The Bikepacker: 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 :-)