Category Archives: around home

around home, friends, history, vehicles

Kentish long-weekend

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After a big weekend of riding the previous week, where I managed to pull a muscle in my knee on the Saturday making Sunday’s large singlespeed ride rather painful, it seemed to a good idea to leave the bike(s) at home for the last long weekend of the summer. The physio sorted out my knee quickly, but recommended I do some form of exercise other than biking – a thought that hadn’t crossed my mind recently. So I went for a run & pulled a muscle in my foot – I promptly gave up running.

Not taking bikes, meant that the four of us could all fit in the same car as we travelled to a quaint 15th century cottage we had rented for the weekend – our base for a friends’ wedding. It’s quite fun staying in a house that is more than twice as old as the country you’re from. Happily, I also had a long weekend for my birthday for the first time in my life – a rather dismal day weather wise, we pretty much spent the day eating well too much. We also managed to fit a visit to Canterbury Cathedral in (I’d been before with Trish a few years ago, so as the weather was pants I didn’t really take many photos).  Eventually we settled on a huge roast dinner and if that didn’t fill me up – the two birthday cakes certainly helped.

Plenty of exposed beams

Kings Head Cottage – plenty of room for us all

Across the village green

One of the older houses in Chartham

Thankfully, the wedding day had considerably better weather than my birthday.  Laura & Luis got engaged before I started working here in the UK, so it was good to see all the plans that we’ve heard so much of come to fruition.  The service was all very traditional (dearly beloved, have & to hold etc.) and quite good fun, I still can’t sing very well though.  On seeing the wedding car, below, I immediately had to get a few snaps for Uncle Geoff back in Australia – I’m pretty sure Bentleys of such age are his favourite.

With a bit too much time to spare between ceremony & evening wedding party, we went down to the white cliffs at Dover in our gladrags – where we picniced on the beach, mucked around, went to the pub and then wandered a bit on top of the cliffs.

After the speeches was the dancing for the night – a céilidh.  Basically a gaelic folk dance, it reminded me of the (awful) folk-dancing endured at primary school – but it was miles better due to there being a good band, a caller to tell me what to do and no longer being scared of girl-germs.  But I still had little idea what I was doing – but it really didn’t matter as plenty others didn’t either.  A huge pig-on-a-spit topped the night off nicely; amusingly the happy couple drove off in a tuk-tuk.

around home, bikepacking, bikes, MTB, national park, UK

A small local adventure

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Rather amusingly, parts of England – including where I live – are in the grip of an official heatwave (Level 3!).  The weather has been extremely settled & good recently, but it is amusing that there have to be nationwide alerts if summer actually turns up properly on consecutive days as no-one seems to know what to do (the last heatwave was in 2006).  Level 4 is apparently a national emergency, so I look forward to seeing what state of panic ensues if that happens.

With sleeping inside being a little difficult (at least it’s not humid) I thought last night was a perfect opportunity to try out a few of the bike-packing items I’ve bought recently.  That is – a Thermarest Neoair inflatable mattress that provides a lot of mattress considering how tiny it packs down, an Alpkit bivy bag and a very cheap & lightweight sleeping bag.

So with my sleeping bag strapped to the handlebars of my singlespeed & everything else loaded into my Camelbak (better & more permanent carrying solutions will appear after new bike is collected), I headed out into a very pleasant evening to scout around the forest for a suitable bivy site for the night.  It was very nice riding in the cool of the evening & there were few people around (it’s nice to see someone riding an identical bike to one which you had ten years ago)  – but I didn’t want to get too far from home as the following morning I had to ride home, shower, make lunch, breakfast & then ride to work before seven o’clock.

On my well worn route to the centre of the forest, I found a few potential sites & eventually settled in a small clearing in some woods well off the beaten path.  It’s a simple arrangement to set up – ground sheet, mattress then sleeping bag inside bivy bag on top of all that – so I wasn’t expecting many problems & there weren’t any.  It has been sometime since I’ve slept under the stars, so it was nice to watch the night take over from dusk as I lay staring at the sky.  Shortly after, a herd of horses walked through seemingly crashing through the undergrowth (I bet they weren’t, but it was so quiet it sure sounded like that), grabbing a supper of grass noisily as they went.  I was a little nervous that they’d be so startled by my presence that I’d some how get trodden on, but it wasn’t quite as bad as coming out of a tent in Nakuru National Park & discovering a herd of giant water buffalo staring at you.  A frog visited me too – that was odd as I was nowhere near any water, I thought.

Anyway, the rest of the night was uneventful – but it was still a bit warm, so sleep was fitful.  Eventually the alarm went at five and I got up, decamped, watched a herd of deer close by and rode home – somehow I got to work even earlier than normal.  So a successful little outing trying the gear & adding a small amount of adventure to my normally quiet week.  It’s nice to know the forest is so convenient for more than just riding – it’ll be easy to head out to safe surroundings to test more overnight gear in the future.

around home, history, UK

Mottisfont

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Following the exertions of the day before, I had planned a day of sitting in the sun at the NZ vs England ODI cricket that I had just learned was in town.  However, fifty quid seemed a bit steep – as one can never be sure which NZ cricket team is going to turn up (the sublime or awful) – so I gave it a miss. That was quite a misjudgement with the Black Caps absolutely pummelling the English – a shame to miss that, but oh well.

Instead I had a relaxing couple of hours in the sun strolling around a National Trust property, Mottisfont, near Romsey.  The house was originally an abbey before the monasteries were dissolved – strangely, when the remains of it were granted to someone who was clearly in Henry VIII’s favour, a house was built around the abbey instead of demolishing it.  The old cellar is the most obvious of the 13th century remains.  In parts of the house there are holes in the walls & at the back of cupboards exposing interesting ancient features.

The grounds are extensive and have a lot of lawn.  I was there relatively early & by the time I left there were hundreds of cars in the parking lot – most of those seemingly belonging to the scores of families spread out picnicing, playing ball and generally just enjoying the sun.  There’s a big walled garden – alas, I was a couple of weeks too early to see the mass of roses that I’m told are very impressive (curses to that long, cold spring).

The font, still spewing forth a lot of water, after which the property is named – as the local residents used to meet here back when Old English was spoken and “moot” meant “meet” (say that last bit quickly repeatedly).

I forget what that smaller tree is, but it certainly was a mass of white.

The house was interesting enough & quite nice – the last owner was quite in to the arts & hosted many artists down from London. Consequently, there’s quite a bit of art around.  I did enjoy the watercolour exhibition until it started getting a little abstract.  The most interesting feature I thought was the small waterwheel on the ground floor that was used to turn some sort of pot spinning device over an extremely large coal range.  Also, doorways hidden behind bookcases are always cool.

A pleasant little outing, not nearly as tiring as the last one.

around home, bikes, GPS, MTB, UK

Isle of Wight day ride

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It’s been one of those uncommon weekends at home – & more surprisingly, it coincided with some very nice early June weather. With no plans & wanting to see, before next weekend, if I could manage six hours of riding off-road in a day, it was the perfect time to finally head back to the Isle of Wight. This was my fourth visit to the island – strangely, the first in the eighteen months that I’ve been living just a few miles away across the Solent. On Garmin Connect,I found a rather optimistic looking, for me, almost-ninety kilometre course from an enduro MTB event that ran the week before; of course I could hardly drive to the ferry in Lymington – so that added another thirty-odd kilometres return.

I woke perhaps a little later than I normally do on a Saturday, but was quickly out the door by nine o’clock – I must have just missed a ferry so had to wait about thirty minutes for the next one. By about eleven I was in Yarmouth & it was heaving with some sort of carnival – that should have been predictable considering how packed the ferry was. But all the tasty food stalls couldn’t tempt me as I was reckoning on being back to catch a return ferry at about six o’clock. The first bit of the course followed a very flat causeway up alongside the delightfully named Yar – the number of Rs you add is in direct proportion to how piratyrannical you are feeling.

Soon I was climbing through a golf course onto the chalk downs – very nice it was too with great views in all directions (only spoiled by the Calshot power station stack & the Fawley refinery – both pretty close to home). The ride to begin with was mostly bridleways linked by small pieces of road – not the most exciting mountain-biking, but that wasn’t what I was really after. It was a very pleasant day out in the sun, with a brisk wind, and unlike the mainland there were very few people about. About two-thirds into the course I started to get a little tired, so the food stops got a little more frequent.

One of the nice things about riding on the island is that you don’t have to go very far for the views to change significantly. Also, unlike the Forest, there are hills – which are much more interesting than no hills. On the return from the furtherest point and closing the second & third loops (the course was vaguely a stick to start with, then three loops stacked on top of it) it started to become sealed lanes connected with bridleways – which I was OK with. Luckily I brought about half my normal lunch, as it’s more sparsely populated over there and pubs for mid-ride meals were a bit harder to find.

I ate much less on such a ride than I expected I would, so was pleased to stumble over a donkey sanctuary (whoever had heard of such a thing?) down a bridleway that had a small cafe with rather nice cakes in it (the carrot cake was saved for later & won out over the yoghurt & lemon flapjack). Of course, just after that I found a very quaint village with pubs – but I was still on track for six o’clock, so pushed on. All the singlespeeding recently has given more feasible options for getting up hills when one is tired – so that was helpful as there were still a couple of climbs to get up before the long descent back to Yarmouth to roll straight on to a ferry.

Back home by eight o’clock – that was a great outing where I could pace myself as I wanted and after which I was not nearly as sore as I should have been. Looking back through the riding diary, that’s the most distance on a single day I’ve ever put in on a mountain-bike (it was mostly off-road) & the second highest total climbing since I got my GPS two years ago (not even close to Alex’s climbfest of summer 2011) . I hope such large rides continue for the next few months every so often, otherwise the RVO will destroy me.

Monument & follies appear in the strangest places in the UK – this wasn’t even at the top of a hill.

The problem with such a long route on bridleways is the scores/hundreds of gates one must open & close – this set appearing suddenly out of nowhere were a little more over the top than most.