Category Archives: around home

around home, bikepacking, bikes, MTB, national park, UK

A small local adventure

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Rather amusingly, parts of England – including where I live – are in the grip of an official heatwave (Level 3!).  The weather has been extremely settled & good recently, but it is amusing that there have to be nationwide alerts if summer actually turns up properly on consecutive days as no-one seems to know what to do (the last heatwave was in 2006).  Level 4 is apparently a national emergency, so I look forward to seeing what state of panic ensues if that happens.

With sleeping inside being a little difficult (at least it’s not humid) I thought last night was a perfect opportunity to try out a few of the bike-packing items I’ve bought recently.  That is – a Thermarest Neoair inflatable mattress that provides a lot of mattress considering how tiny it packs down, an Alpkit bivy bag and a very cheap & lightweight sleeping bag.

So with my sleeping bag strapped to the handlebars of my singlespeed & everything else loaded into my Camelbak (better & more permanent carrying solutions will appear after new bike is collected), I headed out into a very pleasant evening to scout around the forest for a suitable bivy site for the night.  It was very nice riding in the cool of the evening & there were few people around (it’s nice to see someone riding an identical bike to one which you had ten years ago)  – but I didn’t want to get too far from home as the following morning I had to ride home, shower, make lunch, breakfast & then ride to work before seven o’clock.

On my well worn route to the centre of the forest, I found a few potential sites & eventually settled in a small clearing in some woods well off the beaten path.  It’s a simple arrangement to set up – ground sheet, mattress then sleeping bag inside bivy bag on top of all that – so I wasn’t expecting many problems & there weren’t any.  It has been sometime since I’ve slept under the stars, so it was nice to watch the night take over from dusk as I lay staring at the sky.  Shortly after, a herd of horses walked through seemingly crashing through the undergrowth (I bet they weren’t, but it was so quiet it sure sounded like that), grabbing a supper of grass noisily as they went.  I was a little nervous that they’d be so startled by my presence that I’d some how get trodden on, but it wasn’t quite as bad as coming out of a tent in Nakuru National Park & discovering a herd of giant water buffalo staring at you.  A frog visited me too – that was odd as I was nowhere near any water, I thought.

Anyway, the rest of the night was uneventful – but it was still a bit warm, so sleep was fitful.  Eventually the alarm went at five and I got up, decamped, watched a herd of deer close by and rode home – somehow I got to work even earlier than normal.  So a successful little outing trying the gear & adding a small amount of adventure to my normally quiet week.  It’s nice to know the forest is so convenient for more than just riding – it’ll be easy to head out to safe surroundings to test more overnight gear in the future.

around home, history, UK

Mottisfont

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Following the exertions of the day before, I had planned a day of sitting in the sun at the NZ vs England ODI cricket that I had just learned was in town.  However, fifty quid seemed a bit steep – as one can never be sure which NZ cricket team is going to turn up (the sublime or awful) – so I gave it a miss. That was quite a misjudgement with the Black Caps absolutely pummelling the English – a shame to miss that, but oh well.

Instead I had a relaxing couple of hours in the sun strolling around a National Trust property, Mottisfont, near Romsey.  The house was originally an abbey before the monasteries were dissolved – strangely, when the remains of it were granted to someone who was clearly in Henry VIII’s favour, a house was built around the abbey instead of demolishing it.  The old cellar is the most obvious of the 13th century remains.  In parts of the house there are holes in the walls & at the back of cupboards exposing interesting ancient features.

The grounds are extensive and have a lot of lawn.  I was there relatively early & by the time I left there were hundreds of cars in the parking lot – most of those seemingly belonging to the scores of families spread out picnicing, playing ball and generally just enjoying the sun.  There’s a big walled garden – alas, I was a couple of weeks too early to see the mass of roses that I’m told are very impressive (curses to that long, cold spring).

The font, still spewing forth a lot of water, after which the property is named – as the local residents used to meet here back when Old English was spoken and “moot” meant “meet” (say that last bit quickly repeatedly).

I forget what that smaller tree is, but it certainly was a mass of white.

The house was interesting enough & quite nice – the last owner was quite in to the arts & hosted many artists down from London. Consequently, there’s quite a bit of art around.  I did enjoy the watercolour exhibition until it started getting a little abstract.  The most interesting feature I thought was the small waterwheel on the ground floor that was used to turn some sort of pot spinning device over an extremely large coal range.  Also, doorways hidden behind bookcases are always cool.

A pleasant little outing, not nearly as tiring as the last one.

around home, bikes, GPS, MTB, UK

Isle of Wight day ride

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It’s been one of those uncommon weekends at home – & more surprisingly, it coincided with some very nice early June weather. With no plans & wanting to see, before next weekend, if I could manage six hours of riding off-road in a day, it was the perfect time to finally head back to the Isle of Wight. This was my fourth visit to the island – strangely, the first in the eighteen months that I’ve been living just a few miles away across the Solent. On Garmin Connect,I found a rather optimistic looking, for me, almost-ninety kilometre course from an enduro MTB event that ran the week before; of course I could hardly drive to the ferry in Lymington – so that added another thirty-odd kilometres return.

I woke perhaps a little later than I normally do on a Saturday, but was quickly out the door by nine o’clock – I must have just missed a ferry so had to wait about thirty minutes for the next one. By about eleven I was in Yarmouth & it was heaving with some sort of carnival – that should have been predictable considering how packed the ferry was. But all the tasty food stalls couldn’t tempt me as I was reckoning on being back to catch a return ferry at about six o’clock. The first bit of the course followed a very flat causeway up alongside the delightfully named Yar – the number of Rs you add is in direct proportion to how piratyrannical you are feeling.

Soon I was climbing through a golf course onto the chalk downs – very nice it was too with great views in all directions (only spoiled by the Calshot power station stack & the Fawley refinery – both pretty close to home). The ride to begin with was mostly bridleways linked by small pieces of road – not the most exciting mountain-biking, but that wasn’t what I was really after. It was a very pleasant day out in the sun, with a brisk wind, and unlike the mainland there were very few people about. About two-thirds into the course I started to get a little tired, so the food stops got a little more frequent.

One of the nice things about riding on the island is that you don’t have to go very far for the views to change significantly. Also, unlike the Forest, there are hills – which are much more interesting than no hills. On the return from the furtherest point and closing the second & third loops (the course was vaguely a stick to start with, then three loops stacked on top of it) it started to become sealed lanes connected with bridleways – which I was OK with. Luckily I brought about half my normal lunch, as it’s more sparsely populated over there and pubs for mid-ride meals were a bit harder to find.

I ate much less on such a ride than I expected I would, so was pleased to stumble over a donkey sanctuary (whoever had heard of such a thing?) down a bridleway that had a small cafe with rather nice cakes in it (the carrot cake was saved for later & won out over the yoghurt & lemon flapjack). Of course, just after that I found a very quaint village with pubs – but I was still on track for six o’clock, so pushed on. All the singlespeeding recently has given more feasible options for getting up hills when one is tired – so that was helpful as there were still a couple of climbs to get up before the long descent back to Yarmouth to roll straight on to a ferry.

Back home by eight o’clock – that was a great outing where I could pace myself as I wanted and after which I was not nearly as sore as I should have been. Looking back through the riding diary, that’s the most distance on a single day I’ve ever put in on a mountain-bike (it was mostly off-road) & the second highest total climbing since I got my GPS two years ago (not even close to Alex’s climbfest of summer 2011) . I hope such large rides continue for the next few months every so often, otherwise the RVO will destroy me.

Monument & follies appear in the strangest places in the UK – this wasn’t even at the top of a hill.

The problem with such a long route on bridleways is the scores/hundreds of gates one must open & close – this set appearing suddenly out of nowhere were a little more over the top than most.

around home, bikes, combe raiders, friends, GPS, MTB, UK

Combe Raiders Swanage Weekend

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For the second weekend in a row, I was off to Swanage for a riding trip.  To make a pleasant change, I had the short drive to get to a Combe Raiders ride – fifty-five miles instead of the normal hundred to Taunton.  Arriving early due to the afternoon off work, I quite happily passed time in the local bike discussing bike-packing & my next bike.

The ten others turned up in dribs & drabs; once settled into the dormitory/bunkhouse & John had dinner prepared we headed out for a quick ride before it got dark (after being told not to bring lights, I forgot to pack the small ones from my commuter).  Most of the trails in the area I was familiar with from the SSUK 2013 events of the previous weekend, although we did find a nice little descent off the other side of the golf course.  Up onto that ridge again, I had to walk about twenty metres as the headwind was gusty & it was just too much on a singlespeed.   The downhill off the ridge & back into town was just as good & is even better when someone has opened the gate on the blind corner halfway down.

I think this weekend away had been booked well before this was decided, but somewhere along the way it turned into a bit of a celebration of D’s fiftieth birthday – but perhaps that’s just what the guys with wives had to use as a reason to get away for a weekend of biking. Either way, there was special Combe Raider cider, whisky that I actually found palatable & a very enjoyable Friday night. Somehow I managed to avoid the rooms with the chronic snorers – snoring stories are much funnier the next morning when it’s not you that has been kept awake all night.

It would have been too much to expect two glorious weekends in a row – but Saturday was reasonably nice as we headed out to the lap that John, Rich & I had done last week (except they’d wizened up & brought bikes with gears – I was the only nutter left on a singlespeed).

Near the start of the ride – a pub we didn’t go in (well, I had the week before).

“If you’ve got time to hold gates open – get to the back & ride up with the stragglers.” Up the first climb – Isle of Wight just visible in background.

Rich standing in front of Swanage.

As this was the same ride as I’ve already detailed last week – just without the two-hundred odd singlespeeders – I’ll spare you the details, except I rode everything again. Normally, when riding around those with multitudes-more-gears-than-me I don’t mind getting off & walking if I have to; but this time I knew I could ride all of the big hills, so made myself do so – my knees weren’t so happy about that. We stopped in Corfe Castle because someone said there was a good bakery there – I had a great pasty & danish again. The climb up to Kingston was a bit easier this time around  & soon enough we were back at the Square & Compass – nice ale & I convinced myself I deserved another pasty. Back into town via Priest’s Way & time for ice cream by the seaside.

Come Sunday, we’d done most of the trails of note (or so we’d been told) & were looking for a slightly easier & shorter ride before the respective drives home. Somehow, it fell to me to cobble together a route using two photocopied OS maps; I’m not sure that was the best idea for those looking for a cruisy Sunday ride – after all I was riding a tank of a singlespeed (I still can’t believe how heavy it is – that had conveniently escaped my memory before I brought it back from NZ last year) & could not be thought of as taking it easy. Pleasingly for a group of eleven, we only had one mechanical for the weekend – & that was only a puncture on Sunday morning when we weren’t pressed for time. Coming off the Priest’s Way (this time riding up it) we found ourselves in the middle of a Wiggle sportive for roadies. For the next fifteen minutes we had a great time chasing down those ever-cheerful breed of cyclists that wouldn’t even smile or return a greeting as they whizzed past us. I don’t think one of them was overly impressed by being tailed by mountain-bikers – although the icing on the cake was when I managed to pass one up a hill.

I think this photo was taken to show the niceness of the countryside – very pleasant to ride through, if not as spectacular as some recent photos.

After we got over the hilarity at being sworn at by irate roadies that couldn’t handle knobbly tyres passing them, we found a descent we hadn’t done yet. Down the side of a ploughed field, where I was filled with my usual trepidation of riding parallel to barbed wire fencing, we were in between hedgerows and all of a sudden the trail got really rocky & absolute great fun. This was the part of the weekend I most wished I was riding the bike I had in Moab. We joined the main road back into Corfe Castle, joining up with the road contingent before stopping at the bakery again.

More new route took us north of Corfe Castle where we discovered a nicely wooded section filled with bluebells, other flowers & mostly-smooth fun trail. Up & over another ridge & we could see the village of the lunch-pub in the distance.

I had one more nasty surprise on the map – what turned out to be the steepest climb of the weekend.  Unfortunately, we could all see it coming – I was pretty sure that I would be walking up that as it looked like loose boulders at the bottom of a continually high gradient.  To get to it, we had a reasonable climb on the road where we passed more of our road friends again.  I was pleased to clear the whole climb – somehow I negotiated all the rocks before settling down to slowly push the pedals around & get to the top.  From the top of the ridge, we could see the weather closing in – there wasn’t much to see from the lookout, so what else to do but head to lunch in Kingston.

We finally got rained on, for the first time of the weekend (not bad going), sitting in the beer garden waiting for a delicious lunch.  The bonus of the beer garden was we (well, D – he who got sworn at) could boo every roadie that went past.  Then the road got slick & they started crashing on the corner in the village & it would have been funny if they had not needed medical attention.  With the rain set in, we took the easy fast route back to our cars in town.

So a great weekend, where the company was the highlight, the riding was good, the food & drink plentiful and I didn’t blow my knees apart – well organised John.