets on with the rest of the job. (Louise Gagnon)