6 June 2014 (sunny and warm) 84 km

Woke at 6.30am and after breakfast packed up all our belongings, loaded up Dools car and headed to Fishbourne to catch the ferry.  Made it just in time at 8.20 am, got straight on, settled in our seats upstairs and headed back to the mainland.

As with the trip over, it was plain sailing on a beautiful day. The weather forecast for today is for great weather with temperatures reaching 24°. Forty minutes later we were rolling off the other side in Portsmouth and on our way up the A3 to Clanfield where Dools was dropping us at the South Downs Way, a 100km bike path heading east.
By 10am we had farewelled Dools and were on our way hunting down bike paths………yeah right…!

After enquiring at an information office where the lady didn’t seem to know East from West, we winged it and took off on a steady incline. This brought us to the famed South Downs Way which was a pretty good bike path but also pretty bumpy.  Not so bad if you’re just out for a day or two with no luggage, but with fully laden bikes it was not the best.   So seeing as we were planning to do quite a few kms today, we decided the best course of action was to find a pub.  Only for the wifi of course so we could plot a course along quiet, smooth country lanes. 

Us in the village of Buriton

So we veered off into a very nice village called Buriton, where we frequented the local boozer…… a lovely pub called The Five Bells. Here we caught up with some messages and although the connection wasn’t the best, managed to google map some directions.

Taking off from here we had to endure a reasonably busy B road into the village of South Harting, before veering off onto quiet country lanes to Elsted, Treyford, Didling and into Cocking.

  Not for the first time I wondered how the English come up with names for their villages.  We had come across road works on the way to Cocking and a road closed sign. Thought we’d have to take the diversion, which as you may imagine, can be a “pain in the arse”, but the road workers told us to go through, but watch out for hot tar.  The first patch of tar we came upon stretched across the entire width of the road but only went for about ten metres so we walked our bikes round it on the grass verge.  You could feel the heat coming off it.  Skirted round subsequent patches and then came to a long, wide patch with hedges either side.  There was no getting round it so we just hoped it had cooled enough and rode over it.  It was quite disconcerting to feel our bikes sink slightly into it but they didn’t leave any tyre tracks and we made it out the other side intact.

One of the many lovely homes we have seen along the way.

Next village was Hoyle and then Graffham, all this along beautiful country lanes with lots of woods as we were still on the South Downs.  We saw lots of wildlife in the form of two deer, two red foxes and also three pheasants who were running down the road in front of us before suddenly remembering that they could fly and lifting off over the hedgerows.  I nearly ran over a squirrel and saw heaps of rabbits.  We also passed lots of apparently wild purple rhododendrons.  This was cycling at its absolute best.  We didn’t even mind that we had a headwind as without it we would have got unbearably hot.  We were relishing the wonderful scenery, the smooth, quiet roads and using our muscles again after two days without any cycling at all.

At 2.30 pm we reached the Swan Inn at the edge of Fittleworth where we stopped for a shandy for me and a Guinness for Pete and a pork pie each.  Delicious!  Checked directions for the afternoon but it was a bit frantic as we only had half an hour before they closed at 3pm.  Consequently we didn’t do as thorough a job as we might have done and paid the price by taking a wrong turn and spending an hour basically taking a long circuitous route back to the other side of Fittleworth.  The next hour after that was not as enjoyable as the rest of the day as we had to use bust A and B roads to try and get back on track.  Finally at Pulborough we got back to our original route which took us through Nutbourne to the lovely village of West Chiltington where we stopped for an ice-cream, a Cornetto for the equivalent of $1.20! 

The next village was Barn’s Green where we bought some supplies and then continued on our way keeping an eye out for a nice place to cook dinner.  Passed through the interestingly named village of Christ's Hospital.  We saw lots of signs for this "hospital" but noticed it had locked gates so you couldn't get onto the grounds. Discovered Christ's Hospital was a massive, and obviously very wealthy boarding school which looked as though the village had grown up around.  Finally at 7pm we came across Southwater and found a deserted playground to set up our little camping stove and cook up our first hot meal, an old favourite we had on our last bike trip called Beanfeast.  We were curious to see if it would be as tasty as we remembered it.  As we started to cook tea, suddenly three kids appeared and started playing with a soccer ball and a tennis ball on the tennis court next to the playground.  Then we had three other noisy kids come and play actually in the playground.  Our peace was shattered and then a tennis ball came flying over and hit our pot of water we were boiling.  Bloody kids!  Wanted to tell them to bugger off and get back inside and play playstation where they belong!  Luckily the water didn’t spill and we managed to cook our Beanfeast.. It was a bit watery but still pretty tasty and we rounded it off with a carrot and banana each as well as a cup of tea and some biscuits before hitting the road once again.  We were now keeping our eyes open for a good spot to set the tent up and eventually found it on the outskirts of Horsham (aka Nick King country).  We diverted down a bridlepath and found a secluded spot in the corner of a field, surrounded on two sides by hedges and the third side by some hay bales.  It was by now 8.45pm and we had covered 84 km. 

It had been a beautiful day and a hard, but enjoyable ride. We curled up in our sleeping bags under friendly skies and drifted off, thinking about what tomorrow would bring.