South Downs Way - day 1

SDW day 1
What a great day to start. Up early so the boys could have a full English while I went for the healthy option!! Away by 8 am and the traffic was kind to us so we were parked up in Winchester not long after 10 am. Ride into the town centre and pop in at Simply M&S where I convince the boys to go for a healthy lunch and it's round to the cathedral. We get pictures of the three of us from the lovely German tourist and we are away, in completely the wrong direction!! Backtrack, start again and we manage ok second time round. The weather is good but the hills are not. The boys discard their helmets after only a few miles. There is much complaining about having brought too much stuff and we seem to be going so slowly even when we have not stopped for Steve to rummage through his bag for something we think is a figment of his imagination!!! The scenery is nice and around lunchtime we stop for orange and lemonade at a pub but wait until we are round the corner before tucking into our salads. In the afternoon, Andy manages to fall off after hitting some surfaced roots but he's ok. By that time it is 4:30, we still about 6 or 8 miles out from our stopover place and then I need to ride back to Winchester, some 20 or so miles by road to get the car!! We agree I should leave them. I speed off and get to our turnoff point for the B&B by 6 pm. Just the little matter of collecting the car. Of course whilst we had been driving from Eastbourne and using my iPhone for music and navigation I had not thought to charge it so it's been low all day. Now there is only emergency juice in it so I have to relay on my own sense of direction and help from strangers. Refreshment comes in the form of sour fizzy cola bottles and coke and I find the right road and I'm off. Only not too fast at all! I'm quite tired and now it's my turn to be going slowly and taking too many breaks. At one such break I go to pick up my bike and the back wheel has managed to cone loose somehow! That could have been a very nasty accident. I also turn to PED's (performance enhancing drugs) for the first time in my life and hit the paracetamol to ease the aches, especially my back, which after 6 hours in the saddle is starting to complain!

I eventually make it back to the car not long before the sun goes down. As I'm riding back towards the B&B Steve rings. They've got off route and it's up a big hill back to the trail. They have not got the strength so they've decamped to the pub and can I pick them up. I do, we head to B&B and chuck our stuff in before heading back to the nearest town to MacDonalds. Everybody is shattered and asleep quickly and tomorrow the boys have extra miles to do!!!!!!

Steve and Andy 25 miles
David 48 miles