In an effort to stretch our legs after Christmas, this seemed a good time to enjoy the redo The Shipwrights Way. This route is a mixture of bridle ways and road with only one significant climb, so seems nice and relaxing, right? To quote one of the ride attendees – who regularly enjoys cyclo-cross – “This has been the wettest ride I have been on”.
To be fair, the rain during the ride was not too bad, mainly drizzle with a few spiteful showers. With the weather being wet over most of January and into February, the water features for the ride were mainly on the ground under-tyre. The bridle-ways alternated between sticky bogs of mud that soak in any speed to thin streams downhill that you desperately try to follow to try to find firmer ground. Reaching the road sections were often a relief, but we were delighted to have sections such as riding through a half mile of flood water running off the hills after the Queen Elizabeth Country Park (QECP).
For the group, this ride was well worth it, though a mix of being “Type-1” or “Type-2” kind of fun. Starting off at Bentley Station promptly as soon as our last member rolled in on the train at 9:02am, we successfully skirted the parkrunners making their way through Alice Holt. We made good pace down to QECP, with only one significant bike slide by the author using spiky bushes as break. King of the (one) hill into QECP went to our cyclo-cross rider cruising his way to the top while the rest of us may have had to do a bit of bike pushing. After a cheery and warm lunch, we then split with half the group doubling back to Bentley. The rest of us zoomed down the semi-flooded road sections to Hayling Island and caught a ferry in good time. The sun started making an appearance in Portsmouth which cheered us as we skirted round on the coast paths and came out in full as we boarded the train home. Congrats go to the doubling back team though who made it back through the muddiest section, notably without mud-guards, in less than 2 hours. Plenty of time to clean bikes in handily available puddles before their own trains.
