Wednesday 12th Feb B group ride to Ace café

 Gill and Maddie had kindly agreed to sub-lead for this ride on what turned out to be a rather chilly and damp day. Suitably fortified with  excellent sausage rolls at Elleray hall, our biker groups departed; me leading the Harleys, Gill leading the Vespers and Maddie with the BMW’s.

With Tim G kindly back- marking, my group of 7 (Julie B, Jane F, John A, Mick A and Dave E) made our way through west London via canals, river banks and quiet roads. It is always astonishing to experience how far you can travel  around London without encountering busy roads. Much of our route in fact was on the C40 cycleway.

Reaching the Ace we re-charged our batteries with very promptly served grub and were on our way again, taking a shorter and more road -heavy route back to Bushy Park. Navigation had been going reasonably well on the route to the Ace however Garmin gremlins kicked in on the way home and my map and directional arrow changed from the usual north up display to point back the way I had come thus showing all the turns in reverse! Time to call upon group members to lend a hand with navigation which they duly did! Thanks to all who came along yesterday and especially nice to have Dave E with us on his first club outing in a while. Hope you enjoyed the B group banter, Dave.

Garmin post script: the very helpful person in customer services at Garmin talked me through restoring the north up display so fingers crossed all sorted!

Gill's report:

A winter’s ride to the Ace Cafe sounded perfect and so it turned out.  Sue’s route, modified from a Simon route, was spot on with enough challenges to keep us entertained and happily for the most part without traffic.

Our buzzing band of Vespas comprised myself, Liz, Ray Y, Carolyn, Karl, Anne W, Grant, Bob and Tony.  Unfortunately Tony left us early, but Liz’s wrist managed to survive the lumps and bumps of tree routes on the Grand Union Canal and she was able to complete her first ride with us for 6 months.

The Ace Cafe lived up to its reputation, and has no problem catering for large groups.  The food was served almost before we sat down. The jacket potatoes were a great hit on our table!

Despite every traffic light turning red for us on the pm ride back to Bushy park we made good time and 3 of our group enjoyed tea and cake with the first group.

So pleased to have got to the Ace Cafe at long last. Thanks Sue!  Thanks to my group and especially to Bob for back-marking. 

and Maddie's group:

Tim C, Maggie & Paul J, Gill, Pam and Ray W all followed Madeleine on an intricate and interesting route through the back streets and canals of NW London. As a treat, Maddie added a couple of extra diversions in the way - including an unfortunately-muddy steep rise and an extra snippet of canal. We were slow but steady, Ray acting as back marker and sweeping along Tim - who we were all delighted to see back with the B’s.

A puncture for Maggie at lunchtime was efficiently sorted by Paul - fuelled by tea. The lunch at Ace seemed to be enjoyed by all. Ray was miffed that we weren’t labelled as the Harley Davidson’s, since he owns one (as well as a BMW). So, inspired by Ace’s motorbike display, the last group did a bit of re-branding. How much better is ´Triumph Bonneville’s than BMW’s?’