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Looks like fun! Always wondered how easy it was to cycle the length of the Ridgeway. Lived near it so cycled the bits between Goring/Reading and Didcot quite a bit, always wanted to go further.
Do you have a route map/Strava route or anything? Have a few days off in Sept and this looks like a nice two day ride!
C4r1s-
I'll PM you my strava as has my real name so prefer not to post on the forum. TBH the Chippenham to Goring route would make a great day ride - I live near High Wycombe so made sense to break it up for me so I could cycle home. (With an earlier start I could have done the whole thing in a day but where is the fun in that?)
el_presidente
This trip has been an ambition of mine for a long time, and due to quarantine cancelling my French holiday I finally got a window to do it. Used my newly built Raleigh Dynatech Quantum (build thread).
Started off getting the 10:00 from Marlow to Maidenhead, then Maidenhead to Reading then Readign to Chippenham (GWR bike spaces are horrendous...). Obligatory mask shot here:
Straight out of Chippenham station onto Sustrans 403 which uses an old railway, disused canal towpath then tracks to get to Avebury.
#nogravel
Lansdowne Monument on the skyline
Got to Avebury at about 14:00, picked up lunch supplies at the village shop but lots of tourists and I've been there many times so didn't linger. Quick shot of the ditch through an ugly fence here
Slogged up the track to the Ridgeway and from there navigation becomes simple. Conditions were perfect with the scattered showers managing to miss me throughout the day. Views were stunning throughout:
Combines were working late, the farmers had seen the horrible forecast for the following day which was weighing on my mind a bit
the riding was great, although some parts were pretty bumpy and in the wet the mud would bog you down. Eventually made it to Goring where I treated myself to fish & chips and a beer, before heading up to some random woods just out of town to bivi down for the night.
The forecast rain arrived in the middle of the night and I was wide awake by 05:00. Packed up asap as soon as it was light and the weather was absolutely filthy, felt more like November than August. I abandoned my plan of continuing on the Ridgeway tracks and just stuck to the roads (hence no pics), was home by 08:30 where my drowned rat impression amused the family, hot shower very welcome. 23 hours 30 minutes in total