Brian T led this ride and writes:
Saturday evening and I received a text from Gary with the information that the Bikebus café was closed this weekend. Fortunately this was followed by an email from Elspeth saying the ‘Fill your cup’ café two miles on in Cranfield was open, so no major change of plans.
With the sun just about out and temperatures very comfortable, we had four riders, Peter, Phil, Brian and Gary raring to go at CC. We had a tail wind most of the way out and with just a small group we cracked on at a reasonable pace on relatively quiet roads especially beyond Turvey. The road surface was challenging at times though, with broken tarmac.
As usual the number of cyclist increased as we got nearer the Bikebus but nobody said it was closed. It was not far after Bourne End, home of the Bikebus, that we arrived at Cranfield and cycled down the High Street. Not a particular hive of activity on a Sunday morning but we soon found the café, occupied mainly by other cyclists. Just as we were parking our bikes in the garden we met Tim and Elspeth who had just arrived by a slightly different route. Now up to six, we enjoyed the coffee and a good variety of cakes and paninis at the Fill your cup. After a good 50min stop we put Tim in the lead (well it was now a head wind) and came back through North Crawley across the A422 at Chicheley and on to Sherington. Instead of going down to Olney as planned we changed the route and went back through Tyringham, Hanslope and on to Salcey Forest mainly because most people lived that side of town. The route out and back was almost the same at 26 miles and interestingly so was the average speed, close to 15mph.
Gary was on his ‘fully kitted up’ mountain bike, testing everything out for his ride to do the CyclingUK off-road route the West Kernow Way – a 230km circular bike-packing route in Cornwall. Hope the weather holds for the next few weeks.
Thanks to all for a very sociable ride. Lovely day to be out.
CTC Northampton 