Vince's Cycling Stuff

This route was planned with the sole purpose of riding up White Hill. Someone on a club run had mentioned it and I had made a note to do it one day. And that day was today. As usual, of late, the weather was warm and sunny. I planned a 54-mile route that took in quite a lot of unknown territory.

The first 18 miles or so were covered at 16mph. There were some nice lanes around Charing, just keeping to the South of the Downs. After 23 miles I came to a lovely lake, Eastwell Lake.

Less than a mile past the lake my progress came to an abrupt halt when I was confronted with this:

Damn! Again I had failed to check if all of the route was on public roads. But again I figured that the route-planning software wouldn’t direct me across private land, so I once more assumed that there was some sort of right-of-way.

I looked for a way around this road blockage and noticed, a little further back from the gate, a footpath sign. This led me past some sort of old tower or something.

Through one of those anti-bike type gates and across a rough field I came to another bike-unfriendly gate. This one was too small to manoeuvre through, so I just lifted my bike over the gate next to it.

and found myself on a smooth tarmac road

After about a mile of this I came to learn where I actually was, by virtue of this sign

Another interesting ‘off-road’ excursion comes to an end.

About a mile and a half later I arrived at the goal of this journey, namely White Hill. As it turned out, it wasn’t too bad a hill. It’s quite long at 1.6 miles, over which it rises about 450 feet, but I managed nearly all of it in 3rd gear, so it was hardly challenging. But the view from the top was worth it.

The next seven miles consisted of some beautiful roads across the top of the Downs before dropping down again through Lenham Heath and Grafty Green, after which I climbed Ulcombe Hill to the Greensand Ridge for the next four miles before dropping down again into the Vale of Kent. I included a bit of a twist in the tail of this journey in the shape of Westerhill Road, whose 17% gradient I just had enough energy left to climb.

Well, as promised, this route is a modification of the Greensand Hills Route I did last week, except this time the previous descents become the new ascents and vice versa.

I wasn’t really in the mood for this ride. Maybe it was the couple of beers I’d had the previous evening; I just felt a bit lack-lustre, performance-wise. It was a fairly hot day (25°C) with sunny spells.

The first climb of the day was Yalding Hill, and it felt a bit of a slog, which was worrying, this early in the ride. Then, it was down Barn and up Hunton Hill. This was the first time I had climbed Hunton Hill and it was steeper than I had expected. Nearly two miles later came Vanity Lane. Having climbed this for the first time a couple of weeks before, at least I knew what to expect; it didn’t make it any easier though! As I panted my way up the steep incline, a woman jogging (or at least to the extent that one can ‘jog’ down such a steep slope) past me in the opposite direction quipped “and I thought I was mad running down it!”. A grunt of acknowledgement was all I could muster in response, as I gasped for more air. I was glad to get Vanity Lane out of the way – the remaining hills are all less severe. Only eight more to go!

Five hills later I was wishing it could be over. When I came to the top of Windmill Hill I mistakenly thought I had completed the last one, so when I found myself descending again I thought “Drat, there must be another one to go” (or thoughts to that effect!). And there was – Headcorn Road has an ascent of 220 feet in half a mile. With that out of the way I just had 11 fairly flat miles to ride home.

Even though it was a slog I was still glad I had done it once it was over.

Reading something on the web about a year ago, someone suggested a route of this nature – ie. going up and down each consecutive hill along the Greensand Ridge starting at Yalding Hill and moving East. At the the time I thought it would be a killer,  as I considered Yalding, Barn and Hunton Hills, Westerhill Road, Vanity Lane, etc, but really these are the worst ones – with one or two exceptions the hills get easier as you go East. I thought I’d give it a go. I designed the following route (43 miles, 3,340 feet ascent) : It was a hot day (26°C) with light winds. The first climb was Barn Hill. I’m very familiar with this short, sharp shock. The next ascent was Westerhill Road and that was really tough, certainly the steepest on this route – it’s up there with the toughest of all the Ridge hills and required out-of-the-saddle heavy breathing action to get up it! With that one done, the rest were easier.

During this ride I discovered some really nice country lanes around here that I had never ridden before, such as Loddington Lane.  I think this route will become a favourite. I have designed another one that goes up the hills that this one goes down and vice versa. I tried something new on this ride, namely having an IsoGel every 7 or 8 miles. It seemed to work OK and I noticed no unpleasant side-effects, other than feeling more hungry than usual once I got home.