Saturday 17th February, off road Claygate Cricket Club Cafe

Five riders out today, Bill Kent, Ed Pegg, Cam Watson, Mick Curtis and myself leading. Once again Met Office forecast was for overcast with mist. They must’ve meant overcast with drizzle. We set off the usual slippy slidey route out of Nonsuch Park through the ‘burbs of Ewell and climb gently through Horton Country Park.

Ashtead Common was almost deserted, the dank air keeping people in their warm beds and we splashed our way towards Prince’s Coverts. A quick climb had us negotiating the kissing gate to enter the area and a nice, long descent followed. Sadly what goes down has to go up again and so another uphill drag got us out onto the main road. In the Summer these undulations can be avoided by using straighter routes that unfortunately are semi-submerged this time of year.  At the Oxshott Road we turned into Bridle Lane and descended once again to access Oxshott Heath (Southside of A3) which was muddy, rooty and a trail I haven’t used for a long time. However it was very useful as a small bridge takes you up and over the A3 and drops you neatly onto Esher Common.

We slithered and slathered across Esher Common and briefly touched the tip of Arbrook Common heading to the final ascent before tea to get us up to the rich people’s roads in the ‘burbs of Claygate. Minutes later we were locking the bikes up outside the elevenses stop. Much refuelling was performed and Mick was quiet for some considerable time whilst demolishing his favourite, the Full English!

The good thing about this tea stop is it’s relatively close to home compared with others, and so on the corner of Claygate Common when we encountered two large horses and a junior learner, we took it easy and just bimbled along behind them until we got to our second to last climb back towards Barwell Farm and Chessington South.  The horse riders beat us for speed on that hill, they were in front from the start and had more ‘Horsepower’!

The group split at Butcher’s Row, Horton Country Park; Mick, Ed and Bill heading for Cheam and Cam and I heading back towards where I was parked and beyond Cam’s home on the outskirts of Epsom.

Good ride gents, a few different trails today just for a change.

 

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