Off Course

London is a city that blossoms in autumn.  Hammersmith bridge on a misty morning, rowers taking advantage of a cold, clear day.  Richmond Park, orange, the light low and photogenic.  Others have noticed and are here early, SLR’s in hand.

The Thames path takes me past Hampton Court Palace.  I peak through the cracks in the ancient doors.  The moat is mown to perfection.

Walton-on-Thames and onto the Wey.

After a boggy slog through the birch wooded, sandy earthed heathlands of Wisley Common.  The trail explodes into the ruins of Wisley Airfield.  Concrete, painted markings and Buddliea in the cracks.  A great place for some unofficial bike racing I think.

From the trail is destined for the Surrey Hills and across the North Downs Way.  The gruelling climb is inevitable now and when it comes near East Clandon I couldn’t be happier.  I’ve had a quiet week and I’m ready for some riding.  The trail is a root laden bridleway, technical but not so lose as to destroy all rhythm. I meet a young horse at the peak which results in an uncomfortable pass and less than friendly exchange with the rider.

Down into Shere and through the hills where I join the Downs Link Path which connects the North Downs Way to the South Downs Way.  From here a fast, fun, gravel descent into Cranleigh where you join a disused railway.

The railway was closed in the late 60′s as part of the controversial programme of rail closures across the country recommended by Lord Beecham to encourage car ownership and road building.  Short sighted now that, 50 years later, its clear that reliance on motor vehicles is an issue that a society needs to address.

The link path is flat, wide, well made and fast.  I’m spending the night at my parents which is on the path and it’s exciting to be riding a trail that I know from my oldest memories.

The next morning I’m back on the trail by 9am after a no holds barred fried breakfast and the light is stunning.  This section of the trail is has a full tunnel of tree canopy to filter light through.

A stop in Stan’s Bike Cafe just outside Partridge Green is all I need to make to Upper Beeding before lunch.  The climb from here to join the South Downs Way is one of the hardest climbs I’ve ever done.  Loose, steep, quite long and no verges to offer respite.

I love the South Downs Way and I’m always impressed by the way the access to the land and the working of the land are cheek and jowl but never a problem. A herd of cows pass me on the track while I fix a puncture; they seem a bit put out at my presence and switch to single file rather than double for a few metres around me.  Just after this I notice that the oak of the top bar on each kissing gate is work smooth by use, in one instance whilst being held open for me by a famous politician who I shout some support for.  I wonder if you should do that on a Sunday afternoon.

I’m early and the spin into Brighton from here is a short one so despite the raging head wind I decide to push on to Eastbourne along the SDW.  A decision I will question in the not too distant future.

After a detour through Lewes I arrive, having endured another hard climb back onto the trail, in Alfriston.  I stop for lunch bought from the heritage post office and I sit on the heritage town square bench, next door to the antiques shop.

A quick sighting of the Alfriston white horse makes me smile.  Cuckmere Haven in the white, flat light is a special moment as I emerge from a stepped climb through the woods at West Dean.

I’m excited now about the final leg.  I have cheekily decided to ignore all warnings and ride the coastal footpath along Beachy Head.  I’m not disappointed but I am broken, this isn’t a ridable path, it’s barely walkable at this stage.  The tourists seem amused by my efforts though, I’m sure a couple of the lads were placing bets on a particularly troublesome climb.

We struggle up onto the path which involves a sharp climb that I tell myself will 'get the system going’, and then get a  little lost, not willing to believe that a rough field full of horned cows is the path.  It is.

The first third of the route is a troublesome and beautiful mess of gates, hard hills, woods with steps and very mixed ground through the Chilterns.  After which the path drops down to the Thames edge via the ancient Grimm’s Ditch; a mysterious holloway that is unnavigable apart from a rooty path on its southern bank.

I experience a powerful sense of having left the normal space of things.  It always surprises me when I remember that the path I’m treading, the linear space of the path and the journey itself is older by an order of magnitude than wherever you came from, any place you pass through and any other road that intersects; this route is at least 5000 years old.  It’s the start of the human geography of the country not an incidental.  The sense of stepping outside normal time is tangible and like Robert Macfarlane says it’s tempting to think you could exist in the other world forever.

We comment on the fact that the trail is adorned with ancient features which we have neglected to properly research or mark but ‘we’ll look out for’.  I can’t even remember whether we’ve gone past the White Horse Hill or not.  I realise we haven’t later when we have to do a slippery chalk-earth decent down the side of the hill, which has been named ‘the death slide’ on Strava.

The rain comes when we hit the Thames, an hour in the Pike and Perch at Goring deals with that issue and we leave the public house excited about the prospect of a Thames crossing and an afternoon on the Oxfordshire section of the Ridgeway; the part that no doubt gives the trail its name.  The chalk ridge will lead us directly into Swindon where we have decided to end the day with a train into Paddington.

Getting onto the higher path involves another long, hard climb out of Streatley.  I’ve done this before so I issue a warning which inspires a little competition I suspect.  As we crest the hill a family with air rifles look at me like I’m mad for being there.  This ridge has offered dry, safe going since pre-history and sheep were drove along it to market near London well into the twentieth century.  Sheep herds would ‘sleep on their feet’ through the night, which apparently meant tying themselves to one another and letting the bells guide you in a half sleeping state.

From here the views are classic and arresting.  Lumpy, agrarian, a power station, a well placed oak and red kites floating close enough to make out individual feathers.  It brings to mind the landscape conjured in the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke; a landscape with latent magic.  

We are both interested in how the trail seems to have a logic of its own.  Sometimes bare and rocky, sometimes grassy, sometimes with shallow ruts, sometimes deeply rutted without any apparent reason for the change in texture.  Always two ruts, even in places where motor vehicles must nearly never go which we agree must be because people like to walk next to each other.  One rut is usually deeper than the other, both require concentration to navigate.

We choose to leave the trail at the ruined walls of Lyddington Castle which we circumnavigate, an heroic gesture that is immediately made impotent by our inability to find the path back down and having to jump a fence in order to edge down a sheep laden hill to rejoin the Ridgeway which is a road at this point.

We jump on the national cycle route into Swindon which rewards us with a fast off road route into town and a curly ramped, pedestrian bridge over the motorway which I childishly ride as fast as I can to see if I can record the best time on Strava.  There is also a great glimpse of the outdoor lido and diving platform at Coate Park which I resolve to return and swim in the summer.

I won’t go into details here but for those of you that ride into Swindon; there is a  roundabout with roundabouts within.

Riding across the country on the way puts you at odds with modern infrastructure of movement, which is oriented largely north / south, sometimes east /west, connecting London and the north of the country.  The ride involves passing over or under three motorways and several major train lines, being on an axis that relates to a human geography pre-dating the Romans, uninterested in London.

Places happen on the way which have adopted the route in name here and there, like Ickleford where the ancient road crosses the river Hiz near Hitchin.  Otherwise they are incidental and just part of the landscape of the route, places like Letchworth Garden City and Roydon where the walking path becomes a part of the road network for a while and then a path again, sloping alongside suburban gardens with Ronsealed fences and trampolines.hill-path

In places you become suddenly aware of the immense time and memory of the trail, for instance where the path is a metre lower than the landscape it is within.  Here are feelings of connection to the land and to the importance of movement across the land.  Elsewhere the ordinariness is shocking but enjoyable, the only signal the route exists, a yellow way marker on a post or stile inconveniently reminding the odd dog walker that you there is a right to cross this field or that golf course.

On a wet day the loneliness is sublime.  I was the only human on the way and all of the black berries in the hedges were mine.  My imagination stepped in were distraction and company had failed me.  I wished I had read Edward Thomas' poem about the Way or knew more about the animals I shared the day with.

The going is hard, when it's not uphill on loose gravel, it's through deep mud and endless gates.  Half a mile of well made gravel or back road is a gift.  You're tired but somehow the idea of stopping is absurd.  The path goes on forever and the temptation not to stop is huge.  The idea of a boat to sleep on keeps me moving.

Hill trails, open cornfields, gravel tracks, suburban paths, A roads, back roads, industrial estates, bridle paths, bridges, farm yards, golf courses (at least 4), pylons, forests, river edges, village greens, beacons, airfields, rugby pitches, industrial sheds, manure piles, petrol stations, a pub.

Sheep, small mammals, birds of prey, thousands of crows, foxes, dogs and their walkers, a giraffe, deer, cows, horses, ducks and swans, more sheep, pigeons in Letchworth.

It's tough, really tough.  It's impossible not to get totally engaged in the geology of the landscape whilst doing this ride. The paths are chalk with flint nodules that make the going loose and sharp.  The ridge of the downs is around 200m over sea level and broken by river valleys, motorways and train lines that are headed to the sea.  Every valley involves a steep descent and a hard fight back up to the high ground.  The total climbing is over 3000m with no single climb more then 200m.

The first 30km are slow, two hours.  I'm appalled at the low average, I was hoping to cover more ground.  I start worrying about the time I have to complete the ride, doing endless mental calculations as a way of getting me through.  At some point after lunch, in Amberley and a couple of punctures I give up on this and just accept my fate.

The Meon, the Arun, the Adur and the Ouse; river valleys that I count off to track progress and places where food and drink might be found.  I'm worried about supplies the whole time and unusually carry a bag just for food and spare inner tubes.  I need them all and do the last hour or two with no spare which by that point I don’t have the mental energy to be concerned about.

A lady asks me where I'm cycling to and how long it's taken me to get to Amberley from Winchester.  '6 hours!  Why so long?  Why are you on your own?  All that sugar isn't good for you.' She says.  I shrug, mumble something about being quicker on my own and eat my Magnum.

The downs are national park and the public access in most places has a different priority than a lot of the southern British countryside.  The space of the path is largely unfenced and there is a sense of the land use being a stewardship rather than an ownership, a way of managing the landscape rather than commodifying it.  Access and agriculture are not as segregated as is often the case, animals are quite close, close enough to require some evasive action at times.  I don’t feel like I’m going to have to explain myself at some point.

The land feels malleable like a mattress with farms and villages that have gathered in the creases; occasional exciting scars of quarries.

The aesthetic is carefully curated for the most, the national park's image is a work that requires thought and maintenance.  This makes the roughness and realness of a half-way pig farm a highlight and the hyper-manicured outside-environment of a golf course near Brighton a refreshment.

Youth hostel groups are a tin-cup-tied-to-back-pack cliche, which I like.

At 120km, near Ditchling, some other cyclists ask me where I'm headed, 'Eastbourne' I say, 'not too far then' they respond, I smile and push on.

After Devil's Dyke the light starts to turn, the path becomes lonelier and I feel happier.  Saved by Kendrick Lamar and Giles Peterson; I'm going to make it maybe, in any case I'm not going to stop.

I joyfully roll down a chalk path towards an inviting village before I realise that I should have stayed on the high path and have to turn back.  The steepness defeats me and I have to sit in the grass, a broken man.  I remember a scotch egg that's been lurking in my bag for a while.  A dog stands a metre away and starts barks until I leave.

At the top of the hill I find a good concrete path and sing with joy; maybe this path will go all the way to Eastbourne!  I'll roll in at 25kmph!  It stops in one or two hundred metres and I'm back on the rough ground, never mind.

The light starts to fail.  I lost my lights that were packed in a water bottle in the morning.  20km or so to go will take one or two hours and I've got 30 to 60mins of light.  The view along the Ouse to the port of Newhaven is too much and I roll across a grassy field into the port and onto the station platform in time for the train to Lewes for a pint and then onto London Bridge.

Practical Information.

You can do the trail either way and the right way is the way that puts the wind behind you.  There’s not enough hours in the day for this ride so the wind will really count.  Having said that if you can go from Winchester then I’d say that’s a better direction.

The trains from Waterloo to Winchester in the morning are over an hour except the 6:30am which is exactly one hour.

You need supplies for this ride.  A bag with as much food and plenty of tubes is essential.  There are good food stops but this is a ride that needs fuelling and the rough ground will guarantee punctures.