19 May 2019: St Albans to Wing

Another special ride we'd promoted using the Lets Ride website as part of the Sustainable St Albans Festival attracted five newcomers to our group along with Sue who had ridden up from Barnet for the 9am start. Other Sunday regulars were manning a market stall today so missed the ride. We set off via the back roads to Sandridge before crossing Nomansland Common and climbing up to Mackery End where we had a good view of the house before descending to the Lee Valley again to cross Harpenden using the splendid tarmacced Nickey Line. A short cycle on quiet lanes near the M1 brought us to our coffee stop at Harpers farmshop and café. This building used to be pub called the Half Moon. You can see some photos of how it looked in the 60's and before Harpers did the splendid job of rescuing it here

After coffee we made a fairly direct route to lunch at the 33 mile mark in Wing. After an easy climb from Markyate we whizzed down Bison Hill (where sadly there is no longer a Bison visible) onto the plain of Bedfordshire. Good progress brought us to an early quick lunch in the garden at the Cock pub in Wing.  A largely flat and downhill route took us to the group photoshoot outside the gates of Mentmore Towers. History of this Rothschild mansion here. If you are not interested in the history you may be interested in the films that have been shot here.

Mentmore Gates

Our cleverly designed flat route back to Berkhamsted carefully avoiding the edge of the Chiltern Hills  meant we reached Berko at 2.30pm. So rather than stop we just carried on through Hemel and up Hyde Lane to Bedmond before the usual route back into St Albans. A man was spotted petting the cows as if they were small cats or dogs!

Petting the cows!

 After 59 miles we got back early and some of us looked at the market stalls which were still manned for the sustainable week's events.

We all made it back....

Well done everyone and we hope to see you again.

The route is below

Carol & Steve