Meet: 08:30Liverpool Street Station ticket office map for the 08:58 train to Audley End

Distance: 45 miles

Phone: Ian - 07 986 872 205

The ride leaves Saffron Walden and follows the River Cam into Cambridge before looping back along quiet lanes to Saffron Walden.

Depending on the pace of the ride it may be possible tto spend some time in Cambridge.

Pub lunch.

Suitable for any bike.

Report

Nine of us met at Liverpool Street for the Audley End train, ride leader Ian, Anthony, Cathy, Colin, Jane, KE, Phil, Robert and myself (Nick). There was a slight delay, as there was no driver – just as well, I thought, as I might have missed it due to another train. I’d intended to get the Thameslink from Cricklewood to Blackfriars then have a gentle five-minute meander through the City, but that was cancelled, which involved a mad dash down through London on major roads, luckily most of them deserted before nine on a Saturday.

The ride out of Audley End took us alongside fields over which there was a fine mist, and it was all very gothic and atmospheric. We passed a wood where there were deer, apparently, though I didn’t see them – my view of the fine mist was heightened by not very clean sunglasses. A puncture outside a church in Whittlesford gave me an opportunity to give them a wash. I wondered if the vicar put tacks on the road to get people to stop there, but we avoided going in. It was Ian who punctured, but one of the people on the ride topped up the air in his tyres with a new kind of pump which works by pulling a rubber rope in and out of a box. It looked efficient, if a bit noisy; it looked new-fangled, but sort of Victorian as well.

We made a stop at a pub called the Square and Compass in Great Shelford on the road to Cambridge. A fair complement of locals were at their pints already, but we all went for the excellent cappuccino and coffee – not always great in pubs, but this really hit the spot. I spoiled this air of continental sophistication by having pork scratchings as well, but hey, they didn’t have any croissants.

Cambridge always has a very good atmosphere, full of shoppers and students and people who really can’t just stay home on a cold Saturday. As ever, it was great to see so many bikes. We weren’t the only ones still cycling through the crowded shopping precinct. There were some 12-year old boys on BMXs, too. Mostly it was cranky old bikes, but they do the job, and we were the ones who looked odd. Amazingly, Ian met a cranky old biker he had seen on a ride miles away in Chichester a few weeks before – small world, especially in a place teeming with bikes. I thought once we got out of Cambridge we’d discover that we’d picked up another couple of cyclists by mistake…

We were a bit early for lunch in Cambridge, and went for the potentially disastrous ‘stop at the next village pub’ option. No worries, though, and we went on to Grantchester, which didn’t seem to have any shops, but had at least 4 pubs. Grantchester is a writerly type place, having associations with those greats of modern literature poet Rupert ‘Babbling’ Brooke and, um, Jeffrey Archer. Grantchester Grind is also satirist Tom Sharpe’s second novel featuring his character Skullion (from Porterhouse Blue). We didn’t stop in the Rupert Brooke pub (and there was thankfully no Archer and Tart) but opted instead for the Green Man, which had a long long garden, already dotted with several bicycles. At first we were the only ones sitting out there, but the sunshine brought more people out. Very decent food, at very cheap prices. Grantchester is conventionally picturesque – I wonder if the lack of shops made it so – and the whole area has potential for stopping off, with stately homes here and there, and (so Anthony reminded me) an American war cemetery not far away. However, that might be one for a summer ride – we needed to keep pedalling today.

Plenty of other cyclists around, including one guy on a Trek roadie with Look pedals who was on our route for maybe an hour in the afternoon. A few of us seemed to be having a secret game with him, every now and then overtaking him as if to bring him back into our group – it just looked that way, honest. He must have been so relieved when we stopped for a roadside faff to put on/take off layers.

The weather was typically Octoberish, sunny but cold; layers were coming off and going on all day. Accordingly, we kept up a very good speed just to stay warm, and by about three o’clock we felt we’d been successful; a few people were by then in short sleeves. We hit hardly any traffic all day long, and the terrain was largely flat, with only a couple of minor hills. The ride did exactly what it said on the packet, and I’d clocked up 45 miles excluding my morning mad dash time. It was a great route at just the right pace, and I think we all had a great day out.

Nick Sweeney

Note: The route took us in an anti clockwise loop from Audley End Station through Littlebury, Ickleton, Duxford, Whittlesford, Little Shelford, Great Shelford, Cambridge, Granchester, Barton, Haslingfield, Barrington, Shepreth, Fowlmere, Littlebury Green and back to the station at Audeley End in Wenders Ambo