The Bikepacker: Bikepacking - Salisbury to Ropley Dean near Alton

Day #

State of Legs

:-)

	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Ascent (feet)	Ascent (metres)	Punctures
Today	45 miles	km	2310 feet	metres	0
Trip Totals	2887 miles	km	132441 feet	metres	0

Today's Route

Route So Far

Travelogue

Today is the penultimate day of this amazing trip! Hard to believe, but it is the case.

Once again, I woke to a misty day and a wet tent. But this time, the wet was confined to the exterior of the tent and the floor was fine.

I was on the road by 7:30. And what a road. The first 30 minutes of today's ride wins the prize for Worst Cycling Roads and will retain the title unless tomorrow's final ride turns out to include exceptionally awful roads.

The route I'm following from Plymouth to my home in Surrey was created using the excellent online tool journey planner at https://cycle.travel/. It did a tremendous job, assembling a route which leverages the national cycle network and other cycle routes like the National Byway. This means that most of the time, I'm on low traffic roads or on paths that carry no motorised traffic at all. But none of these networks are completely joined up, so I think what I experienced was a section which it was necessary to ride to get to the next bit of the national cycle network. There was a lot of traffic (the time of day was a factor) and the roads were mostly not designed for cyclists with a number of somewhat scary roundabouts and junctions. There were some sections with cycle paths alongside the road, which I was grateful for. But there was a lot of broken glass, not something I generally like to cycle on! Why is there so often broken glass in British cycle paths? And where would the world be without rhetorical questions?!

Happily, I eventually joined NCN route 24 and things got considerably better from there. And the weather improved too, with the mist disappearing and eventually the sun coming out. Cycling in sunshine? It was almost like being in Spain or Italy or France or Switzerland again! i.e. anywhere on this trip except England! :-)

I started to really enjoy today's ride. There were hills but the gradient was gentle. There were photogenic churches. There was even coffee available in one village!

Thank heavens for NCN 24!

I was briefly reminded of northern France (but with a greyer sky!)

Spider's webs are one of nature's architectural masterpieces

The national byway

Coffee!

After stopping for a large coffee and a banana for energy, I carried on and enjoyed some traffic-free sections, yet more quaint thatched cottages and some picturesque river scenes.

Eventually, I reached and cycled through the beautiful city of Winchester.

From there, the cycling was easy and pleasant and passed by a very large mansion which had a lake with lots of birds and some Red Kites circling overhead and occasionally being chased off by plucky crows. Apparently this is a privately owned estate called Avington Park.

Not far from my destination, I encountered a ford. Not an Anglia or Mondeo or Capri. No, a ford, the kind you drive through to get from one side of a river to the other. I looked at it. I looked at the nice dry and safe narrow bridge to the right. And I decided to ride The Mule through the ford. The reason? I thought it would be a laugh!

And it was!

The water was significantly deeper than I'd realised......

So, I had insufficient momentum to roll through from one side to the other,.....

So, I had to pedal! And pedalling totally submersed one foot at a time at each revolution, filling each shoe with water!

LOL! :-)

See? I said it would be a laugh!

My shoes are now drying in what's left of the sunshine and I've washed my socks and have them on the line!

I stopped at a little store for some food to get me through to tomorrow and not long afterwards was at my campsite. I seem to be the only camper once again. It is the end of the season, I guess.

Note the yellow thing in the background

There was quite a lot of noise coming from just over the fence from the campsite. I investigated (in bare feet by the way!) and discovered I was right next to the Watercress Line, a "heritage steam railway"!