Pick a place with a silly name. Ride there. Why not?

The bike was down to the reserve as I pulled into the garage after work on Friday night, and with a bit of fine weather this morning a fill up, collecting the sunday papers at the same time, and then a mornings ride seemed like the right thing to do.

I fancied a bit of speedy riding on good roads, then some twisties, so had a look at the map and found a place with a suitably sniggerable name (Helions Bumpstead) that I could work into such a route.


View test in a larger map

The first bit leaves from Morissons petrol station and heads at legal speeds, honest officer, along the lovely new A428, devoid of all traffic and with no speed cameras on it :). This helps warm up the bike and the tires, and blow the cobwebs out of my head. After a stretch on the A14 which gets a bit busier around Cambridge, I hopped onto the Bottisham road, which runs parallel with the A14 but is empty and has some nice sweeping bends on it as well as some long straights. From there it's doubling back slightly onto another long straight road through Six Mile Bottom (snigger) and onto the A11 for a couple of junctions which allows for "progress to be made".

Left turn towards Linton takes me onto another road with nice sweeping bends, and bits of dual carraigeway to get past the slow lorries. This goes all the way to Haverhill, avoiding it, which is always a good thing :p.

With hindsight I should have turned right towards Steeple Bumpstead one junction later allowing for three snigger-worthy names en-route but turned to Helions Bumpstead instead. This was a twisty windy road with bits missing out of it and evidence of horses (or someone randomly carrying buckets of horse-muck and dumping it on the road) so gently does it all the way.

Then a right turn to Castle Camps and a nice ride through the countryside to Bartlow, and back onto the Linton road. By this time the munchies were setting in so I took the fast route home down the A505 and M11, again making good progress.

A celebratory pork pie called to me from the fridge once the bike was safely put to bed in the garage, so I attended to the aforesaid pie immediately.

In total that's 80 miles so approx half the tank of petrol I just put in it this morning.