24 going on 30 was the final mileage on Saturday’s ride, with Russell making the number up to 13 after a couple of months off with back trouble.
Down the hill to Merstham and a climb across the diagonal to the North Downs Ridge. The route took us by Old Coulsdon and Farthing Downs. Crossing the A23 at Downs Road.
At the top of the hill at Chipstead the highlight of the ride was provided by a Parrot’s tombstone, some dissapointment was expressed that it was not a Norwegian Blue, anyway Vicky is now free to fly over Chipstead, I’m not sure if that means it has died or escaped.
The new section began here,having crossed the line at Chipstead we headed up to the Woodcote Estate and into Oaks Park for our stop, however the decision was taken to continue on to Epsom as the service was at snails pace.
Twenty minutes or so were lost to broken chains but we still arrived at Epsom by 11:30. It became apparent my estimate of distance was a little out as we had already done around 21 miles.
The way back from Epsom was the usual route with a little diversion around Banstead Heath (all those paths look alike). Reaching the A217 about three miles from Reigate the group decided to head back on road. I went back off road arriving just before 2 pm.
This ride was a bit of an experiment as we had to cross several major road junctions and is unlikely to be repeated.
Frank