Yes, I know it's traditional to blame the operator or blame the programmer but actually experience has taught me that the machines themselves are capable of extreme malevolence. It's understandable really - they are generally unattractive agglomerations of plastics and metals with no life of their own, so it's obvious that their jealousy will cause them to try and annoy us sometimes - thank god for the off button, if all else fails I love to use that as the ultimate sanction! Kill switch - I'm going to call it that in future. Oh, and in case my current pile of rubbish (Evesham I think he calls himself - computers are male by the way) is thinking of doing the dirty on me again, I'll just type in these two words "Club Hammer". Yeah, that made it think - I love the sound of hammer on high technology early in the morning!
2 - 3 - 4 ..... and relax........ right let's try writing the blog .... again!
Warm enough for short-sleeves but with a leaden sky hinting at unpleasantness, the last DA Event of the year got under way from Pulborough Station at about 09:50hrs. Colin, the ride leader, had been joined by Bob, Richard, Dave and Vicki. We'd waited for a train to come in from each direction but no-one else had joined us, so Colin lead us away. From Church Place onto Coombelands Lane and then up a sunken road to the top of a sandy ridge before descending down to the A283 next to Stopham Bridge.
As we burst out from the trees we were met by John C. By mistake he'd got off the train at Billingshurst and then, realising his error he had done a quick sprint down to Pulborough. From experience he knew that we usually use Stopham Bridge for the first crossing of the river and he'd gambled on intercepting us there - good call!
So, we made our first crossing on the Old Stopham Bridge and headed west on the A283 before turning right onto a small lane which eventually turned into a bridleway and bore us up through woodland. It was pretty dark under the trees and hard work taking photographs, but I gave it a try:
We emerged from the woods and turned right onto a lane which proceeded to climb even further up - I recognised it as Bedham Lane and we were heading for the top! Once we'd crested, after a short downhill we turned left for another climb before taking a bridleway that forked down to our right. Out of the blue we were presented with the following sight:
The ruins of a church (someone called it Bedham Church) - I found it quite spooky and was very conscious that I was all alone there taking the photograph...... hurriedly I followed the others and recklessly passed them all on the way down the hill. I like to think I was giving a demonstration of good bike-handling skills and showing that just letting the bike go is often better than hanging on to the brakes. The others probably thought "What an oaf!". The bridleway continued as an interesting forest singletrack before emerging at a country pile called Hawkhurst Court. Here Colin pointed out a plaque that informed us that Canadian armed forces had been stationed here during WWII.
Leaving the excessively gravelled drive we gained the firmness of Crimbourne Lane before turning left onto Fittleworth Lane. A few hundred yards later a right turn took us onto a farm track where we all pulled up at the side in order to let a learner driver in a Land Rover go past. The bridleway went left then right and skirted four or five fields as well as scraping against a bend in the river before joining another bridleway in open farmland just south of Harsfold Manor. Time for another photo stop:
From here it was but a mile to the elevenses stop in the tearooms at Wisborough Green. As we pulled up we noticed Edwins bike outside. Also, it started raining.
We sat in the cafe supping our coffee and eating cake for a while and the rain stopped, so we decided it was time to get going again. Edwin was going to stay on the roads and meet us at the lunch stop, the rest of us would follow Colin on whatever route he had in mind.
We hadn't gone 10 yards before the heavens opened and we all hurriedly put on our waterproofs. After another 100 yards, Dave, Vicki and John decided to call it a day leaving just Colin, Richard and Bob to carry on.
The rain was fairly heavy and quite wetting but not too cold and we were often fairly sheltered amongst the trees:
Compare the following two pictures. Taken at about the same place, the first is from 2009:
and here's the one from today:
Once over the hill we passed the lake (no sign of its resident Heron)
and arrived at Malham Farm. After a false start, we got onto the correct bridleway and
worked our wet and muddy way over to Drungewick Lane. Now we had a couple of miles of tarmac before once again plunging onto a bridleway and what was only our second crossing of the river near Gibbons Mill. From here it was tarmac again for a mile and a bit until we arrived at the lunch halt, The Blue Ship at The Haven.
Chris from Littlehampton and Edwin were already there and so was a nice hot bowl of celery soup with a pint of Sussex for accompaniment. One of the good things about the Blue Ship is that the public bar has a stone tiled floor and wooden seats, so us dirty cyclists don't ruin the decor!
The rain had eased a little when we set off to continue the Arun Crossings - Chris joined us and Edwin was heading for home. After a half mile of road we took a level but slightly slippy bridleway through some woods before emerging on Okehurst Road. After a few hundred yards we turned right onto another bridleway that skirted a couple of fields before crossing the river on this bridge:
Shortly after, we crossed the canal by a lock:
After this the route crossed a field and then up a farm track past the place where Edwin had his fall a couple of years back and into Malham Farm once more. Heading south we retraced part of the morning route before heading east past Loves Farm, over the canal and river, across to Okehurst. A pleasant run down Rowner Road was enlivened by the sight of a Mark III Ford Cortina GXL (1973 reg) in orange with a black vinyl roof.
The excitement was too much - my bike had to have a rest!
At Rowners Farm, it was off-road once again with another crossing of river and canal by Rowners Lock. We used a bridleway through Wisborough Green and headed south past Harsfold Manor for our next crossing of river and canal. The climb up to Lee Place was slippy with the top layer of mud sticking to our tyres just to weigh us down. So when we made it to the road, we actively went through all the puddles we could in order to wash some of the mud off. It didn't make much difference though as we were soon on another bridleway and heading down to the river again. Once over, our route took us across some green pasture and that helped remove some of the crud from our knobblies. Turning left onto a road I realised we were heading back up Bedham Hill! But just before the gradient really kicked in we sped down another bridleway into some woodland:
By now the rain had more or less stopped and the temperature seemed to have gone up a degree or two.
and we made our final crossing at Pallingham
before climbing back up to the road to head up past Coombelands and then down into Pulborough to finish a mere six hours after we started.
I was wet and covered in mud, but had a big smile on my face after a really enjoyable days cycling. That's got me all set for a charity ride I'm doing with some workmates on Saturday - 55 miles from Brecon to Cardiff.
http://www.justgiving.com/bhscycleride is the donation page if you get the urge!!
http://www.justgiving.com/bhscycleride is the donation page if you get the urge!!
Our next club ride is on Sunday starting from Three Bridges Station at 10:00 hrs. It will be an easy two hour ride aimed at relatively inexperienced cyclists and will most probably use the Worth Way. Come along and have a nice relaxing, traffic-free (and hill-less) ride.
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