6 do the Downs

Warren reports back from a big day out:

Myself, Steve, Dave C, Craig, Dave L and Gabriel road the South Downs Way MTB ride on Sunday 26th July, for anyone that doesn’t know it is a brutal test of climbing and descending starting in Winchester and ending in Eastbourne 101 miles later. The aim was to set off from Winchester at 7am and aim to get to Eastbourne in around 10hrs where we were to be greeted by Mr Larcombe’s brother Paul (who kindly picked us up and dropped us off at silly o’clock in the morning)

The weather was kind mainly overcast but with a tail to cross wind all the way down. The initial section before you reach Queen Elizabeth Country Park is the most tricky in terms of navigation, luckily Craig had a Garmin sat nav plus a good sense of direction! There are a few sections of road early on and the signs are not the best but we made it to the QEP without making too many errors. Once there we had our first proper decent down towards the A3. After stopping for a natures break in the park Dave L discovered that his camel back (which seemed rather heavy) had in fact been sabotaged by his work colleagues and discovered some weights had kindly been placed in there. Once he had lightened himself and the weights we headed off as by now we were approx ¼ distance.

The one problem with this ride is you need to carry an enormous amount of food/drink and spares so the svelte MTBs suddenly feel very different under such load, also there are a lot of gates that require opening and closing along the route which can disrupt your rhythm. The middle section is probably the best part of the route passing South Harting and onwards through to the Devil’s Dyke, the hills are enormous and surprisingly tough and seem to come one after the other, along the route there are a couple of places where you can fill up with water via taps, in a way the weather played into our hands as we never seemed to require vast amounts of liquid.

Around this part of the ride everyone was starting to flag slightly (some more than others) but with constant eating everyone managed to ride through it. Also being roadies the main area we felt it was in the arms and hands with my hands cramping constantly from the bumpy descents and the long climbs. The ride was going well with no mechanicals or issues. When you get past Ditchling the route does become slightly monotonous with large open views and the chance to see the next monster hill looking in the distance. At this point we had our first puncture but were quickly on our way again just as the wind and rain picked up, by the time we had descended into the last village on the route the weather had improved and we stopped to re fuel (on cream cakes mainly). The ride was nearly over but we still had two more big climbs to go. The cream cake I had made the first of these climbs rather hard but it had kicked in nicely for the final climb.

We all made it to Eastbourne as a group and had done it in a time of 8hrs 58mins riding time and a total of 3300 metres of climbing, next time we’ll ride there and back!

All in all a recommended ride and I’m sure we’ll do it again next year once the memory of the pain has passed.