06 Jan 2019: St Albans to Ley Green

It was a grey and overcast start to the new year and a small but select group of four met in the Waterend Barn. Good value breakfasts were consumed by two of the party and then just before we were leaving we had a call from Gareth who hadn't noticed we were not meeting outside the Blacksmiths Arms. We took a quiet route out of St Albans which wasn't really necessary as the volume of traffic was extremely low and headed up to Woodcock Hill where we encountered a pile of abandoned fridges. Steve took a photo and later that day posted a report using "fix my street" to report the fly-tip incident.

Woodcock hill fridges

What a dismal start to the day to see this type of rubbish on such a large scale. We headed north east via Coleman Green and Water End then changed direction to head north west via Ayot Green and Kimpton Mill before doing a loop around some tiny roads to get to the Plough at about 12.50 and after 22 miles. Gareth was struggling as he hadn't had time to have anything to eat at the start after cycling up from Brookmans Park. He made up the calories pretty quickly by downing two pints of beer at lunch. The pub was very old fashioned and is in a bit of a 1950's time warp pub with some fox heads on display caught at Simonshyde in 1900. The food was very good value and we left at about 1.45 to go downhill via Whitwell, then over the private road to Kimpton where Carol had a puncture. Philip, Gareth and Peter carried on while Steve attended to the problem.

Steve fixing the puncture

Unfortunately even though we found the hole in the damaged tube, the first replacement tube would not inflate properly, so he had to put in a second spare tube before we could carry on. This meant is was getting quite dark when we finally got back to St Albans after about 35 miles. A good dry day and not too cold made for an enjoyable early January outing.

Carol