The Cycle Path
Cycle Log
Day 1 - Saturday 19 June 2004
Culver Point (Isle of Wight) to Winchester
All great adventures start somewhere but this was a very special place to begin. Culver Point at the National Trust (NT) beacon overlooking two sides of the Isle of Wight (IOW) on a high chalk ridge in the AONB. The sun shone, skylarks twittered and with a flourish of champagne and quiche (real cyclists don't eat quiche) with my good friends the Fisher family and Terri Butcher, departure loomed. Alan Fisher strapped a Surrey Produce chicken pie to the saddlebag with a bungy - and off. Cycling here, drinking the air that Tennyson described as worth '6d a pint', was a very good idea - the IOW is another place and delightfully different because of its 'islandness'. Time slows here - nicely. Bembridge harbour is fringed by fantastical shacks on stilts over the water or dead boats converted into dwellings with the permanency of gang planking. The refreshing breeze of Culver Point turned into a headwind, St Helens turned into a hill and the village green was being transformed into a fete. Seaview was indeed a sea view and my path took me all along the seafront, an artistic seafront with massive stone seats smooth and curvaceous - wiggly indeed. An excellent Round the Island Cycle Path allows traffic free cycling here through an old military fort, seafront parkland and into Ryde. No ticket required, anyone can walk, ride by train or car or cycle along the xylophonic wooden pier to catch the Fastcat to Portsmouth Harbour. I used the journey to eat my Surrey Produce chicken pie so packed full of chicken chunks that it was still completely intact! Portsmouth is also packed full of layers of mercantile and military architecture and the old town is now punctuated by a massive needle, the millennium sail that will give, when completed, massive views over the IOW and Solent shore - the best of the new perhaps. The Gosport Ferry was waiting for my next sea trip, a short one across the neck of the harbour to utilitarian, no nonsense Gosport. An old railway cycle path took me past council houses with sea marsh back gates and white elegant crescents with private parks and personalised sea views. The breeze turned into a gale and the Solent was filled with watercraft, big yachts, medium yachts, dinghies of every class, oil tankers, container ships, grey gunboats, windsurfers, kitesurfers, jetskiers, fishing boats, motor cruisers and rescue boats. Grinding along in the gale passing intent Officers of the Day scanning the sea at several sailing clubs for capsized boats I reached the marshland estuary of the River Meon. Wiggling through the marsh I left the sea behind (but not the wind) and headed for Titchfield Abbey - which now does folk nights. The delightful village of Titchfield with a classic corrugated iron chapel and on to find the start of the Meon Valley Trail at Wickham. This old railway slopes generally upwards into the South Downs but is blissfully traffic-free and hemmed in by a linear woodland punctuated by old bridges. At Droxford, Winston Churchill once stayed in a railway train in the final hours before D-Day, protected, if necessary, from German planes by a quick shuffle back into the nearest tunnel. Here I became acquainted with the muscle sapping hills of the South Downs National Park passing from the sweet smells of roadside elderflower bramble and dog rose flowers to the carcasses of road-kill. The old Roman road to Winchester is straight and therefore populated by fast cars - the Romans would have approved but I was glad to reach St Catherine's Hill - still saddened by the scar of the bypass - and the Old City Mill Youth Hostel.
