The Great English 50-mile Bike Ride
I love biking in England. The scenery is beautiful, the roads are smooth, the temperature is perfect, and the car drivers are used to dealing with bicycles.
Last weekend I had a fantastic 48-miler around Berkshire. If you’ve got Google Maps installed, you can follow the trip here (a version of the map appears at the bottom of this post) also, clicking on any of these photos will open up a larger version from the photo gallery for this trip).
The first couple miles of the trip weren’t very interesting, and there was a lot of fast traffic, but once I got out of Sunninghill and Ascot, I found myself on a very smooth and flat country road. It wasn’t exactly traffic-free, but there weren’t a lot of cars. I saw at least half a dozen other bikers. This was mostly farm country, and both sides of the road had large fields. Cresting a ridge, I could see for miles across the Thames Valley.
I made my first stop in Waltham St Laurence, a picturesque village with a number of interesting old buildings. Spotting two bikers sitting in front of what was advertised as a 14th century pub (photo at top), I stopped for a chat and some water. I got directions out of town, and had a couple more miles of country riding, before getting into the outskirts of Twyford and picking up route 4 of the National Cycle Network in Wargrave. Outside of Wargrave, I soon found myself riding down a series of increasingly narrower lanes.
The road narrowed to a single lane as I crossed a steep ridge near Warren Row. This is what English cycling is all about: I was surrounded by cows and sheep, riding up and down on ancient roads, with nary a soul in sight. The descent down to the Thames was exhilarating, although my enthusiasm was tempered slightly by the knowledge that I’d have to climb back up.
At this point, I’d temporarily stopped following route 4, although I was still on a section of the Round Berkshire cycle route marked as route 58. After sweeping around some huge pastures and very posh estates, the route took a right on a much busier road, the A4130. Stopping to photograph the side of a building and wondering when it was last possible to name something ‘Black Boys Inn’ (apparently, Charles II had an Italian granny), I checked my map and realized I could divert to the Thames. I rode down a short hill, stopped for a moment to watch a thresher, and then continued down to the river.
The Thames Path here isn’t actually supposed to be a bike path, and the gravel was a bit rough for 32cm tires, but I was curious about what the river was like here. I started chatting with a guy on a mountain bike at one of the several gates that we had to open. He was heading to Maidenhead to meet his daughter for lunch. We soon left the river, with me looking for a pub in Hurley for lunch.
The first pub was a bit too posh, and was hosting a wedding party, but The Sun turned out to be just right. I ordered a sandwich at the bar and took my shandy out to the beer garden to wait. My new ended up in Hurley after all, so I ended up eating lunch with him, his daughter, and son-in-law.
Heading back up the hill away from the Thames was the steepest and longest climb of the trip. I shifted to my lowest gear and zig-zagged back and forth across the narrow road. At the top of the hill, the cycle route entered a wooded area, and I had nice fast downhill along some cow pastures until I turned left on an ‘A’ road into Burchetts Green. I planned to leave route 58, which continued to the north around Maidenhead, heading straight south on a restricted byway that I could see on my Ordinance Survey map.
After a short and quiet stretch through the woods, and along back gardens, I crossed another ‘A’ road and found myself in a terminally cute English village called Littlewick Green. The local team was defending its honor on the cricket pitch, which was on a huge green, surrounded by picturesque thatched roof cottages. People in folding chairs wearing Panama hats were sipping Pimms while watching the match. I continued through the town on another byway to the south, soon taking a left to pick up route 4 again into Maidenhead.
Part of the goal of the Cycle Network is to provide long distance routes that avoid traffic as much as possible. The result can be some confusing and almost tortuous paths in urban areas. The run into Maidenhead was very nice, taking quiet country roads and byways, but the section in Maidenhead required a lot of concentration to keep from missing a turn. I stopped briefly at the train station for water and a map consultation, and headed south of town.
I might have missed the turn from the main road onto the narrow path followed by route 4, but some bikers were coming the other way, and I decided to see where they came from. The path quickly led out of town through a wooded area, bordered by a sewage treatment plant and a large section of garden allotments. I had to dismount to go through a metal barrier, apparently meant to keep motorcycles and horses from using the path. I soon found myself in a very English-feeling town called Bray, which also had a cricket match in progress.
South of Bray I crossed to a place called Monkey Island, rode down some roads and a byway, and then down a gravel path until the cycle route crossed the Thames on its own bridge. I quickly found myself in Dorney Lake Park, which surrounded Eton College’s huge rowing lake. The trail through the park was entirely grass, like an English horse racing track. At first, there was a sort of dirt rut down the center of the path, but that disappeared, and for about a half mile, the bike route went across turf. That was odd, but I guess it was fitting with the aesthetics of the park.
Leaving the park, I soon became lost in the maze of trails between the Thames and Slough. Not lost, exactly, but I’d lost the cycle route, and ended up back on the Thames Path. I finally found my way back to the bike route, and went down a lovely tree-lined private lane, eventually coming out in a marshy area behind Eton. I rode down the Eton high street and crossed the foot bridge to Windsor and decided that instead of following the complex path of the cycle path through Windsor, and doing a steep climb on gravel, I’d follow the road instead.
The A332 out of Windsor through the Great Park is a busy road, and I felt pressure to keep a good tempo. It was the second time I had to climb from the level of the Thames up to the top of a ridge, and by now, I was starting to feel the pain. After about a mile of heaving climbing, I made it to a gateway into the Great Park. At this point, the climb got even steeper, but at least there were very few cars and I could take it at my own pace. Outside of the Village, I stopped to rest, and check out my map. I decided that if I continued on to the Duke’s Gate, went across Cheapside and into Ascot alongside the race track, where the Queen makes her big entrance, I could avoid the worst of the hills.
I finally made it home at about 6:30 PM. My trip started at noon, and according to my GPS, I covered 47.56 miles at an average speed of 6.3 mph.