Don't worry, nobody was harmed. But today's planned jolly ride to Farnborough accidentally developed a rather macabre character, at least in the morning, as you will see.
A happy bunch of riders turned up quite early at Addlestone for 11s, and surprisingly everyone was itching to go a bit before 11am, so after the usual faffing, we got away more or less on time, leaving Geoff to make his own way back. My route was made up from ideas stolen from David W, Graham and Diane, but everyone seemed to like the ride along the Basingstoke canal in dappled sunlight.
This is when the trouble began. We passed Woking Crematorium, identified by DW as the site of the world's first crematorium, and later visited Brookwood Cemetery, the worlds first lawn cemetery, stopping to pay our respects and also use the conveniences in the chapel. There is a civilian cemetery, conceived by the London Necropolis Corporation as the solution to the lack of burial space in the capital. It even had its own dedicated* station, the London Necropolis station, right next to Waterloo station, but later damaged and demolished in WW2. Trains had different carriages for 1st, 2nd, 3rd class and Hearse Carriages for the deceased, also with different classes. I imagine that you could only get a single ticket for the Hearse Carriages.
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| London Necropolis Station |
After touring the civilian cemetery, we visited the military cemetery with extensive graves for several nationalities from both world wars, before returning to the road to Mytchett and Farnborough.
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| Military Cemetery |
The hungry riders were made to climb a bonus hill in order to view the impressive Mausoleum of the emperor Napoleon III Bonaparte, last emperor of France before his exile to England, his wife Empress Eugenie who built the monument, and their son Napoleon Louis, who was tragically killed fighting in the Boer War, where he was supposed to be assigned to a 'safe' role. The mausoleum, also known as St Michael's Abbey, still functions as a Benedictine monastery, and not many people will be interested to know that it houses an organ by the famous French organ builder Cavaillé-Coll, who built many famous Franch organs including that of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and whose organs were admired by the famous French composers Cesar Franck and Charles-Marie Widor. At least one person will be interested to know that he (Cavaillé-Coll) was born in Montpellier.
But I digress. The abbey is only open to visitors on Saturdays, so we had to have lunch in Wetherspoons instead.
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| Part of St Michael's Abbey |
Graham had left us after riding along the canal with us, and David left at the sight of Wetherspoons, having claimed his two points. Thank you David for providing not just a large part of the route, but also much of the morbid and interesting cultural content of the ride.
The morning was mostly ridden in shade, but the afternoon started in full sun as we climbed the hill at Deepcut to admire the distant views of Woking, looking beautiful through the haze. Someone (Tony?) thought he spotted the Eiffel Tower as well. Then it was downhill nearly all the way through Windlesham and Longcross, anxiously looking at watches, to try to arrive before the (unknown) closing time at the Great Cockrow Railway. In our haste to get there, we passed Colin Q coming the other way, having visited Cockrow but given up all hope of seeing us. I'm sorry we missed you, Colin! You could say we were dead lucky to get there just in time to bag the last of the cakes, and sit in the shade watching the trains and waving at their young and not so young passengers as we put the world to rights.
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| At Great Cockrow (train in background) |
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| Who ate all the cakes? |
It was a very enjoyable day out in summery weather and good company who took my improvisations (i.e. mistakes) in good spirit. Thank you to the many people whose routes I plundered, to Jennie for back-marking, and to David W, Niall, Andy, and Ruth for the photos.
* or should that be deadicated?
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