After an irritating day I decided to take the bike out for a spin tonight. Struggled up a nasty, boring tarmac climb to the top of the East Hill in Hastings where you’ll find Hastings Country Park. As you can see from the Pics below, a bit of mist was rolling in off the sea and the late afternoon sun was making everything look rather picturesque.
The one thing spoiling the view was a big “NO CYCLING” sign. There really would be potential for some great riding through Hastings Country Park if anyone thought to build a cycle trail there. It would doubtless bring a lot more tourism to the town than the Jerwood Art Gallery, MTB tourism has done wonders for some deprived parts of Wales, no reason why it couldn’t fill the B&B’s in Hastings. The terrain along the tops of the cliffs would be a lot more interesting than the goosebump hills at Bedgebury. No doubt the thought of people having fun would scandalise the local residents into writing to their MP so I’m sure it’ll never happen.
As tempting as it was, I didn’t ride my bike over the Country Park, where you see the bike in the photos is about 30 ft from a tarmac road, I pushed the bike from the tarmac to the bench. After a bit of a breather (it’s 300ft above the seafront I rode up from) I headed back down the steep, potholed road trying to keep the bike under 35mph. I had a gentle spin around Hastings Old Town, for some reason I’ve never ridden around the Old Town much. I am a big fan of the place, was pleasant to gently pootle through the streets and take in the early evening vibe.
From Hastings I headed out on the official cycle path to Bexhill. As much as I use this regularly for fitness, it’s not the sort of cycling that is going to draw people to the area. The sea mist got thicker and thicker the further west I went, until I arrived in Bexhill to find the seafront there engulfed in a bit of a pea-souper.
Quite captivating in it’s own way. Round about the De La Warr Pavilion I turned the bike round and headed home, tried to push hard up a couple of the hills but I’m still fighting the remnants of this cold and I’m not on top form so didn’t set the tarmac on fire. As I started to reach St Leonards I noticed my arms seemed to have a white mist on them, almost like snow. While riding it seems I’d picked up a fair bit of sea mist myself. The whole bike was wet, very odd when you can’t feel drops of it falling as you can with rain. Riding through mist you just sort of collect it, gently.
About a mile in from the sea front the mist was absent and the sun was out. Just a smidge over 16 miles tonight, still not managed to hit the 800 mile target I’d hoped to reach before the end of August. Hoping to rack up a lot (for me) of miles in September though.
lardymtb 