One of the absolute joys of working from home are mid-week during the day bike rides. I’d actually meant to go out yesterday but I just couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm – I don’t know why, I just couldn’t make myself get out. I had however arranged to meet Malcolm for a ride this morning just after 10am. I have a temperature gauge in my back garden and when I checked it at 7.30 this morning it said -2 but it was a beautiful morning – clear, sunny, hardly any wind and the road outside my house looked fine (even if all the cars were covered in ice). I gave Malcolm a quick call to check we were still on and left the house slightly late, so had to ride fairly hard to try not to be too late. It was just over 15kms to our meeting point at Withyam and according to Cyclemeter (who’s accuracy/data I always take with a slight pinch of salt), I’d covered the distance in 30 minutes – so had averaged 30kmh. Nice and a good start to the ride. I was on a time deadline to get back home around 12.30 to pick up my daughter from nursery, so we agreed a shorter ride for me and Malcolm would carry on once I had to turn back. We headed up into the Ashdown Forest via Colemans Hatch and then rode straight through at Wych Cross towards Sharpthorne where Malcolm took us left towards Horsted Keynes along a road called Chilling St which features some absolutely beautiful views (and is where the photos for the post were taken). We then rode through to Danehill and Chelwood Gate keeping off the A275. A quick time check showed me it was 12.05 so I reckoned I needed 40 minutes to get home from there assuming it was about 20km. As it turned out it was 27km home from there so I got home at 12.55 having ridden pretty hard for the last 21km from Duddleswell. I got home to find the car gone as my wife had decided to collect our daughter since I hadn’t shown up on time (thanks Love!)
