Five riders met at Cheam Station south side at the appointed hour. Dave Elliott, Sean Slammon, Trevor Hughes, Mick Curtis and myself leading. Wow what difference from yesterday’s foul weather! Today was blue skies, not particularly warm, probably due to the strong winds from the south west, but never-the-less a vast improvement.
We set off through Nonsuch Park (or as I like to call it Canine Menagerie!) and through the back of Ewell to the Hogsmill River. This lead us across to the corner of Horton Park and on to Chessington South where we turned into Barwell Farm Lane. Nobody chose to ride through the ‘Flood of Doom’ opting instead for the ‘Bog of Despair’ farther along the lane.
At the corner of Claygate Common we took a left and headed over the A3 into the very boggy Sixty Acre Wood and then on into Prince’s Coverts which was reasonably solid and stable ground despite the record breaking rain we’ve had recently. There was however one tiny part of the route that was so bad it was ‘walking pace and low gear not to get stuck’, Trevor clipped a tree route and got a mud bath. Left side club colours, right side brown! The tree was not damaged and so we rode, walked and generally slithered to the end of this trail and out onto the road. In lower Oxshott we dropped down Bridal Lane into Stoke D’Abernon and our elevenses stop at the garden centre opposite the church.
Our route back retraced our steps to Prince’s Coverts, but this time we avoided Trevor’s mud bath path; he wasn’t up for a second mud immersion! We climbed east towards Telegraph Hill, Leatherhead Road and onto Ashtead Common. Near Horton the group split up and headed in various directions for home. Mick Curtis and I dropped down through Long Grove Park, East Ewell and parted company in Cheam Village for home.