It’s all going south

In which Sid and Doris prepare for a spring cycling adventure.

When we last saw Sid and Doris on bikes they toured Kent, finishing up on Beaver Road, Ashford, after visits to the Dover Bronze Age boat, the Folkestone cliff road, the Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch railway and the Dungeness acoustic mirrors. Now S and D have in mind going foreign again.

The plan for Kent was that Doris’s new battery assisted bike would carry the panniers and Sid would swan about on an unladen neddy.  But the rack on D’s bike wobbled like a hula dancer’s bottom and steering was impossible. Sid took the luggage and was more mule than swan while Doris was swift.

With forn parts in view it is time to test Doris’s new rack and Sid’s novel thoroughbred to see if this plan will work for a longer tour. The test run is from new adventure HQ to Corfe Castle via the justly famous Poole Harbour Chain Ferry.

Sid’s new bike is a 2023 model Specialized Diverge, seen here in yellow (or green).  It is designed as a gravel bike. These are very popular with people who like to go off road but without the weight of full suspension. Where Sid’s Genesis Croix de Fer was steel the Diverge is carbon. It is also top trendy in having 1x gearing (only one front gear rather than three) and hydraulic brakes. It is lighter and less comfortable. It accelerates rather than gathers momentum. It is a compromise lightweight tourer. The gearing is not super mountain bike but as you see Doris now has the panniers (as long as the battery lasts – so Sid has put a rack on the new kid, just in case).

The chain ferry has been running since 1923 and is now on its fourth boat, seen here coming to collect us at Sandbanks.  It can take 48 cars but in practice they don’t wait to fill up. They take what’s on the slipway and head off again. Real adventures have ferries. And this saves a twelve mile detour inland.

There is also a chain ferry at East Cowes and as here yachties take good care to steer clear.

The climb up to Corfe Castle and Mortons Manor is very steep. Even the lad on the Cannondale Synapse said so. The receptionist warns that though the hotel is full we would be alone for dinner. We give the chef the night off and make for the Greyhound.

Here you can see the castle as left after the English unCivil War. The Bankes family supported the King. The castle withstood two sieges but eventually fell. It was ordered to be destroyed by Act of Parliament, was under mined and blown up.

Corfe Castle is a stop on the Swanage railway, rebuilt from 1976 to date after closure in 1972. It puts £15m a year into the local economy. It was originally on the London and South Western Railway and the volunteers have stayed true with an Adams T3, two Battle of Britain class 4-6-2s (!) and other locos from Southern Railways. The railway day had ended so we may have to go back.

The ride home was around 80 kms with 800 metres of climb using part of another abandoned line which was at about max roughness for the bikes and Sid’s bottom. So, later in the day finding the Darien Gap on holiday in Wiltshire was a bit of a shock. By the end of the trip the battery was pretty much dead with S and D only just ahead of the reaper. We may have to reduce our daily distances (‘or just get fit again’, says S in a slightly priggish way).

Undaunted by this brush with reality the duo will be off to France by a particularly wily route, heading south and west in search of cathedrals, industrial architecture, live music with beer and serendipitous specialist museums. Who could forget the Hungarian button museum?

As Jenny says, it is a tough job but S and D just get on with it.