Cycling the Isle of Wight Randonnee

Slightly rainy day cycle around the island on a 100 km route that took in many great roads with around 3000 other cyclists.

GPX Route here: https://www.komoot.com/tour/1559571235?share_token=a8tFexmLu6ULIJ5z37WBJMEfCBXdScXFAHSXtUGivSeKVRbVJ4&ref=wtd

thanks for tuning in this is my is of white 100K Randon experience where you circumnavigate the island of the is of white which is off the south coast of the UK here I am pumping up in the morning single-handed pumping while filming great strength and power in fact I thought oh this is going to be hard work trying to film and pump but it was actually really easy so I got on my bike all sort in the morning I’ve got tubless tires on there and I will do a bike check later on in the few bits of traffic which surprised me but what is it it’s playing holiday Sunday and it’s uh 10 to 8 so there’s a few people around and about it’s about 11k to get to the start for me cuz I’m camping on the south side of the is white see Point got multiple start points for the 100K Randon around the is of white but I’ve Got Friends starting on the North side near woodon so I’m going to go there to start so a quick map check time and you can see here the aisle of white is off the south coast of the UK I live down here south of London so I drove down to Portsmouth where there’s a ferry and then I took the ferry from here the white link Ferry which is quite expensive on a bank holiday weekend which this landed on in May headed over to fishborn which is actually very close to the starting point but what they do with this Randon is they allow you to start at anywhere you like so there’s like an e brevit app for your phone and you can start in I think one of five different places around the island which are all checkpoints as well so you don’t need to start right at the top of the uh Island there and this is where I was camped out in my camper van down in near new church and it’s a fun little ride in the morning up over a small down which was actually great fun cuz it was fun being on my own for a moment before joining the larger crowds of cyclist where there was about 3,000 I think total Riders this year on this C Hill Farm which is that a point there where we started registered picked up my enamel badge for the for the Year’s Event and then we headed out with a group from my local cycle club there’s about five of us there was actually a 50k ride as well as this 100K and half the well couple of the riders in the group that we with uh stuck with the 50k so they sort of turned back north um shortly after you sort of end up around the the southern region past this airport near Sandown I think you head up north through through the center of the island on a kind of a gravel path if you do the 50k when you start heading back over towards the West here and dropping South you get down to this area called ventor where’s a town called ventor on the front of the uh Coast there with the English Channel in view really attractive nice place because you get some beautiful views from the Downs here you got Ventnor and a couple of the higher points on the island there sent Bonny uh or bonface don’t know which one it is but you kind of cut through a town here and then ended up very high up dropping down and along that Coastal area it was a bit dull and cloudy but the atmosphere was nice and this is a little stop Point here where we stopped and there was some entertainment food and uh just a all around generally inspiring spot where people were having some funners before we uh headed out towards the west then we headed a lot further sort of Westerly and a little bit north as well at the same time back up towards freshwater Bay and uh some of the most beautiful spots there some really nice sort of flat sections where we were speeding along with views of the Sea and the English Channel and then finally into freshwater where was another stopping point heading back east and around about 80k before we got to cows uh my Wahoo run out of uh juice and uh that’s cuz I hadn’t charged it properly and I sort of had to then make my best way around but actually there’s lots of signposts and with all the other ride is 3,000 on the day there’s always going to be someone nearby uh that took me into cows uh before we took the ferry over to the other side of East cows to make that final stretch back towards woodon and kite Farm again so here I am head heading north in the morning again lovely cool kind of weather slightly humid though interestingly and obviously the threat of rain which did hit later on a couple of times but overall it didn’t dampen the spirits of the day really and it’s a nice little Speedy route down where I could see ahead uh the down that I was going to have to climb to get to the star which was a little tiny entertaining Hill on the way there and this is the Garlic Farm just before I climbed the hill and over famous little spot for people to visit where they do wondrous things with garlics in Chutney and various sources plus also they’ve got a nice restaurant there where they make garlic inspired food obviously not just using garlic as the as a kind of a flavoring but it’s actually the main event in language thing about the Isle of white is they call these roads shoots um when they’re like a steep road that cuts through the chalk uh heading down so they’ve obiously been there for centuries maybe they were originally streams or something that had worn down through the chalk and I know they also have a word called a Chine I think that’s another word for kind of a stream that’s cut through the chalk down to the Sea so these shoots tend to be relatively short sharp climbs and that this one was one of those and it just but it was stunning to get to the top over the down there and uh get those initial views of the uh grasslands around this was going to be a party Pace style ride for me today with uh my friends from the club uh some of them beginners and they’d never cycled as far as 100 day before so it was going to be a ride where we all kind of stuck together what happened later is I completely underestimated how long that takes when you’re going at you know 15 km per hour uh through the day with lots of stops for everyone you know stops on Hill stops for sightseeing photos and longer than normal sort of breaks to sit down and have food so took a bit longer than I expected and that meant I had to sort of dash off later so I mentioned that when I had to sort of L cycle hard towards the end cuz I realized oops something that I thought would normally take me 5 and 1 half hours of riding is uh turned into nearly 10 uh towards the end with um the length of time we were hanging around so that’s fine by me cuz I like doing the party Pace riding s of sticking with friends and chatting and making a social event of it and and making sure no one gets left behind but my Ferry I had to get back on the ferry and because it’s bank holiday weekend the white fairy link was really expensive for me because of course I came over with a van to to camp in so I had specific requirements that if you come over on the normal foot ferry with a um with a bike you’re fine it’s not going to cost you too much but uh I’d locked in this particular time and it was very expensive to shift it to the next day uh so I ended up in a massive panic at the end my Wahoo failed me cuz I was out of battery and I’d had to dash off so this is the start at kite Hill Farm getting busy around about half 8 and in fact even though it said starting at 9:00 lots of people were shooting off at half 84 8 even as I was originally arriving very easy to get registered plenty of snacks to start with to load up on [Music] oh what’re sorry [Music] [Music] [Music] so starting out it was nice and dry there was uh kind of a warmish feeling probably about 13° I don’t think it ever went over about 14 uh during the day but lots of SES to see if you’ve never been to the aisle of Wyatt yes there some fantastic scenery to see all over the island and a completely different feel to some of it as well some of the Interior has a lot of sort of not boggy sort of Swampy sort of well there’s no such thing as swamp on the olive white but you know that’s that kind of uh boggy River area which was fenland I suppose is the nearest thing to describe it and then right up onto the Downs when you’re climbing up you get some great views of English Channel as well so really varied roots so the whole the whole gamut of kind of British terrain on one small island which is fantastic to cycle around because it’s just got that nice Countryside feel it’s a bit more laidback not too heavy on the traffic [Music] and certainly lots of nice places to visit I’ve been here in the summer and brought the kids also been here in the summer when I was a Youngster my dad was a teacher so we had sort of summer holidays we’d take breaks over here and it was a great place to visit as a kid as well lots of activities to do only thing I might say is that this time of year may when it’s offseason you may get a really nice day you may get a bit of rain like this but if you’re here in the summer you’re going to face more traffic more Caravans more holiday makers and it can feel a little bit crowded so I probably want to do it actually I want to come over here in the sunnier season maybe in June July one year to sort of get a feel for cycling around then n [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so probably around 35 40K in we got this uh rainy weather which made for fun in fact it didn’t get too cold though being sort of early May uh in the South here you found that uh it was quite mild but the rain did Pile in on us for a good hour hour and a half and these lanes and trails which some of them were a bit muddy you had some water streaming over so you ended up quite muddy bikes and puddles to ride through in the end but really entertaining though High hedge RS in many places which is very similar to uh Sussex where I’m from and sometimes that can be fun other times you can feel like you’re in a green Corridor and you got no nowhere to see you get the tiny glimpses across Fields but definitely is of white has that varied terrain so you can find yourself in these nice sort of leafy green hedro tunnels and then the next minute you’re out in the open or you’re up on a on a down with a great view so it’s nice to have that very terrain to deal with [Music] la la [Music] [Music] yeah we need some more music thank you oh good stuff so fantastic people on the ride of course lots of people to meet I met a chat called Stuart before it even started and we were chatting uh talking about his rides on there and how he’d recently done a ride in Wales and found it really hard work I was also with my group of friends from the local social Ride Club in Crawley and ham in Sussex so it was great to be with them and having to catch up and have chats and food breaks and just general all around entertainment plus there was a fantastic person which you just saw there which had her stereo blasting out which was fun to hear as well going by to see the people sort of entertaining themselves and that it was kind of family uh events it wasn’t just all um serious Riders there a lot of mixed ability out there which again makes for a fun day really so the rain didn’t dampen our Spirits really and it rained twice during the day really once uh this earlier on and then I completely dried out it’s fantastic thing about reasonable quality cycling gear is that it does just dry off as you’re going around and that’s one of those things isn’t that um you often find that you’re moaned out for wearing like that mammal riding around with your cycling lier on and uh you know why are you wearing that gear you look stupid and of course 2 hours into a ride where you’ve got completely drenched by the rain and I was completely dry again and thinking okay I can take the rain again now so you know fantastic to have materials that Wick away the moisture and just means you’re more comfortable rather than feeling absolutely drenched through so big plus one really for uh the good Cycle Gear oh you’re okay you’re okay [Music] so there’s a definite safety in numbers when you’re on these narrow Lanes of course you come to a nice uh curving section which could be a blind corner to you on when you’re out on a solo ride or with just a small group but you’re in a large group like this you can sort of keep speeding on cuz you’ve got a kind of assumption that ahead of you people are making safer [Music] decisions smile be happy [Music] we are heading towards the second of the checkpoints which had a lot of entertainment and music playing as well which was a great fun I’ve got a clip of that coming up just wanted to say that if anybody’s Ian Banks the Sci-Fi novelist he once famously said that if you wanted to spot aliens check out solar eclipses or major interesting events and instead of looking at the event look around you don’t look at the solar eclipse look around you and you’ll see unusual people dotted around could be alien visitors come to see the solar eclipse so coming up next is a little clip of these people playing their music and dancing so there was nothing to lift the spirits more than a bit of Hawaiian dancing and well I Hawaii could it be Isle of white and whitean dancing same tropical feel with an nice drum going there as with a beat which kept everybody happy of course it was a little bit damp at that time still kind of Misty with that low hanging cloud and uh made it really high-spirited for us to to listen to music it was so nice of them to be there and everybody was entertained so that was fantastic [Music] [Music] oh [Music] a so this was a fun section the gravel section of the of the 100K route they did have a road but this was a different interlude you could take so I I downloaded this map which allowed us to have a different view but a landscape but of Wildlife and birds there so made for a different section and we’re all good on our bikes along here because we’re going at a kind of party pace [Music] so it’s just at this point now but 80k in that my uh satinav died my Wahoo run out of battery it was at about 60% in the morning even though I’d done a full charge though before I don’t know I was playing at have double checked in the morning or early on to to check that needed a charge but it got about 9 9 and 1 half hours into the day so found myself suddenly desperately in need to get back to the Campsite in time to catch the ferry which was booked in much more expensive didn’t book the one that gave me a cancel option move option trying to keep it cheap but it was still expensive to get the van over so sped off at this point was about 20K from cows finally got into cows here with the all the cyclists that go over on the ferry saw a couple of guys on that ferry that I was on that Ferry with the year before and I wanted to say hello but I was so sure I remembered them uh from the year before but there you go interesting to see that should bump into the same folks again and then as I headed back to the campsite on the South Side I finally took some footage just I was coming in here great little campsite and uh yeah feels like an old one it’s like the land That Time Forgot a quaint little uh food shop on the side and the people were really friendly in there too really nice smart place to feel safe in parked up and ready to cycle in the morning so certainly use this campsite again next time I’m [Music] over look how muddy it was at the end of the day even with the mud guard look at that rear wheel it’s totally caked in the mud and uh yeah it was good experience on the bike though it’s a Linsky sportif titanium Frane I’ve got kind of Frankenstein set up with a Genesis carbon fork in the front and the group set is grx 12-speed 2 byy and the only reason for that is I had a one by on my gravel bike loved the gearing so much I thought why not go for the same two byy on the road bike it’s been working great for me so just happy to do it and there’s a quick shot on the ferry on the way back over to Portsmouth sun was going down really nice day and one of the snaps earlier on from up on a cliff there and thanks for getting this far if you got all the way through cheers thanks bye