Destination Unknown

I love bank holiday weekends, especially when they’re dry. Easter is particularly pleasant because it has 2 extra days which might be dry. This year, Monday turned out nice, and I very predictably went riding.

We meandered down into Surrey, inched past Chessington with our elbows and pegs tucked in, picked up speed past Leatherhead and down through Headley, avoiding the inevitable cyclists who think since the Olympics they own every single road in the Box Hill area.  Then we debated lunch venues, and Lynn remembered a pub off the A29 with good coffee (always a concern), so we circled around onto the A25 towards Dorking. Meandering further down the A24, I was watching for the diversion at Beare Green, where the A29 is shut off at the moment.  The pub’s website said to go down the marked diversion to the circle at Clark’s Green, do a U-turn there and then take the first left, labelled Ockley.

I, however, do not have a satnav, didn’t know the pub, and therefore was not leading. So we looped the Beare Green roundabout twice, before following the diversion to Clark’s Green roundabout and from there continued blithely on the A24. 

Well, I continued less than blithely, cursing the lack of bike-to-bike at the moment.  Eventually, at Kingsfold, I managed to signal a halt in order to ask why we were going the ridiculous way round and what the hell was the satnav thinking?

It seemed pointless to turn around or change plans – the only pub nearby is overpriced and has precisely nothing on the menu I can eat – so we continued on. Marches Road and picked up the A29 far lower down than necessary. But Marches Rd is pretty and in farily smooth condition, and the A398 has always been a fun road if you bear your speed in mind (in spring and summer, the leaves obscure the cameras).

We rejoined the B2126 (the Ockley Rd we could have taken if we’d followed the original directions from Clark’s Green) and got the Parrot Inn at Forest Green at 2pm. Luckily they aren’t very strict about what constitutes lunch-time, and while they don’t bother to label the veggie options on their menu, those options are very much present. And very tasty.

As the afternoon was pleasantly mild and sunny, we wandered further up the B2126 (nicely twisty and woody, but a few more potholes than strictly required) to rejoin the A25 at Abinger Hammer, opposite the (amnesiac) tea rooms, to complete the loop back to the roads we know so well.