It was as expected, a cold mid-winter start to the day where some 20 riders assembled at the Red Square in Cambridge all eager to ride ‘somewhere’ for our ‘riders choice’.
Sir Secretary, Ian and I put some ride plan suggestions into a blender followed by a quick call to the Salmon Ponds café and finally cooked up a ride with a few extra twists and turns, even more surprising, it appears that all riders kept up to the sensible ride leader 😊
We headed out onto Kennedy Drive and rode via the new Cambridge by-pass onto Richmond Road, Malcom’s Hut Road, Back Tea Tree, Brighton by-pass and through Bridgewater to Boyer Road. A left turn over the bridge at New Norfolk took us up Glenora Road to the Salmon Ponds and in to the dense fog and barely 2 degrees at the Salmon Ponds. There was a little hesitation by the manager as to if and how he would serve coffee to the 20 odd bods but we were victorious with a few suggestions from the riders.
As depicted from the photo, it looked more like a scene out of a wild western shoot out appearing quite eerie through the dense fog. Some riders turned back for home, some turned right over Macquarie Plains for home including a couple of cheeky chaps who decided this would be their only way to take a short-cut and arrive before me at Bothwell. This brought our main group of ten on to Ellendale, over Lake Meadowbank – lovely scene as usual, through Hamilton and Hollow Tree to Bothwell. We were fortunate that the sun finally found us at Bushy Park and climbed to a steady 8 degrees, some welcome improvement.
There was a happy chatty group at Bothwell and following the usual social catch-ups, we all rode down to Melton Mowbray with half turning left headed up to Jericho and back down the Mud Walls Road to Richmond and the other group turning right down the Heritage Highway to Pontville and on to Wicked Cheese (of course) via Middle Tea Tree road. It was a quite balmy 11 degrees as we had our final hot drinks and tall stories before heading our individual routes home.
