Early Bird- Return To Shadoxhurst

Reaching The Fabled Shadoxhurst- Time To head South

Having really enjoyed the new Shadoxhurst circular a few months back I decided it was well worth a return trip. Despite the good weather there were only three of us, myself, Paul K and Steve D. This route took a direct journey to Rye before heading North on fabulous quiet and wide roads towards the fabled Shadoxhurst near to Ashford. Despite all the roads being 'yellow' C roads they a are wider than most C roads and with only a few climbs this made for fast riding. I felt like I was riding fairly close to flat out on my recently acquired Giant Defy and that I must be breaking lots of Strava segments so I was surprised that I only managed to beat half the segments set last time on my old Rayleigh, so maybe the old girl is not as bad as I thought? Despite having done two hard mtb laps of Bewl the night before, Steve was riding significantly faster than myself, the only time I could get ahead of him was when he had to shift about to give his groin a rest. Paul has been putting in 150 miles a week recently since getting back to road riding and he was also really flying. On the way back we had to slow down for a few 'traditional' Sussex lanes that could do with a big sweeping to remove all the accumulated muck and gravel in the middle of the road. We were now only six miles from the cafe, but to get there we had to climb up Doleham hill and then Peter James lane. these didn't seem quite as hard as last time and I managed a second best on Doleham and a pb on Peter James. As most of the road surface is so good on this route, we will ride this classic route once more in the autumn before the year is out.