B Group - 4th December

After thanking Maureen and Wendy-Jane for their hard work serving morning tea to us all during this year, and the presentation of awards to John Bassett and Ed Sharpe we set off at 11:15 down Plough Lane and Ockham Lane on our well worn route to Ripley. We crossed the High Street and followed Newark Lane before turning left into Papercourt Lane. In Send we turned right and rode up to Old Woking then along the High Street before veering off into Vicarage Road and Westfield Road. In Moor Lane we immediately turned right into New Lane then, rather than being seen to be duplicating Pete Barnard's recent route (in reverse), we took a left into Robin Hood Lane at the end of which we turned right into Sutton Green Road and left again towards Wareham's Farm then right into the small lane known as Foxes Path. We passed through a gate and so that we could savour the beautiful countryside we rode slowly along the lane up to the Catholic church of St Edward the Confessor. King Ed, son of Ethelred the Unready and Emma of Normandy, starred in the lively history leading up to the Norman invasion. Françoise enjoyed, that is to say 'blushed', to be reminded of this cataclysm in our history. Although we may only believe it as a result of the forceful barrage of political spin from the Normans of the time, it appears that Edward probably chose William as his successor, long before his own death early in 1066.

This photo is on the website: http://www.saintedwardtheconfessor.org.uk/

At the church it might have been tempting to turn East towards Sutton Place, the Grade 1 listed Tudor manor house, former residence of J Paul Getty, which is now owned by a Russian billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, one of Russia's richest men, but significantly, a Putin era oligarch rather than a Yeltsin era one. He is also a major shareholder in Arsenal FC which may endear him to a minority. However I hadn't called ahead to ask him if we might visit, and with other arrangements for lunch, we did a quick pirouette around the car park in front of the church and turned West down towards Blanchards Hill.

At Jacob's Well we turned down Clay Lane to cross the A3 and then turned right into Burpham Lane followed by New Inn Lane. Near Merrow Common, in Park Lane, we dismounted and trundled across the road to get into Old Merrow Street which brought us out onto the A25.The large ornate gates into Clandon Park seem to be permanently shut so we rode another half mile along to the Henchley Gate and rode along the small lane, on the Earl of Onslow's land I believe, until we reached a small gate for pedestrians which enabled us to continue along to Clandon Park House. Once out on The Street in West Clandon we turned left for the last 100 metres or so to the Bulls Head.

This is one very warm and cozy pub, brightly decorated for the festive season, where we ate some very decent and freshly prepared pub grub. They had set aside a nice area for our 20 or so riders and served us as quickly as they could. After 16.7 miles we were all quite peckish and greatly enjoyed our lunch. Vic had taken a quite different route from the rest of us and when we arrived he was in the final stages of polishing off his lunch. Such cunning has probably evolved from years of riding with the A Group!

We managed to tear ourselves away just before the pub's closing time of 2:30. After galloping the two and a quarter miles along the A246 we turned North into The Street in West Horsley. For a change we took the quiet road called Long Reach up to Ockham and retraced our route back to Cobham where nine of us stopped for refresment at Café Aromas in Hollyhedge Road after just 9.1 miles since lunch.

It was a pleasure to welcome two new riders into our group, Bill Thurston and Andy Bowskill. I hope they haven't been deterred by what was a fairly big mileage for this time of year.

Many thanks to David for being back marker, to Terry, Pam and Peter for being ready, with some maps I had prepared earlier, to lead any strays back onto the correct path. Thanks too to Neil and everyone who marked corners; there were a good few opportunities for people to miss the turns today.

- Tim

 

The pink trail is the morning route and the turquoise one is the afternoon ride