Series 12, Episode 1: East Sussex

Here is the cycling forecast for Sunday 10th May, issued by the Met Office at 0400 hours: West London: North westerly headwind, fresh to brisk; cloud cover: slight; visibility: good, traffic: scarce, temperature: tinglingly cold.

I rode into the rising sun to catch my 7 o'clock train from Clapham Junction, calling at everywhere on the way to Hove. My legs started to get re-accustomed to the weight of panniers and camping gear as every slight incline required changing to a lower gear.

I shivered on the platform and the train wasn't much warmer.  When I reached Hove, it was grey and breezy with a few spots of rain, but it soon brightened up a bit.  Brighton was quiet as I rolled along the prom.  There wasn't much to see on the nudist beach either, but that could be due to the cold.

Brighton

Royal British Legion conference 

who knows?

From Brighton there's a concrete cycleway along the undercliff for maybe six miles, to Peacehaven where you go back on the undulating cliff road.  Before that, I entered East Sussex at Saltdean.  There's a hill to get over to Newhaven,  on a very dodgy steep, potholed and pebbly road, but soon I was back at sea level by the port.  Whichever way you look at it, Newhaven is not the most picturesque port,, but I found a harbourside cafe for a good breakfast.

Undercliff walk/cycleway

Peacehaven

Dodgy promenade in Saltdean

Newhaven 

Newhaven fort

After Newhaven it was quite varied.  A rough pebbly track along the beach, only just rideable in parts with some walking, took me a few miles to Seaford, which nestles below the Seven Sisters, seven hills that produce seven white chalk cliffs where they encounter the sea.   The A road climbs about 100 metres in a mile to get past most of them, but it's a busy and narrow road, so I took a detour inland to avoid it.  It was about ten miles and treble the climbing, but I wasn't being followed by a queue of impatient drivers, and it was pretty, so it was much better.

Dodgy

Dodgy

Scenic detour

Lunch was at a very busy Birling Gap cafe, which was moved  back from the cliff edge recently after it got too close.  Birling Gap is between the biggest 'sister', Beachy Head, and the other six, so there was only one more hill to climb... Two and a half miles mostly into the wind, and very exposed, so it was hard going.  The descent on the other hand was lovely, snaking round hairpin bends down into Eastbourne. 

Birling Gap

 

Beachy Head

Everybody should enter Eastbourne that way. It gives a good impression, rolling down a wide road lined with big houses and hotels in well kept grounds. On the seaward side, a few parks and sometimes just the tree-covered cliff. The road is called Grand Drive, and it is. The grandness gives way eventually to ordinary hotels and houses but it's still nice.  

Eastbourne 

One problem emerged though :  the coast was now angled up so I was riding north west, right into the wind, still a strong and cold north westerly.   The further I pedalled, the slower I was going and I had to scale back my ambitions to reach Hastings, another 12 miles and another hill .   Instead I stopped in a campsite in Norman's Bay, a few miles past Eastbourne, and somewhere I've camped before.   Put the tent up, rushed to the pub but unfortunately they stopped serving food three quarters of an hour earlier (at 5pm).   I was gutted, but recovered when they said they could do a pudding for me.

They very kindly gave me the most
sheltered spot, which isn't very sheltered.

So I'll have an early night and hope I sleep well - it's forecast to be cold.   A good first day - modest distance but pretty hilly, and a 20mph headwind reducing to 15mph, all day.  I must have annoyed the weather gods.

Completing the Circle

Well ... the end of my coastal adventure is in sight.  Last year I rode along the south coast from Exeter to Hove, near Brighton, including all the hills of the Jurassic coast and the Isles of Wight and Purbeck.  To complete the circle back to London, all I have to do is finish off the rest of Sussex, ride round Kent and back up the Thames estuary.   Kent is big, mind you, and it has a lot of coast.

It promises to be an interesting trip.   I'm setting off very early on Sunday, May 10th with my last train ride back to Hove.   Not quite as exciting as earlier trips to Inverness, Ullapool, Mallaig or Fishguard, but there are plenty of places to visit and explore a little, places that are quite familiar to many of us and probably a few that we've heard of but never visited.

I'll be writing something for this blog every day, assuming I have a network connection, and I'll post some pictures and an update of my travels, so if you'd like to join me, by the magic of the internet, you can just tune into this blog.  

Please note that if you previously "subscribed" to get new posts automatically in your inbox, this feature has been withdrawn by Google, so you will now have to look up the blog yourself.   Sorry about that, but I hope you will still join me.

Jersey

The ferry to Jersey was on time.  It was the same ferry we'd left last night, which had been to nearby St Malo overnight.  We met another couple of lovely cyclists, who had been delayed by the weather, with an extra three nights on Guernsey,  a scramble to find somewhere to stay, and missing three nights of their paid-for stay on Jersey.

Jersey looks different to Guernsey.   It was daylight, for a start.  But the approach was littered with jagged rocks sticking out of the sea, giving it a wild feel.  Once ashore, the town of St Helier feels like a modern spacious town, laid out in what seems a French style.  Maybe it had to be rebuilt after the war?   The harbour and town are at one end of a long crescent of a bay with miles of sand at low tide.

One of the harbours at St Helier

This is not strictly about cycling round the coast but might be interesting;   Liz and I improvised a ride to the west, along the bay and across an old railway line to the far side.  It was beautiful and culminated in an out of this world ride across a tidal causeway through jagged rocks to a lighthouse.  Jersey has a network of cycle routes and "green lanes" with a 15mph speed limit, where motorists have to give way to cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders.   We followed a couple of these back to the sea and had a lovely half day out with only gentle climbs.

Riding in Jersey is much like the UK, with a few twists:  The maximum speed limit is 40mph.  Traffic lights go straight from red to green, like in France. They don't have a lot of traffic signs: Give Way, No Entry and bus stops are just indicated by something written on the road.  All the street names are in French, but house names are mostly in English.  Many of roads on hills are called Mont de ...something ..., which is a bit off-putting at first.  It feels familiar, but just a little foreign as a place to cycle.

Jersey cycle routes

Round the island

I rode round the island the next day.  Jersey is shaped a bit like a croissant, with the points facing down (south).  St Helier, the capital, is on the lovely southern bay,  towards the west end.  So I set off east along the bay towards St Aubin, at the west end of the bay.  The gentle railway walk we followed yesterday goes up a valley from here, but today I was going right to the south, so instead I had an alpine climb, with several hairpins, out of the village to the plateau and down to the point of the croissant, where there were several old WW2 gun emplacements guarding the approaches to the bay.

 

Leaving St Aubin

Guarding the bay

I was now in the Jersey National Park, which seems to stretch round the coast from the south east to the north west.  Just around the corner, a picturesque bay and the hamlet of Le Portelet, with the odd Bentley and Rolls Royce parked by the roadside.

Le Portelet 

After another vast sandy beach, St Brelade's bay, I came to the Corbiere lighthouse and the amazing tidal causeway that we visited yesterday, but didn't cross it this time, instead continuing round the coast.  Mostly quiet road with a couple of sections of heathland pathway, to get to Le Braye, another beach with miles of sand. I was a third of the way round, and it was coffee time.

Tidal Causeway to Phare Corbiere

I let Liz go first, in case it was dangerous 

St Brelade's Bay

Leaving the flatlands and Le Braye beach

Easy cycling north along the beach, with a few sand dunes and a decent tail wind for company, until I reached the eastern point of the island.  After this I climbed up on to the plateau and rode across the north of the island, mostly on the high ground.  There was the odd swerve down to a little rocky cove, pretty little places with a bit of sand.  And then, inevitably, back up again: a couple of the climbs were pretty serious with a few hairpin bends.  

Giant Puffins!  (Guernsey in the distance)

North coast

Greve de Lecq

Rozel Harbour

Eventually, I was on the west side, St Catherine's, with views of France - the Cotentin (Cherbourg) peninsula not far away.  From there it was pretty flat, and there were some small sandy beaches.   St Catherine's had a huge breakwater/pier, like Lyme Regis on steroids.  My favourite place on the west was Gorey bay, with a pretty harbour overlooked by a big castle.

 

Gorey bay

After Gorey I was on the main A3 and A4 coastal roads, not that busy but a bit boring for a few miles, until I got to the south of the island again and pedalled back alongside the beach to "home" at St Helier.  It was a brilliant day out, very varied countryside and coastline, plenty of hills, and some interesting wildlife.  I saw a red squirrel at St Brelade, and a black squirrel in the North somewhere, and a bit later I think I saw a snowy owl flying over a field.   However Google says they are not found in Jersey, so maybe it was a seagull.  Easily confused.

We came to be very fond of Jersey, its scenery, roads, drivers and the friendly people we met.  The ferry journey back to Poole with DFDS was calm and uneventful, but the following day's ferry was cancelled due to high forecast winds, so we were pleased to have dodged that one.

The Channel Isles!

You may have noticed that I missed a bit of coastline on my last trip.  The Channel Isles are reached by ferry from Poole or Portsmouth, but when I was passing earlier this year, the ferry times weren't convenient,  and anyway, they don't seem to encourage un-booked trips.  So I devised a plan to visit the two largest islands, Guernsey and Jersey, in September, and booked ferries in advance.

It's complicated.   You're supposed to go to one or the other, for, say, a week. Ferries don't run every day, and are operated by different companies.  My plan was to spend a day cycling round Guernsey, hop over to Jersey, another day riding round, and come home.  Three ferries, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, seemed to work.  I asked Liz if she'd like to join me, and she said yes.

I looked at going to the smaller islands: Alderney, Sark, Herm; but it doesn't seem possible to take a bike to them.  Cycling is simply not allowed on little Herm (about 1 × 0.5 miles), and you can send a bike by separate boat to tiny Sark (3.5 × 1.5 miles) but it's a lot of fuss.  (Actually, I later discovered you CAN take a bike to Alderney.)

Ferries, accommodation,  trains all booked, and after a few months of long hot dry summer, it was nearly time, when the weather changed.  On the previous Friday evening, an email informed me that the Monday ferry was cancelled due to adverse weather.  We'd been re-booked onto the Tuesday ferry instead.  Cue gnashing of teeth, but also some relief on my part because Liz doesn't like rough ferry crossings.  Maybe it was for the best.

Plan B:  Ferry to Guernsey Tuesday (arrive 17.15), one night in hotel, ferry to Jersey Wednesday (depart 10.00), and the rest of the trip unchanged (so far).  It must be one of the shorter holidays in Guernsey,  but I decided that I'll have to come back another time, as the option of riding round the island overnight didn't really appeal.

Ferry

The ferry crossing, on a whizzy catamaran thing taking cars and vans, was one of the rougher crossings I've been on, and we arrived shaken but not stirred, only half an hour late.

Welcome to Guernsey

St Peter Port

First impressions of Guernsey from the ferry were of a fairly low-lying island, but they weren't entirely accurate.  We were first off the ferry, and after speeding along the harbourside we found the last half a mile was steeply uphill through the narrow, haphazard streets of the old town to our guest house.  After a lovely meal nearby, we saw the sights of St Peter Port by the light of the very quaint and dim street lights.  It's a beautiful old town with a strange mix of English language and French heritage, or so it seems.

Tomorrow we have to be at the port before breakfast is served, so they have arranged a takeaway breakfast for us.

Today's mileage: 8.5 miles.  Tomorrow:  Jersey.

Maps and mileages

As you will see, on some of the days something was happening with air pressure, and this affected my Garmin's altimeter.  I don't remember going below sea level!

Day 1 - Exeter to Beer

Day 1 elevation

Day 2 - Beer to Abbotsbury

Day 2 elevation

Day 3 - Abbotsbury to Osmington Mills

Day 3 elevation

Day 4 - Osmington Mills to Swanage

Day 4 elevation

Day 5 - Swanage-Wootton Bridge IoW

Day 5 elevation

Day 6 - Wootton Bridge-Totland

Day 6 elevation

Day 7 - Totland IoW - Gosport

Day 7 elevation

Day 8 - Gosport-East Wittering

Day 8 elevation (rising pressure?)

Day 9 - East Wittering-Hove

Day 9 elevation (the 'big' hill at the end
is the hill from the beach up to Hove station)

Mileages

There were some very hilly days, with the second day (Beer to Abbotsbury) appearing in the top 10 hilly days of the whole trip round the coast.  344% is exceptional.

That's all for this trip!