Adventures in the Hascombe hills - March 22nd

I promised a few hills, but we got hills with knobs on.   It felt like hills with hills on.

My intentions were good, to ride the lovely Thorncombe Street and see the horses head sculptures.    But the only horses heads we saw were extremely lifelike, as they were attached to real horses.  Beautiful scenery, but no sculptures.   Instead, my route followed a different bit of Thorncombe Street, down a lovely valley - at first - then up some fierce hills.   Still beautiful, but lacking in the horses head department.  Luckily we had strong group of riders, and I couldn't quite hear what they were saying when they saw the big hills for the first time.  

Full of the joys of spring

It started with a long climb up to elevenses at West Horsley Place, a new venue for us.   It's a manor house open to the public and operatic centre, with a bus collection, although we didn't see any of that.  We sat in the sunshine as more and more riders rolled in - twelve in all.   Diane, Niall and Terry weren't coming on the ride (lucky them) and we left them having an extended elevenses chat, before Diane and Niall headed down to Ripley for more sustenance and chat.

We went up and over to Shere, up again to Farley Green, a bit more up and then down to Shamley Green, Wonersh and Bramley.   Then it was up Snowdenham lane to arrive at the start of Thorncombe Street.   If you haven't been, you really should, it's beautiful.  The scenery reminded me of the Windows XP desktop picture, only better.

No horses

At the village of Thorncombe Street we took the right turn into Thorncombe Street, rather than the left turn, which is called Thorncombe Street.  It was all lovely, until we got near Hascombe and turned right to Mare Lane  (what is it about horses around there?).   It was a 'mare of a hill, but it led to some very pretty woods; Hydon Heath and Busbridge Woods.   A short step from there to the Jack Phillips for lunch.      

What a lovely hill!

Are we nearly there yet?

Since our recent Wayfarers ride to Godalming I have a considerable knowledge about Jack Phillips, the radio operator on the Titanic.  I tried to interest the group in an educational discussion about Jack Phillips, but they were not that interested, so I made them go and look at his memorial stone in Farncombe.   You can find out more in the wonderfully-named Encyclopedia Titanica.   Afterwards we rode over the hill at Littleton to Guildford, where Brenda left us, and the rest of us headed to Ripley for tea.  We were disappointed to find that Diane and Niall had already left without waiting for us, but on the plus side, Pinnocks was still open at 4pm and we had tea and cake (and what a cake!) outside in the sunshine.

Thank you to all of you for venturing to East Horsley and to those of you who came on the ride, I hope your legs stop hurting soon.   Thanks also to Alan for back marking and encouragement to the hill climbers, and Andy for photos.

Spring is in the air!