A Question of Counties - Part Four

This time I've been thinking about when I first rode into the neighbouring Counties from my Hertfordshire home, which is tricky as they would most probably just been exploratory rides as I learnt to ride my bike, thirty four years ago. Remember no compulsory training in those days, you just bought a bike no bigger than 250cc, stuck on some L plates and got on with it.

ESSEX

Although I do recall what was almost certainly my first foray into Essex about a week after getting my first bike when I managed to miscalculate a right hand bend on the appropriately named "Crooked Mile" near Waltham Abbey and became better acquainted with a large blackthorn hedge! Luckily I rode away from that one. Here's a recent shot taken in the county at the amusingly named village of Ugley Green. This is of course just up the road from Ugley itself, home of the "Ugley Women's Road Race" yes it does exist! Typically I couldn't find a village sign at Ugley itself so I had to settle for the neighbouring hamlet...

BEDFORDSHIRE

Again a tricky one but would have definitely been in the very early days, here's a shot taken on the B1042 near Wrestlingworth in 2008. I chose this particular shot because it's a different bike, included for a bit of variety. It's my Suzuki SV1000S that I only owned for about 6 months:

CAMBRIDGESHIRE

Again a regular haunt on early rides but here's another current day photo from somewhere you might have heard of (no not the one in Australia, that's got a E on the end);

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE

I'm fairly certain that my first trip here might have been as part of my first ride to Oxfordshire, when I went to watch some student mates racing at RAF Little Rissington, my route took me through Aylesbury on the A41 (this being long before the M40 had been built). This photo was however was taken near Woburn in 2011 when I took out the then brand new Triumph Tiger 800XC for a demo ride:

NORTHAMSTONSHIRE

My first trip would have been a ride to Northampton in about 1982 but I found this picture dated 22nd May 1983 from a trip to the 6 hour endurance race at Silverstone. I had owned the GPz 750 for a whole two days at this point in time.

Progress to date.....