Spring is such a lovely time to be out on the bike, although last nights thunderstorms made it a bit mucky and brought down enough rubbish for me to get a puncture before I even got to the Clock Tower this morning and I missed the draw being made for the club places for the Ride London team:

Luckily due to the whatsapp group I knew where they were going, and could let them know I would catch up. So after changing the inner tube, and nipping back home to get another one just in case, I zipped along the A4 (well as much as was possible with the car boot traffic!) and along Dorney Common to catch 9 others in Eton. Luckily I had changed to my summer bike - might not have caught them so easily on the winter one! Unfortunately the group had already lost Gurpal by Eton, so the 10 of us (Dave D, Mark W, Rob O, Taran, Les, me, Hewan, Simon, Miriam, John G) carried on to Crimp Hill.

At the top we regrouped, and as we had Rob and Les with us from the Birds Hill group we let them take the lead and take us on some new roads past the Great Park, Virginia Water, down through Chobham Common and to Sunningdale. Most of us didn't have a clue where we were now - but Rob and Les looked after us and even found us a coffee shop where we sat outside with coffee and cake - very civilised.

The route home took us along Drift Road where Les set up a through and off. This was really good fun - we were rubbish at first, its not something we do very often on the clock tower run - but we got the hang of it and were soon easing along the road in perfect formation! We lost a few as we neared home, John and Simon wanted to go further - but I clocked 43 miles at 16.7 mph average - a bit faster than normal but it was reasonably flat, and working as a group meant we gained some speed. A really lovely, sociable ride - one of my faves for ages, so thanks to the Birds Hill guys for staying with us and showing us some new routes...