B Group- 16th July

After a decent morning tea at the Bradbury Centre in Kingston 24 of us headed out on the route which had been planned for us by Peter. Having fallen off a ladder while doing some work on a friend’s garage, and fracturing a bone in his leg, he took care to pass on all the detail for the morning ride to Stephanie, and the afternoon ride to me over a cup of tea. It transpired that Steph, who had undertaken to be back-marker, has had her teaching timetable rearranged so that she can no longer come out on Wednesdays so I ended up with the ingredients for the route and copied them into my gps unit so that I wouldn’t have to rely on my flaky memory.

We took the Cobblers Walk through Bushy Park and after Hampton and Hanworth we passed through Feltham Hill to Ashford. We zigzagged through Staines and after resolving a bit of confusion about the path through a sequence of roundabouts we picked up Liz’s friend Kay who rode for the rest of the day with us. After the smooth tree lined road around the Wraysbury gravel pits we arrived at our lunch venue.

The highlight of the day was The George at Wraysbury where the several members of staff looked after us very well indeed and served all sorts of dishes from their starter and sandwich menus. Despite our large number these were all delivered very quickly. When four of were left in the baking sun at a table with no umbrella they found and assembled a new umbrella and base for us and our brains soon started working again.

After lunch we rode up to Sunnymeads and curved around the Mother of all reservoirs to Colnbrook and Poyle before tangling with the cycle path through the middle of M25/J14. After Stanwell Moor we followed the bit of cycle path down a short stretch of the A3044 with its very messy turn into Park Road. We skirted around the Staines reservoirs and headed through Ashford and beyond.

After Charlton, Peter’s plan was to go directly to Upper Halliford and thence to Squires for Tea. But knowing that we would not have done any great number of miles I decided that we should head for the Walled Garden in Sunbury after a brief detour.  For some time I have intended to point out the house in which J. G. Ballard lived with his family for much of his life. So we detoured down Nutty Lane amidst warnings that this surely wasn’t the way to the Walled Garden. But after the spiral ramps of the bridge over the M3 we arrived in Old Charlton Road and we stopped briefly at the great man’s house. He is probably best known for the novel and movie “Empire of the Sun”, works of fiction that were based on his extraordinary autobiography “Miracles of Life”. “The Kindness of Women” was his semi-autobiographical sequel to “Empire of the Sun”.

This is a photo of him outside the house we saw today. He died in 2009.

One I took in May during a recce

At the Walled Garden I was worried that it might take a while for all 17 of us to be served but Sandra and the staff pulled out the stops for us and we were all seated with our tea, coffee and cake before long, sweltering in the heat but enjoying the tranquillity of the garden.

Thanks to Tony Hooker who kindly accepted the job of back marker and to everyone who helped to prevent people from getting left behind at strange intersections. Thank you to everyone for their cheerful company and above all thanks to Peter for designing the ride and entrusting his plans to me.

Photos are at:  http://tinyurl.com/mrbk2tr