A Lousy Start ended Wonderfully!

The initial idea was to start on Wednesday night and get as far as I could before it got dark and then find a campsite, as it turns out that wouldn’t have been a great idea because even if I had started at 4.00pm I would have only got as far as Exeter before having to pitch tent, well may be not.

Due to a couple of meetings I didn’t get home until 7.00pm so there was no real chance of doing anything so I left it until the morning and even then Thursday morning dawned damp and drizzly so I busied myself getting as much packed and sorted as I could before wheeling the bike out of the garage for the last bit in the end I finally got under way just before mid day. It wasn’t long before I met up with the first raft of people heading off early for Easter, as soon as I hit the M3 the amount of loaded cars and caravans, was much heavier than normal, even for a Bank Holiday, they had been predicting that more people would be holidaying at home this year and this may have been the first evidence, I was due to see more before my trip was over.

I pushed on as best I could down the A303 passed Andover then Boscombe Down, it was slower than normal due to the heavy traffic but not by much, I knew the fun would come when we reached Stonehenge and the road becomes single carriageway and sure enough it was. The amount of people that either don’t look or just want to ignore a bike filtering is amazing, lost in their little world of steel, they don’t think about what is around them and by simply pulling to one side by as little as a foot a bike can get through a line of static cars. Even worse some people see it as their mission in life to be a pain in the ass, by purposely closing off a possible gap.

For the time being the weather was still okay but it was very grey and looking in the direction I was travelling the clouds were getting heavier, not only that the wind was gusting quite badly at times and with the bike already handling like a pig due to the weight, it led to some interesting moments.

After going past RNAS Yeovilton the drizzle started and it got slowly but surely heavier until I reached the Blackdown Hills and it turned into full on rain, in fact the cloud level was down so low by now, there were times when I was riding through the cloud level itself. Now this may sound stupid, I had decided to take the inner lining out from my suit as it was proving too hot in normal conditions, however it is a HG Tuareg suit and that lining is also the waterproof layer, so this rain had started to penetrate and I was feeling not only a bit wet but also cold. So it was time to pull over and get something warm to drink and dry off a bit and see if the rain would ease.

I had remembered a place on this road that was a bit like a Little Chef, but under a different name, Just then I turned a bend and saw the Newcot Chef and it hadn’t come a moment too soon, as my visor was now wet both inside and out, I had put it up slightly to stop it misting up in slow traffic and soon as I did that the rain started running down the inside, so it had become a real problem.

Two large cups of tea and a toasted sandwich later and I had warmed up a bit it gave me chance to dry my jacket a bit over a convenient radiator and clean my visor, I also rescued a waterproof overjacket I kept in one of my front saddlebags just for this type of occasion, I decided against the trousers because the last time I wore them I decided they were for real emergencies only as the plastic they were made off meant I just slid around on the saddle all over the place and it became a real struggle to keep myself in the right position, I move around a lot when I am riding anyway but I want to do it out of my choice if you know what I mean. I had chance to take a very quick photo before I set off again it will give you some idea of how low the cloud was.

There is a hill the other side of that valley, honest.

Thankfully the further I pushed on the brighter it got and when I reached Exeter the rain stopped thankfully and it rapidly brightened up so as a soon as I reached the road to Plymouth and Totnes the roads themselves were dry and my spirits started to lift.

After a quick re-fuel in Totnes town centre I headed off through the back streets, through a small housing estate and finally out on the back lanes to Ashprington, Tukenhay, Comworthy and into Dittisham. Boy were some of these lanes tight, it would be a struggle to get a normal family car down them never mind anything bigger, add to this the fact that they were still damp from the mornings rain the high banks on either side meant the sun had not reached all the road surface, if you can call it that at times, so were no more that wet dirt tracks at times due to the mud left behind by farm vehicles, all this was just a taster of what was to come the following morning.

In this post there are a few examples of how true to the ethic of a coast ride I don’t know how long I can keep this level of detail up though as it is a major struggle to get any decent mileage covered. At this rate am going to cover a huge amount of mileage as sticking to these lanes so close to the coast is leading to a lot of doubling back on myself at times, not because I am going wrong it is just what is needed to get from A to B at times.

Despite this whinge there are some glorious little places along the way at the heads of inlets etc. which can just make you think ‘what beautiful countryside there is in the UK’

After going downhill on some very steep gradients for the last couple of miles, with tight U bends, meant I was in first or second gear all the time and riding the back brake, I stopped for a quick break for a photo and a drink of water before tackling the opposite. Over a mile of uphill with 25% gradients and U bends, however given the tightness of the lanes I had to be very wary about cars coming the opposite way and having to brake quickly, not a nice situation to find yourself facing a car on one of these U bends and having to hold the weight of a fully laden bike on 25% incline.

It wasn’t long before I had another tough section, very tight and narrow both down and up again, before I cam out through a small housing estate in the top of Darmouth, down past the Royal Naval College I had photographed from the other side of the estuary a few weeks ago. I went down along the front and into the town itself so I could take the B3205 out through Southdown Warfleet Road, I was amazed to find that whilst there was a queue of about 50 cars waiting for the Higher Ferry there was only one for the Lower Ferry, okay on the far side you have a few extra miles to cover it is not that bad, it is probably a 10 min drive rather than waiting over 30 mins in a queue.

After going up Weeke Hill I took a quick detour through Redlap before coming out on Dartmouth Road just above Stoke Fleming along through Blackpool, fortunately or unfortunately not the one in Lancashire, I have that dubious pleasure in a few weeks time. At Strete you can see right down the coast road you are about to enjoy to Torcross riding past Slapton Sands and it was wonderful despite the flies the nice weather seemed to have been hatching on the lake on your right hand side.

Time was getting on, it was now after 5pm and I still didn’t have a clue where I was going to be camping that night and the one close by the lake did not appeal with all the aforementioned flies. Thankfully luck was on my side and on reaching the roundabout at Stokenham I saw a sign for Old Cotmore Farm and boy was my luck in. It is a small and extremely friendly campsite, with a mix of touring caravans and camping, however it is such a nice place some people leave their caravans there for the whole season.

The husband and wife team that run it are from Worcester originally, this is becoming a bit of a trend, a few weeks ago I had eat in a great restaurant in Brixham that was run by a couple from Worcester. Matthew and Gwen Needham really are a very attentive and helpful and I think this has engendered a really friendly atmosphere at the camp it is somewhere I will remember for a long time, for other reasons as well. After setting up camp I had chased off to the showers, which I have to say were superb. I then got ready to cook my evening meal, but was interrupted from my thoughts by Gwen who came up to return my camping fee, asking me to donate it to the charity, this was followed by a chat with a young mother collecting her son from the swings, taking him in for his evening meal, she also promised to donate online, this was then followed by man and his daughter with a couple of cans of beer in his hand, one for me, following a nice chat about biking while I cooked my evening meal. Despite it still being grey and overcast and the sun going down the last hour really did brighten the day. After washing up I got off to sleep and thankfully despite being woken a couple of times as other people arrived at the site later on I got a pretty good nights sleep.

The following morning dawned as expected and thankfully a much brighter day. It appeared that I was the first one to get up and get moving so I started to do some brief packing whilst getting my breakfast underway, however as with the night before the friendliness of the site started to showed itself again, as just about everyone either said ‘good morning’ or came over for a chat. Before I could get finally packed another woman cam over and pushed a further donation into my hand. It was not my intention originally to do any collections as I went but this was an added bonus.

I finally got underway just after 10.00am which I thought wasn’t too bad, however the first hour and a half proved to be one of the most tasking I have ever encountered. I immediately turned towards Beeson and Beesands after leaving the camp site and although it was tight it was still fairly comfortable riding. I had my first fright of the day when I was taking the road from Huccombe to Bickerton when I encountered a car on a bend. Stupidly I had just taken a position close to the gravel covered centre of the lane when she came around the corner, No fault of hers whatsoever, I got it wrong, however despite riding the back brake when the car appeared I put my front brake on only to find the front end go away as it skidded on the gravel, if I hadn’t been so wide awake and quick with my reactions it would have been curtains, even then it was a damn close thing, with the front end skidding two or three times before I could finally bring to rest in the passing place narrowly avoiding the car that was now stationary.

I uttered my apologies for scaring them and got on my way, but it wasn’t long before I encountered my next ‘tricky situation’ after leaving Hallsands you go through a village called Lanacombe before reaching Chivelstone I was really trying to be careful almost on the verge of being over the top, however I came around one corner to find a farmer had been on the roads and if you have ever been to this part of South Devon you will know it is typically a red clay type soil, that when wet takes on all the properties of a good grease. Again my own fault but then again my own skill and an earth bank got me out of it. Going up the rise out of a corner, I got slightly off line and I mean by inches but it was still enough to touch this pile of red clay in the middle of the road, what followed was probably one of the scariest and most invigorating episodes I’ve ever had. As one biker once said to me ‘any accident you walk away from, is a good accident’ and this was a doosey I ended up in a tank slapper that lasted for about 30 metres up the road before I got it back under control, including a major rebound off the earth bank on the left hand side of the lane. I didn’t stop until a few miles later as I felt everything was okay, I kept it up and I recovered it was only when I stopped at South Pool did I see the extent.
You can see the lump of earth stuck in my crash bars along with the red earthy marks on my tank, saddle bags, my panniers and my trousers not to mention half of South Devon on my boots.
Where I stopped to take the photos was quite interesting as I had pushed on to a place just before South Pool, where the sign said ‘Tidal Road, sometimes impassable’ you can see from the previous shot all the seaweed from the next you can see why.

After this I went up over a small rise before descending yet again this time to go through a ford, that I wouldn’t want to go near in anything other than the lowest of tides we were at.

I have to admit at this stage I was pretty much at sensory overload and I would have been stopping every few minutes if I had decided to take every photo possible, add this to the fact that it was extremely slow going with all the tight lanes. It had meant that I was only going at between 10-20mph for huge sections and even when I got ‘free’ I was still limited to between 30-40 at best, anything higher than this would have been absolute lunacy, now people can accuse me off a lot of things but lunatic I’m not.

Coming out from South Pool I headed up onto the A379 at Frogmore a beautiful setting which almost had me stopping to take a yet another photo but I had to stay disciplined otherwise I was going to get nowhere. A quick blast down this A road was welcome release not only for myself but I bet the bike herself. Once in Kingsbridge I decided it was time for a coffee break so I stopped at the old harbour area. It was there that it could be said that I might have had a religious moment if I had ever been inclined. Firstly there was a big religious gathering singing hymns in the square near by, well it was Good Friday, that and a little old lady came up to me after reading the stickers on my bike to force a few pounds in my hand and wish me an onward safe journey, some of her words were around the fact that there should be more YOUNG people like me, crying out loud 'Young I’m not' but it did make me feel good. So the last 24 hrs had now raised a further £25 for the Charity and I was feeling good about myself. There is no doubt Kingsbridge is a lovely spot when the sun is out, unfortunately it was almost straight into the camera when I took the following shot.

After leaving Kingsbridge it was out through back lanes again, a lot of the time when riding these lanes all the Sat Nav says is , ‘Riding West on Road’ or something similar, it wasn’t long however, after a number of ups and downs as I have described before, that I came into Lower Baston and then an almighty climb and descent into Salcombe Town Centre. I always remember this place from when a girlfriend took me there over 25 years ago now to stay at a friends place for the weekend, a twee little place but the people I encountered had this bizarre very pronounced okay yah accent, ever since then it has always been Knightsbridge on Sea to me. During the off season this place must be dead because I can’t believe all the Porsche and Bentley drivers actually live there all year round, it’s a bit like Rock on the North Cornwall coast I suppose,.

No I’ve got it now, the parents go to Salcombe and they send their kids to Rock to get them out of their way.

Lovely as the place is when riding through the centre of town it was like riding through a fashion parade, the mothers and their daughters were made up to the nines, there is no way they would even dare to endanger their nails on a sailing boat despite being bedecked in the latest outfits.
It did give me a good giggle though before heading up towards Rew and Bolberry, before reaching Hope Cove, both Inner and Outer, this sounds an awful lot easier than it was, as once again it was up hill for a mile then down hill for a mile at ridiculous gradients.

Sorry about the bins and I don’t want to go on about this, so it is the last mention (for now) It was taking much longer than I had envisaged to do these sections, because of the narrowness of the roads and my desire to stay safe, I was therefore riding as much as I could and stopping for as little as I could, which my rear end wasn’t liking me for at all.

I then got a bit of good luck I had marked one of my maps as ‘investigate’ as one route was not clearly defined and looked as if it was not passable according to all my maps, however when I got there a wonderful National Trust attendant ushered me through the car park and even gave me the best directions to Thurlestone, which then led on to Buckland and Bantham before getting on to the A379 again for the short ride into Aveton Gifford.

Just after the bridge there is a turning to another ‘Tidal Road’ with the words impassable at times even larger. The section is probably only just over a mile, however it is very plain the dangers that can lurk on it’s route.
One thing that I did find strange was a couple of old codgers parked up in ‘Passing Places’ for crying out loud can’t you read, have your flask of tea elsewhere, they are not the only ones, the holier than thou crowd of Ramblers who do the same thing, can’t find a proper parking place so deem there need is more than anyone else, especially the locals and park where they want. If you haven’t guessed it by now I don’t like the bulk of ‘born again ramblers’ who come into the countryside and try and dictate what country people should do.

The next photo really shows the height the tide can reach, I have stood up to take a couple of them and you may think why photograph a post? Well that post is taller than I am and there evidence is clear that the water reaches the top of it, so they are not joking when they say ‘sometimes impassable’. After a quick ride up Stakes Hill to Bigbury, yes you guessed it very steep and narrow roads I then went down to Bigbury on Sea as I wanted to try and take a photo of the art deco hotel on Burgh Island. I did the best I could but I couldn’t stop one thing I noticed was a group of surfers on the far side of the bay and although it was a beautifully sunny day I bet the sea was freezing.
What followed next was one of the worst parts of the trip. A quick loop back towards St Ann’s Chapel and I took the turning towards Challabourgh, or what I have now deemed CHAVaborough, coming down into the valley, it is full side to side and up to half a mile from the seafront with static caravans, all you can see is beige, cream and light green aluminium boxes. I was so disappointed I didn’t stop and pushed on to Ringmore only to encounter the next issue a car came flying around the bend and only because I was taking it so easy that I was able to stop right against the bank, if I hadn’t he certainly would have hit me, as he skidded to a stop with his open drivers window conveniently position next to me so I gave him a right mouthful, ‘didn’t you hear me beep my horn?’ a lot of use that did, while I had earplugs in and helmet on.

His mate in the car behind who had almost rammed him, shouts through he was only doing 25mph, which was about 10mph faster than the corner needed so I gave him a mouthful as well, it really was reckless and here comes the rub both of them had London accents so they were obviously staying at Chavaborough.

Once I had recovered my temper I headed off through Kingston towards the A379 only to encounter a blockage on the road, a mobile home was coming down the lane and and a couple of cars were coming the other way compound this with a woman in a new car who was so panicked she would pull over for fear of scratching her car, thankfully there was loads of space for me to filter my way through and those stuck there must have been fuming to see me get through it without too many problems.

The next section once again looks easy on a map but gives no idea of the gradients involved but I needed to push on it was now after 2pm and I still hadn’t reached Plymouth however it did produce a lovely part of the coast at Noss Mayo and Newton and Noss. Another short stretch on the A379 again before heading off down through Knighton, Wembury and Down Thomas before navigating around a housing estate in Plymstock. I then had to work my way through Plymouth itself which is a combination of confusing and depressing, there must be so nice areas but I didn’t see them mainly because I was going through the built town centre and then on to the Hoe itself.

It may sound as I am rushing this a bit now, however each post is getting bigger and longer, in fact at times it seems as if it is taking longer to write it up that ride it in the first place. I did stop on the Hoe briefly for a coffee and use the toilets there, but I also needed to get my maps sorted as the next section was going to be a bit quicker and bit intense. I passed by the main gate of the Balfour Shipyard which I remember visiting over 20 years ago on business when it was DML, it was very straightforward run up through to Higher St Budeaux but then some of the issues started with a number of housing estates with tiny Closes and Avenues that end in cul-de-sacs without warning, I am therefore going to avoid these wherever possible in future as it doesn’t add anything to the task it just adds to delays.

Tamerton Foliot Road leads on to Fore Street and eventually Allern Ln, signposted to Lopwell, or it would have been if some scank hadn’t broken the sign, in fact this was about the 10th I had come across during this trip alone, after yet another detour through a housing estate before spotting a broken sign and double checking with the Sat Nav I was on my way, it proved to be a very nice section although it was really getting late and I wanted to cover as much as I could before stopping for the night, I had an ambition of Looe but it was looking at risk. Milton Combe was bypassed on the way to Buckland Abbey , turning left before Buckland Monachorum to cross the river then South for a quick loop around Bere Alston and Bere Ferrers before the run back up to Gulworthy and back on to the A390, after crossing the bridge at Gunnislake it was a case of turning immediately South again towards Harewood and Calstock it was on these lanes I had a ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ moment when I saw a two carriage train high on an embankment, against the skyline, slowing down for a crossing, with the sun behind it shining through the windows, it really was quite surreal.

These lanes really were tight around here and it was now getting on a bit, however I was determined to get to Looe before I made camp for the evening but this was soon brought to an abrupt halt on the road to Botusfleming when a bout of cramp kicked-in in my left thigh. I’d obviously been pushing on too hard without anything to drink, a pint of water later and a walk around for five minutes and I was on my way to Saltash where I had to refuel then it was on to Tideford, Polbathic and then Torpoint.

It was now 5.45pm and I needed to find somewhere to camp for the night so as I pushed on around the peninsular to Cawsand and then Crafthole, the first I came across was a large Holiday Camp style place that looked over the top. The second in Downderry was even more interesting there was no mention going up the lane or even turning into the driveway . The first inkling that something was different was when I came across the 10ft high wooden gates, then on the right of it, I saw the sign which stated, ‘all campers at this site have to be nude, as this is a naturist site’ I struggled to turn the bike around and bumped into the people I asked direction from on the way up. Boy did they get a surprise, they had lived in the lane for over 5 years and had no idea the place was a naturist camp.

On to Seaton it actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I ended up passing a small site called Polborder House, which turned out to be run by a couple from the Wirral, close to where I was born. After pitching the tent and getting my stuff sorted out it was getting dark by the time I was cooking, eventually the sun went down as I washed up so I took the opportunity to climb into my bag and read my book before drifting off to sleep.

The next morning I would be trying to get going as soon as possible as I wanted to get a few miles under my belt before heading back home to take some customers to a football match at Villa Park on Sunday.

Take care and as Mick says ‘You don’t stop riding when you get old, you stop riding to go to a football match.