When people ask where the Windmill Club is based, there isn’t really a simple answer. With members scattered over a wide rural area we don’t so much have a home base as a home patch straddling the Cambridgeshire / Hertfordshire / Essex borders and roughly bounded by Royston, Baldock, Stevenage, Bishops Stortford and Saffron Walden. But now it seems a name has been given to this particular neck of the woods – The Barleywolds.
I can find no mention of the name in the historical records but there is a newish website – barleywolds.com – making the case for this “. . . area of wolds (gently-rolling hills) and 60 villages, about 30 miles north of London, between Royston, Stevenage and Bishop’s Stortford, on the border of Hertfordshire, Essex and Cambridgeshire”.
While Barleywolds has a certain ring to it, academic opinion would seem to favour The Hundred Parishes, so named by David Heathcote, Saffron Walden historian and author who coined that name in 2009, as defining “a large, attractive, gently-undulating area, around 450 square miles, of northwest Essex, northeast Hertfordshire and southern Cambridgeshire that is largely unspoilt and is richly endowed with many fine examples of agricultural and built heritage.” Indeed, two years ago the Windmillers enjoyed a presentation from the Hundred Parishes Society.
Whatever the name, this was the area Keith chose for Thursday’s outing. Setting out from The Black Horse, Brent Pelham, he led the way along quiet roads and the occasional bumpy track to Ermine’s Café, Thundridge, a new (to us) venue and, given the high standard of refreshments on offer, we are likely to return in the not too distant future.
Thanks go to Keith for planning the outing and getting us all organised.
For the record our peloton comprised: Alan, Brian, Geoff, Graham, Jeremy, Keith, Ken, MartinB, Paul, Ric, Rod, Simon and Tom.
The Windmill Cycle Club 