19 Aug 2018: St Albans to Leighton Buzzard

A rather gloomy day with slight drizzle greeted the stalwarts at St Albans for the scheduled ride to Eversholt. Five of us set off via Hogg End Lane and passed Buncefield oil depot before picking up Phil near the exit of the Maylands Estate. He'd guessed correctly the route we planned to take. Later in the day we were discussing the 2006 disaster with Ronny who hadn't heard about it even though we thought it had made the European news at the time. We finally made it to Jackie's cafe in Cheddington at about 10.50 only to find it closed for Sundays during the school holidays.

After a quick debate we backtracked to the Waterside cafe at Pitstone Wharf where the service was a bit slow. Ronny and Phil left to go back and the rest carried on towards Eversholt until Steve B called out that he'd left his wallet in the cafe. In a panic he started cycling back to get it, only to turn round again and sheepishly admit it had been in his trouser pocket all the time - apparently the "wrong" pocket. As we'd lost so much time now it was deemed a good idea to still head north, and do a loop through the Brickhills before going to the White Swan in Leighton Buzzard for lunch. We saw several Greensand Ridge walk signs featuring what I used to think was a camel but now know to be a Muntjac deer and indeed later in the afternoon we saw a specimen by the roadside before it ran away to cross the busy dual carriageway leading to the M1 motorway.

Muntjac were brought from China to Woburn Park in Bedfordshire in the early 20th century.

After lunch at the JD Wetherspoon establishment where we were surprised to find a bouncer outside at 1pm, we headed for a different tea stop at the Flamstead scarecrow festival as we had seen a poster for the event on our outbound journey.  The village was very busy with families wandering around judging the exhibits and we had a cuppa in the Methodist hall.

Lots of crows!

Not very scary.....

So unusually for the first time in nearly thirty years of riding a Sunday ride did not visit any of the planned stops! We got back to St Albans after 5pm after covering 60 miles on what turned out to be a pleasantly warm day with strong winds that sometimes helped and sometimes hindered our progress.

Carol