World Cup Ride

Whoops - forgot to post a blog for this ride!!

The start was from Three Bridges Railway Station at 09:30 hrs. If my memory serves me correctly, I (Bob) was joined by Norman, Anton, John V, Jeet and Seb.

I called it the "World Cup Ride" because it was on the same day as the World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands - I had hoped to go through villages/past pubs that would fit into that as a theme but failed miserably to come up with any ideas to suit! As we headed through the northern parts of Crawley and then past the airport I could have pointed out that some of the planes were going to Spain and that some of them were painted orange (the Dutch team colours) but I didn't. After an uneventful passage of Gatwick the most noticeable thing was that the path between the river Mole and the lakes on the approach to Horley has been resurfaced with a compacted grit material - hopefully this will make it cleaner to use during the winter months.

Rather than use the subway, I took the bridge past Horley Railway station and then picked up NCN21 (or is it 20?) to head north out of the town. Those riders on the more 'delicate' machines took a slightly more easterly route to stay on smooth tarmac, but Norman and I toughed it out on the bumpy track (I was mistakenly under the impression that it had been resurfaced).

Meeting up again, we headed uphill and then left to go past Redhill Aerodrome and then used the intriguingly named Philanthropic Road into Redhill. Heading due west we reached Woodhatch and crossed the A217 at the traffic lights. We next used Sandcross Lane and Slipshatch Road before taking a little northern loop to go past the Police Dog training school and the deer park. We passed the Anchor at Betchworth a good hour before opening time and then the Plough in Leigh not long after - that meant two of my lunch options were written off! That's the trouble with a group of fit(-tish) blokes - they were riding too damn fast :-)

From Leigh we headed off towards Newdigate and used the very quiet Hogspudding Lan
e to emerge opposite the Six Bells (still too early). The boys were flying now and we made good progress south to arrive in Rusper bang on opening time. John Jeet and Seb decided to continue on back home leaving Norman, Anton and myself to enjoy a leisurely lunch sat outside the front of the Plough. The beauty of Rusper is that there's a nice downhill glide towards Crawley for the first mile or two (and then it's flat), so I was home just before two. Norman had a (different) downhill before a small climb back to Horsham and Anton clocked up yet more miles as he carried on back to Haywards Heath.

At this point I would normally put in a plug for the next ride, but as I'm writing this retrospectively it's already happened!