It was in my diary to organise a ride mid March, to lead some ladies to enjoy the beautiful daffodils at Pyrton Church. I asked if any other Champs wanted to join me? Sue had a mid afternoon deadline, which would have been difficult to guarantee, but Cathy was keen, so the ride was set up last week with 8 of us. I had 50% drop out at the last minute, including Cathy! Some nasty cold virus doing the rounds it seems. Shame, and I hope all you ladies who weren't able to join us, will soon be back to fighting fit.
So we were 4 riders.... plus 1 special guest.😉
We met at Checkendon car park at 9.45, and my hubby came along for the lift, originally intending to do his own thing, and to ride home. But at the last minute, he thought he might as well join us ladies. It was only 3 degrees when we started, and as the profile shows, almost immediately dropped down steeply. Not great to warm us up, but then plenty of undulations, so at no point were we cold today.
Just before we dropped down Berins Hill, I was telling Amy that I had previously seen some of the polo ponies from Checkendon equestrian centre, being ridden (and walked) by the stable grooms. Each groom rides one horse, and leads a couple of others. And at the bottom of the hill on Well Place Road.... there they were!
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| here come the polo ponies, so we pulled over to allow them to pass. |
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Waiting for the ponies to pass, with Checkendon now high above us.
John, Daphne, Amanda, and Amy. |
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| they are beautiful ponies. |
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| All clear, and now a little rise up to Hailey X roads. |
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Todays route looped around a couple of times,
but with not too much overlap. |
Route
Not all the roads round here necessarily have names, but basically we took a right at the Xroads, then another right turn heading in the direction of Ewelme. Straight over a couple of main roads, and dropped down into the village on a hill that we would later climb back up.
At a high point once more, it was all easy for the next few miles, as we loop around back towards Cuxham, and into Brightwell Baldwin. Once passed the church, we left the roads into a concreted bridal way, through Cadwell farm.
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| The bridal path through Cadwell farm. All good surface. |
We left the farm track and turned now heading to Berrick Prior, all easy going and some downhill much of the way back to Ewelme.
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| Photo by Daphne as we pass through Berrick Prior. |
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Passing back through Ewleme again heading upstream this time.
Daphne requested a quick stop again at the Watercress beds for her own photo. |
Since we dropped down
into Ewelme on our earlier part of the route, no prizes for guessing that it's now uphill to get back.
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Looking back into Eweleme from the high point.
A grey day now. Any sunlight gone. We noticed some sheep on their sides,
which I now know from google is a sure sign of labour. |
So, maybe if we had hung about, we would have seen the lambs being born. But we had to keep moving. We had started our ascent, but the next challenge was Nuffield Hill. The first part is the steepest, then it flattens out.
