Date: Sunday 20 April 08
Time: 10:00
Meet point: Avenue Nurseries, Lasham, GU34 5SY. Map, 51.188812N 1.006279W for the techno-junkies. Very easy to find, Avenue road is signposted to Lasham Gliding Club from the western end (A339 Basingstoke - Alton), and the eastern end (B3349 Odiham - Alton) is a crossroads at the Golden Pot pub.
Plan is breakfast (or a coffee for those on a diet) in the garden centre cafe, ride for about an hour to a coffee stop at the very busy biker friendly Loomies cafe at West Meon, and another half hour back to the garden centre where we started for another coffee (can never have too much coffee!).
Lasham to West Meon is 54 miles and there a petrol station next to the cafe at west Meon so it's probably easiest if we aim to have enough fuel at the start for the first leg.
For the Tomtom users if you download this itinerary file (right click and "save link as" rather than just clicking the link) and save it in the itn directory on your tomtom, you should get a route called Carpe-Alton. If you use a different system you should be able to convert the file using ITNconverter. Alternatively for those that rely on more traditional methods the meeting point is about here (though actually south of The Avenue).
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Seeing as yesterdays Berkshire meet managed a pretty good turnout I'm thinking we should arrange another southern meet at some point, and how about doing it with a rideout?
I was thinking Alton Station cafe (biker friendly greasy spoon, not open Sundays though) would make a good meeting point as there's some great rounds around there. As a first stab I've had a quick play on Autoroute and came up with this route which is about 70 miles with a mix roads, starting with breakfast/coffee at the cafe and ending at the Lord Derby pub in Odiham. Leg 4-5 is based on a stretch Cavey said was good from M3-J10 to Corehampton, so please correct me if I've got the wrong bit, I'm using the road that goes through Morestead to Corehampton. Leg 6-8 is just to avoid the A3, I can nip down there for a recce one weekend and see what it's like.
Any suggestions on distance (is that too far, or would longer be better) and other roads? I'm thinking maybe March/April time but don't want to be too close to the East Anglia meet and I'm sure some of you can't get let out 2 weekends running. I know several locals work a fair few weekends so when can the awkward ones manage?
Edited by ChrisG, 13 April 2008 - 08:56 am.
