Tim Corrigan blogs on cycling, trips and programming…

Yes I really did just ride the South Downs Way again – this time with my cousin Steve.

The ride came about when last Christmas he mentioned that it’s always something he really wanted to do. Never one to turn down a cycling opportunity I agreed to do the trip straight away. So, a little later in the year than we’d thought (due to me being in Mongolia for 3 months) we set off on the 3 day, 100+ miles, hill climbing marathon from Winchester to Eastbourne.

And… it went almost entirely without any problems. No fallings off, some light rain on the 3rd day but nothing to slow us down, no mechanical breakdowns, relatively few aches and pains and most of all: NO PUNCTURES! After my previous experiences (with between 4 and 8 riders) having just 2 people (and 2 bikes – both in good working order) made things a lot more straightforward.

Thanks again to Liz for luggage support on the first day (after that we carried it).

We also discovered some amazing vegetable curry pasties in the general store in a little village called Jevington – last stop (and 2 hills) from Eastbourne. So good we went back for a second one (though they got my second one wrong and it turned out to be cheese and onion – still bitter about this!).

Here’s a video I put together of the trip – some gimmicky stuff in this one:

A great way to round off the summer of cycling. Now I’m not commuting I’m looking for some more cycling challenges to motivate me to keep the fitness up through the winter. Anyone???

This was really 4 very different rides all in one! It consisted of:

1. The advanced mountain biking course at Queen Elizabeth Country Park
2. From there following the Southdowns Way to the A29, just west of Amberly.
3. On the road to Burnham (from where I took a train to Havant)
4. The Hayling Billy Trail back to south Hayling Island.

Total: 39 miles – most of it offroad, and a great 6 hours training. Here is the route (terrain view gives you more of an idea):

View larger version at EveryTrail

I also used the trip to try out my new Tachyon XC Micro helmet camera for the first time. The following is my first dabbling in the world of helmet mounted video (much better efforts hopefully to come in future posts). The video is all of the advanced mountain biking course at Queen Elizabeth Country park – so gives a flavour of the riding there:

In a side note – I learned with interest recently that if you upload something to YouTube that incorporates copyright material (such as say… the music you put your biking video to) it is quite possible that it can be actively permitted to remain there by the copyright owner for various reasons… see this fascinating talk on how YouTube manages copyright material.

After breakfast:
Rob: “Ok I’m not going to ride today”.
Me: “Yeah ok Rob whatever” (complete disbelief – been wound up too many times..)
Rob: “No really. I’m not riding.”
Me: “Yeah ok then”
Rob: “No I’m REALLY not riding”
Me: (less sure) “Err ok..”
pause
Me: So you are riding yeah?
Rob: “No”
pause
Me: “If you do it now I won’t make you do it next year”
Rob: “No comment”.

So without one understandably downtrodden, shin injured, weather sceptical tap out we set out on day 3, which was.. a gloriously sunny day! The first hill was tough but once that was conquered we settled down for another day of riding up and down hills. We had no punctures and the previous week’s practice ride of this section paid off with us knowing the places not to take wrong turnings.

We enjoyed the uphill, the down hill and the flat sections (yeah ok there wern’t many of the latter). We had a great pub lunch and hurtled down the hill into Eastbourne about 4:30, straight to a Belgian restaurant for well earned steaks and Belgian beer. All in all – despite some bad weather on the first couple of days it was a great trip. I’d do it again, but next time – in 2 days! Come on you know you all want to!

Day 2 started with guess what – more rain. But with a forecast for the rain to clear quickly, we left our luggage in the porch for Liz to pick up and set off for – oh a good 5 metres before Andy needed to adjust his disc brakes! We then got ourselves back up the hill to the South Downs Way and set about tackling the many hills of the day.

But it kept raining. And wet chalk makes for pretty slippery riding, and we were slipping all over the place – with quite a few near offs. Rob did fall off, and then proceeded to smack himself in the shin with his (apparently ungrippy) pedal – and then again – same shin – ouch. We all wished we’d kept our winter tyres on, though frankly I’m not sure it would have helped that much on some of the wet chalky descents.

It was still raining at lunch time and we were so covered in mud we ate our pub lunches outside in the rain rather than leave mud all over the seats inside. The weather did clear up in the afternoon though and despite a few more punctures and hard work riding up hills, we did start to enjoy ourselves…  Neil: “I may complete the SDW but it may be at the cost of my sanity”. Andy: “I’m actually looking forward to the next hill”. Me: “Andy has lost his already”.

We finished up in the bustling town of Clayton (well ok it’s a village with one pub, though that was bustling by the time we filled it with 4 hungry cyclists, Liz our favourite porter, Kaylee (9) and Dylan (2)!)

Andy, Rob, Neil and I set out to ride the South Downs Way in 3 days. The South Downs Way runs for 100 miles from Winchester to Eastbourne in the south of England, and a pretty tough 100 miles they are too. The route is 95% off road and is characterised by seemingly endless ups and downs. This time we did at least knew what we were letting ourselves in for as we’d previously attempted it 2 years ago and ended up drinking beer on Brighton beach after the second day!

So the morning came.. and it was raining. We tried to delay the start, but really, we just had to get on with it. Thanks to Mum and Dad for the stay over, lift to the start and big breakfast and supplies of energy bars. We had one other thing on our side as well – Liz (our favourite porter) was to take our luggage to the end point of the first day so all we had to carry was what we needed during the day. Oh and of course.. we’d all trained really really hard this time.. er.. hadn’t we?!

The rain had left much of the first part of the ride muddy, and it wasn’t long before we were covered in mud and our fair share of nettle stings. We made good progress though – pushing on to Queen Elizabeth Country park by lunch time (we recall it being late afternoon before we got there last time). It went a little downhill (well alright not before a lot of uphill!) though when we had a series of punctures in the last hour, and upon riding down an amazing descent to my pub of choice by 5 only to find it didn’t open till 7 we had to ride to the backup pub almost 30 minutes away. However by the time we got there, Liz had turned up offering moral support and more importantly, strawberry chewy sweets.

The day finished with a lot of food consumed, a last 10 minute uphill ride to the farm we were staying at, a good hour of bike maintenance and finally, falling asleep with hot chocolate watching Bridget Jones’ diary. Oh and Liz offered to carry our luggage again for the next day on condition she got to take a photo of us on our knees begging.. Dylan (our 2 year old mascot) had to join in of course!