South Downs Way

So, after fighting with my ankle for 6 weeks I decided to take a different approach. Lay off the MTB and climbing and focus on low impact stuff to keep my fitness up. The road bike has come back out and I have become addicted to Strava! My fitness has gone through the roof and after 5 weeks my ankle has realy started to show signs of improvement :-) Itzi and I finally got back on the MTB's last weekend and did a gentle downland amble of about 15 miles and that felt good, so this weekend we decided to ride from Petersfield to Amberley on the South Downs way, which is about 28 miles. A good test for my ankle and a good challenge for Itzi as she has never rode that far, especially off road with about 3000ft of ascent! The sun was shining and we set-off from Petersfield train station about 09:30. After some initial good progress Itzi got a puncture, followed by a brake failure, swiftly followed by a broken chain! Good job I'm an engineer! And then about 10 minutes later I looked up a descent from the bottom of Beacon Hill to see her dissapear into a hedge! After sprinting up the hill I found her OK, but a bit bruised and shaken! To her credit after a bit of bread and a cuddle she got back on to finish the remaining 15 odd miles-well done Itzi!!

Brilliant day out


Cheese!