Day 1 (18/04/14) - Cycling to Southampton

It had been an eventful day before the cycle even started with me crashing my car/having to sort out the insurance stuff in the morning and squeezing in an 18-mile marathon training run in the early afternoon. Tom was also busy with his website design stuff (juicywebs.co.uk). Our plan at the start of the day was to leave early afternoon but after the car crash there was no way this was going to happen. I got back from my training run (which went really well, possibly to do with the adrenalin still in my system after the crash) a bit after 3pm so we agreed that leaving at 4pm would be achievable. Of course this didn't happen. I didn't start packing until about 3.40 and despite the list I had made/pile of stuff I had left on my floor it took ages. I ended up swapping bags from my smaller waterproof to by bigger waterproof bag, with it dawning on me that I would not be able to squeeze everything into the small one. I was now rushing which didn't help matters. After squeezing it all in came the faffing with trying to bungee my sleeping mat and circular pop-up tent to the outside of the bag. The circular shape of the tent made things awkward but eventually I came up with a reasonable arrangement. Tom was as bad as me - asking to borrow one of my other bags at the last minute before also realising that he wouldn't fit everything in and resorting to using his pannier bags. After all of this I had to send a few emails and write down how to get to the hotel via google maps with a pen and paper. Just before leaving I called the hotel letting them know that we wouldn't be there until maybe 10pm - they said it was alright as long as we got there by 11pm. Eventually we left at about 6.15 at a slow pace with the bag feeling horrendously heavy. I wanted to get this ride over with as quickly as possible so planned the quickest, easiest to navigate/most direct route possible. This took us down the A33 towards Basingstoke. It was a dual carriageway but not very busy by this time - it reminded me of cycling down the E4 in Sweden when we did Arctic to Africa last year. We were both in good spirits (this was helping me take my mind off the car crash and it gave Tom the chance to escape 'the pit'(Chris's bedroom/the Juicywebs office which usually stinks of Chris's damp dirty clothes, is never clean or tidy and the curtain is normally closed with no natural light getting in). After a while we got to the dual carriageway bit and the A33 turned into a single-lane road before shortly reaching Basingstoke. After a bit of confusion with directions we followed the ring road around the town centre and got on the road to Winchester. Time was now getting on/the daylight was running out so we stopped briefly at a junction to turn our lights on/pee in the bushes/check directions. We carried on to Winchester, which we eventually got to in the dark and struggling to see clearly on the unlit roads. I wasn't sure where exactly to go from here so we went to a petrol station and asked. Tom went in and said to the guy 'which way to Southampton mate?'. After Tom explaining that we wanted an easy-to-navigate route he explained where to go but said it was well over 20 miles away but also said that he walked there in an hour once. We guessed that it was more like 10-15 miles after remembering what it looked like on google maps earlier. Meanwhile I was with the bikes outside hungrilly eating a load of spaghetti that I had cooked before we left earlier. When Tom came out I went in to buy a couple of jars of bolognaise sauce that we could cook whilst camping. When I came out Tom had eaten the majority of his spaghetti. It was now gone 9.30pm so we were eager to get going. After squeezing the bolognaise jars into Tom's pannier bag we headed off. Within about 5 minutes we weren't sure where to go. Tom asked someone who pointed us in the right direction. My rushed tent/sleeping mat arrangement was starting to slag about so Tom had to realign it a few times. It was now properly dark - thankfully the roads were generally well lit. We were keen to see how far away we were from Southampton as the 20-something miles the guy in the petrol station said would not give us enough time to get there by 11pm. Thankfully a sign soon appeared saying it was 8 miles away. We headed through Otterbourne and to the end of this road. Thankfully my gut feeling of going with the road to the right of the motorway rather then the road to the left of the motorway paid off and it wasn't too long before we started to recognise the approach Southampton. Tom and I had both been there before, with Tom living there for a bit during his uni days. Then it was a lovely long coast downhill towards the town before easily finding the hotel. We got there at 10.30 and explained us leaving later than intended to the owner. He didn't mind and led us around to put our bikes in the garage. It was a relief to finally get there and even more of a relief knowing that I wouldn't have to put on my backpack on again until tomorrow. Breakfast was served at 7.30am so we agreed that we would be packed up and down by 7.30 sharp so we could get away at a reasonable time in the morning. We were given our key and wifi codes before making our way upstairs to out room. The room was very nice indeed and the beds were incredible. The shower was great too and came with complimentary soap/shower gel. I made a point of putting a toilet roll with my stuff incase I needed a wild in the middle of nowhere on the island in the next few days. I had a brief ipad wifi session before explaining to Tom (who was watching TV) that we neeeded to go to bed. He agreed and we went to sleep at about midnight.

Introduction

Me (Ashley Middlewick), Chris Thomas and Tom Smith are a group of friends who recently moved in together and have done some big trips over the last 5 years. Just over a week before Easter we decided we should do something over the Easter weekend to tide us over until our Irish Coast to Coast walk in October. I came up with this (our mission was to cycle to the Isle of Wight on Friday before walking around the entire coastal path Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning before cycling back to our house in Reading and going for a carvery) which Chris and Tom agreed would be good. This led to me and Tom going back to our parent's to pick up our camping stuff the weekend before setting off, with Chris saying he would do it the day before. I booked our hotel in Southampton for Friday evening (we would have preferred to have stayed in one on the Island but we left it too late booking and all the cheap ones were fully booked). Our criteria for the hotel was that it should be cheap and most importantly have somewhere we could leave our bikes over the weekend. Over the course of the week I had made lists of stuff to take and had started dumping this in a pile on the floor of my room. Chris ended up going back to his mum's house in Chelmsford on Wednesday like he said he would but dissapointingly decided to sack off the trip right at the last minute to spend a bit more time at home. We had done no training whatsoever in the build up to this.