Hatfield to Cambridge - Again

So today I ended up doing another Cambridge ride - I’ve pencilled this route in for a London Brompton Club ride in September so I thought I’d give it another run through to ensure that I know where I’m going and to make sure the route is fine.

No pictures from the ride - I think I’m becoming guilty of jumping on the bike and just going again, it seems like I need to do a few more social rides to exorcise that from the system!

I completed the route this time on my S type, rather than the P type. This route should be doable on a three or six speed Brompton easily enough, though the first half may cause issues for a one or two speed as it has a few inclines - nothing to major but perhaps enough get out of breath on. The end, from about Royston, is fairly flat and allows for riders to get up to a good speed (if the wind isn’t in the wrong direction like it was today!)

The big fear I had was that there was perhaps not enough places to stop - some of the route is quite desolate. However, doing the route again, there seems to be plenty of places to stop so that shouldn’t be an issue, with plenty of places prior to Baldock (with then nothing really until Royston). Timing is my main concern - I did the route in four hours, I’m not sure what the club is likely to do it in - maybe seven hours including a break for lunch? We did the London to Gatwick ride in 4 hours and 47 minutes (which didn’t include the lunch as I turned off my Garmin), so we might be six hours I guess?

Either way, the route looks like it should be fine - the section on the A10 is probably the worst part but I can’t see a way around that. There is a path alongside the road but it doesn’t lead to the junction we’d need to use and we would need to rejoin the carriageway to use the junction anyhow.

This ride marks 65% of my yearly target for cycling (2,500Km) and we’re only 55% of the year complete. This leaves 879Km to go. However, I’d like to break the back of this before the end of August as then the bad weather may set in. Next weekend sees me probably undertake a ride from London to Brighton with the guys from work - based on the LBC ride from Richmond to Brighton the other day, that should knock another 10% off the target. I’m also considering doing the Devon Coast to Coast when I go home for a holiday in August if I can sort out transport plans etc - getting back home from Plymouth might be a pain so I might look at doing it in reverse and get home from Ilfracombe as that’s easier to get back from. I think I’ve got a route somewhere, so I’ll look into doing that. Does mean that perhaps I might have to look into getting some more kit for the bike. Though there was talk of taking my sister hiking over Dartmoor that week so I need to figure out what’s happening.