A Group 2nd October

Cobham - Gomshall - Leatherhead

Today the insufferable, toothy, smirking, arm-waving, air-headed, gibbering weather soothsayers once again failed to earn their £1m bonuses by misreading the tea leaves in the bottom of their mugs, by promising rain and delivering a warm, humid and rainless day. There are so many of them. Surely their modest talents could be put to marginally better use on the banks of the Congo.

As for the ride, anticipating a flood to intimidate even Noah, I planned a a ride of modest proportions, that would have been welcomed by our most gentle Easy Riders, expecting us to be bedraggled rats long before our lunchtime refuge at Mount Ararat Inn. We therefore set our heading due South from Cobham for the Compasses at Gomshall. The further we pedalled, the higher the clouds, the more clement the weather, the more concerned I became that the storm would not break. 

Within spitting distance of our destination, a radical rethink was demanded. My cohort of 16 Saladins had not yet broken sweat. Having descended Coombe Bottom, we breached the A25 and set about some more ascent, assented enthusiastically, I think, by all. We thus explored a few more glorious Surrey ups and downs, familiar to hilly fiftyers, before descending once again to the arterial A25 and an enlightening cameo from Vic on the history of the cycling sign on Abinger Green, the ironwork cycling motifs presented by a local polymath named Lionel Joseph. And then to lunch 'al fresco' in the warm October sunshine beside the shallow Tillingbourne. A raspberry to the millibars.

Good food and beer and off again, the weather now a distant memory. Up, then down to Peaslake, then up to Leith Hill and Coldharbour and down again to Dorking and along the cycle path to Leatherhead and the reward of tea and carrot cake at Annie's. Some sat inside, some sat, for some unfathomable reason, outside in the sun but to the enveloping aroma of Leatherhead's exhaling sewers. Time then to part, for some reason those outside leaving sooner than those inside.

A relaxed and gentlemanly ride for early October, with the autumnal scents and colours of Surrey at its best.

Jeff