On a glorious day, 24 left Shepperton on the Laleham Road and then took the Thames Path through Penton Hook to Staines. Passing under Staines Bridge, we took the B376 through Wraysbury and Datchett (where we passed the A group going in the opposite direction), and then the B3026 to Eton and on towards Eton Wick. Just before the latter, we turned left throuigh fields towards the Thames and took the towpath to the Dorney rowing lake. We semi-circumnavigated the lake on its South side and arrived at the Pineapple pub in Dorney just before our planned arrival time of 1.30 p.m. Here, Lisa (Colombo) was awaiting us (by pre-arrangement with Terry) and we all enjoyed seeing her again.
Our sandwiches took a long time to arrive and, when they did come, the portions were so large that they took a long time to eat. Stephanie, the last to be served, sportingly stuffed the second half of her sandwich into her saddle bag so as not to delay us. But even so we did not leave the Pineapple until just after 3 p.m.
On the return journey, we took the Northern road round Dorney lake, the tow-path to Eton Bridge and the B3021 to Old Windsor. Pam then guided us via clever back routes through her home turf to Staines, whence we took the main road thru' Laleham and Shepperton to 5 o'clock tea at the Garden Centre on Halliford Road.
There were a number of incidents.
(a) At Penton Lock, Eddie had to deploy his military self-defence training in order to avoid being hit by an irate pedestrian.
(b) Robin twice fell off his bike when he was unable to extract his feet from his toe-clips
(c) When turning right from the A308 at Old Windsor, Bernard's back wheel was struck by a (slow-moving) car. Thankfully, Bernard was just able to avoid falling over, and neither rider nor bicycle were hurt.
My thanks to Terry for being back marker.
John Gould
No comments:
Post a Comment