21/9 Firle Snake

With such a long dry off-road season this year our stamina has slowly got better and our rides have got longer. Our default distance now is around 30 miles so this called for another new route.Myself and Derek knew of a legendary series of tracks in the Woodingdean area known locally as 'The Snake'. If we started at Firle we could take in the snake but also to make the route even more interesting, what about climbing over Mount Caborn (overlooks lewes)? looking at the OS maps there  is a choice of two tracks across Mount Caborn , we could take the more obvious one straight across and through the golf course. Familiar tracks took us out of Firle before reaching the road climb to The Bo Peep car park. As we climbed up this famous hill climb a roadie came past us.

Ivan And Paul Show The Roadie The Right Way To Climb!

This was like a red rag to a bull so Paul and Ivan accelerated and actually beat the roadie to the top of the climb (much to his amazement) despite the drag from their knobbly tyres. After descending towards Bishopstone we headed North towards Blackcap. We have come down this way many times but never up it, it was a seriously long drag which I found OK but not Derek, who was suffering with a back injury . Eventually we were back on the SDW but Derek decided to abandon due to the pain he was in .Familiar tracks took us down Itford hill and towards Telscombe before we eventually arrived at the start of the 'snake'. The snake was a fabulous track which sinuously weaved it way up wards through Woodingdean valley and finally reached Bullock hill. 

Josef Is Happy To Be On 'The Snake

Despite ascending over 100m , at no point was the gradient anything more than nice and steady, so perfect for a heavy rider like myself! A rapid and scary descent down a hard packed chalky bridleway (lethal when wet) took us into kingston and into lewes. Heading through the town we came across an excellent little cafe built into the side of a church with very friendly staff . Suitably refreshed we headed east towards Mount Caborn. To reach the mount we had to ascend the steepest bit of road I have ever ridden up . The gradient must have been 1 in 5, about the same as chick hill but about twice as long. Finally the angle levelled off and we were at the start of Mount Caborn by the golf course. The path I had chosen took us straight through the golf course following the regular posts planted there to show the rights of way. All around us there were dozens of golf balls and warnings about golf balls coming in from the right.At any moment we expected a golf ball to come flying at our heads. Fortunately none did and the golfers didn't seem to mind us passing through.Eventually we exited the golf course through a gate and were now in the windswept wilds of the mount, we were glad to be up here in the summer rather than the winter. The track had done us proud being obvious and wide and we were looking forward to an awesome descent down to Glynde. The descent turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax as much of the decent to sea level actually occurred on the road we took to get us down to the A27. We had planned to cross over the A27 and then climb back up towards the aerials before traversing across followed by a rapid descent  but one look at the climb in front of us convinced us this was not a good idea and with the promise of beer only 5 mins away we took the new cycle-path alongside the A27 instead , and hopped across the main road directly into Firle via a convenient little traffic island. 

This turned out to be one of our best ever routes and is one we will definitely repeat next year, although next time we will try the steeper track across Mount Caborn to try to avoid the golfers and to give us a more dramatic finish to the ride!!!

Ivan Shows The Way From Mount Caborn!