Let's call their bluff - on the second Saturday of the month, paid-up members of our cycling club have priory access to places on an East End ride.

We will meet at the Southwark Needle at 9.30am and will ride out along the CS3 Cycle Superhighway to the Yurt Cafe. This is located in St Katharine’s Precinct and is a Social Enterprise Community Cafe operated by The Royal Foundation of St Katharine:

Sadly, we won't be able to have coffee there, as this is at the start of the ride and we are not allowed to have two coffee stops.

We will then continue on to Mile End Place:

It is easy to miss, as it looks like a goods entrance to a row of shops, but it is the place to live if you are interested in cemeteries! Once we go through the arch we find a charming group of Victorian cottages, which are surrounded by not one but three cemeteries: two Ashkenazi Cemeteries and the Old Velho Sephardi cemetery. For those who haven't yet looked this up in Google, “Ashkenaz” in Hebrew refers to Germany, and Ashkenazi Jews are those who originated in Eastern Europe. Sephardic Jews, by contrast, are from the areas around the Mediterranean Sea, including Portugal, Spain, the Middle East and Northern Africa. There are high walls which stop us going into these cemeteries without permission, but these don't stop us from learning all about the Sephardi Jews who initially pretended to be Spanish, but eventually became accepted as Jews, because Spain had fallen out with Jews and Britain had fallen out with Spain.

We then continue Meath Gardens, Victoria Park and the View Tube, where we do stop for coffee.

We then return to the Southwark Needle, where the ride finishes.

The 13 mile route can be downloaded from here: https://ridewithgps.com/routes...

Ride pictures are posted on our Facebook page.

Ride Leader: Nigel Bee (Tel 07415 315 690)