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.