Wednesday, 01 June 2011
Nigel writes: With midsummer less than a month away, and with a fine evening forecast, I thought a slightly longer ride than usual would be appropriate today. There were nine of us today: Ian, Julia, Eva, Mike K, Neil, John, Tony, newcomer Liz and me, and after agreeing a route with the others at the start we set off down Hills Road to Addenbrooke's.
We turned left onto Wort's Causeway and climbed over the Gogs to Fulbourn.
When we reached Fulbourn we turned onto the Balsham road. This is a long straight road as far as Charterhouse Bridge over the A11 and was quite busy, but beyond it the road was much quieter as we climbed up to Balsham. We continued through the village on the B1052 through West Wratting.
A mile or so beyond West Wratting we turned left onto a minor road and then right onto a even smaller road towards Dullingham. This was probably the loveliest section of the ride, a gently undulating descent.
At Dullingham we turned north towards Swaffham Bulbeck, on a road which over five miles makes the transition from lush wooded lanes around Newmarket to the rather bare, flat, landscape of the fens at Swaffham Bulbeck. As we rode along here the sun went behind clouds and the temperature started to fall.
From Swaffham Bulbeck we followed NCR 51 through Bottisham to Quy. A few minutes later we arrived in Fen Ditton, where we stopped for a drink at The Plough. We reached the pub at 9pm, after two and a half hours of cycling, making this our longest evening ride so far this year. However with sunset at 8.50pm it was still quite light and we sat outside by the river enjoying our drinks.
After about half an hour we returned back to Cambridge via the Wadloes Path and the Jubilee Cycleway. I arrived home at 10pm, having cycled
32 miles.
Nigel DeakinView this GPS track on a larger map