04 May 2019: St Albans to Wheathampstead

We had another great turnout today and another new rider; the destination was Charlie's in Wheathampstead, so the route was not as long as it could’ve been.

We headed off down the Harpenden Road, which for some reason was very busy, so it was quite a relief to be getting off it at Ayres End. From here we took a detour via East Common and made our way around the golf course then dropped into the back end of Harpenden. Then it was back up and around to meet the other end of Ayres End to shoot down towards Nomansland Common, but before we got there we took on Bull Lane leading us to the junction of the Elephant and Castle. Not long after this we headed into our destination town and Charlie's Café. This establishment soon filled up with 13 of us occupying all the spare seats including the outside tables.

It was quite windy and the rain was threatening all throughout the ride. Our way back featured the hills and rises of Beech Hyde Lane and Coleman Green Lane. We hit Sandridge and made our way back to Jersey Farm via House Lane and from there we got back to the start via Oaklands College. The bouncing lambs were out in force and the alpacas were looking very relaxed.

It’s easy to get confused between llamas, alpacas and vicunas.  Llamas have distinctive banana-shaped ears, alpacas are smaller and have triangular, pointed ears and vicunas are the smallest.

 Llama                                                   Alpaca                                       Vicuna

Neil 04/05/2019