Ticket to Ryde: a roadbike adventure #ridebikes

A ride from the edges of South London down to Portsmouth and across to Ryde in the Isle of Wight and beyond for a few days riding fun.

I’m riding the carbon Swift Racevox with Dura Ace groupset and hydraulic disc brakes.

morning all it’s Monday morning 23rd of June and um the gravel bike is uh hanging up because I’m not using that today um so that’s gone away to rest because I am using this bad boy here the uh Swift Race Fox and I’m going to head over to the Isis of White uh for a few days and do some riding over there fire up the Garmin except for road not uh gravel go to save courses south London to Portsmouth 123 km the other thing to note is that it’s been 30 31 32° C recently uh what’s 32 double it and add 32 64 96 so it’s been 96° F or 32 C for the last four or five days now all of a sudden it’s dropped to about 18 and it’s uh quite windy so although the sun’s out it’s not as warm as it looks ups and downs home of the Derby [Music] all right just climbed up uh over E ups and downs um and now we’re going to head straight back down the other side down Pebble Hill which is a dangerously fast uh descent some might say come on mate come on oh slow me down right I made it down Pebble Hill did you see that van he rushed to overtake me at the start of the hill and then held me up a dangerous overtake not for me but for the guys on the other side of the road who hooted him and then he held me up all the way down the hill anyway I’m now in the land of Robo DC one of my number one uh number one fan and contributor on this channel thanks Robo there was a time when Rob would have joined me on a trip like this but unfortunately he’s been out of action for quite a while i’m sure you’ll be back on the bike soon Rob [Applause] [Applause] this is a beautiful little road a bit sketchy in places the tarmac’s a bit dodgy and there’s lots of gravel around in places but um it’s a nice quiet road and nice nice fun to ride [Applause] 64k i’m at the halfway point feeling uh feeling a bit jaded now i haven’t had anything to eat yet so uh I’m going to stop in a second right a charming village shop just being served by two lovely ladies um and uh not entirely sure where I am but um 68 km in um and as I said I um I’m not really eating and drinking on the uh on the ride because I’ve got um I’m having my teeth straightened and I have been since uh December and I got these um aligners invisible aligners um in and um you’re not supposed to or you can’t eat with them it’s really difficult um so you have to stop and take them out so uh so that what that’s why I was flagging a bit so just saw this and thought I’d stop iced bun and Belgian bun is that and flat whites and um yeah get some carbs and sugar in me and caffeine and I’ll be ready for the second half of the ride so this is the special tool that I need to take my uh aligners out so as you can imagine it’s not easy to do that on the fly nice little climb through the woods here single track road this is steep oh front wheel off the ground 16% 87k and that looks like the uh last climb to my Well I’m going to turn left but the climb over my shoulder is the last climb of the day I believe right onto the last climb um it’s not too long but it’s a red one in terms of difficulty and also busy with traffic still going 97k uh I think I think that’s all the hills um haven’t got a lot to say here actually national Cycle Network 22 i think I’ve been on and off that on the way down here i’ve seen a couple of signs for Portsmouth but the first one with a distance actually indicated 12 miles so what’s that it’s about 20k isn’t it let’s go let’s do it not sure why it’s brought me up a gravel uh trail all right 108k and my uh virtual partners just finished i hate that guy so I can smug um and here I am in uh Haven’t um which is where I finished the uh or got the train on the ship rights way challenge earlier on this year if you watch that video if you haven’t watch it it’s a great one oh it’s not quite the sea but it’s the briney eststerie if this was smelly vision you could smell that salt and seaweed 114 km here we are lava famous uh iride ship there and uh Sper tower the sund deck there’s the spin tower and I made it to the um fast cat right we’re out of the Bahamas so he’s revved up the engines a bit and there simple as that all right the final climb 9 center graham lives at the top of a hill which means all rides finish like this [Music] oh 12% 13 why does he live up here the views it’s amazing so that’s Sandown Pier behind me sandown well-known holiday destination lovely and over that shoulder you can see back to Portsmouth and you can see the Spica Tower i can with a naked eye probably not with a GoPro so yeah he lives on one of the highest points on the island which is great in many ways but not for starting and finishing uh cycle rides it’s not here is the top path Culver Haven in it’s within stumbling distance of uh Graham’s place so we shall have quite a few beers in there this week