Nigel writes: The current freezing cold spell continues, but at least we have some daylight in the evening now. Today was bright and sunny and with sunset at 7:37pm a pleasant evening ride, much of it in evening sunshine, was in prospect. There were five of us on tonight's ride: Gareth, Peter, Mike K, John E and me. At the start we had the usual discussion of a route. With the pub stop in Barton I suggested a loop south to Whittlesford, north-west to Kingston, and then east to Barton - the same route as on January 2nd. However Mike suggested that instead of taking the familiar route south to Whittlesford via Little Shelford, we went via Stapleford and Sawston. We all agreed and off we went.
The first section of our ride took us south along Trumpington Road and Porson Road to Long Road where we joined the guided busway.
We left the busway at Addenbrooke's and followed the DNA path to Great Shelford. We crossed over Granham road and continued south through Great Shelford and Stapleford to Sawston. It was quite sunny but there was quite a strong cold wind from the north-west. At Sawston we turned west, crossed the by-pass and followed the new cycle path over the Cam to Whittlesford
At Whittlesford we turned north-west towards Newton. We continued north-west through Hauxton to Haslingfield, where Gareth, Peter and I took a brief excursion to the top of Chapel Hill and back down again. When we got back to the bottom there was no sign of Mike or John. However we knew they were perfectly capable of finding their own way so the three of us carried on to Harlton, the Eversdens and Kingston. With a tailwind and a burst of after-work energy our speed increased and we made rapid progress. We reached Kingston at about 8pm and then turned east for the final few miles in the dark through Toft and Comberton to Barton which we reached rather early at 8.15pm.
We stopped at the White Horse for drinks and snacks (cheesy chips and curly chips). After a while we were joined by John, who had taken the same route as Gareth, Peter and I but at a more moderate pace. Afterwards we all returned back to Cambridge. I arrived home at 9.30pm having cycled 28 miles.
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Stopping for chips was too much of a cheesy idea for me, so i decided to go through canterloop farm and enjoy the sunset which was very nice, with the added bonus of not bumping into mr canterloop.
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