On fine weekends half the bikers of north-east London seem to end up at the same tea hut in the middle of Epping Forest, at High Beach, drinking from paper cups among the hornbeams. This finish lies just south of the forest's tip, between Walthamstow, Highams Park and Woodford Green, and the forest is the last green thing you see before the city closes around you again.
Epping Forest is an ancient royal hunting ground, saved from enclosure in the nineteenth century and run ever since by the City of London. Its pollarded hornbeams and beeches, cut for firewood for centuries, have grown into strange, many-armed shapes, and in autumn the colours are wonderful. At Chingford, Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge is a timber-framed Tudor building from which the court once watched the chase.
Woodford Green has a statue of Winston Churchill, who was the local MP for decades. Walthamstow, to the south-west, was the birthplace of William Morris, the designer, poet and socialist, and his childhood home is now a gallery of his work. The Walthamstow Wetlands, a series of old reservoirs turned nature reserve, is full of herons, cormorants and wildfowl, a surprising wilderness in the middle of the city.
Coming back from the Weald or the Test Valley, the M25 and M11 deliver you to the edge of the forest, and the A104 runs through it towards Woodford. The forest roads are lovely but heavily policed, with speed limits and cameras. Watch for deer, cyclists and horses.
Fuel is easy on the main roads around Woodford. And if you still have energy, the detour to High Beach is short: one last tea among the trees with a hundred other riders comparing notes on the day.