Went on a fun ride yesterday, Balham (London) to Sheerness (Kent, on the
coast), but with a couple of hills.
I looked it up before the ride on my super duper south of england road
atlas, used my spiffy little map measuring tool, 45 miles. Looked at the
map, showed the hills all being a bit South of my route. So I thought I’d
leave early and try to get there for a nice lunch.
So I have my breakfast and then head out across London on the Coker and
what’s this I see before me, a big hill, straight away. Now I was expecting
this cos it’s near to home, so over I go and then there’s another hill and
another and another. By now I’ve realised that road atlases don’t have a
colour for built up and hilly, only one for each, so the hills don’t really
stop where they do on the map. Hmm, interesting. Anyway, I get two thirds of
the way there, over lots and lots of friendly hills which aren’t too bad
really once I’ve warmed up, I’m out in Kent somewhere, with Oast houses and
silly little villages called Twittering Hedley and general sort of
countryside stuff like that. There was actually a village called Thong, well
it made me laugh anyway. Anyway, here I am, 30 miles from home and I take a
look at the map and it looks more than 15 miles to me. Oh well, I’m ahead of
the time I was aiming for, so I buy some aniseed balls and on I pootle,
coming to the river Medway, notable unknown to me (and to my map) for being
several towns all munged together on several hills, these are really hilly
hills which is taking the piss. But I can see the sea, well at least the
estuary so I’m all excited and riding a bit faster, over all the hills on
the main road through all the Medway towns till I get to the side road which
goes round to the bridge to the Isle of Sheppey and Sheerness. Now I should
be there now judging from how far I’ve ridden, but am obviously not and then
I come upon a sign that says ‘Sheerness 10 miles’, which is slightly
irritating. Got there in the end, mr speedo was showing 57 miles as I
arrived in the most bleak ex seaside resort ever. 3.15pm was a bit late
for the 2 o’clock lunch I was expecting too. It did have very cheap and old
arcade machines, so I got to spend the 50 minutes waiting for a train
reliving my childhood by shooting stuff and driving things round and
whatnot. All in all it was a really fun ride, but a bit of a surprise. I was
well chuffed that I did ride up all the hills even if they did slow me down
a fair bit.
So I guess there are two tips here, firstly road maps don’t show hills
properly, which I knew really, and secondly, if you’re planning routes when
you get home after a night out drinking, check the distances and stuff the
next morning, you might have screwed up something!
Joe
