30 July 2007

Le Tour de Richmond Park

While the Tour de France ambled through Paris I was tackling the hills, tight bends, little children and dogs on a circuit of Richmond Park.

There are various paths in the park but the best one for cycling is also the longest one which mostly follows the outer wall. This is a circuit of around 12 km.

I enter the park at Ham Gate (centre left on the map), which is about 1 km from where I live, and I go counter-clockwise. This is partially because I am a mathematician, and we measure angles counter-clockwise, but it also gets the biggest climb, up Kingston Hill (centre bottom), out of the way early on.

The kids and dogs apart, Richmond Park is a joy to cycle around because the cycle routes keep well away from the traffic and, instead, go through some of the wilder parts of the park. For example, this time I saw two herds of deer, the stags were close to Sheen Gate and the does were a little further round towards Bog Gate.

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