Back In Time
11th June 2017
Having done the very first Recce for this ride way back in January, I found on arrival a building site! Ooops should I try somewhere else I thought, no I shall persevere, so in I went to talk to the staff in the office who assured me that by June all will be finished & we would have the benefit of using their brand new restaurant by the newly formed lake, how C&F I thought, I could just imagine us all sat by the lake scoffing, in the warm June sunshine.
On subsequent Recces the newly formed buildings were coming together nicely & the lake had been dug out & filled with water, my vision was coming together!
My last Recce & dry run found all the buildings were finished, including the restaurant, but it looked a little, well empty! I asked the staff whether the restaurant was open & to my disappointment they told me “no”.
So June the 11th dawned I had a route but nowhere to eat at the end, oh well its about the ride eh? At least the weather was playing ball it was nice & warm with the sun coming out every so often. C&F members started arriving at 0900 a couple of new members as well, and by 0945 we had booked in 63 riders, a nice medium sized group for C&F! So I set about giving the morning briefing & informed everyone that the restaurant I had planned was not open, oh you should’ve seen the sad little faces in the crowd, not! It looked to me they were all there for the ride, well done guys!!
Off we set on the usual ride out of town, over Putney, bridge onto the A3 & away from the big smoke into the country. We exited the A3 at Cobham through Cobham out past the Chelsea training grounds and on through Dorking. The route took us through the picturesque village of Albury, we used the A281 through Bramley to the coffee stop & a sportster fill up at Alford (Tina next time fill up, it’ll make the homeward journey a lot less stressfull) The guy making the coffees asked me how many, I said probably 60, I wont print what his reply was. A few riders left us for home at this point.
We left the coffee stop for our final destination along the 281 to Billinghurst then onto the A272 through the South Downs National Park, then the A 286 to our destination of Singleton. Steve Graham made his usual sterling effort to coral everyone for the group photo after which I declared the ride end. One point to mention, I overheard a rather excited Lisa Gunther exclaim she was riding in the part of the group with some bad boys, I wonder who they were? Jean, Garo & Kia LOL!
Anyway A big thank you to RCs Nick Deal & Mick Newstead for being superb ride marshals on the day & I suppose I’ll have to thank Steve Graham for Last Man Duties & taking some snaps... But the biggest thanks go to all the members who turned up on the day, who without you lot it would be just Steve & I and we’d just bicker! Thank you everyone.
Don’t forget the next ride is Jonathan Gooch Chocolate Box on Sunday 16th July, see you all there.
Fred Woolcott - C&F Road Captain
Photographs by C&F Photographer Steve Graham