Measure Twice
I’m quite partial to a ride of any distance. I tend not to balk at anything too long, and time permitting would rather do a good days riding than do anything too short. That said, I am still a fan of a little after school ripper, or squeezing one in before work or other commitments. So 30 miles is a neither here nor there distance, and my local (or local for a 30 mile loop) takes around 3 hours or so and is lumpy. I’m familiar (not fast) with the local climbs, both on and off road, so I largely know what I’m getting myself into.
If you’ve had a root around on this site, you’ll be aware that I’m a big fan of exploring further afield, and using apps like Komoot, along with Google Street View to help plan out routes. I’ve used Komoot locally to good effect to link up and expand my standard loops and routes, and I’ve been Komooted on a number of occasions, the best one recently was up someone’s private drive through the middle of an ornamental pond.
It’s all fine and well getting lost close to home, or being redirected up somewhere silly that you know you can backtrack from, but when you’re into the more unknown, I do prefer to be a bit more considered in my approach to route planning. Also, when I’m preparing for an adventure somewhere new, I do get overexcited and stay up late pouring over street view, google maps, and Komoot, checking how much is off road, how little tarmac there is, and giddying up for what looks like singletrack from the blurry satellite imagery.
What I don’t tend to look at is the relief or profile. I can see that a ride has how ever may feet of climbing. I’m not a climber, I like going down the other side. I will climb to burn off cake/pies/pizza/burger/chocolate etc., but uphill is uphill and that doesn’t interest me too much. Interesting or not, I don’t think I’ll ever learn that it should be paid attention to, and the darker the red, the more it’s going to hurt.
This route took place in South Devon. This is the tidal road at Aveton Gifford.
I’d Like to Speak With a Geologist Please
I like rocks. I like maps. I like fluorescent gilets. I should be a geography teacher. But I don’t like all the surveys with high school children asking about the shopping habits of octogenarians. So I should be a geology teacher. But I’m not. I’m worse than that, I work in IT and one of my hobbies outside of cycling is hitting rocks on the beach with other rocks to see if there are any trilobites inside. I have so far been unsuccessful, but many rocks have perished by my hand.
What I genuinely do enjoy though is the different trails, surfaces and history of the strata, and usage of trails. For example there’s a packhorse trail nearby, and the stories of how it was built and what is was used for are fascinating. There’s also the remains of an old roman road, that is nearly arrow straight across the hills, whilst the newer A road bends and sweeps and covers at least triple the distance.
At home, I’m lucky enough to ride mostly on gritstone. Or mud. But if the trail is rocky, even if it’s pissing down, it’s gritstone. So it’s pretty much like riding on sandpaper. This has spoilt me. If I go anywhere that isn’t like that, I feel like I’m riding on polished marble that’s had a thin coating of lard applied. It takes a bit of getting used to.
In the case of this ride, there was an abundance of limestone on old cart tracks. Centuries of use had made tram track like ruts, that if you were lucky, your wheels would slot in and away you’d go. Unless you came to a bend. Or an incline. And that’s where the fun begins.
Get Over It
This ride took place in September 2023. A beautiful warm and sunny day. It hadn’t dropped below 20 Celsius overnight, and the air was chewable. I’d set off before 8am and it was already tickling 25 degrees. The route had started where we were staying, on a last minute family getaway, in Aveton Gifford, Devon. The village itself is quiet and lovely, and was an ideal base for getting to a number of beaches and towns.
The route immediately climbs sharply away from sea level (the village is at sea level, at the very tip of the river becoming an estuary, and has a tidal road which does flood at least twice daily) up to the top of the headland, and beyond. This would be the dark red bit on the profile of the route, had I bothered to take notice.
It was tarmac, and relentless. Every corner had a false flat, and the gradient would kick back up again, over and over. Upon reaching the top, I was pleased to have gotten what felt like all of the climbing out of the way. The road dropped down back towards sea level, turning into a gravel track, that got fast and twisty very quickly. A sharp 90 degree bend at the bottom scrubbed all speed off, and crossing a stream, the climb back up to the other side started. It was like riding up a wall. Made of soap. The gravel track had turned into a rutted cart track, and for every pedal stroke, there was at least half of it just in wheel spin.
As this levelled out and began to descend, I remembered reading about someone riding King Alfred’s Way hitting the ruts on the Ridgeway and saying just keep looking forward, and not at the ruts. This was grand advice, and I managed to not loose my teeth.
La Komooterie
After around 10 miles, I’d settled into a groove (pun very much intended). The heat and humidity were bearable, there was a sea breeze, and I was really enjoying exploring, riding new trails, seeing new villages. There’s something innately wonderful, foreign and exciting about riding in your home country when holiday.
Not only are the trails different, but the place names, especially in South West England are so alien to what we get in the North west that it adds to the fun of it all. That’s not to say the place names are silly, or that we don’t have ludicrous place names up here. I like the sound of Westward Ho!, and we have Penistone.
Each village has it’s own feel, and even as simple as the difference between the churches, chapels and hedgerows. This is all important information, as I was about to spend 15 minutes getting Komooted. I’d dropped into a village with a cross road in a dip. Over the middle of the cross roads, was a foot bridge going to the local school, that avoided crossing the road. There was a spur off the crossroads that went into a residential street and ran parallel to the main road. My Garmin shat it’s knickers.
In Robocop, ED 209 behaves better than my Garmin when the course Komoot has made has a slight deviation. (ED 209 is the massive Robot that goes apeshit when the smug corporate types are trying to showcase how wonderful it is). I’ve worked with AI, and I assure you, skynet will not kill us. The Matrix won’t happen. All we’ll have to do is tell the robots that you need to go up the road, make a u-turn, turn left and make a u-turn.
In the space of about 10 square feet, course lost/course found/course lost/course found popped up on screen every time I went in a different direction. At one point, I ended up on the footbridge, just walking up and down with the garmin and my phone, trying to work out where I should go. There was a church next to the school and I’d leant my bike up on the wall there. The route on my phone, and garmin were indecipherable as to which direction I should take, and the garmins freak out in the heat had done nothing for my concentration. As I walked down to my bike, there was an sign covered in ivy that I’d missed, pointing into the the church yard, through the gate. It had a little white horse on it. Salvation. I’d not considered that the route would go through the church yard and beyond, and was happy to crack on and shut up the little demon in my bike computer.
Bigbury Sands. There’s a pub called the Pilchard on the “island” in the top left of the photo. I did manage to ride to it, but it was hot and hard work.
Bikes and Boats
The descent down from the church took me back to sea level, winding and turning down rock steps, singletrack, loose gravel, it had it all, and I would make the trip back to ride it again. Again though, the profile would be changing rapidly to dark red. Every time I’d descended, it was immediately climb back up. Not one inch of the route was flat. If it was a climb, it was steep. If it wasn’t a climb, it was a descent. And the descents were bliss. Fun, fast, technical. But they were not easy. There was no rest on them, and where a modicum of a breather could be had, it was blasted away by either the heat, humidity, or thrill of the unknown.
As I’d reached the top of that last climb, I turned off towards a fast grassy bridleway. I was overlooking a village, at eye level with the top of it’s church spire. It was beautiful. The descent took me back down to sea level, and to this day, I can feel the exertion and elation of managing the next climb out of that village. It was on loose marble sized and shaped gravel and went on through the woods for what felt like miles. The woods were overgrown and brambles were tugging at my jersey and making my arms sting from the sweat immediately pouring into the scratches. I’d made it it to the top without putting a foot down (I’m not a climber, so this felt like I should be awarded with a medal, or an ice cream), and it was immediately back down to sea level, this time down the most fun descent of the day, which like the climb, felt like it was never ending, but unlike the climb, I didn’t want it to.
When it did end, it spat me out onto a beach opposite the town of Salcombe. I was really looking forward to this bit. The beach was beautiful, Salcombe is lovely, and the view from the opposite side really does do it justice. I’d purposefully planned the route this way, because I knew that as I was at the mouth of the harbour, I’d be able to pay a couple of quid to hop on the 2 minute ferry crossing to the aptly named Ferry Inn at Salcombe. I had the same glee that a toddler does when they are shoving your underpants, phone and a full toilet roll right into the u-bend of the toilet. Vibrating with excitement at the fulfilment of a bucket list item, my bike and I were on a little boat in the sea, on an adventure.
Unlike the toddler who couldn’t really care less about the wellbeing of the plumbing and has moved on to filling your shoes with lego, and very much in the guise of the parent, elbow deep in the toilet and unable to google a plumber due to the phone being the crux of the problem, I’d treated myself to a coffee and a flapjack in one of the cafes. The price of this made me wretch as much as being elbow deep in my toilet and seeing a little bit of poo float up towards my face. As lovely as Salcombe is, it is a little bit London-On-Sea, and so I left.
There are many reasons to do this ride. For me, this is right up there.
To The Beach
This ride was hot, sweaty, stingy, burny, hilly and amazing. You may have read this thinking, shit, he’s on a right moan about riding up hills. I’m not. I can’t climb, but I don’t dislike them. Going downhill in my opinion is better. It’s more fun and that’s what it’s about for me. But I don’t hate climbs, I’m just not very good at them. The point I’m making here is that it’s so much fun to explore, and looking at maps and street view amplifies the excitement, but can remove some of the reality. I knew that Devon was hilly. I just didn’t know that South Devon had that many vertical roads and trails contained within it. I looked at the elevation and thought nothing of it. I glanced at the profile and ignored it. I’ve since made routes that are longer and ostensibly harder. I look at the profile and my brain refuses to accept that any of it is steep, even after this. Maybe this is because nothing can be as steep and grueling as the constant ups and downs of this area, and I now only fear the climbs from here.
On that point however, the last climb was wonderful. The route runs paralell to the sea and the coast path for a few miles, along the beautiful Hope Cove, and then gently climbs off road up to the top of Bigbury, where it’s all down hill to Aveton Gifford.
You could ride this route in any direction from any point, and it’s included in the Gravel Routes page. I always try and run my routes from a train station, but this one is more about a story of a ride I loved and will absolutely do again.