South Downs Way

With Kelsy away on another European Pinot jolly my browser quickly turned to researching another cycling weekender. The road bike was still out of action from a spoke destroying ferry crossing the previous week and it was hardly the weather for it anyway. It was time to break the mountain bike in with some good old British bridleway action ‘darn sarf’.  The Trans-Cambrian way had sprung up on my Instagram feed recently, it seemed like the place to go to get a suitable backdrop for moody shots of bikes with bar bags in bad weather that I could nonchalantly caption after I’d thawed out. However with ‘ventusky’ showing 50km/h gales and snow forecast on the Thursday I backed down fairly quickly. A friend suggested the South Downs Way as a good alternative, better weather forecast and much more achievable; he had burst out laughing at the idea of doing 100+ days along muddy trails. In fairness, I am still getting used to the MTB life and as such conversions from tarmac distances on 28mm tyres to tracks on chunky treads are wildly off, I would find this out on arrival at the first days destination 6 hours later than planned and well after the calories had all burned up.

The paths ranged from damp field to fast flowing rivers with everything in between. It didn’t take long for thoughts of a chilled weekend lounging around a campsite pondering life with ale in hand to turn to worrying about whether I’d remembered to replace the batteries in the bike lights. One other thought that was beginning to surface whilst pushing my bike up the third steep banking of the day was the serious lack of food and water around. Before setting off I’d flicked through the pages of a considerably outdated guidebook and chuckled to myself about the detailed instructions and locations of farmyard taps and opening hours of village stores. It was a one-hour train outside of London how can I not find an elderflower presse to quench my thirst and an oat flat white to help me on my way. I’m not joking when I say that I was taught there was a Waitrose on every corner in the South of England. How wrong I was, this was more remote than Ilkley moor and I desperately needed some sugar. . .

To cut a long ordeal short (that involved strapping my phone to my bags to dimly light the way) I had dramatically underestimated the South Downs Way and seriously overestimated my own ability on a mountain bike. The route itself however did not disappoint, the sun danced perpetually through heavy laden clouds scudding in off the Atlantic and from the panoramic vantage of the South Downs ridge weather patterns played out their melodrama in the palette of the greatest Turner paintings. The trails, filled with the magic and mystery of ancient settlements and pagan worship, twisted and turned through dense woodlands of ancient beech and yew, open fields of recently sown crop, barren heath and eventually through the rolling chalk cliffs of the Seven Sisters. The weekend was a real taste of a place I had never been before nor given little attention to, Kipling described the area as "Our blunt, bow-headed whale-backed Downs", I think there’s more to it than that.

Here’s a few of those moody pics . . .