What a wonderful way to spend a weekend... 3 days cycling the South Downs Way, between Winchester and Eastbourne.
I cycled Friday-Sunday (11-13/8) in aid of Fairfield School – a special school providing education, therapies and specialist facilities for pupils with severe or profound learning difficulties and/or physical, medical, multi-sensory and communication difficulties. See http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/fairfields/ for details.
The South Downs Way is a 100-mile, mainly off-road route, with approx. 10,000 feet of vertical climb. I lost count of the hills, but we must have climbed close to 15-20 of them over the 2.5 days riding - each one about 500ft of climb followed by a ride along the ridge at the top with gale force winds gusting much of the time, some rain, amazing views and then some scary descents.
My legs were exhausted, along with my shoulders from carrying water in a back-pack for 3 days and my thumb joints from using the brakes so much on some of the descents… not to mention the messed up leg from a fall!
It was a big stretch for me and I was glad when it was over, but I must admit I now see the attraction of off-road cycling... the few short stretches of road at either end were dangerous - some drivers are really unaware of cyclists. They seemed rather worse than in Northants/Leics where bikes are more common on the roads.
2 comments:
liked your brief piece on the South Downs Way - I would love to encourage everyone to do it once in their lives - I really enjoyed it and had not done anything like it before. also did it for charity and raised thousands! still collecting in fact ;-)
Scott
should have added...
www.supporteastbournescbu.co.uk
you can read our story there - thanks
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