Ealing Friday Riders

It certainly didn't feel like spring when we met at Syon Park for Guy's ride to Chobham.   There was still plenty of ice at the sides of the road.    No excuses but plenty of reasons today and so there were only eight of us.    Jobs, streaming colds, ventures overseas - mainly feeble reasons like that.   We missed you all. It soon turned into a glorious sunny day, although Rachel's satnav didn't agree.  It kept telling her to turn round and go back home.   Then we discovered she'd put it on upside down (not really).    We went the normal route to Hampton Court but then suddenly turned right at the roundabout instead of going over the bridge, heading to Shepperton and Chertsey before venturing back north of the M3 for a bit, almost hitting Windlesham and then diverting to the lovely Turkish café in Chobham, which does great cheese sandwiches.   And I'm told they do excellent Turkish breakfasts too. Back past ...

The group waiting for Rachel's puncture to be repaired

It started with Dave's puncture ... On Friday John led about 14 of us to Chipperfield - out through Northolt, Ruislip, Harefield and Rickmansworth and then along quiet lanes around Chorleywood Heath and near Sarratt, including the beautifully named Dunny Lane.  It turned out that last week was not Chiggi's last ride: she rode with us part of the way before she had to go back to attend to other things :-) Lunch at Chipperfield garden centre Back through Latimer, Chenies and Chorleywood, where Ruth took the train home (possibly arriving after we got home due to a person on the line), back to Harefield and then mostly a different route back to Greenford, where the group split.  I made it 44 miles from Ealing to Greenford, and 2200 ft of climbing.   Thanks John!

Bye bye Chiggi 

A good turnout for Chiggi's last ride. Cold and damp just like our mood with Chiggi leaving us. ​      Bikes at Wetherspoons Beaconsfield Tony..

A real strong windy today, only 4 (Niall, Dave, Tony S and Tony H) at Syon and we left late heading to Windsor and it was a struggle in the headwind.. Safely ensconced inn Wetherspoons we lingered over lunch. The return along virtually the same route saw us it 25mph plus at times with the tailwind, no rain and not really cold. A nice short if hard ride. Tony.. 

Raining hard when I left home for Syon GC and was the fist to arrive, gradually  Niall, Michiko, Ruth and Jan arrived and i was decided to take a shorter ride The Rocket at Putney as the weather was so wet.  Chiggi's rude brunch