Slideshow of a cycle trip to the Isle of Wight. It was a nice trip, so I’ll write my happy memories here too.
This was one of 2 trips on my Thorn Raven Sport Tour, travelling light with a bivvy bag. The forecast was good for about 2 weeks. I planned to ride to the South coast at Littlehampton and then follow NCN 2 westwards.
I had a brilliant first day: I met my brother at Cambridge for lunch after 73 miles and he led me through quiet lanes to Essex. Next day I rode up the Thames estuary past the ports and fortifications and had my own battle with some very steep steps over the sea defences.
I didn’t enjoy Kent very much: hot, steep, narrow lanes and fat cars. The ride improved when I reached the old railway path that took me west towards Crawley. I ate chips watching a deer in a cornfield before making camp in lovely old woodland.
I needed to join the Downs Link next morning; it is a lovely path, but I found it is not accessible from some of the roads it crosses and it was hard to see from the OS map where I could get onto it. I also found that the Co-op do some very nice almond croissants at 7 am!
I started on NCN 2 at Shoreham, just where I had left it the year before. Bognor Regis had both a kite festival (struggling in light winds) and a seat on the shortened pier for lunch. I had to rush past Chichester harbour and was just too late to visit the palace of King Cogidubnus at Fishbourne – even the cafe was closed. There is a dull A road to Havant with a cycle lane but it was brightened up after Emsworth (which I quickly explored) by a call of “That’s a Rohloff” from a man with 2 boys on a yellow Thorn triplet to which I replied “That’s a Thorn, we’re related!” He kindly led me through the twists and turns of the cycle paths onto Hayling Island while I chatted to the 3 of them. They are all keen cyclists. The boys were riding “hands-off” as they would usually be playing on electronic games while riding. We parted on Hayling Island where he was taking his boys to buy ice-cream. They set me on the path to catch the last ferry across Langstone Harbour entrance. On the ferry I took some pictures for a group of very pretty girls who were attending a music festival in Portsmouth. One of them told me she wanted to get fit… that she wasn’t very fit at the moment… she was “very drinky”, which seemed a fair assessment; I was pleased there was a bus waiting there to pick them up from the ferry! I was less pleased that the festival fences blocked the cycle route in Portsmouth so I had to take to roads and keep stopping to check the map. All went well then till the Hamble ferry which had ceased for the night and didn’t start again till a very civilized time in the morning; that meant camping nearby and taking a big diversion after my usual early start.
When I got to Southampton, the Isle of Wight ferry departed before the ferry that would have carried me across Southampton Water to continue route 2 in the New Forest; I made a quick decision based on the fact that I had already had 2 cups of coffee and a Danish pastry at the cafe and there was nothing else to do for the next hour and so I went to Cowes instead.
It takes about a day to ride round the island, but it takes longer if you’re interested in boats, fascinated by the historic defences and rocket installations at the Needles and can’t resist National Trust scones. The Needles Fort cafe takes you back to WW2; it has 1940s furniture and the staff were all dressed for the 1940s – I’m sure I was served by Mrs Pike from Dad’s Army! I stayed a while to charge my phone batteries as well as eat scones!
It was cold and windy camping above St Catherine’s lighthouse but I was cosy in my bivvy. In the morning I glanced at the weather app expecting to see a row of yellow suns as normal and met a row of black clouds with lots of raindrops and just 3 days left before they arrived. I didn’t think it would be much fun in a bivvy bag in those conditions but there was just time to get home – with increasingly strong headwinds all the way.
I was interested to see the Great British aircraft carrier in the Solent; later I discovered it had run aground. I stopped at the miniature railway’s cafe on the way out of Southampton. In Oxford they were filming for something big; they wouldn’t tell me what it was but they were sure I’d be going to watch the result when it was released. North of Milton Keynes I made a mistake and followed the Canal rather than the cycle route; it took me to an unusual old iron aqueduct, but then I had to carry my bike down a long flight of steps to get back to the route by the river below.
Route 6 railway path to Market Harborough next morning was a lovely ride with a longish tunnel with no lights but a ventilation shaft in the middle. Rutland was hillier than I’d expected. By the time I left the cafe at Barnsdale Gardens on the last stage of the journey the headwind was very strong and I was impressively slow to the finish!