Over a week ago now, I cycled some 135km (about 84 miles) from Witney to Southampton. It was mostly beautiful and occasionally hard work, but I think most reasonably frequent cyclists could do the same sort of thing. Not convinced?
What you might be worrying about is the sheer physical effort in cycling that far. Here's the route I took:
The aspect of cycling that first springs to mind when you think of difficulty is of course climbing up hills; you're doing that under your own steam, after all. If you click through to the Strava trace you'll get more information on that.
I won't lie to you. Some of those hills were killers. The most physically punishing bits were:
- Blowingstone Hill near Kingston Lisle at around 35km in, with a peak gradient of 16.3% or around 1 in 6.1, rising around 80m.
- Inkpen Hill near Combe Gibbet at around 65km in, with a peak gradient of 25.8% or around 1 in 3.9(!) rising around 120m from the nearest flat.
Physical exertion on its own is no fun, that's for certain. But you can sometimes push yourself through it more easily, if you're enjoying yourself, or if you're well rested. Or you can even walk your bicycle up the steepest bits and just take your time (I did that on Inkpen Hill.)
In fact, I felt at my very worst much later on in the journey when I had already spent all that energy on the hills, and was feeling a little dehydrated and hot. That was the point where I had to negotiate the flatter but busier urban areas - Andover, Romsey and then Southampton: all of it running pretty much on empty. So when I had to make the decision between Andover and Romsey to abandon my route briefly (see below), I seemed to feel more pain than during even the steepest climb.
With that in mind, I would say: don't think of a long cycle ride as requiring physical preparation; think of it as requiring psychological preparation. Look at it this way: it took me just under nine hours from door to door: with just under seven of those in motion, that averages at just over 20kph. Even if you were pottering at 15kph, you'd do it in nine hours' cycling, or maybe a full 12-hour day in total.
Looking back, I feel more than ever like the biggest psychological boosts all come from preparation: that way, you don't have to worry about things when you're out there, but can also keep mindful of all the support your prep is giving you. It turns out that I got bits of the preparation right, but a fair amount of it wrong. So here are my suggestions, based on the experience; if you're tempted to do something like what I did....
Map your route
Cyclestreets gave me a great selection of three routes to try. I followed a combination of the balanced and quietest routes almost all the way, apart from: a brief detour over the hills near Eldon (see later); and a wrong turn near Standford-in-the-Vale. Study these routes, very closely. Memorize features like forests, hills, Roman roads, and of course cities and train lines (see "have safety nets" below).
Although I love my tech, I didn't rely on my phone, and you shouldn't either. GPS tracking to record my route wasn't a big hit on the battery, but it could've been. So print out what you think you'll need; and back it up with smallish-scale foldable OS maps. I pencilled in important junctions on three such maps: Oxford(shire), Newbury and Wantage, and Andover/Romsey. Print out bigger cities using Open Streetmap, and ink your preferred route through them.
Also: don't be afraid to ask for directions.
Cycle out; train back
If you only have to head in one direction, then obviously you get to see more for a given mileage than if you're returning by the same route. Yet even a circular route feels like you've travelled a much shorter distance from your starting point than a one-direction cycle ride: "as the crow flies" is an important psychological concept.
Try to plan a journey to end at a train station. By all means end at a big town without a bus station, if you're sure that the bus services are friendly to e.g. foldable bicycles. Stagecoach expect you to store them in a bag, which implies they either don't understand how people use foldable bicycles, or they don't understand integrated public transport, or they simply don't care.
However you do it, arrange things so that you can just: head out. Once you're on the road, you should never have to worry about how you'll return. If you can continue to look at the hills in front of you and think "I'll be at the top of that before I'm done; and once I am, then I'll have beaten you, you bugger" then you will get to the top of it; you will have beaten it.
Set off before dawn
My ride began at around 5.30am, for a dawn at 5.48am. The whole outside world was an eerie, cool blue; it was at this point that I saw a hare and my first fox. Indeed, the most beautiful bits of the cycling were either before the sun properly came up, or on the quietest of the back roads.
And given that an early Saturday morning helps to make back roads even quieter than usual, then it's clear that you should start as early as possible. If I'd known now what I knew then, I'd have started even earlier.
Seriously: if you don't do anything else after reading this blogpost, then do an hour or two of pre-dawn cycling, while the long summer days still conveniently permit it.
Food and water (and other stuff)
I had no idea how much I would have to essentially stoke myself like an engine. Sugary food just disappeared: a pack of cereal bars, three bananas, two apples, more cereal bars, flapjacks; and then chips with cheese when I arrived. Even crazier, I must have gone through five or six litres of fluids, and still felt thirsty (a fellow cyclist has indeed suggested a litre for every hour cycled, plus top-up water for when you're not actually moving.)
Take at least two litres with you, and then map out places where you can refill your bottles (Hungerford for me, then afterwards I was buying fluids instead.)
Also pack at least some of: suncream; toilet roll; sticking plasters; basic toolkit for puncture repairs; spare inner tube.
Avoid offroad paths
Between Fullerton and Romsey, Cyclestreets decided to put me onto an offroad route: part of NCN Route 246. This would avoid a stretch the busy and somewhat aggressive A3057.
I'd say that this particular stretch of cycle route was a joke at my expense: almost impossible to find and get onto at Fullerton (I had to duck my way through brambles a mile or so on in the end); completely unsignposted when you got onto it (I was frequently worried I'd missed my turnoff) and a surface that was part loose, sharp stones and part mud. Maybe it would've been OK on a mountain bike.
In the end, to avoid having to use any more of NCN 246, and with no desire to deal with the A3057 instead I took an alternative route at King's Somborne, up into the hills around Eldon. It did mean an extra couple of hills at around the point where I was losing the will to keep going, but arguably it was worth the physical effort - even at my lowest ebb - to no longer have to worry about imminent punctures.
Expect to get tired, and to stop
Plan stopping time. I didn't really do this, and so was initially annoyed at myself for taking longer than the route's estimated time. Of course, though, you should stop, and expect to stop. Find nice places to stop on hills; and stop on the top of the hill, don't be tempted to ride down first: you won't enjoy the ride as much. Linkenholt after Inkpen Hill was especially beautiful, and I wish I'd been less fuzzy-headed and thirsty.
Especially, expect to get tired more often towards the end. With that in mind, don't schedule three major urban areas in quick succession at the very end, if you can. If I were doing this again, I'd go west to Brockenhurst, or even try to reach Lymington. Either of those are embedded deep in the New Forest, and are considerably prettier than Southampton. Southampton is a hole.
Have safety nets
Rather rashly, I did the whole trip solo. I probably wouldn't do that again, although it did mean I could have made the decision not to go on the Friday night, if the weather had been appalling, with very little loss of face (I couldn't resist telling people at work on the Friday, you see....)
But with that in mind, my best companion was my Brompton, for two reasons. Firstly, I knew that I could bail at any city with a train station, any town with a bus service, or any village or minor road accessible by a taxi: and I could always get home. If I really couldn't fix a puncture, I could fold up my mode of transport and get it into any other, bigger mode of transport.
But the second reason is that a bicycle you love, that makes you smile, that you occasionally want to reach down and pat after climbing a particularly tough hill or spinning through a particularly beautiful glade.... That's a bicycle you might ride to the ends of the earth.
Is it really worth it?
For me? Definitely! For you? I can't answer that.
All I know is that I saw foxes and a hare and rabbits and deer and a clutch of grey partridges and a red-legged partridge. I saw Oxfordshire asleep; Berkshire waking up; Hampshire enjoying its Saturday morning. I tailed a startled buzzard for half a minute, as it tried to negotiate its way out from between the hedgerows. And I made it to the sea, from one of the most landlocked-feeling counties, entirely under my own steam.
It might be just as lovely when you do it; it might not. But wouldn't it be annoying, to never be certain either way?
