We're taking a ride up the Lee Valley whixh is one of our favourite places to ride. It's a great place to ride if you're new to cycling, plenty to look at, traffic free and flat.Also the Lee Valley is changing for ever now that is to be the home of the 2012 Olympics so it's an opportunity to check on the progressand guage what's going to be lost and gained.

Suitable for all bikes except racey road bikes.

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Our River Lee ride fed into a ride with Greenwich and Southwark Cyclists. I think that by the time we reached Island Gardens we had 6 rides from Lewisham that helped swell a good sized group of to about 20 riders.

It was a sunny start but there were heavy clouds on the horizon.
Through the isle of Dogs and past Canary Wharf, quite a few sites here that are beginning to be developed. I suppose the Manhattan style skyline is going to be added to.  It’s a shame that the old brick warehouse and the cycle shop on the corner of Cuba St and Westferry Rd has gone.

We take the Limehouse Cut. I still marvel at the pontoon section at Bromley-by-Bow bur wonder if this project might have been better utilised at the horrendous Bow Interchange. After 10 years of riding up the Limehouse Cut I’m still not sure which way to look when I’m crossing this road.

The section of canal side path between the C4 Big Breakfast House and Carpenters Rd is closed for essential engineering works. The works are taking place between 18/06 and 23/06 so any one reading this shouldn’t have to worry about this particular closure although I suspect as the Olympic building gathers pace we’ll see an increasing amount of closures on the Lee path.

We have a 5 minute heavy shower and every one dons waterproofs shelters under a tree and then the rain stops and we follow Ray on a route up the back streets on the west side of the canal.

Back on track at Carpenters Road and Liz takes over again and leads us over Hackney and Walthamstow Marshes. We cross from the east bank to the west bank at Springfield Marina and turn south to head home. We cross back east again to Hackney Marshes at Lea Bridge, South Mill Fields. There are a few spots of rain and we have nice rainbows to the east.

Jocelyn’s Brompton punctures. No spare tube, no problem we thought, we patch it but then struggle like hell to get the Kevlar tyre back on the rim and have to result to tyre levers to get it on. The tyre promptly deflates after inflating, probably pinched the tube as we levered the tyre on. Jocelyn bravely does a Captain Evan’s and sacrifices the ride home so as not to inconvenience the rest of the group and  looks for public transport, which is what she says she usually does when her Brompton punctures.

The group has split and Anthony, Roy, John and I ride the Victoria Park, Mile End section of the Regent’s Canal back to the isle of Dogs and the foot tunnel.

Back in Greenwich the main body of the group emerges from the tunnel behind us, they took the Limehouse Cut back and Ray’s chain broke which accounted for how they ended up behind us.

Back in doors at 10:30 and I get a call from Jocelyn who had just arrived home too. The folding Brompton had been put on a bus to London Bridge and then a train back to Catford. All’s well that ends well.

Thanks to Liz who led the ride.

Very grainy photos as the compact digital camera is pushed to the limit by the fading light.

Ian Pendleton.