Bicycle Touring England
Garry McGivern Travelsonabike2 is cycle touring England on Sunday, 20th September 2015. Wootton Bridge to Brighstone. 41 miles. Damp start today, there was a very heavy dew, so I had to pack the tent away wet, very wet! When I went to put it up tonight, there must have been nearly a gallon of water in the bag! Needless to say, the tent took a while to dry out. I knew it would, so it gave me a good excuse to stop a bit earlier.
My original plan today was to go back over the water, back to the north island, as the locals call it! I went down to the ferry, but there wasn’t a ferry in port. When I asked what time the next ferry was, I was told 9 o’clock. 45 minutes away, so rather than hang around, I went back up the hill, which leads to the ferry terminal, just to have a look around and just kept going!
Playing The Tourist
Strangely, I bumped into that nice man I met on the ferry yesterday as I was going up another hill! I decided that I was going to ride to Godshill on the other side of the island, apparently it’s meant to be a pretty village! Once again, though I couldn’t see the attraction. But then I’m not a very good tourist! After that, I decided to ride to Shanklin on the southeast of the island and found a nice cycle path that ran along the prom to Sandown, about 4 miles away.
After that, I decided that I would stay on the island after all and started to make my way to Brighstone, stopping off at the Chequers Inn at Rookley, which was always a favourite place to stop when we used to do the Isle of Wight trips. I’m staying at my usual campsite, Grange Farm. They seem to have even more camping pods and some funny little things called a camper hive, which I can only liken to a wooden coffin that fits two people in, but has a sliding door at the end, most bizarre!
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