Category Archives: around home

around home, bikes, history, MTB, UK

South Downs Way & Winchester

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I parked just outside of Winchester this morning to get on the South Downs Way for a portion of it just to get out & enjoy the thinly clouded day. The route runs east from Winchester a hundred miles to Eastbourne on bridleways & some road – I imagine it’s very popular in the summer, but I only saw a couple of walkers & one other rider while I was out.

The first couple of miles were climbing on narrow roads, before getting to the east end of an MOD firing range & heading off the seal & starting to cross the fields on the top of the down. With all the hedgerows & green fields it was pleasantly English & the views improved as I climbed a little (there wasn’t really much climbing in the part I did). I was pleased to not get very muddy at all, I was expected the chalk soil would have different ideas – but it was mostly just damp & not wet, sloppy mud.

Back towards Winchester

It’s a little odd riding these sorts of trails in England – you never feel very far away from anywhere. That’s sort of nice when you’re by yourself. It was also very strange riding through some farmer’s fields & then suddenly being turfed in to the middle of a farm’s working buildings. There were dozens of pheasants scrambling out of the hedges & undergrowth, which was amusing.

I had a nice long descent down to the village of Exton, pity a lot of it had been rerouted a while ago (the signs said temporary, but they looked old) on to the road. Some nice big manor houses & deprecatingly named ‘cottages’ around here to look at while I snacked before turning around & heading back up the hill. Apart from the first part of the return, the riding was a lot easier than I expected – the GPS confirms I was very gradually climbing for a lot of the way out.

The River Meon flowing through backyards in Exton

I probably would have fitted, if my Sat Nav had have sent me down here

All in all a pleasant two & half hours & forty kilometres spent; nothing exciting as far as singletrack goes, but I imagine this will be a great route to bikepack during the summer. I must remember & come back & see if I can ride to Eastbourne.

Since I had parked at the Park & Ride lot, I could hardly not take the bus in to Winchester to see this historic town.  A cathedral town, it was once the capital of England & the seat of King Alfred the Great.  Lots of nice rambling streets & buildings doing their best to stay upright, it was pleasant strolling around.

Winchester Cathedral – Jane Austen is buried here

This 18ft diameter, 1 ton piece was originally a (round) table & depicts Arthur & his twenty-two knights

around home, history, UK, vehicles

Beaulieu Museums

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Happily for me, the National Motor Museum is a short way down the road from home in the New Forest at Beaulieu.  With rain on the forecast, I set aside the afternoon to go & check it out.  It turns out that there is not just a large car museum to look at.  But that didn’t stop me spending most of my time in there.  There’s many notable cars to gaze at, including quite a few that have set land speed records at various times – Sunbeam & Bluebird come to mind.  Slightly less speedy cars, but more recognisable these days, include Mr Bean’s Mini, Arthur Weasley’s flying Ford Anglia & the Trotters’ van.

There are strange looking contraptions from the late 1800s, cars that really are just carriages without horse & an engine bunged in the bottom somewhere, a ‘Blower’ Bentley (that’s for you Geoff), all manner of Rolls Royces & so on.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

The museum building must be going on forty years now – strangely it has a monorail running through the top of it. Said monorail looks like it was once transport for henchman in a Roger Moore Bond flick. Outside of the main building there’s a small Bond car exhibit – most interesting there is the submarine Lotus Espirit from The Spy Who Loved Me. Also of note is that AMC that performed the spiral jump in The Man with the Golden Gun. Apparently there’s a much bigger display of Bond cars planned. I’ll have to come back & make use of my free entry for a year. Nearby is the World of Top Gear & the Enormodrome filled with cars from various challenges that have featured on the show. But that deserves another photo post for those who may actually be able to identify them.

Further through the extensive grounds & Victorian gardens is a small exhibit detailing the role Beaulieu Estate played in housing SOE operatives during WWII. Being on the south coast of the country, this whole area has a lot of war history – more of which I’m sure I’ll discover in the months to come. Just past this is Palace House which is the ancestral house of the Lords of the Estate & still the home of Lord & Lady Montagu. Parts of it were originally the gatehouse of the nearby abbey, but it was extended in the nineteenth century. A small part of it is open to visitors & mostly filled with portraits. All the captions were written in the first person by the current lord of the estate – they were much more personal & easier to read.

Just around the corner are the remains of the Cistercian Beaulieu Abbey that didn’t survive the Dissolution after three hundred years of existence. The refectory still serves as the parish church of Beaulieu; there’s a big exhibit on the life of the monks, but by then it was getting dark & damper & I’d had enough of looking at old things & wandered back out through the grounds.

around home, UK

Settling In

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Somehow, I’ve found myself back doing twelve-hour shifts, two days, two nights & four days off. At least this time, it’s only for a couple of weeks just to get familiar with the finishing plant. Alas, there was no fifty percent pay increase this time. My first week at work was spent mostly meeting all sorts of people around the company & learning what they do, as well as reading a lot & trying to get my head around the polymerisation process of making SBR (styrene-butadiene rubber).

I’ve settled into a nice big room (lodging locally) with plenty of storage for bikes, skis & other necessary items. It’s an arduous two-minute drive to work (I will bike when I finish shift work & get organised) & the New Forest is a few hundred metres away in the other direction. I’m also interested to find the history of the kiln of Lime Kiln Lane, off which my street runs. My first weekend here I went for a little explore on my bike in the forest. With a stack of trails off the net on my GPS I just headed out to see what I might find. Pleasantly, I bumped into some local riders & tagged along with them. So I got to find some of the better trails (it’s all pretty flat, but more than enough to amuse me mid-week), avoid the steers, ponies, donkeys & the trained falcons. Somehow my intended two hour explore ended up well over fifty kilometres, four hours & all the way to Brockenhurst & Lyndhurst.

That afternoon I popped down to Hythe to take the little ferry across to Southampton to have a look around – rather, to finally get a decent phone. The ferry takes about fifteen minutes – which is almost as long as it would take to walk the length of the pier (one of the ten longest in the country). But it works out well that there is the oldest pier railway in the world to get you to the end. It is a rather rickety ride down the pier in cute little carriages pulled by a tiny little electric engine. The ferry ride itself is also interesting as Southampton is a big port & there are usually cruiseliners & other big ships around.

I really didn’t take many photos – there is pier there somewhere

The local MTB club had their fortnightly ride the day after, & feeling a little tired I dragged myself off north of Ringwood to Braemore. It was a very pleasant drive through the countryside, crossing into Wiltshire & then back into Hampshire. It turned out to be a big group – about forty riders – that split into four groups to keep things moving on. Once again, it was a flat ride & we managed about thirty kilometres of bridleways & the odd connecting road. Although it has still been quite the mild & dry autumn, the ride was an exercise in getting covered in mud. The worse part was the half a mile or so of road outside a pig farm. The road was just one ordeal of riding through sloppy shitty mud. That caused all sorts of chain-suck problems for me for the next few miles, but they eventually disappeared. All in all a nice little ride to get out & meet some locals.

My return appointment to get the results of my MRI was last Tuesday, so I spent the day up in London. As expected, the front of the capsule in my shoulder is torn. I was given the choice of surgery or not; it could well be OK if I sat still for the rest of my life. But the desire to go riding, skiing or do other interesting things isn’t likely to abate – so I chose the surgery option. Now I just have to see the shoulder specialist & then wait for the operation. So that could be a good three to six months away – which makes it a little hard to plan trips as I would be wingless for at least two weeks afterwards.