Blog posts

The Club’s main social event of the year, the Dinner and Awards Presentation, will take place on Saturday 4^th March 2017.  We will be returning to the Princess Royal at Runfold, who have always looked after us very well.  I very much hope that the event will again be well supported, and the committee have decided that it would be a good use of club funds to subsidize the event for the benefit of members, which means that we have been able to peg prices to those of 2016.

I have guaranteed that we will have at least 50 attendees (required for free room hire), so in order to help me relax over Christmas I would greatly welcome early bookings; in other words, why not do it now.

Full details are:-

Date:  Saturday 4^th March 2017

Time:  7.00 for 7.30

Venue: The Princess Royal, Runfold, GU10 1NX

Menu:  see here

Cost:  £16.50 per head for 2 courses, £22.50 per head for 3 courses

Booking:  no later than 2 weeks before the event, but bookings already open, please contact John Murdoch (johnmatsouthview@btinternet.com) with your menu choices and I will then advise you of the procedures for making an online payment direct to the Club’s account

On Sunday (30 Oct) I decided to go exploring and took a train out into Hampshire.  I found this:

which was completely new to me.  I thought I had cycled through this village before, but a very long time ago, so maybe before this green man had been created.  Or maybe I’d never been there.  Anyway, how many of you know which village this is?  There are lovely quiet lanes in all directions.

The weather was grey as we set off from Winchfield station for the quiet, twisty lanes through Mattingley and Stratfield Turgis to the excellent coffee shop at Bramley Bakery, but it steadily improved to become a lovely day, mild with sunny intervals.  Leaving the café, the trainspotters among us had the good fortune to have to wait for three trains to pass before the level crossing barriers rose.  More lanes took us to Ramsdell and the very busy A339 Basingstoke-Newbury road, where a most unusually cooperative articulated-lorry driver signalled us to cross and slowed right down to let us do so, so we were soon on our way, looking at his long tail of cars that would otherwise have delayed us considerably.  What a gent!  Must be a cyclist.

Now we were into the downs, and the gradient started to warm us up more than the sunshine was doing.  Then after a long freewheel down from Ibworth we followed Malshanger Lane, a delightful avenue that was completely new to me.  From Church Oakley to our lunch stop in North Waltham the downland lanes looked at their best with glowing sunlit autumn tints and a few resplendent cock pheasants, all enhanced by the evocative smells of the season in the breeze.

The Fox is an excellent traditional pub serving good food and beer.  Recommended.

The concensus was for a direct return to Winchfield so we followed the well liked lanes through Axford, Upton Grey and Odiham (tea and cake at Fountains Coffee Shop), arriving at the station just five minutes before our train.  It’s good to use the train to get beyond our normal orbit into the quieter roads of less populated countryside.