A group ride 25 June: Caterham - Horley - Denbies

Today's ride was an adventure as the planned leader, Jeff, needed to be at home with his wife, who had taken rather longer than expected to recover from a hospital visit the day before.

So we were at Caterham without a leader and without a plan, since I was unable to remember any of the details of Jeff's planned route, much less able to follow it.   Luckily teamwork produced good results and a couple of maps:   Pete Jesson had the relevant Surrey cycle routes map and Dave Vine had the OS map.   Dave and I conspired to make a route to Horley Wetherspoons where we knew we would not have to book, and then I utterly failed to enter it into my GPS, confirming all the advice that route planning with a GPS is best done at home on a PC.

The adventurers set off around 11.30 towards Woldingham station, where we chose a road beside the railway called Church Lane.   What could possibly go wrong?  The road soon turned into a rough stony track (this was not mentioned on any maps) and to make matters worse turned into a very steep uphill.  I later noticed that the nearby railway went into a tunnel at this point.   We wished Jeff had been there to enjoy the route, or even better to lead us on a different route.

Once on the top of Oxted Downs the tarmac returned and we followed a bit of Paul's route in reverse, down the very steep Chalkpit lane into Oxted and continuing south along lovely quiet lanes towards Crowhurst.   Peter Betts punctured just after Oxted so most of us had a leisurely wait watching a light aircraft doing some sort of acrobatics.

Our regular photographer was unavailable, and the stand-in
missed most of the group leaving the pub.

We were running a bit late so Dave and I decided against going via Lingfield and cut the corner, heading down Tandridge Lane, reversing a route recently led by Mark, and across to Smallfield and the Jack Fairman in Horley.   John Scott elected to return by train from Horley so ten of us returned on more familar roads through Norwood Hill, Leigh and Brockham to Denbies.  

Thank you to Peter Betts our back marker, to Pete Jesson for the loan of the map, and to my co-leader Dave Vine, and our best wishes to Mrs. Tollerman who I hope is fully recovered now.

A very enjoyable day out: 32 miles and 1815 ft of ascent from 11s to tea.