By James Hibbert and Chris Holland
If I had a pound for every time one of us said ‘Who’s idea was this anyway?!’ then the Christmas drinks would have been on me. Chris swears it was my idea and the WhatsApp’s messages from earlier this year suggest it was my idea, but I wasn’t going to admit to that until the ride was over. Now the ride is over we can agree – it might have been my idea, but there was never any push back from Chris. So you can consider yourself at least an accessory.
Inspired by the number of people in the club tackling their own adventures, it felt like it was time to up the stakes a little, and Chris and I agreed that King Alfreds Way, on the gravel bikes, could be the perfect proposition. Something challenging enough to make it an adventure, but short enough to fit it in between Judith Chalmers – sorry – Chris’s – busy ‘Wish you were here’ recording schedule. A 350km loop of (mostly) off road riding, officially starting and ending in Winchester, and looping clockwise around Salisbury, Swindon, Reading, Hindhead and back to Winchester. Cycling UK suggests 4-8 days, and the resulting conversations had us flip flopping in our minds about how to tackle it, where to break it up, and how long we should give it. The answer at this time, was that 2 days doing two thirds of the loop was the correct answer for us, but this soon felt like a bit of a half hearted conclusion, so we agreed we would tackle the whole loop in 3 days, and later (thank the Lord) decided that the 4 days was required. Cycling UK is correct – it’s a 4-8 day ride!
The next few months were spent creating lists of what we would need and how we would carry it, and of course, buying all the stuff we would need. Finding accommodation for the ride in the right places, and at the right prices, proved trickier than expected, so a plan was hatched to get the train to Winchester on the first morning, and cycle to our first stop; a stunning modern farm cottage approximately 105km from Winchester, then another near 100km day to a Premier Inn in Reading, with the third and final stop over being supported by Tracy, who would meet us with the camper van, and a tent for me, with the added benefit that we could off load the heavily laden bike bags for the last day, and the journey home again.
If I was to re-name the title of this adventure, it could arguably have been titled ‘A dummies guide of How to under-estimate’ … It think its fair to say we under-estimated the ride itself, the amount of planning and organisation it would require (everything from getting the bikes on the train, to the accommodation, to packing everything we would need and could carry), and of course – the big one – we completely under-estimated the weather !!! It only turned out to be the hottest 4 days of the year !!
So, Day 1: We met each other at Sutton Train Station, bright and early, all packed up, and as we sat on the train to Clapham and changed to Winchester, the weather was glorious, the bikes were prep’d and clean, and so were we for that matter!! We’d picked up a breakfast for the journey, encountered a friendly ticket inspector, and life was good. We were living the dream of talking about our adventure of The King Alfreds Way, without actually having put a tyre on it as yet.
That’s the best thing about planning an adventure – you get all the pleasure of talking about it, planning it, and the expectations of gliding along with a tailwind, without having to burn a single calorie – arguably the build-up is one of the best bits, but of course, the build up doesn’t actually build those memories, and the memories are normally built on the painful bits.
We got off the train in Winchester and headed for the Statue of King Alfred to officially start our ride. The bikes felt heavy, but we were fresh, and after saying goodbye to Big Alfie, we were off – well briefly !!! Despite practice packing and rides with the bikes and bags, we were less than 5km in before the first bag ‘issue’ and a stop for a ‘fix’. I won’t lie, we’d only been on tarmac so far in order to get out of Winchester, and already we were having bag issues. 220 miles of real rough stuff was looking like an ambitious ask, but actually, we learnt along the way how to strap and pack the bags better, and despite my huge outback saddle bag swaying around like an excited dogs tail, and causing my bike to have some very strange handling characteristics, there were few issues in this respect.
The first day was hard !!! It was hot, and it was the longest day of the ride. The first half of the day was a joy (as was the whole ride to be fair) the tracks were challenging, mostly in terms of being undulating, but also rocky and rough under tyre, and at our first stop we ate, drank, refilled the water bottles, and looked at what time it was, and how far we had to go, and figured we best get moving again. This afternoon was by far the most taxing – the heat didn’t give up, and we were riding across the Salisbury Plains wide open spaces with no shelter from the sun, narrow rutted trails that would try and take the bike from underneath you, and as with the whole ride, there were intermittent hills that would see our speeds drop well in to single digit speeds – for these hills, and with the bikes loaded up – it was just a case of ‘got to keep moving’ – speed wasn’t an issue. Across the foreign looking Salisbury military areas, and on to the Ridgeway. The plan had been to try and get in each evening for about 4pm – the reality was that at 4pm on each day we were still usually still 2 hours from our destinations, hot, getting short of water, and wondering if we’d have the time to get in, freshen up, get out again for a meal, and back again for a sleep, and have the ability to recover for it all again the next day.
The end of the first day saw us going up one almighty hill, to the point I was holding my helmet to try and keep my temperature down the best I could, and down the other side wasn’t much easier, the ruts making handling the bikes hard – we finally arrived at the stunning farm cottage, which if I had the energy I would have jumped with joy to have arrived – the reality was I was feeling a little queasy after such a long day, but thankfully a good re-hydrate, shower and change, and we headed to the local pub for more rehydration and a lovely meal, and our batteries were recharging well.
Day 2: The signs are out there if you open your eyes. Today was a strange day, never to be forgotten now, but more of that in a second. We woke up nicely refreshed, made a glorious breakfast, the sun was shining, but today was a shorter (and in our heads easier) day than the one before. All our days started like this; ‘Today is going to be a good day, will be easier for sure, and its not looking so hot, etc, etc’ …’ later each day would always end the same ‘ Oh, heck, I think we under-estimated the Distance/heat/terrain/etc/etc … are we nearly there yet?’
So, day 2 we headed back up on to The Ridgeway, where we would spend most of the day. It runs high high up across the region, and occasionally drops you back down to ‘normal’ ground level, and it started stony and got grassier as it went. The climbs back up on to it at times were very challenging, and the downhills fun (if still speed restricted by the baggage), and today was feeling hotter again.
‘Un-identified frying objects’ … at numerous points the off road tracks would cut across roads, and you’d pull up to the road, check it’s clear, and cross. The Ridgeway is popular with walkers too (when not so hot), so quite often where the roads met the tracks, there would be a small carpark. At one of these crossings Chris was a little behind me in crossing, maybe hesitating for a snack or quick drink .. I rolled over very slowly, and as I did so, I was stopped by a man sitting on the rear doorway of a ropey old small motorhome – the sort of thing you see in horror movies – big old thing, covered in stickers, and there sits this weedy (but very tanned) looking man smoking a roll-up. The conversation starts as most do this weekend ‘Hot enough for you’ he says … to which I reply ‘Yep, the crazy thing is that before the ride we were praying that it wouldn’t rain’ .. Well, seems I had (or was it all ‘in the stars’ after all) given him the perfect ‘in’ to his conversation. ‘When you get home, picture a bird landing a specific place in the garden, and it will come’ … ‘do it more, and the frequency they arrive will increase’ … ‘The Aliens watch and are in awe of us and all we have to contend with’ … ‘the signs are always there, you will see if you look for them’ …. ’time is a myth’ ….. ‘times are changing, the Aliens are coming’ … and so on …. We had a little chuckle as we left, and continued on not giving much thought to it, but as events unfolded, these conversations would come back to us, and strange events did unfold … or was it just co-incidence and a small dollop of heatstroke – either way, it kept us entertained along the way.
Once again, the last 2 hours in to Reading seemed to never end, but we were finally off the very hard going Ridgeway, and back to civilisation in parts – The Ridgeway was sparse, long long long stretches of nothing, and no-bodies … thankfully there were a couple of times Chris thought to himself ‘I wish there was someone to ask if there is a café, not too far off route’ and they would appear – this happened with such frequency, we started to wonder about our recent conversation. The challenge of the Ridgeway of course, is by coming off it, you drop down to the nearest town or village, but then having to climb back up again, and did I mention the heat !!!
We rolled in to Reading, showered, changed, walked to the nearest pub, sat outside, chewed the fat (mostly about how fast passing electric bikes were going, all carrying food, and no-rider ever peddling), ate and rehydrated before another night of deep sleep.
Day 3: Ah, today is going to be an easier day, its not looking so hot, and maybe a bit shorter … I am sure the Aliens, if they were watching, were laughing at us later that day – today (have I said this twice before all ready??) was definately the hardest day, to the point we (due to circumstances) had to get recovered a little bit earlier than planned by Tracy and the Campervan. Rolling out of Reading along the canals was nice, the bags packed up better and better each day, but today surely was the hottest day as we later entered the Surrey section of the ride. We thought about getting a drinks stop in, and two cyclist appeared (thank you, ET) and guided us towards a stop near Fleet. It needs saying again, but its at this stop, that I think I was the hottest I had been on the ride so far, it was a scorcher, but thankfully, there were a number of cooler wooded sections after this, and it felt more like the tracks we are used to riding – it was a hard morning, but an enjoyable one.
Riding along a track, we came across a Tap room, selling cold beers (and probably other stuff) and we stopped, rehydrated, and set off again. From here on in, the ride took a turn for the worst as we entered Devils punchbowl – it was hot, and sandy, and I was forced to walk a lot, initially because its impossible to ride through the sand, and later over the rocks which were too big for any gravel bike.
We stopped half way up one of these rocky hills, and the fun unfolded !! … Chris’ navigation had ran out of battery – no problem of course, I had a battery pack, and Chris has a cable in his backpack … the backpack on his .. uh oh !!! … the backpack that should be on his back, but when he turned around, all that was on Chris’s back, was Chris’s shirt … oh heck !!! .. we were out of navigation, and as time unfolded (very quickly) we realised the backpack had more and more vital things in it – the ride might end tonight if its not found, and we couldn’t figure out where it had been left, The obvious answer was the Tap Room – but had it been taken off somewhere else to get something out of it? We couldn’t be sure. We were way too tired to ride back, we didn’t have the time even if we had the energy, we were at that point of loss when out of the blue (bearing in mind, we literally could go hours without seeing anyone) a mountain biker came up the rocks, and stopped to assist (come on, its getting freaky now !!!) … he knew the name of The Tap room, and we tried to call – but no answer – so he said, lets get you to the car park at the top of here, you can call for Tracy (I don’t think he knew her name), and drive down to see if it’s there, and that’s exactly what happened – and it was. Another strange encounter, but the strangest thing was not what he did, but what he said. We were telling him the story of the missing backpack, and the actually words he used were ‘Sometimes the signs are there …..’ talking about your back felt a bit lighter, etc …. but this sentence was eerily close to our previous conversation with the mystery man. – * mind blown at this point *
We drove to the campsite sat in the first air conditioning we’d encountered for 3 days, set up camp in a lovely little site, and tuck into a very civilised dinner with wine in the open air. The peace and quiet of which was broken by a large family with very strong South-East London accents talking, shouting and singing all night .. but that’s ok, we might have been up early and crashed around a bit also … not intentionally of course * wink wink* !!!!
Day 4: Bikes now clear of the clothes, toiletries, bags, etc, that we would no longer need, we were driven to where we stopped our ride last night, and we set off again. This section truly was glorious .. if you want a nice day on the bikes – Hindhead going South is an amazing section, of truly beautiful surroundings. Par for the course (actually a good section was in a woods near a Golf Course) the day started easier .. was broken up along the way by a random person at just the moment we were starting to think about a coffee stop (this time a man on a mountain bike) but got significantly harder as the day went on. Today was interspersed for a time with real downpours, which meant I was putting on, and taking off my rain coat every 5 minutes for a while, as it was still hot, and the rain meant I was walking up some of the steeper climbs again – I just didn’t have the grip to ride up them. The rain passed, and true to form the end of the day was tough; the downhills being just as hard on the arms now, as the climbs were on the legs. Each climb we were certain we’d be able to see Winchester from the top, and each climb all we could see was another valley and another hill. It was clear at this time we had no chance of getting our 3:45pm train.
Eventually, we did get to a climb where we could see Winchester in the distance, and we felt all but home .. a tricky ploughed field, some more rocky inclines and declines, and a field with rabbit holes the perfect size to put your whole front wheel in, a final canal section and we were home … Woo Hoo … again, a bit too hot and tired to fully celebrate, and an un-necessarily long explanation from a bus driver outlining every bend and curve in the roads (I think the aliens were playing with us) of how to get to the train station, and we sat on the busy Sunday train, sweaty, dirty and smelly, and arrived back in Sutton just in time for it to get dark.
Wow – what an adventure. The memories now earnt with real blood (genuinely), sweat, and very nearly tears. So many memories keep flooding back to me of the good riding, the bad riding, and the things we have seen and done, the people the aliens sent to assist us, the properties we skirted by, the villages you would never normally pass through, the nature we have seen, the army practicing, low flying aeroplanes, the places we refueled, etc … Would I do it again? I would, without hesitation, do a similar ride, and the company and support was as always a delight, but would I do King Afreds Way again? .. most likely not – the heat wouldn’t have helped, and its listed as suitable for any bike, yet we struggled on Gravel bikes, and on a mountain bike I think it would be easier in parts, but slower in some of the wide open spaces. Our average speed was about 15kmph on average, slowed massively by the walks and steep hills, and genuinely on the open spaces and even across fields we were really pushing on. We couldn’t have gone any quicker. Maybe Cycling UK is correct, it’s a 4 – 8 day ride, but 5-6-7-8 days is a big commitment.
So much more I could say, but I hope the above gives you a flavour of our ride, and maybe that little bit of extra motivation to pick your own challenges or adventures and get out there and do them. You’ll never know the exact journey you’ll be taking, but that’s all part of the fun ….. now has a enough time passed to start planning for another ?!??!?!
