TET: Great Western Trail: Day 1

 After a long 7 hour drive south in the truck to avoid the heavy rain sweeping across the UK. I arrived at Gareth's place in the early evening. That night was filled with fish n chips, red wine and whiskey mixed interspersed with a lot of catch up gossip about bikes, kit, the state of the UK and anything else we could think of. 

Early Saturday morning, we were both up. The dogs were walked, the bikes loaded and we set off onto the local trails roughly aiming to be somewhere the other side of Salisbury Plain by days end.

Within 10 minutes, the bikes changed colour. All of the rain for the last four months is pooling on the ground, running down the rivers and generally everywhere. The English countryside looks like a drowned rat at the moment. That said, because lots of the lanes surfaces are chalk across this area, the surface water can drain quickly. This sometimes gave us dry surfaces to razz across, usually through an arched canopy of beautiful woodland. 

Every now and then, we were forced to detour around fallen trees. Sometimes, this was a straight forward weave, others involved climbing banks into field edges and dropping back onto the trail further on. Always fun with 20+kg of luggage. Still, these KTM 690's are a capable bike, with a lot of low down grunt, so, once you get the hang of the weight, they will do this kind of thing all day. 

We passed the marker stone for Geoffrey de'Havilland at Seven Barrows, which is where he flew his home made plane for the first time. There are also some beautiful buildings along this stretch of route, from the thatched cottages made of chalk and brick through to the larger and more imposing looking building like the double round tower in the picture above. 

Our route for the day wound its way across the edge of the South Downs, traversed to the North Downs, then dropped south towards Salisbury Plain. On main A roads, the route is about 2 hours. On trails we rode all day from 9am to 5.30pm with a late lunch stop at a burger bar somewhere near Larkhill. 

At one point, we passed the Hanging Gibbet, which is a big Y shaped piece of oak, sitting upright on the top of a hill. The trail here, traverses that hillside and has some great views. There are Black Kites hunting along the ridge lines in the area, so they are a constant companion as you ride. 

Traversing Salisbury Plain is always a great thing to do. Its one of the few places in the UK where there are so many trails to ride in such a small area. The trails are long, across chalky areas, boggy areas, through scrub and many other types of habitat. There are loads of people about usually and its very popular with horse riders. 

This brought us alongside Stonehenge, the famous standing stones. The green lane here was taken up with parked vans, as people who worship the Solstice and follow the old Celtic religion gathered and camped out to celebrate. The public used to be able to touch the stones and walk amongst them. But these days, English Heritage has closed off the access that close and folk can only get so far and only if paying! Still, even at a distance, they are imposing as a structure. 

We eventually found a small camping spot on a long trail, in a bit of woodland next to the trail. We were up in the clouds and the tree canopy was dripping big wet droplets of water all the time. We pitched the tents just as it got dark, so the cooker came out quickly for a hot drink and to cook up the pasta and Salmon we'd picked up earlier. Also the red wine came out and some foraging found us a fair bit of kindling and some damp logs. Gareth is a whizz at getting a fire started, so that made a great centre piece for the campsite!

Another great day of riding, lots of places visited and some lovely, happy people on the trails today. We stopped for a gossip with loads of people all day, which is always a good thing. Oh and Coventry beat Wolves in the football, something that will cause a great deal of glee in Coventry tonight!