Went out for a nice 117km ride today, on a route designed to pick off a few gaps round the Tenterden area. As a result, I've increased by max square from 20 to 21 (in fact I now have 8 overlapping 21x21 squares) and my max cluster from 826 to 866. Satisfying.
One of the tiles required venturing onto
a private estate, but I figured since the road was marked as a restricted byway, it should be fine. There were a few people about but no one batted an eyelid - except a bunch of geese, who made a lot of noise but didn't go so far as attacking me.
The road is a 'lollipop' - straight off the main road with a loop at the end. I followed the loop round and most of it was well surfaced, but then I hit a section of muddy farm trail, well churned up with some deep ruts and puddles... I wasn't sure how far I needed to go round the loop to bag the tile. Tried to check on my phone but the map wasn't detailed enough to be helpful. And I didn't want to get home to find I'd missed out on it, so ploughed on - ploughed being the operative word.
Turns out I didn't need to go along that bit after all. Doh!
Also realised that if I'd carried on another kilometre or so along the road from Tenterden to Rolvenden, instead of turning back towards Biddenden, I could have bagged another tile that would have taken my max square to 22. Annoying. Once I've got that tile, that will be pretty much the limits of my square reached for a while - I can't expand any further north, east or south without going into the sea, so I'll need to focus on expanding westwards, and it's getting to the point where that's going to involve some proper long rides.
Still, a very enjoyable ride, taking in some very pleasant new lanes I've not ridden before - which is really the main point of this exercise, isn't it?
The muddy bit was the top section of the loop, which did go into a tile I needed, but I filled it in anyway on the road out of Tenterden: