I don’t need an excuse to ride my bike, but meeting my parents for a pub lunch seemed like a good way to turn an hour’s round trip in the car into a two day, 10 hour each way bike ride.
So that’s what I did.
The North Downs Way provided me an almost direct route between my house and the pub – so route planning was about as easy as it gets and I was get to ride the eastern half of the North Downs Way.
Lunch with my parents was booked for midday. So with over 70km to cover I set off early, just before 7am, and pushed hard for the next 5 hours, well above my normal average speed when on a loaded bike.
I kept stopped time to an absolute minimum and maintained an average speed of 15km/h, which was quite an effort as my normal pace is 10km/h on a long ride (I work out my average speed based on elapsed time, not moving time, I find this works best for me).
I ended up arriving 20 minutes late, rolling into the pub car park in about heart rate zone 9, only to see the absence of my parents’ car – they were another 20 minutes later than me!
After lunch and a short walk with my parents, I had a slightly more relaxed 10km ride to Dunn Street campsite. I got set up and enjoyed a nice chill evening – grateful that this time the pipes weren’t frozen.
I slept well and enjoyed taking my time in the morning to pack up my all my kit and my dew soaked tent (it was somehow wetter than if it had rained).
The ride home was at a gentler pace than the ride out and I got to look around a little more and enjoy the landscape – which, while no match for Wales, or Scotland, was still stunning in it’s own way, made even nicer for the fact this was so close to home.
While a benefit of the North Downs way is that navigation is pretty much foolproof – go straight. It does start to become a little boring after so long on the same route. While I’m an advocate for “there’s always something to see”, what I was seeing was a lot of the same.
That said, it was, as ever, nice to be outside.
I lost count of the number of motorbikes that passed me and I wouldn’t have been able to hear you if you told me – those things can be loud.
As ever, finding water or other things to drink proved an issue on this route – and the irony of less remote routes being arguably worse for this continued.
About a third of the way home I saw promising looking signs for a farm shop, so I pulled off route and rolled into the farm to be greeted with a crowd of people enjoying a sunny afternoon, drinking in a courtyard area outside the farm shop.
I felt slightly out of place as I rolled up and leaned my bike against a fence. The relative solitude of hours on the bike was a stark contrast with people enjoying an afternoon drink with friends.
I popped into a couple of places around the courtyard but came up empty. So, feeling much more like a country boy in the big city than I really should have done I got back on my bike and left.
I snaked round the back of and in between places I was vaguely familiar with. The next few hours were enjoyable but uneventful.
Six hours later I was home, exhausted. Two big days, while nothing too technical had taken it out of me.
I ate, I drank. I ordered pizza.
I’d enjoyed challenging myself to ride with a time limit and to turn what would have been a short but boring drive, into an ‘adventure’.