It's Christmas Eve, and with no preparation to do for tomorrow since everyone is stuck at home with their immediate family this year, we decided to make the most of the dry day and drove to Chieveley to start a ride today. All of the counties around Berkshire joined Tier 4 covid rules yesterday, but we were staying in Berkshire today anyway.
route
Gill and Dave drove in their own cars too, and met us there, then Gill and I set off, with Dave and John following. I had not cycled in this area before without my ebike! John discovered a puncture on his gravel bike this morning as he went to load it up, so he did use his ebike. The planned route elevation plots out to 2000 feet, but often that reduces when actually ridden. (more about that later!)
It was only about 2 degrees as we started off, but felt ok in the sunshine. The first few miles were easy dropping down to Winterbourne, then forking left to Bagnor, where this amazing hedge is surrounding Kimber Cottage. As I stopped for this photo, John and Dave overtook us.
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| Amazing sculpted hedge in Bangor |
Next, we pass the Watermill theatre, then a bit of climb passing The Woodspeen pub, before taking a left turn towards Stockcross. We take a left turn on the A4 (uphill!) before the Garmin catches up and advises this is wrong, so we drop back down again and turn left. This take us to Marsh Beenham where we cross the K&A canal.
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| Kennet and Avon Canal at Marsh Beenham |
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| Top of another climb near Wickham I think. |
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| views from the top |
We pass through Welford which is famous for its show of snowdrops at Welford Park, and where "Bakeoff " has recently been filmed. A nice stretch of downhill, which is something we haven't had too much of today! Then as we come into Westbook, a sharp right turn, almost missed it, as we start to climb to Boxford. This is tough! (John told me he had full power on for this section). But we did it. It came in 3-4 stages of undulations.
So I mentioned the elevation at the start. It plotted out as around 2000 feet. My Garmin recorded the ride as 1420 feet, Gill's Strava at 2061 feet and John's Garmin as 1886 feet. A huge difference. Our legs definitely climbed 2000 ft!
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| Leaving Boxford as the next climb looms ahead |
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| Gill passes as I take the photo. Here we go again. Phew! |
We come into Winterbourne once more (different road from the one we left on) but now retrace our steps back to the parking. This was all downhill for about 3 miles at the start, so no surprise how this ride ends. 😫
So nice to see the sunshine today. Load of large puddles and debris to pick our way through, so not a particularly fast ride, but we did the same as the " boys" at about 11.1 average speed, and got back 5 mins after them, which considering we stopped for photos, was pretty good going.
Well done Gill and glad you enjoyed your first ride in West Berkshire area.
