Essex and East London

First velocio start time is 1000 at Paddock Wood community centre. Coffee and cakes from 0930. The timed section finishes in Marden, while the total length back to the campsite is 30km. Gpx to get you to the start is attached. Turn by turn route sheets to the start will be available in the marquee.

Link to ride to start of Treasure hunt.

We have had two brilliant evenings, firstly great thanks to Lucy for a brilliant and unusual quiz. The BBQ went very well, the weather was perfect and band were excellent. The ice cream arrived at exactly the right time. There was a lot of running around yesterday to make it all happen. Tim and Vicky made two round trips to Crawley to pick up the BBQ equipment, Pauline and Cliff went to Folkestone to pick up two kegs of beer and Jim and Kate had to go and pick up so more wine. So great thanks to them all as it was greatly appreciated. Also thanks to Dave Ferguson for being press ganged into lighting and tending to the BBQ. Without his help it would have been very chaotic. It looks like grey clouds this morning, but no actual rain forecast. This afternoon will be much brighter and getting quite warm for the evening. Today, find your way to the community centre at Paddock Wood for Tea/coffee and a cake. Don’t forget your vouchers. The route is in the rides list the bottom or there are route sheets in the Marquee. The tea and coffee will be in a Gazebo but we can go inside the community centre until 11:00 if it is a bit cold outside. There will the Try a Tandem event on at the same time, so, hopefully, there will be others around the field so lock up your bikes. Russel and Rachel will be handing out the Treasure Hunt sheets and recording your start time. Tim’s clues can be quite intriguing so it will be an interesting challenge. Tim and Vicky will be at the end in Marden to record your time. There are two pubs and a cafe at Marden for lunch or you cycle to Balfour Winery for a platter and some wine tasting, expensive but very nice if it sunny. The afternoon is your own, You can easily get to Scotney Castle or Bedgebury Pinetum for a pleasant visit. The bar will open at 17:30 so you can have something with your fish and chips. Collect you fish and chips from the van by reception. The talk tonight, 19:30, is by John and Kate Bosley about the trials and tribulations of their tour around France. It will be proceeded by the Treasure hunt results and grand prize giving.

That was a really pleasant coffee stop yesterday organised by Lucy. The Try a Tandem was less successful despite Lucy’s great efforts in distributing many flyers. We will have to rethink that format. What a brilliant treasure hunt organised and supervised by Tim and Vicky and marshalled by Russel and Rachel. Congratulations to Andy and Christine for winning the trophy. Weather today looks good with it becoming very warm and Sunny this afternoon. There is no suggested ride direction today so just pick one you haven’t done or visit one of the many attractions. The bar opens tonight at 18:30, followed by the traditional Barn Dance at 19:00.

Hi, someone took our washing out of the machine yesterday and we now can't find a couple of socks, if you have them could we have them back on pitch 64 please? We're getting especially low on toddler socks! Thanks Emma

I have added a gallery on the Tandem Club website where pictures can be added to which I have added mine already that tells the story of the week. If you do upload, naming them is grand as in the future they can be identified easily and if you can get the word Tandem in there somewhere that helps the search engines get the club closer to the top of searches. https://tandem-club.org.uk/showcase?cmd=view&group=&id=153

I know life is busy (I've been locumming this week) but if you have time and pictures, can you add them to the revant ride on the website. It's reasonably easy, just drag and drop or choose file. A description is really helpful. I've done NE Medium and it looks great

Just a note of thanks to everybody who attended TCN2025 at Tanners Park Farm. It is quite a task to organise a rally, as many of you know, but it was great to see everyone enjoying themselves for a whole week. The site staff would really appreciate it if you could post a review on Trip advisor. Also, if you have any photographs of tandems around the campsite, please could you send them to Natalie at kentcampsite@gmail.com so they can post them on their website. Thank you all for making a successful rally.

Please see the details of the next ride from John & Pat The June ride will start from the Winnersh Garden Centre RG41 5HG at 10.30 am the Centre Cafe is open from 10.00am . Please park away from the main area by the buildings so as not to get in the way of the other visitors. They will close at 4.30pm but the cafe will close at 4.00pm We will have a mainly flat route with a couple of short hills, there is intended to be a short part on a Bridleway but this depends on the weather the days before the ride as to the state of the paths. The total ride will be 21 miles 17 to the pub and 4 back to the Garden Centre. Lunch will be at The Wheelwrights Arms Davis Street Hurst RG10 0TR and menu is enclosed, they will require a deposit of £5 per person which we will put up if everyone would reimburse me with cash on the day this will be fine. We have had a Sunday Roast with them as a trial and were impressed. https://www.thewheelwrightsarms.co.uk/menu They do charge a discretionary Service charge of 10% so watch for this on your bill if you do not wish to pay that amount. They would like to have menu choices and numbers by 17th June 2025 please. for those looking at beers...... its a Wadsworth Pub with a large choice. Please email us at goshjohn@live.co.uk to let us know you can join us. Many thanks John and Pat Saunders

Some re-organisation of the website is on-going, some things may have moved ...

July ride cancelled

There will be a ride on 12 July from South Ferriby. Starting from the seat on High Street, just after the Right Turn of Sluice Road. Coordinates. 53.6760807, -0.5050948. Down to rigg and back round, via Elsham Hall, Brigg, Appleby and Winterton. Start 1030 AM. Best Wishes Peter and Lynn

Have you the date correct? Because I do not have a Time Machine so posting that there is a ride at 18:02 on the 12th July with the ride starting at 10:30 on the 12th July is impossible. I think you must have the date wrong??

If I am buying maps to cover the Rally do I need ANWB 21,22 or 23 ?

Map Achterhoek nr. 10 (Falk) covers most of the area.

That may depend on whether you're planning to do the short rides or the long ones. But the route info for all the rides is now available from the website, so you can download that and see where the rides go.

I can't download the GPS routes. Can anyone advise me please?

Belay that, just done it I think.

Hi, are we able to edit the route sheets like last year? I tried last year's method to'download as editable file' but not work. I edit them so the typeis bigger (!) and over less pages to carry/print.

Yes, I am trying by copying and pasting but it's tedious!

Hi Bart who did the routes has uploaded 2 PDF files to the routes. One of these is from Komoot which is in the editable section. Therefore these can't be edited to enlarge the print I'm afraid. The route sheets from omoot are computer generated not done fresh from the rides. I hope that helps Neil

If Bart could make the routes stored on Komoot 'Public' -- the one I tried to look at (Sun Short) was 'Private' -- then we could go to the Komoot site and get the instructions from there, and presumably we could take the text and rearrange it into whatever format we like.

Your other option is to take the GPX and run it through the program of your choice as many produce route shetts, RidewithGPS for example. There is a problem with these route sheets though that they are generated by what the program thinks are road junctions, this will apply to Komoot as well I expect

I'm pretty sure you'll have to pay to access the Komoot route sheets

If it helps, through our membership of AudaxUK, I can import files into the posh version of RidewithGPS and use the Trace tool to create cue sheets, though they need checking. Happy to share these with anyone..

Yes, that would be great. I’d just started the slow process of importing the routes into the free version.

Yes, can produce Excel route sheet as shown for you to turn into your favourite style.

Hi Sheila. This would be a fabulous thing to do. If you can do this for all the routes and send them to me, I can make them available. This in turn will save duplication of effort. The disclaimer is that these aren't as good as route sheets produced by a person as the program guesses at the turns, but they give a guide

Further to Pat and Mike's kind reply I am planning short rides so which ANWB would cover 21, 22, 23 or all three ?

Neil, will do the route sheets asap. Should be able to let you have them by mid-week or so. Members do need to be aware that they are auto-traced and may have inaccuracies. I shall check some but not the long ones!