Five weeks after the Ride100 I had an itch that needed scratching. I had signed up for a 100 miles but, due to the abject weather, the route was cut down to a mere 84. Since then I've felt I've short-changed all my sponsors and so decided a crack at a ton of my own.
Whenever I head north it is gloomy and chilled. Struggling up to Barnet rain looked imminent and I could have baled at the first light molecule of water landing upon my brow but it never arrived.
The megalopolis of Northern London has little appeal to cyclists - no hills, impossible navigation, too many towns and rubbish scenery but, once out through Potters Bar and beyond WGC, the cycling gets very nice with plenty of cutesy scenic villages, quiet roads and the like. There are even lots of little hills to make you feel as if you have done something.
Getting beyond the M25 on anything but a busy main road - A5, A1000 - is a job but the delightfully named Dancers Lane is an alternative as it leads you to a tunnel under the Orbital.
This is the early stages of National Cycle Route 12, which, if you forget to stop cycling, will take you to Grimsby. For more on Route 12 click here: Sustrans Route 12
At WGC I left the route to head towards Milton Keynes.
In doing so I entered a world of bygone days; of poorly built buildings with the wood showing, crooked windows and dodgy roof tiles.
Not before too long, the countryside opened out into broad fields of post harvest fallowness but, with me not being agricultural by any stretch, fallow may not be the right word. Before reaching Codicote, the tight, hedged roads passed through country where they still shoot things. Pops and cracks of big bore rifles rattled my cage for fear of my helmet looking like a tasty rabbit. Onto Kimpton, up to Whitwell then across to Lilley and Barton, the cycling is great with very little traffic. Other cyclists were few and far between. There are no big centrepieces or attractions such as the lung busters either side of the Mole Valley or Chilterns.
Eventually I arrived at Woburn. Woburn Abbey is not a falling-down old church-style ruin but a massive private house, the seat of the Duke of Bedford, with its own estate within which lies not only said stately homey but also a safari park. Deer also roam free within the confines demarcated by the huge cattle grids sunk into the road cutting through the estate's lush lawns and meadows. Woburn Estate is part of a small chain of estates that includes the Bedford Estate in Bloomsbury and the London Estate, which I suspect is not the North Peckham Estate.
Had I been planning on sticking around I'd have enjoyed the following unmissable event:
Jane Watts is, it turns out, one of the country's leading concert organists. I had thought she may have been an actual celebrity - perhaps a TV chef or sports star. She is, all the same, celebrated in her domain and that's what counts.
Just around the corner there are signs that the blight that blights our urban areas is catching on out here:
The above went out of business just as this below did a century before. The Grand Union Canal is still a masterpiece of engineering but I am sure everyone was glad someone invented the train as those locks must have been a right old to-do, however picturesque.
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| "I'm just at the lock gates now" |
Route 12's procrastinations through Hatfield and WGC put me off the maze of Milton Keynes. So at Little Brickhill I diverted westwards to Stewkley via Great Brickhill. So as to make up the miles, I took a further diversion to Winslow. Winslow is not to be confused with Wilmslow, which is near Madchester somewhere.
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| A fourteen-up-six-down in Winslow |
Heading back, finally, I passed this rather lovely thatched bungalow.
Somewhere towards Chorelywood and the modern train that would whisk me home, I passed an unusual looking thingumabob. I guess it is a water tower.
From Whitchurch via Cublington, atop of a energy-draining hill, down to Aston Abbotts and Wingrave, I made it to Tring for the last leg of this Olde Worlde loop. There are some tough little hills lurking on the fringes of the Chilterns. White Hill, which topped out at 19%, reduced me to 3 mph - and tears almost. I was concerned that I would not hit the 100-mile mark, in spite of my extras to Winslow. Bovingdon around to Chenies, and up and over to Chorleywood took care of the mileage. I also spotted a spooky thingamajig that might have been a modern version of the water thing above - as if to herald my return from the past to the now.
I have no idea what it was but it was buzzing.
For general navigation, the 100000s:
I have had it with the blasé, slap-dash offerings of Michelin and their approximations of roadage and hillage. After-all their maps are for cars so I guess it was my fault to expect any accuracy in providing for the needs of the self-propelled. The IGN on the other hand do not show WW1 cemeteries with the same gusto as Michelin - instead they just locate the main memorials.
For the close-up: The 25000 shows people sitting in their front gardens and is being used for the nitty gritty of trying to line up with the relic of WW1 that I found.
