A Sunday recce today with John for a route I am leading for Breeze mid week, starting at Watersplash Lane to tea at Taplow Lake. It's a cobble together of bits and pieces of other routes, although I have never been to Taplow Lake before, other than passing by it when Cathy and I rode with the Cookham Breeze champs a few weeks ago. I had plotted a route out, then decided to reverse it so that we would be riding DOWN Drift Road, and not up it.
Route
We parked at Watersplash Lane, and immediately headed away from Windsor Park, heading instead to ride though Ascot Racecourse. The route I had went under the tunnel, but John persuaded me that he and Dangerous Dave had taken a little path before... which ended up with us actually dashing across the racecourse! Pretty sure we weren't supposed to be there 😁. We then did MY route. We noted a little takeaway cafe in the racecourse, open every day.
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| Ascot Racecourse |
A little bit of residential streets now, always good for a nosy, then a couple of sections on main road to Cranbourne, passing the Fishing Cafe on our right, and turning left into Crouch Lane. No traffic here at all, nor the next section on the lovely wide Winkfield Lane. Drift Road next, and we split up to give any traffic a chance to pass easily, but infact it was almost empty too. (Hope Wednesday will be the same). A right turn to continue our downhill to Fifield, and then across the A308 into Monkey Island Lane.
We did a quick detour to take a look at Bray Watersports Centre and what cafe facilities they had. Not too impressive, so probably won't be using that one.
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| A quick detour to Bray Watersports Centre |
Continuing over the M4 to Bray, passing Caldesi, we pass the centre of Bray
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| Bray cycle route 4 |
Then a left turn into Hibbert Road, where we shortly pick up the Route 4 cycle path through Braywick Park. At the bowling club, we cross a bridge over The Cut. Straight over a roundabout, then first right into Old Acres (this avoids joining the A4 juction). We wiggle around Horseguards Drive, then the cycle path called Guards Club road to emerge at the A4 just left of the bridge. No avoiding this way to cross the river that I can find. We continued on paths and finally the A4 itself since the cyclepath system is absolutely useless... of and on, left hand side one minutes, right hand side the next.
(I have since found a better route which I will use on Wednesday which is to turn left immediately after crossing the river, into Mill Lane, then a loop to turn right into Berry Hill where we will cross straight over the A4, with traffic light control into the lane leading to Taplow Lake.
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| Taplow Lake. Weeds looking pretty! |
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| The cakes were delicious and a proper pot of tea and china cup too. |
Leaving the lakeside, we continue on the same road, crossing over a timber bridge to join the Jubilee River cycle path, which we now follow for about 5 miles into Eton. The wildflowers looking lovely all along the path edges.
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| Paths mostly empty the whole way other than handful of others |
Eventually, we take a sharp right turn off the Jubilee path, and follow the railway viaduct towards Eton. (I did this the other way around before with Sarah, Rosie and Cathy.) You get a really nice view of Windsor Castle on this section, which I must point out on Wednesday to my riders.
Over Eton Bridge, through Windsor, and the uphill begins to get through the Great Park. Pretty much to only up hill today! I noticed this little house, called Appletree Cottage towards the end of our ride through the park.
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| Within the Great Park |
A nice downhill to finish, back to Waterspash Lane. And as we drove home, it started to rain.
