2009-03-14 Sat - Overnight to Shoreham-by-Sea

Come on people - sign up! The forecast is for a glorious clear moon-lit night with a gentle tail-wind. It will be awesome.

Sorry you can't make it, Paul, but have a nice party!

pigfarmer's birthday party wouldn't happen to be at the South Lodge in Crabtree, would it? ;)

+1 to what Moth said - great night for a ride if last night's one is anything to go by. If the body was willing I'd be up for a repeat. Enjoy the spin.

good luck dear chums.
i'll be thinking of you whilst sitting in a library.

I shall not be riding this evening unfortunately.. Have a lovely trip guys

have a good one, I'd be all over it if I wasn't do a half marathon tom morning, enjoy the ride

Just about to leave now, see the rest of you guys there.

Christ. It's an absolutely beautiful morning in sunny Kent, so must be the same in 'not quite as sunny as sunny Kent but still sunny' West Susex.

Hope it was a good ride.

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!

it was good. Weather pretty much as forecast, stars twinkling through a thin layer of stratus and a yellow moon that rose up to welcome us to the countryside and light our way to the surreality Gatwick, where we spent a long time faffing around and lost two to an insufficiency of sleep & warmth and an excess of milk respectively. We left them to catch trains and went back to cold clear skies, a bright moon, and a lot of twisty interesting back lanes (with surfaces of variable quality) through woods and farmland.

As dawn began to seep into the sky we joined A roads and upped the pace a little for the final stretch into Shoreham, making it to the end of the harbour breakwater in plenty of time to see a glorious golden sun rise behind the tower blocks of Brighton and clear the moon's sliver path from the sea.

With the sun well up we cycled on into its yellow light to find breakfast in Brighton. Blazing sunshine everywhere.

sounds like an eventful ride. Wish I'd done it now.

Come along next time, Jim!

OK. When is the next one?

Not set yet. I'm planning a couple of routes. It may only be in May, as somehow the forum social calendar is already full when I have time. But I'll announce it soon to give everybody long notice.

None of the above is true- It was all agony [except for the travelator at Gatwick airport ;) ].

I finally trundled in, twenty minutes ago having picked up a bit of food shopoping, and when my flatmate asked 'where did you pop out tolast night, I had the ego-gratifying occasion to answer 'just to Sainsbury's, via Shoreham by Sea' .

@ Moth- you're a poet;
@ Oliver- you're a human Garmin;
@ Gina- you're a high mileage info-super-highwayenger
@ McCarthy- you're an over-speedy milk-guzzler

Seeing the sun rise above Brighton with all the abruptness of a fried egg popping out a toaster was magical, ...especially as it was then followed by, ahem, toast and fried eggs.

Christ. It's an absolutely beautiful morning in sunny Kent, so must be the same in 'not quite as sunny as sunny Kent but still sunny' West Susex.

Hope it was a good ride.

Sam, good to hear you. Remembering the general excellance of the Canterbury Ride. Sure you would have enjoyed this one too. Oliver got us a fantastic, non-undulating route which I imagine would be idyllic by day. and hitting the coast at London's famous Shorham By Sea much more interesting than London's infamous callused-toe that is Brighton.

Jim- do it- Shoreham has a beach for swimming.

So you weren't welcomed at the seaside with torrents of abuse and mobile phones thrown at you!

Well done guys!

Sam, good to hear you. Remembering the general excellance of the Canterbury Ride. Sure you would have enjoyed this one too. Oliver got us a fantastic, non-undulating route which I imagine would be idyllic by day. and hitting the coast at London's famous Shorham By Sea much more interesting than London's infamous callused-toe that is Brighton.

Jim- do it- Shoreham has a beach for swimming.

I was up for it, but I had to play football this morning in an important match. Shouldn't have bothered, we lost 3-0.

Seeing the sun rise above Brighton with all the abruptness of a fried egg popping out a toaster

And you call me a poet!?

It was a really good ride thanks to all of you on it. Oliver - thanks again for your excellent preparation and navigation, Gina and mmccarthy - hope you got home ok and are recovering, Dropout - the random babble helped greatly.

moth

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    Well done guys! Feel really bad for pulling out...

Wish I could have seen the sunrise too.
I just woke up a couple of hours ago and feel a lot better now.

@ Oliver - Thanks for the superb navigation!
@ Morth - Thanks for the light fitting!
@ Dropout - thanks for the amusing entertainment at the airport! have you ordered your nurse belt yet?
@ McCarthy - thanks for the company taking the train home!

Had a good time and great fun, hope to make all next time. Will be rested and better prepared promise!

All--it was an absolute pleasure!

I'll pipe up about the next plan soon.

Oliver - sounds like a cool ride. Yes the goods lift was open on Friday, although I used the stairs just along the alley as getting 43 bikes up via the lift was taking some time. The Gatwick staff must be wondering what's going on with bikes arriving in the middle of the night two days running. Some wag has even put up one of those cycle route signs by the goods lift.

Next fnrttc is on Thurs April 9th, so if you avoid that weekend I'm in for your next foray.

Thanks for the info, Des--I didn't realise that there were stairs. We took a long detour. I suppose chances are that the stairs wouldn't have been locked, as they're probably a fire escape.