You are reading a single comment by @ewanmac and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
Did you have a rough idea of where you wanted to camp or did you just pull up at the first stand of trees that looked appealing?
ewanmac-
I had selected a place to camp around 180km into my original route. At some point due to not wanting to ride lanes in the dark and being tired I decided to just try and find somewhere instead of pushing to go where I'd planned. Looked for somewhere that looked wooded on the garmin and just headed towards there, turned out to be a pretty good spot, didn't have to stray too far off the road but was still pretty secluded.
zooeyzooey
Went on my first solo overnight trip last week (not quite a mini-tour but still) to the south downs. I left too late in the day on the first day (I had a 4 hour opening shift at work, means I wake up at 5am, so had to take a nap before leaving) which meant doing less miles than planned, partly due to tiredness, also due to the route being planned on lots of country lanes which didn't feel safe at night on my own.
Just so happened I chose the night of the big storm to do the trip, so my first solo wild camping experience (in a bivvy) was ridiculously wet. The ride into Brighton and then back to London was soaking, the climbs were hard fully loaded anyway, but the fact I was basically riding up a stream at a lot of points made them a bit ridiculous.
Was still a lot of fun, and it was partly to test my kit for riding London-Glasgow starting this Sunday, and it all performed pretty well. I was just surprised how slow I was riding full loaded considering this is the bike I ride all the time and generally go quite a bit quicker unloaded.
Didn't take any photos day one due to limited time, but here are a few from day 2.
Where I slept after packing up camp. All of the earlier pics came out terribly due to darkness. It's pissing it down but you can't really tell.
self congratulatory chocolate after climbing Devil's Dyke.
had second breakfast hiding in a bush at the top of Ditchling Beacon. It was pissing it down again. Last of the photos due to how much more intense the storm got after this.
Strava: Day 1 Day 2