Saturday Bike/Train Ride

Well, in what's turning into a series of "where did Bob ride this weekend" posts, I had another very long ride on Saturday.

The goal for this one was to actually follow the path that I will take this coming weekend and make sure I won't get too terribly lost along the way. And in that effort it was a great success. I managed to ride from my flat to Gatwick Airport. (Here's a map from south of the river to Gatwick.)

It was a pretty nice ride for about the first 2 hours, a little bit more traffic-y than I prefer, but nothing too bad. Then it started to drizzle a bit, and that's just no fun. I rode in and out of the rain for about another 45 minutes to an hour. I really wanted to find the entrance to a footpath that will (hopefully) lead me most of the way down to the coast. I managed to find the path, and I took some pictures of the planes landing in Gatwick.

At this point, I had been riding for about 3 hours, and was exhausted. I also hadn't really prepared as well as I should have by packing some food or gel or something. So I decided to turn around and find some food along the way back.

Along the route there's a town called Redhill, and I had seen the South Redhill Train Station on the way down to Gatwick. After the turn, I biked back about 45 minutes to get to Redhill and I decided that I would find some food, give myself 20 or 30 minutes to recover, then try to make it back. But then again, there was always that train station as a fall back.

So anyway, I got a footlong Subway sandwich and devoured it along with some crisps. Delicious.

Then I hopped back on the bike and started to get back on my route, when I noticed my punctured rear tire. Fantastic. I stopped and did a quick tire change. As I got back on the bike, realizing how heavy my legs felt, how full and happy my stomach was, and that it would be another 2 hours back home on an underinflated rear tire... yeah, I bought a train ticket and went home.

The good news is that first, it was a really great ride, and I have the first half of my route planned for this weekend. Second, my route follows along train tracks almost the whole way down, so if worst comes to worst, I can always pop off the bike and be home in about 30 minutes.

I still need to do a bit more prep work, especially when it comes to having some food for the ride. But I think I can take care of that this week and be ready to make it down to the coast on Saturday.