Back to Chichester

John cycled down from Bishops Stortford to Guildford yesterday afternoon. He did really well, as it's 80+ miles and he was by himself.

He stayed with us on Friday night and then Paul joined us on Saturday so the three of us could cycle to Worthing via Chichester. John only wanted to go to Worthing where he was visiting family. I say "only", but Guildford to Worthing via Chichester is around 50 miles which is quite impressive the morning after an 80 mile bike ride the previous afternoon! Then Paul and I would head home, hopefully ending up between 90-100 miles.


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We set off around 6:45 after a breakfast and juice. We travelled down past CHASE and out towards Godalming then Haslemere. I dont recall cycling south on this road before. There were some great hills!! (although "great" wasn't a word I heard John using!). After 30 miles or so we stopped for 2nd breakfast at Singleton. I must have driven through it many times, but had never realised what a beautiful little village Singleton is.

I had Google'd a route into the Garmin around the back of Goodwood racecourse to avoid having to go through Chichester centre. Once again, I was really pleased with the Garmin under these circumstances. It was not an obvious route, and certainly not one that any of us had done before, but we found our way down to the A27 without incident. Then it was just a case of blasting along the A27 for 20 miles until we hit Worthing. This part of the trip was very quick due to the road being pretty flat.

At Worthing, about 1/2 mile from where we were dropping John off, we noticed Paul had a puncture. So we stopped and changed his tube and said farewell to John.

Paul and I were feeling great. 50 miles already, and we were doing fine. Just outside Worthing, coming up the A24, there is quite a long hill and we realised why we were feeling so good; the wind had been behind us on the way down!! It was tough going, and it took us pretty much the same amount of time to go 40 miles home as it did to go 50 miles down there! Although part of that was due to Paul getting another puncture, and us stopping to pump his tyre up a few times and eventually changing the tube again at Cranleigh.

When we eventually got home, I felt the best I've felt after a ride of that distance. Maybe I'll manage a ride tomorrow, although the weather forecast predicts snow.