Sunday Ride: 21st May 2017

Beautiful warm sunny summer day. Yet only seven were ready at the start point. Was it because it was a little further than usual? (though not as far as last week).

Whatever. A great ride was missed by many. Well the outward was nothing special to write home about once we got to Smallfield. The choice of getting to Handcross is either over Turner’s Hill or the flatter circuit around boring Crawley. Crawley it was. But spirits rose on the discovery of a new watering hole. High Beeches had been spotted recently (not difficult with that clocktower) by the cycling fraternity and now shows up on a variety of Internet searches.

Except we were almost the only folks there to welcome Jeremy who had made a late start.

The Tea Room is the old stables. The splendid house, our resident historian explained, was reduced from this:

To this by a crashing unmanned Halifax bomber in 1943:

The full story (and apologies for stealing the pictures) from: http://www.slaughamarchives.org/picture/number1348.asp

Refreshed we set off for Balcombe and beyond except for Bob who was taking an early bath. Balcombe might be a beautiful chocolate box village but its charm was stolen by this amazing Victorian edifice built in 1841. The Ouse Valley Viaduct (also called Balcombe Viaduct) over the River Ouse on the London-Brighton line is 1,475 feet long.

That’s only half of it! There is more and more impressive pix here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouse_Valley_Viaduct

Up to Ardingly and right towards East Grinstead. The riding got a little stickier after that as a couple of off-road sections caused the odd issue. It might have been a dry sunny hot day but it hadn’t completely eradicated the downpours of Thursday & Friday. Eventually, after we lost two more who needed to be home plus another 20 miles on the clock, we fell upon The Plough, Dormansland for afternoon refreshment. Jeremy had rushed ahead and taken the rutted roundabout route but still got there before us.

We had an interesting conversation in their sunny gardens which I am forbidden to repeat here. Except to say it would make an exciting addition to the Anerley strip 😉

Return via Marden Park: 61.85 miles at a moving average of 12.50 mph.