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@Oliver Schick
Ah, that was nice. :) Except we lost Gina and Michael at Gatwick. :( But well done for them for coming out and riding the first 35 miles with us, Gina having done 70 miles in the morning on very little sleep.
Gina and I met in Islington and found Tom and Michael at HPC. No John. Exercising her BlackBerry capacity, Gina found John's number in the phone numbers thread and rang him up. He'd been having bike trouble and was running late, so we met him at Clapham Common, having left HPC at around 10:25.
After a fast ride from HPC to Gatwick, tailwind-assisted, we made Gatwick at 12:10am. Oddly enough, the famous goods lift was locked and we had to take a long detour via the A23/M23 roundabout. (Des, if you're reading this, did you use it on Friday night?) Gina and Michael decided to catch the train back as they weren't feeling very well. Hope you managed to get some sleep and get better, guys!
After Gatwick, John, Tom, and I soldiered on, slowing down a bit to catch the sunrise at Shoreham at the right time, and we timed that perfectly. An utterly beautiful sunrise over the hills behind Brighton, watched from Shoreham breakwater by the Old Fort.
We carried on to Brighton in the blazing, pale early morning sunshine straight ahead, had a good breakfast at the Izzy Cafe (first customers for the day) and then trained it back to London Bridge.
The new route worked out really well. For about two hours (I think) we didn't see any cars except three when we were crossing the A272, but they weren't going our way. Beautiful lanes, through forests, through fields, the odd hill and descent, lovely sleepy villages, peace and quiet and plenty of time for talking bollocks off the scale.
Distances (I kept track for a change):
HPC-Gatwick: 35.2 miles
Gatwick-Shoreham: 34 miles
Shoreham-Brighton (this includes riding out to the breakwater and back, about 4-5 miles for that): 10.7 miles
I personally ended up with 90.5 miles on the clock, and the others may have done more, as they had a longer distance to get home.
Loved it. Thanks to all for the lovely company. I'll remember this one and I'm definitely keen to do this route again!