Shoreham Airshow

Todays ride was a quick sprint from Horsham to The Downs above Shoreham for a leisurely picnic watching the aerial displays at Shoreham Airshow. Led by Bob, the other riders were Pete S, Pat, Frank, Barbara (part of the way), Clare and Dave. The ride down was fairly uneventful save from the fact that Bobs middle ring revealed itself to be unusable following installation of a new chain and that Clare is King of the Mountains - more on that later.

Sitting on the Downs was very pleasant and we had a good view of the airfield and the aircraft. I took a few pictures but they rendered the day as looking much more grey than it actually was - there was strong sunshine pushing through a fairly thin layer of high cloud.

First we were entertained by a trio of Gnats - these were the fast jet trainers formerly used by the RAF (and by their display team the Red Arrows):




I messed about with this one in Photoshop:

Here's Pete with Lancing College in the background:

Another display was by the Breitling Wingwalkers. Each of these planes (I think the plane type is a Steerman) had someone on the top wing, though it was hard to see what the wingwalkers were actually doing - hanging on for dear life I guess!

I suppose that in a way the following picture is iconic "Shoreham Airshow":

The Falcons Parachute display team were good - very accurate - although my picture doesn't really do them justice:

and there was a dogfight enactment featuring several WWI type aircraft - these two are SE5a's - the type of plane that Biggles' friend "Wilko" Wilkinson flew:

There's the possibility I may have doctored this picture:

After about threee hours of sitting on the turf and having met up with several riders from the Bognor and Chichester section, we decided it was time to get cycling again.

I decided to take us north, further up into The Downs and then to head down the steep rocky path to Bramber. All the time we were travelling this route we could hear more planes flying around but didn't see much of them apart from a couple of Spitfires (I was too slow getting my camera out for them) and a Hawker Hunter:

As we traversed the rocky path we were caught up by the Bognor Chichester riders:

Once at the bottom we said goodbye and we headed east and north whilst they headed west.

We headed up the A2037 as far as Small Dole and then, at Woods Mill, turned right onto Horn Lane to Woodmancote. Crossing the A281 we went through the quiet backwater that is Blackstone before a short traverse along the B2116 and then Wineham Lane - every time we came to a hill, Clare shot up it and I shot out of the back of our 'peleton' (even though I was ride leader!!). The two hills on Spronketts Lane saw me run completely out of energy and that tough little climb into Warninglid was almost a bridge too far.... At this point Clare mentioned that she was a Black Belt Judo instructor - no wonder she was so fit she could just eat up the hills and spit them out! Continuing north, even the (relatively) easy slope from Slaugham Pond to Handcross meant the others had to wait for me to catch up again but the level road all the way to Pease Pottage allowed me to get back into the spin of things.

We crossed the bridge in order to avoid the big roundabout and, at the Horsham link-road crossing we parted - Clare and Dave were debating which route to use to get back home (the long or the short route), Pete and I to go down the hill, past K2 and through Tilgate and Furnace Green. Oh, I forgot to mention that Frank and Pat had left our viewpoint early and headed over to Cuckfield to "get on down" at a Rock concert (or something)..........

Pulling up at home, I had about 56 miles on the speedo and also some shopping to do - for a middle chainring - Shimano, 36 teeth, 9-speed, 4-bolt, 108mm centres.

Next weeks ride is a Three Bridges start at 10:00 and will go north and east from Crawley. It should be an easy 30 miler, see you there!