Due to a mistake (caused by, frankly, my own stupidity) I had to work on the next bank holiday. In recompense I was allowed to have the next day off. Since it was going to be a beautiful day, I was well pleased with this. Since I'd enjoyed the ride out over the Hertfordshire hills so much, but had screwed up so much of the photography, I thought I'd have another run out that way again and try to capture it a little better. Instead of turning east this time though, I'd turn back to the North to return home directly via Biggleswade.
After the epic ride I needed a shorter run, and this was a route I hadn't previously stitched together before. In fact, the last time I tried it was the very first ride on the newly-built Shift. I was far more occupied with mechanical rather route-finding questions, and I ended up getting rather stuck in the dark in a field near Arlesey. Arlesey's not a bad place (and it had a train station to take me home), but it is a bit of a dull commuter strip. More seriously, its name is rather frequently misspelled as Arseley, which never fails to raise a smile.
For both reasons I would be trying to avoid it today, instead attempting to slip through the country tracks to the back of Biggleswade. As the area is covered with a giant wind farm, and the roads are deliberately truncated to stop people using it as a rat-run behind the A1 motorway, this is harder than it looks. I thought I found a viable route, though, and was keen to check it out.
First stage exactly followed the beginning of the four-county extravaganza. The conditions were, if anything, ever better.
This lovely track runs out of Potton between the Biggleswade road and the John of Gaunt golfcourse.
Apologies for the repeated photos here: I made a conscious effort not to photograph the same damned thing, but there are always things that draw the eye. On the plus side this is a significantly better shot.
If anything the route was better going a couple of days later, but I was still pretty fatigued from my long ride to Essex (and more profoundly from a four hour presentation for work the previous day. Seriously guys, was that necessary?) and was going really slowly - it took the best part of an hour to cover the less than 20km into Ashwell.
I was pretty happy with the easy-going pace, though, and kept it up climbing up the hill up to the ancient fort.
Finally, when I got to the Cat Ditch, my route diverged. Instead of heading back to the road to Bygrave, I would continue off road all the way into the Ivel valley containing the A1(M) motorway and the East Coast rail line. This turned out to be a terrific route, a great-surfaced scenic ride along the high ridge with views down to the big conurbations of Baldock, Letchworth and Stevenage. And I had it all to myself.
Down in the vale below is Baldock, the original medieval market town of the region (and now the smaller town). Fun fact: Baldock was set up by the Knights Templar, and its name derives from "Baghdad". No, really! In medieval times, Baghdad was famous as the most prosperous market in the world - so the Templars named their new town after it in the hope it would similarly prosper.
Letchworth Garden City, and extensive light industry surrounding. Letchworth was the very first planned town of the "Garden Cities" movement, and was constructed from scratch in the 1910s. Such planned towns are relatively rare in England, and are frequently the subject of horror (cf. Stevenage) or derision (e.g. Milton Keynes). But Letchworth really works: it has wide boulevards and art deco architecture, and I actually prefer going there to shop than Cambridge (which is typically mad with tourists).
After a fun descent, I popped out on the back road which runs out of Baldock. This is a bastard of a road at most times, and I avoid cycling even a kilometer on it - but I could immediately dive off it and down the old mill road (and currently it's pretty quiet anyway).
Popping out on what used to be the Great North Road, before the modern A1 half a kilometer West was built. This doesn't stop this usually being a fast and busy road. The farm references the river Ivel, which runs north here up the vale through Biggleswade and Sandy.
And here's the old mill, at Norton Mill on the river Ivel. It's now a really fancy house - downside is you need to live right next to the motorway, though
I crossed under the motorway, and quickly picked up the well signed "green wheel" route out of Letchworth towards Stotfold. The "green wheels" are generally attempts to create a ring of footpaths and cycleways around larger towns. Generally these are a good thing, although they do tend to lose any vestige of wilderness so aren't necessarily the most attractive route for my kind of wanderings. They will get you around towns and avoid roads, though, so this was a good way to get to Stotfold, the first town over the border back in Bedfordshire.
Onto the cycleway, part of the Letchworth "green wheel".
I rather screwed up on the approach to Stotfold, and instead of taking the underpass decided to just cycle around the huge roundabout on the bypass of the main Ampthill road. In the event it was fine: I haven't cycled with traffic like that for a while, so it was even a bit of an adrenaline rush to go toe-to-toe with the cars doing 30-40 mph on the roundabout. The drivers were good (as they nearly always are at big junctions, if you act like a car yourself and indicate like crazy by sticking your arm out).
I cut right through the middle of Stotfold, which is not a huge place. Unlike many places in Bedfordshire, this is close enough to big towns of Hertfordshire to be mostly a commuter bedroom community, so while it's nice enough it's not the most exciting place.
A typical "chippy" (fish and chips shop). Many villages and every town will have one. Closed, as most of them are during the pandemic.
After Stotfold I cut north across country on well-signed green wheel-style cycleways. The route was jammed with people out for their constitutional, and I started to feel a bit concerned I was getting to close to too many people. Fortunately it thinned out as I got further from Stotfold. I managed to overshoot, came out near Astwick, and after ascertaining that I couldn't in some way hack my way to the north, doubled back and found the (mercifully much quieter) route over the hills towards the broad vale containing Biggleswade.
Quite a quiet stretch of the path leading out of Stotfold
The prominent water tower at Edworth, a landmark I drive past every day on my way to work in Stevenage. I know winter is over when it's light enough to see the thing on my drive home at 6pm or so.
I pulled over the rolling hills, and the broad vale in front of Biggleswade dotted with the impressive wind turbines slowly unfurled. I passed just one other guy, cycling with his young son out over the hills. I picked my way down into the vale, finding that I could relatively easily get out into the network of paths before Biggleswade that I knew reasonably well. The sun was intense and the wind turbines looked quite huge and impressively alien.
Crops in the middle of picking outside Biggleswade - the big new warehouses alongside the A1 are visible in the background. I wondered if they couldn't get enough pickers in during the pandemic. Typically very many pickers and agricultural workers would come over in season from the EU: *something or other* has messed that right up, and what with the virus too now crops are rotting in the fields.
I crossed under the A1 and was immediately in the suburbs of Biggleswade. It's a small town, and I passed through its whole length north-to-south rather quickly, leaving the town via Biggleswade common.
Crossing under the A1 the change from farmland to suburbs is stark
Mosaics along the rail bridge in the centre of Biggleswade. Now something of a commuter town, Biggleswade has a long and rather curious history of vehicle manufacture. Dan Albone was apparently the inventor of the first commercially successful light farm tractor, but more relevantly for this journal also invented one of the first safety bicycles, the Ivel Safety bicycle, in 1886.
On the other side are mosaics depicting Biggleswade's very own highwayman of the Great North Road, Shock Oliver. Like a lot of these highwaymen, a kind of Robin Hood mythology has sprung around them. Shock Oliver was meant to have only stolen from the rich, and to have let a Doctor McGrath pass unmolested when he had to go and see a seriously ill patient in Sandy. Whatever the reality, the historical Shock Oliver was hanged in Hertford in 1800.
I was glad to get out onto the common and the always pretty run across to the Greensand ridge, climbing up through the RSPB reserve back onto Potton heath.
Climbing the short but punishing hill through the RSPB nature reserve. The RSPB exists to promote ornithology and protect wild birds - apparently by some measures it is the richest charity in the country.
