Summer's last Gasp?

As we do every year those of us who like to do a bit of off road completed our once a year 'off road' to Brighton.Present were the usual suspects, myself, Ivan, Paul K and Colin (on his once a year mtb ride).The ride started off with all road until we were able to pick up the SDW at Eastbourne. There is then a brutal very long climb up to the top of 'Butts brow' before a very rapid and bumpy decent down into Jevington.Here we met a friendly cyclist who was on an old Kona that was nearly as old as the retro bikes that we were riding,we gave him the club email so another possible recruit? At this point I began to think that maybe full suspension wasn't a waste of money? Having gone all the way down to the valley floor we then had to climb all the way back up towards 'the long man'. Myself and Paul found this to be the hardest climb of the day and shamefully we had to get off and walk up some of it. Ivan as usual took it all in his stride and Colin was going well to. Following another very bumpy decent down into Alfriston we headed for R&R at our usual cafe stop (Badgers), unfortunately this establishment was full but then we discovered one on the corner of the road, the ladies in there were really friendly and it was cheaper than Badgers so that was a nice discovery. After the R& R we decided we would take the easy route to firle along the old farm track which skirts around the base of the Downs rather than the downs itself. The only price we paid for this was that we had to do the steep climb up to firle beacon on the road, this wasn't so bad but did seem to go on for ever and with backbacks on our backs we were overheating. We now knew that most of the hard stages were behind us and flew down rodmell hill only to discover Dave HH about to climb up it. Dave was doing the SDW in a day and had been on the route since 5:00, we didn't envy him at all knowing full well what he had left to do.Colin's response was f##k that! The rest of the route proceeded quite nicely, when we finally reached a bit of tarmac, Colin was so glad he kissed the road before the best part of the whole trip which is the endless fast decent down into the heart of brighton. Colin suggested we try a different curry house this time and the one we discovered was much better than the usual with excellent staff and food, this is the one we will use when we ride to Brighton again on one of the hack back rides. A tough but enjoyable day, myself and Paul really did struggle on this ride and for us that is the last off road of the season, tarmac here we come!!
SC