Another great ride from Caroline.

Most of us met at Vesuvio’s for coffee and a chat. A new ride starting point (but not a new café as it’s a Wheelers’ favourite and our regular haunt, especially right after our monthly free repair workshop).

Through Ropemakers’ Field via the canal from Limehouse, we skirted Mile End and Victoria Parks, to the ride’s Hackney meeting point in London Fields. Via Hackney Downs to Clissold Park, where we admired parts of the New River, a ‘modern’ aqueduct bringing water from Ware in Hertfordshire to Sadler’s Wells. The New River being 400 years old, modern is relative to Roman aqueducts.

A short distance to Finsbury Park for another café stop and from there onto the Parkland Walk, a walking and cycling path to Highgate along what was an old railway line. Then a short distance on road to the Parkland Walk continuation, which boasts one of the greatest views of London. Not many know of it, so it has a certain intimacy and privacy the big hill viewpoints don’t (e.g: Ally Pally, Parliament, Primrose, Crystal Palace etc.)

To Muswell Hill Park, which merges with Alexandra Palace grounds, to Priory Park where there is what was a huge fountain of 50 tons of Cornish granite, originally in St Paul’s Cathedral churchyard, and now full of plants.

After Downhills Park, with its Gaelic football pitch, we rode on to the Lee Valley Park to the next café stop in Markfield Park, sited on former sludge tanks of a sewage treatment works. The handsome building nearby containing a restored beam engine.

Along the river Lea and up the hill to Springfield Park and, after riding along the Lea for twenty minutes in the rain, we arrived at the Olympic Park where the sun was shining off the wet ground. We stopped at the Timber Lodge for a while, then continued to Victoria Park and Mile End Park.

Such a good route, with one third off the roads, it meant we could easily chat and be sociable, which is a large part of what the Wheelers are about.