Cycling Clubs

As a potential newbie to one of the West London clubs, this thread has been a godsend.

As soon as my shoulder is back to full strength I'm going to go for a ride with a couple of the clubs, namely Twickenham, Kingston Wheelers and maybe Kingston Phoenix.

I'd seen London Dynamo and was put off by thier lack of history and a touch of intuition. I quite like the idea of going on a club run with some members who were riding bikes before I was born.

So Al, if you have any advice I'd love to hear it, are you a member of a club round here at the moment? I'm in Teddington.

Must say that I didn't find them unfriendly (which might sound strange), but have belonged to clubs before and it seems the approach is generally and rather sadly the same. I accept that cycling is one of those sports where you have to HTFU - but got me thinking that if I was complete novice would I return for another club run? You can imagine the scenario, you keep up for 50 miles and then someone puts the hammer down and you're left spat out the back and on your own with 10 or 15 miles to get back home and feeling knackered.