This ride didn't have the most auspicious start ...

A (former!) member of the London Cycling Meetup Group offered a lead a ride through Hatfield, Hainault and Epping Forests. It sounded like a nice route, so I said sure and duly scheduled it.

Said anonymous person began the day by asking someone to buy four train tickets instead of one, then when his mistake became apparent, completely failed to apologise for it, let alone offer to make amends.

Cyclists generally have a relaxed approach to route-finding. As long as we're heading in the right direction and are on nice roads, that's good enough. Our anonymous friend had other ideas, and kept stopping every 500 metres to check his map. This wouldn't have been quite so bad but for the fact that he had the map-reading skills of a legally-blind lemming (two of the U-turns were sufficiently lengthy blind-alleys to show up on the Google Earth track above!). Exhausted by all this work, he then proposed a lunch-break just 7 miles into a 40-mile ride. He eventually threw a strop and stomped off home on his own, much to my relief.

Aside from that, though, it was a delightful day. Otherwise great company, delicious roads and absolutely stunning weather.

Eight of us took a train from Liverpool Street to Sawbridgeworth, where Paul & Anne, two friends who live there, joined us. It was pretty much all country lanes, with just the very occasional stretch of B-road.

(If you're wondering why all the photos are b&w, I hardly ever use my pocket camera these days and hadn't noticed that the colour style dial was on b&w.)

Paul & Anne, who don't do much cycling, snuck off for their own pub lunch 10 miles into the ride. The rest of us waited until 22 miles in, at Fyfield.

This was a pub I'd discovered a month or two ago while failing to find a different pub. :-) It had been a happy accident, as the pub I did find served much better food. It had a garden with plenty of room for both the bikes and eight hungry cyclists.

Since we were no longer constrained by the original planned route, we took the view that a train station 10 or 12 miles away would make a sensible destination. Rob kindly took over navigation duties, and more lovely roads were ridden.

Our new destination was Ingatstone, a lovely small town with a rail service into London. Except when there's a bus replacement service to Shenfield ...

Rob had reached the edge of his map, so I consulted my GPS and found that Shenfield was less than five miles away. I led us on the final stage of the ride to there (admittedly that also involved a U-turn, but only after 100 metres, honest!).

I was particularly impressed by Jo, who was completely new to cycling (not ridden since she was a kid) and completed the entire ride on a relatively clunky bike. Playing rugby clearly helps with fitness levels!

As always, the trike was slow uphill but fast downhill, and overall averaged out fine with those strange two-wheeled bikes.

My original plan had been to ride home from Ingatstone, but since Shenfield was on my train line, I took the lazy approach and let the train take the strain from there.

Total mileage for the ride from Sawbro to Shenfield was 38.4. My total mileage from home was 42.5.

A group photo will follow.