Bloody hell, it's lumpy round Biggin Hill, isn't it? Total of about 500m climbing (according to Strava) in 49km,
That's bang on the average climbing for anywhere around here, Sheffield/Peak District. Sounds odd to get that much climbing darn London Way.
Well, Biggin Hill is perhaps more Kent/Surrey than London. There's no great altitude there, just lots of short, sharp climbs - and the only reason my ride was so lumpy was that I was going back and forth across the gradients for the sake of the tiles. The main routes tend to follow the contours.
I have a 220km route planned (hoping to do it on one of my days off next week) which could be similar. Komoot reckons about 25km "off-road" in total, including -
Unpaved: 8.19 km
Compacted Gravel: 5.63 km
It'll be worth it for the tiles though - about 60, I think. But I might wait to see what the weather is like before deciding whether to ride it.
I did this ride on Wednesday. It was a lovely day out. Set off later than planned, and because of the terrain being quite difficult in places, it was slow going at times, so I ended up bailing out and getting the train because it was getting late and I needed to get home. But I managed to get all the tiles I'd set out to achieve, so job well done, I reckon...
Tiles 7393 > 7452
Max cluster 1354 > 1442
Max square 21 > 23
Filled in a nice chunk of tiles along the Kent/Sussex border around the Cranbrook/Tenterden area. (There's another big chunk of tiles that need filling further along the border around Tunbridge Wells, plus a big hole in West Kent, and some odd bits down near Dungeness, but I'm well on the way to getting the whole of Kent covered - question is whether I can beat trickedem to it... think I'm still some way behind him though.)
Before:
Cranbrook tiles by
citoyen, on Flickr
After:
Cranbrook tiles by
citoyen, on Flickr
The route involved going through Bedgebury Forest - a popular spot for mountain bikers. Not really ideal for road bikes, but the alternative would have been loading the MTB up on the car and driving down there. The main routes through the forest aren't too bad - wide, hard-pack trails like this:
Bedgebury by
citoyen, on Flickr
Or not so wide but still easily navigable on 28mm slick tyres, like this:
Bedgebury by
citoyen, on Flickr
Bedgebury by
citoyen, on Flickr
But then there were occasional obstacles like this...
Hmmm... left or right? by
citoyen, on Flickr
And one or two nice bits of singletrack...
Bedgebury by
citoyen, on Flickr
Further along the route, there was another woodland trail that was the only way to reach a particular tile - I admit I got off and walked a few bits... but I did stick to my guns and follow the trail all the way through the woods, even though it would have been easier to only go far enough to get the tile then double back and take the road round:
Cranbrook by
citoyen, on Flickr
Cranbrook by
citoyen, on Flickr
There were also a couple of dead end farm tracks that I only went along far enough to reach the tile. Never happy about doing that, but there was no through-route option that I could see on the map.
And the final tricky bit of the day was a cluster of four tiles south of Tenterden, the middle two of which are only accessible via a bridlepath that starts next to Smallhythe Place. The first couple of hundred metres were fine, but I had to walk the rest... at least it was all dry. And I did follow it all the way through to rejoin the road at the other end...
Tenterden by
citoyen, on Flickr
Tenterden by
citoyen, on Flickr
These are the four tiles the path goes through:
Tenterden by
citoyen, on Flickr
Zooming in on the above pic, you can see the path only just clips the corner of the top tile - would have meant some traipsing across fields otherwise:
Tenterden by
citoyen, on Flickr
Treated myself to a splendid lunch from Waitrose in Hawkhurst at about the halfway point:
lunch by
citoyen, on Flickr
