This post is natively available in English only. For other languages, please use the Google Translation drop-down option on the right menu (desktop version).
The map below shows a “cleaned-up” version of our route between Lowestoft and East Harling on this day. By “cleaned-up” I mean, where I considered necessary, I edited the “real-life” track to exclude some of the mistakes or issues we encountered along the way, such as navigation errors, closed gates or other impassable obstacles (with a bike), etc. The objective being to prevent you from making these same mistakes or benefiting from the experience we acquired while riding on this route. Keep in mind everything changes… life is dynamic, roads and paths are closed for maintenance or become impassable for a number of reasons, access to certain locations may become restricted, etc. Use it at your own risk.
In addition to the raw GPX route shown in the map above, which you may download through the link below the map, I have also created a Google Maps version of the entire route in the EyeCycled Google Account.
To visualise the Google Map of the Via Beata route and main Waypoints please click on the link below (opens in a new tab).
These are the pictures we took on this day of the journey. Where possible we provided some context in every picture taken. These pictures are not to be sold or used without prior consent.
Click on the thumbnail to expand picture and read about that moment. The navigation numbers below each gallery refer to the number of viewable pages in the gallery.
5. Links to useful online resources for this day of the journey.
We are giving you our experiences here for free, but it is up to you if you want to replicate them or not. Each journey is different and you may want to plan a custom one for you. Hopefully some of your journey may match ours, but for any portions that don’t these are useful online resources for this day.
Unfortunatelly we were unable to visit this way-station. It is located inside the Harvest Centre in Brandon, which gate was locked. The centre appeared to be closed. Possibly due to covid restrictions.
The easiest way is to use the form below and send us a message, but you can also leave comments both here as well as in YouTube or our social media accounts. Kepp in mind we do this as a hobby, not as a job, so our responses might be delayed. We aim to provide a response within a week, but it can happen that we are travelling or otherwise unavailable for longer than that. If you didn’t receive a response within 2 weeks, but send us a folloy-up message.
Do you like these posts? Why, then, don’t you pay me a coffee to help with the blog hosting cost and as a caffeine incentive to keep me going through the long hours of the night?(Suggested amount: £2.00 or USD $3.00 or 2.50€ or whatever you want to give).
You may donate through my Patreon Page or through PayPal directly.
Please rate this post by clicking on the desired star (1 = Awful, 5
= Excellent)
This post is natively available in English only. For other languages, please use the Google Translation drop-down option on the right menu (desktop version).
The map below shows a “cleaned-up” version of our route between Lowestoft and East Harling on this day. By “cleaned-up” I mean, where I considered necessary, I edited the “real-life” track to exclude some of the mistakes or issues we encountered along the way, such as navigation errors, closed gates or other impassable obstacles (with a bike), etc. The objective being to prevent you from making these same mistakes or benefiting from the experience we acquired while riding on this route. Keep in mind everything changes… life is dynamic, roads and paths are closed for maintenance or become impassable for a number of reasons, access to certain locations may become restricted, etc. Use it at your own risk.
In addition to the raw GPX route shown in the map above, which you may download through the link below the map, I have also created a Google Maps version of the entire route in the EyeCycled Google Account.
To visualise the Google Map of the Via Beata route and main Waypoints please click on the link below (opens in a new tab).
These are the pictures we took on this day of the journey. Where possible we provided some context in every picture taken. These pictures are not to be sold or used without prior consent.
Click on the thumbnail to expand picture and read about that moment. The navigation numbers below each gallery refer to the number of viewable pages in the gallery.
5. Links to useful online resources for this day of the journey.
We are giving you our experiences here for free, but it is up to you if you want to replicate them or not. Each journey is different and you may want to plan a custom one for you. Hopefully some of your journey may match ours, but for any portions that don’t these are useful online resources for this day.
This way-station is entitled "The Glory of God gives it light". It's based on the scripture of Revelations Chapter 21 v. 23, about a vision of the "Heavenly city" that John had while he was a prisoner on the island of Patmos. It is currently located on the grounds of the Church of St Peter & St john in Kirklet.
We actually missed this way-station. We tried to find it, but were unsuccessful. It could well be we cycled way past it and didn't see it. See video for more details.
Located near the gate to the Emmaus Centre in Ditchingham – a charity that gives homeless people a place to live provides training for job opportunities.
The easiest way is to use the form below and send us a message, but you can also leave comments both here as well as in YouTube or our social media accounts. Kepp in mind we do this as a hobby, not as a job, so our responses might be delayed. We aim to provide a response within a week, but it can happen that we are travelling or otherwise unavailable for longer than that. If you didn’t receive a response within 2 weeks, but send us a folloy-up message.
Do you like these posts? Why, then, don’t you pay me a coffee to help with the blog hosting cost and as a caffeine incentive to keep me going through the long hours of the night?(Suggested amount: £2.00 or USD $3.00 or 2.50€ or whatever you want to give).
You may donate through my Patreon Page or through PayPal directly.
Please rate this post by clicking on the desired star (1 = Awful, 5
= Excellent)
This post is natively available in English only. For other languages, please use the Google Translation drop-down option on the right menu (desktop version).
The map below shows a “cleaned-up” route from Lowestoft to St Davids. By “cleaned-up” I mean, I edited the “real-life” track to exclude some of the mistakes or issues we encountered along the way, such as navigation errors, closed gates or other impassable obstacles (with a bike), etc. The objective being to prevent you from making these same mistakes or benefiting from the experience we acquired while riding from Lowestoft to St. David’s in 2021. Keep in mind everything changes… life is dynamic, roads and paths are closed for maintanance or become impassable for a number of reasons, access to certain locations may become restricted, etc. Use it at your own risk.
In addition to the raw GPX route shown in the map above, which you may download through the link below the map, I have also created a Google Maps version of this route in the EyeCycled Google Account.
I know it looks identical to the map above, but this map can be shared with anyone you know who you think might benefit from it without the need to download it.
As the items it the map don’t appear to be clear, I’ve add a little picture below that might help.
The name ‘Via Beata’ in Italian means “blessed way” or in as preferred by its British founders ‘a way of blessing’.
The Via Beata was the idea of Steve Eggleton, who lives in Banham, located right on the route. In conversation with Steve, before we started our journey, he mentioned that he literally dreamt of it one night and the idea never left his mind. The dream was of a line connecting the west coast to the east coast at its widest point, from Lowestoft (the UK’s most easterly point) to St. David’s Cathedral in Wales. As Steve is master artisan of wood carvings, his dream included a network of Christian art-works along this route that had the intention to communicate God’s love for people. These art-works are referred to by him as “Way-Stations”, positioned in key points along the way. The number of way-stations is increasing gradually with new way-stations being added to the route every year, which gives this pilgrimage a dynamic nature.
The first way-station was set up in Banham in the Summer of 2009 and then the organizers have worked outwards to the East and to the West with the initial aim of establishing a way-station every ten miles or so and linking them with existing footpaths and rights-of-way. The Via Beata was therefore established as a walkers path.
The Via Beata really isn’t yet an established bike route: like Lands-End-to-John-O’Groats, so there is no one way to do it. But it has piqued Sustrans’ interest and we were lucky enough to have been sent a pdf and GPX files of a possible route that Sustrans had put together from various National Cycle Routes and other bike-friendly paths and roads. Katy, who has discovered this route and worked tirelessly on planning before our start in 2021 dedicated a disconcerting number of hours to tweaking the route, avoiding some of the more obvious possible pratfalls resulting in a planned journey to go in 10 stages: long days towards the start (where it is flat) with the shorter days saved for the Welsh mountains.
I confess, if it wasn’t for Katy’s reaserch and planning I’d have probably never heard of the Via Beata, so all credits must go to her. She wrote a blog explaining her motivations and how close this was to her heart. I encourage you to read her blog here.
As it is often the case, things never go completely as planned, especially when you are in a group of pioneers executing th plan for the 1st time. We had our fair share of issues and problems along the way… from inexisting paths, locked gates, weather related detours, blocked roads and other impassable obstacles with a loaded bike. Yet, we’ve managed to keep our route reasonably close to the planned one and achieved our goal in the planned 10 days of the journey.
The series of videos and blog post that follow are an account of our experiences in these 10 days. For the vast majority it was an extremelly positive experience. Both Katy and I loved this trip and when you really like something it is only natural that you want to share it with other like minded people.
So, the product we are giving you for free here, are our experiences and advice on how to avoid the major pitfalls we had along the way. We’ve spent counteless hours editing the videos so they look consistent and present a view of every meter of the route so that, if you want to follow in our footsteps (or bike tracks rather) you’ll know exactly what to expect. For the few people left in the world who are avid readers, Katy has written detailed accounts of every day of the trip in her blog and I’ll be linking my blog posts to hers as she does a much better job in textually describing our experiences than I ever could hope to. The more technical details, such as the GPX route, the stats (altimetry, distances, speed, heart rate and other telemetry stats) and the videos are more on me than on her, but we did work cooperatively in order to provide you with a reasonable guide.
If you read to this point, I’d like to invite you to donate us a coffee for this work. We don’t sell the information, nor get any money through monetizing or advertisment at the moment, so donations are this blog’s only source of income. If enough money is obtained through your generous donations that will enable us to pay for the renewal of EyeCycled.com, the hosting of the information and as a added motivation for us to keep doing this. We are very thankful for anything you can spare.
4. How will the Via Beata materials be presented and made available to you?
The Via Beata materials will be available in written format here, in the blog, and as a playlist of videos in the EyeCycled’s YouTube Channel.
The blog posts will follow a similar structure as presented here with 1 major difference: For the written account of each day’s journey, I’ll just provide a link to Katy’s Via Beata Blog posts. She worked hard in publishing these posts on the same days the journeys happened. I was always very impressed by her commitment and dedication. Even after having cycled long distances all day and being very tired, she always found the motivation to stay up in the evenings writing the posts. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Her blogs are fantastic written accounts of the journey and if it wasn’t for them a lot would have been lost in memory from 2021, when we actually did the journey, to 2025 when these posts and videos are being published in EyeCycled.com.
For those familiar with EyeCycled’s YouTube channel you will know that videos are mostly the “time-lapse” recordings of the journey, with commentary and a musical background. The difference between these videos and previous ones are, in my humble opinion, the unprecedented level of clarity and stabilization of the footage provided by mechanical and electronic means and the clear 4K resolution footage recorded. Katy and I also worked hard in providing relevant commentary to the footage where we considered it to be useful.
From the time this introduction blog post and video are published, there will be 1 new blog post and video every week until the entire journey is covered. As the journey took 10 days and the playlist is planned to contain 12 videos, incl. today’s one, we expect the entire program will complete in 11 weeks after this publication.
The series of Blog posts and videos were the result of hundreds of hours of hard work. We didn’t do this with the objective of making any money out of it, but if they are useful to you and you’d like to recognise the value of this work, please consider sponsoring EyeCycled.com or providing a one-off donation to keep the blog going.
You’ll find below several picture galleries, one for each day of the journey plus an extra one for the days we spent in St Davids after the pilgrimage was complete. These will be repeated on the posts for each specific day. There are 463 pictures between “Day Zero” and “Day 10” of the journey and then another 261 pictures for the remaining 3 days we spent in St Davids. I considered not posting them all at once, but perhaps they might serve as an incentive for you to follow the series of videos and blog posts as they are published. Where possible I provided some context in every picture taken. These pictures are not to be sold or used without prior consent.
Click on the thumbnail to expand picture and read about that moment. The navigation numbers below each gallery refer to the number of viewable pages in the gallery.
Use the links below to jump directly to the desired gallery.
6. Useful online resources for planning your own journey.
We are giving you our experiences here for free, but it is up to you if you want to replicate them or not. Each journey is different and you may want to plan a custom one for you. Hopefully some of your journey may match ours, but for any portions that don’t these are useful online places you can go to aid in your planning.
If you are walking (or cycling) the Via Beata, this is the main place to go. Keep in mind, however, the Via Beata route is mainly designed for walking and there are a few stiles and kissing gates on the route that are challenging for cyclists.
Currently composed of 12 videos, incl. 1 introduction video, 10 videos of the journey (1 for each day) and a final conclusion video in St Davids after out arrival there.
This group is mantained by us (EyeCycled). It is unofficial, but it may be useful as a forum for the exchange of information between those who have already done the pilgrimage and those who are planning to do it. We've created a similar group for the Pilgrims' Way pilgrimage and that has proven to be a valuable resource for pilgims.
The easiest way is to use the form below and send us a message, but you can also leave comments both here as well as in YouTube or our social media accounts. Keep in mind we do this as a hobby, not as a job, so our responses might be delayed. We aim to provide a response within a week, but it can happen that we are travelling or otherwise unavailable for longer than that. If you didn’t receive a response within 2 weeks, but send us a follow-up message.
Do you like these posts? Why, then, don’t you pay me a coffee to help with the blog hosting cost and as a caffeine incentive to keep me going through the long hours of the night?(Suggested amount: £2.00 or USD $3.00 or 2.50€ or whatever you want to give).
You may donate through my Patreon Page or through PayPal directly.
Please rate this post by clicking on the desired star (1 = Awful, 5
= Excellent)
OK, if this is the first Pilgrim’s Way post of mine that you are reading, I’d recommend you go back a little and read my Introduction to the Pilgrims’ Way blog. There are a few things I explain there that I don’t here and this post might look confusing if you don’t know these things beforehand (e.g. why 15 stages?).
This post is all about the second day of the pilgrimage – but do take into consideration I was cycling, so if you are walking it is likely you’ll cover much less ground than me! In this one day I covered stages 4, 5, 6 and 7 and I describe them separately here. The section below provides the statistics for the full day, but in each video, there are some statistics for each one of the stages such as distance and time.
YouTube Playback speed settings.
I reckon that the videos show the route and the difficulties quite well, despite being so speeded-up. You can pause them for more detail or reduce the playback speed in the YouTube interface, if you don’t mind watching it for a longer time (if you do this, don’t forget to mute the video to avoid hearing a slowed-down version of the music!).
Also, bear in mind that this pilgrimage was undertaken during the pandemic and that, although some restrictions had been lifted in the UK in August/September, many places, such as small community churches, were still closed.
Stage 04: From the Bishops Table Hotel in Farnham to St.Catherine’s Village in Guildford
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 10’31″).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the 4th stage between Farnham and Guildford. In yellow the downloaded walker’s path. In red the path I took.
Katy left the hotel about 1h before I did. The destinations was Guildford for both of us, but as she had a train to catch and a time to get home for her first professional engagement that day, she took a more direct route to Guildford’s the train station while I continued on the Pilgrims’ Way.
After retrivieng my bike from the hotel’s shed (it does fit 2 bikes easily… more than two might be a bit of the squezze though), I set out on my way. Because of the Covid restrictions the hotel wasn’t offering breakfast to its guests, but I thought I’d find a place to have breakfast along the way. Easier said than done in times of lock-down.
It was a beautiful day and getting out of Farnham is very easy. As you can see in the video immediatelly after crossing the A31 (after the bridge where I took the pictures of the flowers), the Pilgrims’ Way route took me to Darvills Ln which is already way marked as being a part of the North Downs Way. At the end of Darvills Ln I found myself at what appeared to be the gate of a property I reluctantly entered as it was a clear public footpath that led to a small bridge after a little gate. I am not sure what to advise future cycling pilgrims here. If I write my Pilgrims’ Way cycling guide I will try to find an alternative, as after the bridge the bushes on the path get a bit too dense to make it a comfortable ride. I didn’t see any “No Cycling” sign, but it is just a bit of common sense. Regardless, this path will lead you back to the A31 Farnham-bypass road which you’ll have to cross. I don’t recommend you ride on the A31 as traffic is extremelly intense and there are no hardshoulders, but there are low traffic roads inside of Farnham that lead to this point as well.
After crossing the A31 I got a bit lost at Guildford Road as I was supposed to take the underpass (subway passage) to Park Ln but crossed to the other side of the road instead (you’ll see it in the video). I quickly realised my mistake and back-tracked a few meters, taking the underpass and finding myself right in front of the Shepherd & Flock pub, where you should keep to the right. The path leads to, what I suspect, might be a small farm, but I do believe there is still right of passage there. There is a closed gate, but the gate has an open passage to the left to get through. After the gate you’ll find yourself first on Rock House Ln and then on Guildford Road where you’re going to pass the Princess Royal pub on the left (good food, been there before) and continue on the direction to Runfold and Seale (on Seale Ln).
Arriving in Seale I tried to enter St Lawrence’s Chruch, but it was unfortunatelly closed. Right after the church there is a war memorial and I thought it was the perfect and quiet spot to fly the drone and capture some aerial footage of the church and the path ahead / behind. Katy did the voice-over about Guildford, in the distance, and St Lawrence’s Chruch at this point and I personally believe that, in addition to the nice views from above, her explanations are very interesting and spot on. You should watch this part at least, even if the rest of the video might not be that interesting to you 🙂
After Seale you’ll continue on the Puttenham Rd, which eventually becomes Seale Ln again (I know… the English have a distinct pleasure in making everyone confused with their road naming system – or the lack thereof) passing by St John the Baptist Church (where I stopped to take some pictures) towards the Puttenham Golf Club which you’ll enter as the North Downs Way squezzes between it’s fields on the right the small farms on the left. This portion of the Pilgrims’ Way is beautiful, but you should be aware on dry summer periods you may find several patches of sand banks which make cycling challenging (I presume it will be quite muddy in winter too)..
I left the North Downs on an appropriatelly named Sandy Ln, but on hindsight I think I could have continued on the North Downs. Sandy Ln will lead you to the destination of this stage, which is St Catherine’s village, belonging to the town of Guildford. This stage ends at the Ye Olde Ship Inn Pub where pilgrims can rest and have some refreshments (closed at the time of my pilgrimage).
The picture gallery below shows the pictures taken by Katy and me along this stage. Click on any picture to enlarge.
Stage 05: From St. Catherine’s Village in Guildford to the National Trust’s Box Hill Stepping Stones
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 13’46”).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the 5th stage between Guildford and the Box Hill Stepping Stones. In yellow the downloaded walker’s path. In red the path I took.
As you might have heard in the video of Stage 4 during the drone footage at St Lawrence’s chruch in Seale, when Katy told you about the town, Guildford is one of the largest towns along the Pilgrims’ Way. It has 80 thousand residents and stage 5 starts in St Catherine’s village in the outskirts of the town. The first landmark you reach is the crossing over the river Wey. The pedestrian bridge has a few steps, which means you’ll likely have to push your bike up and down the bridge as you can see in the video above and in the pictures below. Its a really peacefull corner of Guildford that I didn’t know existed until then.
After the bridge you’ll find yourself riding on the fields of Shalford Park to get to the Pilgrims Way, which in this case is the name of the road you take. It was at the corner of Pilgrims Way and the A281 (Shalford Rd) that I took the picture of the Pilgrims Way road sign with my bike to the right. I used that picture at the start of all Pilgrims’ Way videos I made.
You’ll ride (or walk) on Pilgrims Way for only a few hundred metres until you reach Shepherd’s Way, which I missed and had to back-track a few metres. At the end of Shepherd’s Way you will enter the dirt track of the North Downs Way which is really beautiful and will present you with views of forest tracks, rural landscapes, horses and nature in general. If you’re cycling, please be careful as there are deep sand-banks in places where cycling is not possible or very treacherous (many horse riders and dog-walkers along this path as well). After you cross Halftpenny Ln and continue on the North Downs Way, you’ll have a climb through a path of woodland to reach the Church of St Martha-on-the-Hill, which I really recommend that you take your time to appreciate, specially the views. I regret not having flown my drone in this location as this is one of the most interesting chruches along the Pilgrims’ Way (imho) given its somewhat remote location. The altitude will allow you to see very far and perhaps let your inner child enjoy the rope swing hanging from a tree branch, but make sure it can sustain your weight 🙂 (I also regret not having tried it myself).
Unfortunatelly the church was closed due to the covid restricitions at the time, but I know they have a purpose made stamp for Pilgrims’ Way pilgrims, so take the opportunity to get your pilgrim’s passaport stamped as well.
The descent from St Martha’s Hill was very mountain-biking like, which was fun, but be careful as there are patches of sand and lose rocks along the way. Zooming in on this spot you’ll also notice that my track and the walker’s track diverge a little on the descent until they reach Guildford Ln, but you’ll soon enter a single-track which will lead to some farm fields which are perfectly rideable. If you continue on the single-track following the walker’s path you’ll reach a locked gate with a stile I would not recommend overcoming, so I had back-track a few meters and diverge to the A25, which, despite the heavy traffic, has a small pedestrian footpath on the right. My navigation software lead me to another closed gate in what appeared to be private property (it was probably trying to make me re-join the the original Pilgrims’ Way path), so I just continued on the A25 turning right at Upper Street and then Chantry Ln where you’ll cross a Ford and get to a footpath gate clearly marked with a “No Cycling” sign. I was nearly back-tracking or considering pushing my bike when I realised there was another track a few metres up with a cemitery to the right. It doesn’t seem to be on any map, but it was on the downloaded walker’s track. There were no signs that I should not cycle on it, so I took it, and surprisingly that path led me to a road called “Pilgrims Way” again. You’ll find “Pilgrims Way” roads in many different places along the Pilgrims’ Way route, probably remnants of the ancient pilgrims’ track. This is in the village of Shere and you’ll take a few more single-tracks to reach the village of Gomshall.
As I arrived in Gomshall it was already 14:00h and I was really hungry, not having had anything to eat that day. That’s when I rode pass the Compasses Inn and decided to stop for a bite in their beatiful river side beer-garden (this is the River Tillingbourne, the same you crossed over on the Ford in Shere). I had a delicious veggie-burger and I totally recommend it to you.
I left the Compasses Inn after about 45 min and continued following the Walkers’ path only to reach a set of kissing gates too narrow to fit my bike trhough, so I had to back-track once again, riding past the Compasses Inn again on the A25, under the railway bridge until I reached Beggars Ln which is a long climb that forced me to push the bike up through most of it (I blame it on the veggie-burger 😉 but, seriously, it was difficult terrain with sand and deep erosion cracks in places). Once you’re done climbing, the path through the woods becomes flat and leads you to Ranmore Common Rd. This road will lead to the St Barnabas Church where I did take the opportunity to fly my drone again and where Katy did some wonderful commentary on the video. I particularly like the reference she made to the Bishop of Guildford calling it a “cathedral in the woods”. Well worth watching, if you ask me.
After St Barnabas Church you’ll pass by the vineyard fields of the Denbies Wine State which Katy also references in the video. To me, I felt like I was somwehere in France, having riden my bike through the vineyards of the Champagne region in France on my way to Rome during my Via Francigena pilgrimage of 2016. Take your time to enjoy the sights.
The final descent will lead you to the A24 which is really tricky and dangerous to cross due to the extreme high-traffic, please be careful. Once you cross it you’ll find yourself at the car park of the Box Hill Stepping Stones, where this stage ends and it is one of the main natural landmarks of the Pilgrims’ Way.
The picture gallery below shows the pictures taken by me along this stage. Click on any picture to enlarge.
Stage 06: From the National Trust’s Box Hill Stepping Stones to the Feathers Hotel in Merstham.
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 14’53”).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the 6th stage between the Box Hill Stepping Stones and the Feathers Hotel in Merstham. In yellow the downloaded walker’s path. In red the path I took.
This stage was, without a doubt, one of the most challenging (if not the most) of the entire journey.
As you can see straight from the start of the video (after my little speech at the beginning), the footbridge has steps, but these steps are really a child’s play in relation to the steps up Box Hill (nearly 300 in total). Lack of attention on my part made me miss the right turn my navigation software was telling me to take. I was really tired and not feeling very demotivated at the moment and climbed a lot more steps than I needed to (I probably did about 200 of the 300 steps when I needed to climb only about 100). “Here you do, here you pay” as per a Portuguese Proverb. I could have removed this portion from the video, but I decided to keep it in for your amuzement.
After all the bike pushing ordeal, I reached a kissing gate too narrow for the bike to get through. Ordinarily I would try to find an alternate route, but this was not an ordinary moment. Thankfully as I was removing my panniers to lift the bike over the gate on my own a runner arrived and he was more than happy to give a helping hand. There are good people on this Earth. After that I thought to myself “That’s it! No more bloddy kissing gates“… yeah, right mate… I didn’t quite follow that, I’m afraid.
At least at the beginning I did put in practice my new “no more kiising gates” resolve, as when I got to the Box Hill Rd the walker’s path pointed to a field with a kissing gate, which I promptly declined to take and continued down on Box Hill Rd turning left at Old Reigate Rd and joining the A25 (Reigate Rd) a little later. I did make an attempt to re-join the walker’s path at Chalkpit Ln (you’ll see this name again in other places) when I found it just to be another dead end (a local resident told me there was no way through, unless I wanted to cross some people’s gardens, which I obviously wouldn’t). Back on the A25 I rode to the next round-about and took the first exit to the left on the B2032 toward Betchworth Station and then re-joined the walker’s path about 1 km later. If you do take the same route, please be careful as these roads are narrow have no cycling/pedestrian paths and traffic is intense.
Once I re-join the walker’s path on a single track, guess what? Another kissing gate! That was how long my resolve of “no more kissing gates” lasted. Thankfully it was one that I could easily overcome with the bike, so I decided to continue on that track. Met a few local cyclists on that path which indicates it is used for cycling as well, however, there are footpaths on which I decided to just push my bike out of respect for the rules. This portion of the Pilgrims’ Way will take you up Reigate Hill, so there was a lot of pushing the bike in places, up to the Inglis Memorial where I arrived just as the sun was setting. Reigate Hill is similar in elevation to Box Hill, just not as steep. Just before the Inglis Memorial I recorded a video explaining the situation and that I was going to abandon the Pilgrims’ Way in favour of an urban route. I recorded another video at the Reigate Hill car park where Komoot re-routed over to Gatton Bottom instead of going through Gatton Park and the Golf Course the get to the final destination of this stage which is, according the the guide, Quality St. I set my stage’s end to be at the Feathers Hotel in Merstham as it stands right at the corner of Merstham High Street and Quality St, so a very good approximation of where I would have ended had I stayed on the walker’s route.
The picture gallery below shows the pictures taken by me along this stage. Click on any picture to enlarge.
Stage 07: From the Feathers Hotel in Merstham to the Chalkpit Lane in Oxted
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 3’47”).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the 7th stage between the Feathers Hotel in Merstham and Chalkpit Ln in Oxted. In yellow the downloaded walker’s path. In red the path I took to the Days Inn Hotel near Westerham, about 5.5 km further.
As stated in the video above I have no footage recorded for this stage (or at least quality footage I could use). As I arrived at the Feathers Hotel in Merstham, it was already getting dark and I still had at least another 20 km to ride to the place I was staying that night, the Days Inn Hotel near Westerham at the M25 Clacket Lane Service Station. So, I stopped recording shortly after, but in order not to have a break in the series I’ve put together this short Google Earth Fly-Along video animation showing the downloaded Walkers’ route compared to the route I took to the hotel that night.
A brief explanation is given by me at the start of the video. I apologise for the gap, but a pilgrimage, like any other outdoor adventure, is full of surprises and the unexpected adds spice to the experience.
According to Leigh Hatts’ “Walking the Pilgrims’ Way” guidebook, this stage is 12.8 Km long for pilgrims walking on the traditional walkers’ path. If I ever get to do this stage on a bike in the future I’ll add it to the series also.
As you would expect, I was pressed for time and it was getting really dark so I didn’t stop to take any pictures along the way.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to comment or send me a message through the contact form.
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OK, if this is the first Pilgrim’s Way post of mine that you are reading, I’d recommend you go back a little and read my Introduction to the Pilgrims’ Way blog. There are a few things I explain there that I don’t here and this post might look confusing if you don’t know these things beforehand (e.g. why 15 stages?).
This post is all about the first day of the pilgrimage – but do take into consideration I was cycling, so if you are walking it is likely you’ll cover much less ground than me! In this one day I covered stages 1, 2 and 3 and I describe them separately here. The section below provides the statistics for the full day, but in each video, there are some statistics for each one of the stages such as distance and time.
YouTube Playback speed settings.
I reckon that the videos show the route and the difficulties quite well, despite being so speeded-up. You can pause them for more detail or reduce the playback speed in the YouTube interface, if you don’t mind watching it for a longer time (if you do this, don’t forget to mute the video to avoid hearing a slowed-down version of the music!).
Also, bear in mind that this pilgrimage was undertaken during the pandemic and that, although some restrictions had been lifted in the UK in August/September, many places, such as small community churches, were still closed.
Stage 01: From Winchester Cathedral to the Cricketers Pub in Alresford
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 11’17″).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the stage between Winchester and Alresford. The yellow line shows the downloaded walkers’ path and the red is the one I took on my bicycle.
After something of a filming marathon that took over two hours(!), we finally left Winchester around 11:20. Finding our way out of town wasn’t as straightforward as I’d thought it would be – you can see on the map the stretches where our track (in red) diverged from the one taken by pilgrims on foot (in yellow). After a few navigation hiccoughs, we found ourselves riding on the Nuns’ Trail, winding through marshland and small creeks leading to the river Itchen. This is a delightful stretch and I recommend that you take it slowly, not only because is a path shared with walkers, but to take in its natural beauty. Near the start there is a small patch of wood called Hillier’s Haven, with some striking wooden sculptures of animals including a wolf and an owl.
After the Nuns’ Trail the route dips under the A34 and arrives at St Mary’s Church, which is right on the Pilgrims’ Way route and has several references to the Pilgrims’ Way.
As we left St Mary’s, we accidentally took the B3097 up to a field where we rejoined the walkers path…which is where we had to negotiate the first kissing gates – a sure sign that we were on footpaths rather than bridleways. If you are cycling, I would recommend that you stay on the B3097 all the way to Itchen Abbas: Katy and I agree that the experience of cycling through the fields was not worth the considerable inconvenience of getting bikes through the kissing gates!
Itchen Abbas – more specifically, St John’s Church – is a lovely place on the river Itchen. I spent quite some time there riding back and forth over the little bridge so that the German TV crew could capture different shots of me riding and talking about cycling and pilgrimages. As they had done in Winchester, they fitted me with a wireless microphone and the cameraman either ran on foot besides me or drove in front of me sat in the back of the van with its back door open, filming me from the front. This was all a new and unusual experience for me. I found it quite hard to think of things to say!
After Itchen Abbas, the route took us to the Avington Park Golf Course and then through some more fields and woods (where the TV crew did more aerial filming with a drone) with more kissing gates. National Cycle Route 23 runs alongside the golf course and, if you are cycling, I would recommend you take this instead of the walkers’ path, which you will join again later just before Ovington.
Crossing the A31 onto a small dirt track leads to a lane that will take you to a ford and then on to Watercress Meadows. As the name suggests, you’ll see an unusual watercress field on a strip of water to both left and right, and I imagine at the right time of the year it would be quite flowery! Then it’s just a few hundred metres to the Cricketers Pub in Alresford, which is the final destination of this stage.
The picture gallery below shows the pictures taken by Katy and me as we left Winchester and along this stage. Click on any picture to enlarge.
Stage 02: From the Cricketers Pub in Alresford to the Alton House Hotel in Alton
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 10’36”).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the stage between Alresford and Alton. The yellow line shows the downloaded walkers’ path and the red is the one I took on my bicycle.
We didn’t stop in Alresford: I would imagine that in normal times the Cricketers pub would be a good refreshment / toilet stop for pilgrims – but in our case the pub was closed due to the pandemic.
We continued riding on Tichborne Down Street before taking Whitehill Lane towards Bishop’s Sutton. After Bishop’s Sutton, the route went along the edge of a grassy field (after a rather challenging kissing gate), and this is where I filmed Katy and I talking. As Katy mentions on the video, we should have continued on the B3047 until it crosses the A31 onto Old Park Rd and then Parkside Lane. It was in the middle of Parkside Lane that we entered the corn field you can see in the video and the pictures below towards Ropley Village: it was quite surreal to ride in the middle of a corn corridor!
After Ropley, we had to find an alternative route because it was a footpath (rather than a bridleway) and the kissing gate was too narrow to get through with the bike (you can see the divergence on the map) – and we had to do the same again at the junction with Andrew’s Lane, this time because of a stile (which really wasn’t possible on a bike), diverting to Dunsell’s Lane and then Gascoigne Lane / Gilbert Street.
The same happened at Kitwood Lane (you may by now be sensing a theme…), because the kissing gate was very narrow and there was a clear sign asking people not to cycle on the footpath . The kissing gate in question is on the right of Kitwood Lane and, if you are cycling, I recommend you instead take the left at the fork where Swelling Hill becomes Kitwood Lane. I wish roads in England didn’t change names so often… Kitwood Lane becomes Alton Road at a five-way junction a few hundred metres further on. It’s all quite confusing, I know – but if you are English you’re probably used to it! The walkers’ path joins Alton Road about 1.3 km later, becoming a dirt path with trees on both sides that give the impression of being a green tunnel, which was rather lovely.
Just before the village of Chawton there is another kissing gate – but this one, thankfully, is manageable. After this you’ll be back on the A32. The walkers’ path leads to a set of steps on the other side of the road, which we decided to avoid, riding instead towards the roundabout and taking the Winchester Road exit. This will all lead you to Jane Austen’s house, which is now a museum and the point at which Katy does some talking in the video.
Now we were pretty much in Alton, but we got a bit confused navigating the urban roads – I think because Komoot (the app that I’ve been using) was guiding us through low-traffic roads rather than along the main road taken by the walkers’ path.
The picture gallery below shows the pictures taken by Katy and me as we left Winchester and along this stage. Click on any picture to enlarge.
Stage 03: From the Alton House Hotel in Alton to the Bishops Table Hotel in Farnham.
If you haven’t done so already, please watch the video first and then read this blog for more detail! I didn’t want to include all this information in the video voiceover because it would have added too much to the length of the video (which is 9’06”).
The picture below was used in the video and I hope will help you make more sense of the text below.
Map of the stage between Alton and Farnham. The yellow line shows the downloaded walkers’ path and the red is the one I took on my bicycle.
As before, we didn’t stop in Alton as by this point it was already 17:15 and we were feeling the pressure of not wanting to arrive in Farnham in the dark. The walkers’ route seemed to want us to cross Alton Rugby Football Club but, looking at the grassy field, we decided not to cycle over it; thankfully it was easy to find the path on the other side of the pitch. This then took us past the Church of Holy Rood in the village of Holybourne where, in spite of being pressed for time, I couldn’t resist stopping and taking a picture (unfortunately the church itself was closed, as was so much in 2020). Further on, the path took us to some fields, one of which we would have chosen not to ride on, were we not so pressed for time: the soil had been prepared for planting and it was all uneven and, although the footpath is very clearly marked on the map going straight across (which of course we did), there was no obvious track on the ground. We consulted maps at the time and no sensible alternative appeared to be available without considerable back-tracking – but later, on closer inspection using Google Earth, there appears to be a forest track that leads to a dirt farm road. (I don’t actually know if that dirt road is open to the public, but anything would be preferable to crossing that field!) This dirt road would meet the walkers’ path just before the village of Upper Froyle, less than a kilometre away.
After Upper Froyle, trying to keep on the walkers’ path, we turned right onto Gid Lane, to find ourselves at a narrow kissing gate that also led to a farm field. Gid Lane ends at the A31, which is a very busy main road and we weren’t keen to ride on it – so we backtracked and continued in the direction of Lower Froyle, turning right towards the Anchor Inn pub and getting on a parallel road to the A31. I couldn’t find the name of this road, because strangely no roads in that area are named in Google Maps / Earth.
We made one last attempt to rejoin the walkers’ path by going up Pax Hill (you’ll see the photo of a white bike at the top of the hill), but that led to yet another narrow kissing gate, which wasn’t possible with bikes. So it was backtracking again for us, and we continued on the road parallel to the A31.
Arriving at the village of Bentley, we turned left onto Hole Lane, leaving the paved lane at a single track through some woods where I took pictures of wild pheasants that crossed our path. We had to climb a hill through a field of dried-out wheat stalks and the sunset at the point was quite spectacular – I should have stopped to take a picture, but you’ll get a glimpse of it in the video.
Then we were back on paved lanes, and passed a big solar farm on the right. At this point, Katy and I got separated for a few minutes, as she was a bit behind and our navigation systems were showing different routes so, after a quick phone call, I backtracked a few hundred metres and met her again on a single track heading towards Dippenhall. At this point we could have taken Crondall Lane for a more direct paved route to Farnham, but we decided to stick to the walkers’ path that took us along some nice dirt tracks up to Middle Old Park and Park Ln, arriving at Castle Hill right in front of Farnham Castle.
We arrived at the Bishops Table Hotel in Farnham much later than we expected, at around 19:45, just as dusk fell – but although the light was fading, it was still clear enough for my filming to be OK (this wasn’t the case in many of the following days of the pilgrimage, when it got dark before I finished riding!). We were tired, but very happy to have arrived and rewarded ourselves with some excellent dinner that night.
The picture gallery below shows the pictures taken by Katy and me as we left Winchester and along this stage. Click on any picture to enlarge.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to comment or send me a message through the contact form.
Please subscribe to my Blog and/or to my YouTube channel if you don’t want to miss the next one and help me spread the word by liking and sharing my Facebook Page, Instagram and Tweeter feed also.
Thank you for your time!
Do you like these posts? Why, then, don’t you pay me a coffee to help with the blog hosting cost and as a caffeine incentive to keep me going through the long hours of the night?(Suggested amount: £2.00 or USD $3.00 or 2.50€ or whatever you want to give).
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Please rate this post by clicking on the desired star (1 = Awful, 5
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Welcome to my Introduction to the Pilgrims’ Way blogs and video.
This post is a bit long, so if reading is not your thing I’ve also created an introduction video which contains some of the information contained here. This post, however, is more detailed and contains the high-res pictures used in the slideshow portion of the video.
If you rather watch the video before reading the post, here it is.
Still here? Good! – there is quite a lot of detail below that I had to cut out from the video as I couldn’t read it all in 10 minutes or less.
But before we move on, two things:
Classic T-Shirt – Scallop Shell Collection
I’ve created three Pilgrims’ Way collections with different designs for T-shirts, mugs, phone cases, water bottles, pullovers and other items that pilgrims might find useful, will be able to wear or use during their pilgrimage, and keep as a memento after it.
I published a post on the 25 of August 2020 (a week before setting off) in which I introduce the pilgrimage and write about my plans. It might be a good idea to read that post before this one, if for no other reason than to compare before and after. I am not going to repeat here what I’ve already written in that previous post.
Please note that this post comes to you five months after the fact – but better late than never.
Winchester Cathedral from the air (east side)
Although this was the shortest cycling pilgrimage I’ve done, it was also one of the most unusual. That’s because there was a German TV crew following and “directing” me, capturing all sorts of video footage for a TV documentary about the Pilgrims’ Way that will be aired in Germany and France at some point in 2021.
On Sunday the 30th of August 2020, my girlfriend Katy and I cycled from Bracknell, where I live, to Winchester, a very enjoyable ride of nearly 65 Km. On arrival in Winchester,
the German TV crew was already waiting to record some made-up scenes, as if I was starting the pilgrimage that day, whereas in fact I set off the next day, a bank holiday here in the UK. After several takes in various places, the crew invited Katy and me for dinner in a local pub and after that we went back to the B&B we were staying in that night, just a few hundred metres from the cathedral grounds.
The next morning I flew the drone up from the B&B’s garden to capture some footage of the town and the cathedral. I wasn’t authorised to fly the drone over the cathedral grounds, but the German TV crew was (unlike me, their drone operator is a qualified pilot).
Before I could start the pilgrimage, we spent nearly two hours recording a number of video “takes” that challenged my really poor acting skills. They filmed me arriving at the cathedral on my bike, being greeted by Canon Andy Trenier, and receiving my pilgrim’s credential and the first stamp. They also captured the going-away blessing and then recorded me leaving the cathedral grounds. All of this meant we left Winchester much later than we had planned. Katy also cycled with me from Winchester to Farnham that day.
Four days later and many experiences and obstacles behind me, I found myself in Canterbury, again being greeted by the German TV crew for a series of takes of my arrival, receiving the blessing and the final stamp from Canon Emma Pennington, and recording some drone footage of cycling up the hill in the campus of the University of Kent at sunset. It wasn’t until the next day that I was able to fly my own drone up to capture some footage of Canterbury – and I did so over waters of the Great Stour river and over the fields of the river side trail between the village of Chartham and Canterbury, to minimize the potential of breaking any rules.
So, in this post, I’ll provide a summary of what these 4 days added to my life and I am going to divide this into 4 categories:
OK, starting with places, before starting the pilgrimage I bought Leigh Hatts’ “Walking the Pilgrims’ Way” guide book as, as, to my knowledge, there isn’t a Pilgrims’ Way guide written specifically for cyclists, and it turns out there aren’t that many pilgrims who have done this pilgrimage by bike either. During my planning I also searched and downloaded a few GPX files I found online with walking routes taken by a few pilgrims.
The route of the Pilgrims’ Way typically follows a major landscape feature of southern England, the North Downs. This is part of a chalk ridge extending from the Ridgeway in the west to the white cliffs of Dover in the east and the major towns along the route are found where this ridge is broken by rivers such as the Itchen in Winchester, the Wey in Guildford and the Mole at Dorking. For the most part, the Pilgrims’ Way is on a terrace on the south of this ridge, where you’re going to come across several typical English villages, churches and pubs.
The spelling of many of the towns or villages is a bit of a tongue twister for a foreigner and, as it is often the case in England, you don’t pronounce the names as they are written. I dare you to try and then compare to what I say in the videos to come (I had to do my own research to try and get it right): Winchester, Alresford, Alton, Farnham, Guildford, Mertsham, Oxted, Otford, Wrotham, Halling (which I skipped), Aylesford, Harrietsham, Boughton Lees, Boughton Aluph, Chilham and Canterbury.
There are, however, stages that start or end in places other than a town or village, such as Box Hill
(although there is the village of Box Hill to the east of the summit as well). Box Hill is considered an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty by the National Trust of England and, at its peak, the 224m elevation is the highest single-day climb you’ll have to face on the entire journey, which is made more difficult by the stepping stones crossing over the River Mole and the 275 steps going uphill (not all of which were necessary to climb, thank God!).
Adding together all distances outlined in the guide results in a total distance of 222km (incl. Halling), but I rode a total of 244km on the four pilgrimage days. The additional 24km is due to detours where I could not get through with the bike or for route changes and various other reasons. There were several stages where my route took me close to the suggested start or end points given in the guide, but not exactly there. I’ve also had to skip the village of Halling, as I decided to ride straight to the Aylesford Carmelite Priory as the TV crew was waiting for me there . The picture below highlights the differences between the walkers’ route I dowloaded from the internet (in yellow) and the one I did (in red).
Pilgrims’ Way Route: In YELLOW the walkers’ route I downloaded from the internet before I started the pilgrimage, in RED the one I actually took.
I created a time-lapse video for each stage I rode and will write at least one blog post for every day of the journey covering the stages I did that day.
As mentioned before, part of my plan was based on a GPS track I found and downloaded from the internet. It provided the route taken by a pilgrim on foot and from that I planned my four-day ride using an app called Komoot, making the changes for some of the deviations from the walking path that I already anticipated, but… oh, boy… if only I knew.
Having met Leigh in Canterbury the year before, I was fortunate to get in touch with him for some advice and support for my adventure. I was told (and already knew) this wouldn’t be an easy route to cycle on due to the existence of many Kissing Gates and stiles (something that those who live or have lived in the UK are probably familiar with). These are intentional barriers to contain livestock, but have
One of the many Kissing Gates along the route.
the unintentional result (one would presume) of being serious obstacles for bicycles also, even on tracks where riding a bicycle is allowed… yes, there are tracks exclusive for walkers where bicycles aren’t allowed and they’re are aptly named “footpaths”. I tried to stay away from these, but there were moments where the deviation was simply too big to justify, so I dismounted and pushed the bike. This gave me the idea of writing my own Pilgrims’ Way cycling guide… watch this space!
Still, even with all obstacles and the demands of a TV crew, I managed to cycle all the way to Canterbury more or less according to plan.
A stile, impossible to cross without lifting the bike.
The most challenging day of the four was without a doubt the second day. I left Farnham around 9:00am and had planned to ride roughly 75km. I knew it would be challenging, not only because of the greater distance, but because I had two hills to climb: Box Hill and Reigate hill, both over 260m elevation.
Still, I thought it was doable, as it would be a day entirely dedicated to riding, with no filming scheduled.
What I didn’t know was that the climb on Box Hill would be made pushing my bike up at least 150 steps. I also had to make several detours, as there was a larger number of kissing gates and stiles that I wasn’t able (or willing) to cross on my own and that would lead to footpaths, where cycling is not allowed anyway. All of this contributed to the fact that, after nine hours, I had ridden only 55km, little more than two-thirds of the way, trying my best to keep on the original walkers’ path. Of these nine hours, however, at least three hours must be taken off as time I used to take pictures, fly the drone (twice) and lunch, since I had no breakfast that day. As I got to the Inglis Memorial near Reigate the sun was already setting and I still had over 20km to ride to my final destination. I definitely didn’t want to ride on the gravel paths and dirt-tracks in pitch-black conditions, so at the car park after Reigate Hill, I had Komoot re-route the remaining third on an urban route on roads, but still I arrived at my destination (the Days Inn Hotel in Westerham, by the M25 motorway) in the dark at around 8:30pm that night.
The kissing gates and stiles were no doubt the biggest challenges along the way, even more than the hills. I have not counted the number of them, but they were numerous. Luckily, I was able to get through (or over) most of them, but there were a handful that were simply too narrow and I didn’t feel like throwing my bike over them by myself, so I had to stop following the original pilgrims’ path and find alternative routes in these situations.
Problem with the bike… lost one of the screws that fasten the rack to the frame
I also had a mechanical fault on the bike, which meant I had to go looking for a bike shop to try and fix it. I lost one of the screws that fastened the rack to the frame of the bicycle, probably due to the fact I was lifting the bike vertically all the time (to overcome the kissing gates) with the load still attached the rack. Katy indicated a bike shop in Kemsing to me, but I couldn’t find it (it appeared to be a home workshop with no signs), but I found a car garage and they were kind enough to provide a temporary fix by screwing the rack to the frame with a self-tapping screw, which might have damaged the frame, but it was better than a lose rack. This also meant a little detour and extra time, but gave me also the opportunity to get to a pharmacy for some lip balm for my dry lips.
Even with all the detours and challenges, my route closely matched the walking route for perhaps 85-90% when compared to the GPS track I downloaded from the internet and to Leigh Hatts’ guide. If my Pilgrims’ Way Cycling Guide becomes a reality, I will make sure the suggested route is appropriate for cycling and provides an enjoyable experience, because some of the walking paths are clearly unsuitable, or not even allowed, for cycling.
Some people were constant presences before, during and after this pilgrimage. Particular thanks to Katy for her help and support during this experience. She rode with me from Bracknell to Winchester, then did the first day to Farnham and after that kept in constant touch advising on possible alternatives and providing help to find a place to fix my bike problem (and, later, helping me work out how to pronounce some of the place names). Also, thanks are due to my good friend Fernando, who came to pick us up in Canterbury two days later.
From left to right: Izzy, Sven (sound), Mareike and Michael (cameraman)
Then there were the four members of the German TV crew: Izzy (who is actually Welsh and not German), Michael the cameraman, Sven the audio guy (and drone operator) and Mareike, the producer of the documentary. They are professionals, of course, with a specific job to do, but we were in constant contact through these days and we had some good laughs together, mostly as a result of me goofing around and my bad “acting” skills. My thanks also go to Canons Andy Trenier and Emma Pennington at Winchester and Canterbury cathedrals respectively, for their lovely blessings at the start and end of the pilgrimage, which isn’t something every pilgrim can benefit from. Joe Bailey is a member of the Winchester Cathedral staff and was coordinating with the TV crew, and videoed a reflection moment with Katy and me and posted it to the Cathedral’s YouTube channel. Then there was Christine Chantal and her husband, the owners of the B&B we stayed in Winchester the night before we started the journey – they are really lovely and warm-hearted people, and I hope they managed to do their planned sailing in Greece, despite Covid.
Left to right: Christine Chantal, me and Katy.
I encountered numerous people on the paths or roads of the Pilgrims’ Way, but very few pilgrims. To all the people that laughed at this crazy guy with a loaded bike struggling to get up Box Hill steps, when even on foot they were struggling… the laughs were on all of us, but trying to do that with a loaded bike made me feel very “special”. I encountered two gentlemen walking in Alton and I immediately knew they were pilgrims, not only for the rucksack and stick, but also because one of them was carrying Leigh Hatts’ Pilgrims’ Way guide. I also encountered two women pilgrims on a gravel patch after Otford and a couple touring on bikes (not pilgrims) whose destination was the west coast of England / Wales (still hundreds of miles away). Compared to the Camino de Santiago and other pilgrimages I’ve done, the Pilgrims’ Way is largely a lonely one, which might be something some pilgrims particularly enjoy.
It is not easy to select a few over so many in four days, and obviously “moments” are connected to places, people, experiences and challenges. So, in order not to repeat myself, the very first moment of note is when, months before the pilgrimage had even started, I decided I was going to do it and all the activities that followed that simple decision, like buying and reading the guide, the exchanges with the author and countless other people, and looking for information that could be relevant for a cycling (as opposed to walking) pilgrimage. Other moments – many of which I would not have been able to experience (because of Covid), were it not for the fact that I was taking part in a documentary:
Leaving Winchester Cathedral and arriving at Canterbury cathedral as mentioned before.
My visit to the Carmelite Priory in Aylesford, the history lesson I had from the friar, and seeing the room I would have stayed in, if they hadn’t been closed due to the pandemic.
The blessing from Canon Emma at the cathedral’s high altar, right under the dome of Thomas Becket shrine, the spot he was murdered.
The singing Katy did there, filling the place with her wonderful voice.
The veggie burger at the Compasses Inn in Gomshall, at their riverside beer garden just before the climb to Box Hill.
The many moments of introspection riding by myself in the middle of the many forested pars of the North Downs way.
The drone-flying moments – with my continuous fear of messing it up and crashing causing a degree of stress.
The moment, a few kilometres before Lenham, that I realised I had fallen of my bike and hit my head, which I have no memory of (it’s a complete blank for about 10–15 minutes!).
Canterbury Cathedral
As I said, moments are numerous and associated with all three other categories, so it’s hard to pick just a few.
So there you go: something about the places, challenges, people and moments of the Pilgrims’ Way.
To finish, you may be curious about things like detailed stats and cost. I’ve put a Google Sheets spreadsheet
together, containing all my expenses itemised by day and type, as well as the telemetry from my Garmin Edge 810 cycling computer (distances, heart rate, calories, elevation gains, etc.
You can access it in Google Sheets directly or download it as an Excel spreadsheet (or CSV, etc), but altogether I rode 244.29km in four days between Winchester and Canterbury,
with an average heart rate of 143.75bpm, at an average speed of 13.10km/h, and there was a total 3,330m elevation gain. I also spent £290.34 in the four days – an average of £72.59 per day – and £478.43 in total when the overnights before and after the pilgrimage are included, making an average of £79.74 per day.
I hope this provides you with a good introduction about my experiences along the Pilgrims’ Way and entices you to keep following the series of videos and blog posts that will come over the next weeks.
I wish you all a “Buen Camino” – and stay safe!
Picture Gallery of the photos used in the introduction video
Do you like these posts? Why, then, don’t you pay me a coffee to help with the blog hosting cost and as a caffeine incentive to keep me going through the long hours of the night?(Suggested amount: £2.00 or USD $3.00 or 2.50€ or whatever you want to give).
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Start of the RED Mountain Bike Trail, Swinley Forest, Bracknell
Hello EyeCycled friends!
Life has been busy and somewhat complicated especially now that I am so close to leave on my 2,000 Km pilgrimage to Rome on the 30th of June.
Yet, as part of my training I’ve been trying to ride my bike as much as my free time allows and this week I rode all the way from Bracknell to Camberley through the Swinley Forest. On my way back, the weather was so nice I decided to ride the entire length of the RED trail as this was the one I did not record when I posted my first Swinley Forest MTB Trails post back in August 2015. I’ve been wanting to record this trail since then, which is much more technically challenging than the BLUE one.
First time with a GoPRO Chest Strap… Feeling a bit like a fool.
I have also tried something new… a GoPRO chest strap mount. I’ve seen quite a few riders using it and always wanted to give it a try. I don’t think it is something I will be using often as I found it to be a bit uncomfortable, but it is always an option. I found that is does help reducing the shakiness of the picture, however, the RED trail was not a good place to test it properly as the trail is really bumpy.
Anyway, I’ve got 2 options for you:
A 59 min long full length video of the entire trail with my voice commentary only i.e. no music, no video acceleration where you can, hopefully, see the entire trail in detail.
A 10min 51sec, accelerated video (6x normal speed) with some nice music, but quite difficult to watch at places because there is only so much shaking that video stabilization can deal with. If you don’t have time (or patience) to watch the full length video, this may be an option. You may also want to watch the shorter, accelerated version first and then focus only on the parts you find more interesting on the full length video (tip: if you are watching the accelerated video at 3 min and want to see that part in greater detail, just multiple by 6 and jump to the full length video at around 18 min).
Always good to have options, isn’t it?
But before I give you the videos, here goes the stats of the RED trail as recorded by my Garmin Edge 810 and according to a 51 years old amateur rider 🙂
Length / Distance: 11 Km or 6.83 miles (In the information totem pole, the length given is 13 Km / 8 miles, but there were several diversions in place).
Time: According to my Garmin, 59 min in total or 53 min of moving time.
Average Speed: 11.1 Kph (Km/h)
Max Speed: 33.8 Kph (Km/h)
Elevation Gain / Loss: 202m / 206m
Max / Min Elevation: 3m / -43m
Average Heart Rate: 169 bpm
Max. Heart Rate: 192 bpm
Calories: 746 CAL
RED MTB Trail: Full length Video (59 min)
RED MTB Trail compressed / accelerated video (10 min 51s)
Thank you for your time.
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For a while I wanted to record and post about one of Bracknell´s greatest attractions for cycling, the Mountain Biking trails in the Swinley Forest. I took a young friend to the trails yesterday, but I made too many stops and I wanted to get a continuous footage of the ride / trails.
The Green and the Blue Trail begins and ends here.
Just as my luck would be as I arrived in the Swinley Forest it started to rain. If you read / watched the post and video about my Bath Two Tunnels ride under rain you must think, this guy loves to ride bicycles when is raining… No, I don´t! But I live in the UK and you can´t escape it here. It´s a beautiful country, but rains a lot. I don´t think I need to write what already exists available in the web, so I did some copy and paste from some of these resources. All credit goes to the authors and the links are available. From the Bracknell Forest Council Page: “Swinley Forest is an area of the Windsor Estate between Bracknell and Bagshot to the west of the A322. Owned and managed by The Crown Estate, it comprises 1000 hectares of mainly Scots Pine woodland. Three cycle trails in line with the International Mountain Bike Association industry standards are available for you to enjoy in Swinley Forest. The green, blue and (*) red cycle routes all begin from The Look Out Discovery Centre and provide a range of challenges for families cycling for fun to highly skilled riders. Further information about the cycle trails is provided by The Crown Estate on the Royal Landscape website. Please visit The Look Out Discovery Centre’s outdoor activities page for information about how to get there, about car parking charges and bike hire available from Swinley Bike Hub. (*) A small part of the red trail is currently diverted owing to the presence of ground nesting birds.”
I found out through Google that there is a Mountain Biking group called Swinley Riders. They are a lot of information available in their WEB site: http://www.swinleyriders.co.uk/. Will try to get in touch with them.
Swinley Bike Hub. Bicycle rental.
If you are visiting and don´t have a bike, you can rent an excellent one at the Swinley Bike Hut. Rental Prices, according to their web site is £15 for 2 hours (includes helmets) and £5 for additional hours. 2 Hours is sufficient if you only want to do the green and blue trail. Please check their web site for any pricing changes.
If you want a map of the trails, there is one in PDF format here.
OK, enough info, right? I did the green and the Blue trails today. When I have time, and hopefully the weather improves, I will try to update this post to include the Red trail too. The data below is from my Garmin Edge 810 and does not coincide with the data given in some of the resources above.
Green Trail:
Very Easy – For total beginners, families and small children.
Land Rover Experience Hydro Mountain Bike – Stock Photo
Don´t expect this to be a technical article about the bike. You can search Google for that and will find plenty of information (or you can click here), much more than my very limited technical knowledge can cover on it or any other bike, as a matter of fact.
This is my kid’s bike, but he is starting to outgrow it. His particular is a frame 16 bike, which fitted him very well in November 2012 when we bought it, but he has grown in the 2 and a half years since.
Although I manage to occasionally bring him out of his bedroom for a bike ride, he unfortunately does not share the same enthusiasm for cycling as his father does.
His previous bike was an extremely heavy 20″ wheel Raleigh mountain bike like bike. He was initially enthusiastic about his new bike, saying he was going to ride to school every day during summer time, but that didn´t last long.
My son and me after completing the 35 miles / 55 Km of the Wokingham Bikeathon in 2014.
Yet we did many 20 Km rides together and he has done the entire 35 miles or 55 Km of the 2014 Wokingham Bikeathon with me.
My son Vini during the Wokngham Bikeathon 2014
Even though it’s about 3/4 of the price of a Specialized Hard Rock, I can´t fault this bike and has similar specs. Comes fitted with an hydraulic disc brake system, which is not common for bikes of this price range.
It´s a nice bike from a very well-known brand for cars. Definitely one of the ways you can afford a Land Rover.
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Specialized Hard Rock Sport Disc 2012 (Stock Photo)
Don´t expect this to be a technical article about the bike. You can search Google for that and will find plenty of information (or you can click here), much more than my very limited technical knowledge can cover on it or any other bike, as a matter of fact.
I don´t know about the newest cassette, gear, breaks or groupset technologies and about the quality of the various brands in the market (e.g. . I ride bikes, but don´t know much about them other than the known brands in the market with which we often associate quality. Specialized is one of such brands.
So allow me to go back to “B4” and to digress a little… I´ve lived for 2 periods of my life in the UK. Back in the 90s I lived for 7 years here, then I left in 1999 and came back in 2006. When I came back the first thing I bought to myself was a £60 bicycle in a Sports Direct shop in Reading (I think). Rode it a few times and then didn´t use for years (or only very occasionally). Prior that that bike I had many more and I often rode a bicycle to the Uni / work back in the 80s.
The Specialized Hard Rock Disc, however, was my first “quality” bike.
At the Great Hollands Recreation Ground
I know quality is something relative and when it comes to bicycles you can easily find premium bikes at the price of a small family car. In comparison to the £60 bike from Sports Direct it was the best bike I ever had up to that point in life. Even better, it came as a Father´s day gift from the mother of my children.
I must confess, I ride bikes, but don´t know much about them. There are known brands in the market with which we often associate quality. Specialized is one of such brands.
I still can remember the excitement after completing my first 10 Km on my old bike many years ago when I took up cycling again and then comparing the same route on the new bike the day after I got it. What a difference…
At the Savernake Park
The rapid fire triggers was something I hadn´t experience in a bicycle before and the precision to which the gears changed was impressive. I don´t think I would have progressed in cycling as I did if it wasn´t for this gift from my family.
The pictures I used in this post with of my first ride on June 2012. A route of just under 20 Km (12 miles), I think.
It was with this Bike that I did my first long distance ride from London to Brighton for the British Heart Foundation on June 2013, exactly 1 year after I got it.
Me and my bike at the London to Brighton bike ride organized by the British Heart Foundation.
I kept my old £60 bike for many years after receiving the Hard Rock and it was on that bike I mounted the kangaroo seat I used to ride with my younger son, then a Toddler. After he outgrew the seat it was time to also part from the bike and I sold both (bike and seat) to a nice lady that came to collect it at the Bracknell train station with her baby attached to her back.
My old £60 bike with me and my little boy on the Wee Ride Kangaroo Seat.At the South Hill Park
If you are thinking of getting a new bike in the price range of £400 to £500 and want a mountain bike? Totally recommend this one. It hasn´t given me any trouble in years and the day I decide to part from it will be a sad day for me for many reasons.
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and according to a 51 years old amateur rider 🙂
