Bikepacking - Isle of Sheppey

 This weekend, I headed east to the Isle of Sheppey, an island off the coast of the east of England in the county of Kent. My destination was a farm right on the east coast of the island which offers "close to wild" camping, with minimal facilities (a tap and a compost toilet!) and lots and lots of space. When I booked, it was summer and I'd chosen to camp right on the clifftops. On the day though..... well, it was most certainly no longer summer! It was Autumn (Fall) and the further east I got on the 65 mile ride, the windier and windier it got. When I arrived it was blowing at least 40mph and there was no way I could pitch my tent on the cliffs. So instead, I camped in woods about 100 metres back from the cliffs. Sheltered enough but still pretty windy!

Outbound route and stats

My legs did OK on the outbound ride although there was an off-road section after about 40 miles that was a complete nightmare. Impossible to cycle, with rocks the size of my fist all over the trail and a steep 17% section I had to push the bike up, with great difficulty it has to be said. 

And the wind did take it's toll, no question.

The nightmare trail - 17%!

Crossing to the Isle of Sheppey by the old bridge to the right of the newer, faster road

After pitching the tent and hanging wet (sweat!) clothes out to air and dry, I lit a camp fire and ate dinner.

I had a pretty good night in the tent. With some merino wool thermal underwear and my silk sleeping bag liner, I was more than warm enough, so that's an improvement on the last trip. I believe it was colder on this night too.

I did well navigating using my battery saving hand-written paper summary, this trip and only used my smartphone when necessary. The combination of the two techniques works well, assuming you've summarised the route in writing carefully. I used the maps.me app this trip. It works well and the route is very clear, especially since I'd edited the KML file to make the colour of the route a nice, high contrast black. The only issue I found was that once in foreground, the screen no longer times out, even with no interaction with the phone. This is convenient for sure, but not good if you really want to conserve your battery, so I had to show the home screen of my Android device manually, every time after consulting maps.me, so that the screen would then timeout and sleep. Maybe there's a setting....

My return journey was hard. It was still very windy and early on, it was raining too. Just keeping going was a real challenge.... but of course I did. It was slow and strength sapping. I suspect I didn't drink enough, which couldn't have helped. 

Somewhere nice in Kent

Return journey route and stats

I'm now seriously reconsidering my packing list. Can I reduce weight but still have all that I believe I truly need? Time will tell.

Until the next time!

Bikepacking - One night at Knepp Wildland

This weekend, I embarked on my first real bikepacking trip! It was a modest affair, with only one night camping but it's a start and it went well.

This has been the year of Covid-19 so like most people, I've done very little of note. I've been cycling regularly as always, but there hasn't been anything even vaguely resembling a holiday. So this weekend's trip was partly a short holiday and partly an opportunity to test the bikepacking bike, my legs with all that weight, and all my bikepacking gear, such as my lovely new MSR Hubba Hubba tent.

Knepp is in West Sussex and the home of a rewilding project and a number of conservation projects, including one which aims to reintroduce White Storks to southern England. I'd heard of it but never been there. They allow camping in a meadow, with minimal facilities. It's not wild camping but it's nothing like the usual (horrible) commercial campsite experience either.

 To get to Knepp from my home, is only a ride of about 30 miles. I wanted to ride further than this, so used plotaroute to plan a route which passed through the Surrey Hills via the county's highest point, Leith Hill and then into the South Downs National Park, trending west and then looping round to the south and then east and finally to Knepp. This made the outbound route 65 miles. I decided to cycle a more direct back the next day.

The outbound trip went more or less according to plan. My chain came off a few times, indicating that the front derailleur needs a tweak. Apart from that, it was a really nice ride. Leith Hill went absolutely fine. Slow.... but no difficulty, and bearing in mind that my touring bike with bags weighs three times as much as my road bike, this was a relief! The remainder of the route was on the whole, quite lovely. West Sussex has some really picturesque places.

Camping was fun and Knepp's camping experience was very much to my liking. Nice and quiet. 

My new MSR tent is wonderful. Lightweight, easy to erect and more than spacious enough for my needs. It's well ventilated too, so no condensation problems.

In the night though... I was a cold! I have an Alpkit Pipedream 200 sleeping bag, which is supposed to be comfortable to 7 degrees celsius. According to local weather data, it got down to only 10 degrees celsius that night and yet, I ended up adding my silk liner to the bag and wearing my day clothes and a hat and was still a bit chilly! I'm going to have to think about this!

I returned without incident (apart from the chain coming off once!), covering an additional 33 miles. I had to ascend a tough hill called Pebble Coombe Hill which has a gradient of about 12.5%. This was actually pretty difficult, which surprised me given Leith Hill had been fine. I guess there's a gradient at which it suddenly gets really hard :-)

Outbound Route and Stats

Return Route and Stats

Photos

At the top of Leith Hill

Surrey

The first thing I saw on arrival at Knepp's!

Lots of room in the MSR tent

Dinner - A roast salmon and tomato sandwich!

A misty morning with a breakfast of bread, banana and honey being prepared