The Long Way to Portsmouth

It was just after half past midnight when I rolled out, only an hour and a half after getting off the bike from an evening spin to Marden. I was off to visit my son at the University of Portsmouth, which was a good enough reason to ride there, and with my best distance stuck at 305.6 km since my Kent coastline ride in June 2025, I took the long way. A very long way: my first move was east.

It was clear and about 10°C with next to no wind as I went through Headcorn and Biddenden to Tenterden, where my shadow kept me company along the High Street. I was 29 km in and further from Portsmouth than when I’d started.

Then I finally turned west, through Benenden, Tunbridge Wells, Groombridge and Hartfield, picking up personal bests in the dark. After a pause in East Grinstead just before five came Turners Hill and Handcross, and the first light of the day found me beside one of the Hammer Ponds in St Leonard’s Forest, the sky turning orange behind perfectly still water.

By half past seven I was in Dorking, where I stopped for just over half an hour before setting off past St Martin’s Church under a clear blue sky. From there it was into the Surrey Hills: under the railway at Gomshall, past the war memorial near Albury and up Newlands Corner, the first climb of the day that Garmin thought worth a category.

Guildford and the Hog’s Back followed, with a blaze of red creeper at Compton and heathland through Puttenham to Seale, and then Farnham on a Saturday morning.

Alton was the next real stop, nearly 50 minutes just before noon. Straight after it came the biggest climb of the ride, the long drag up Medstead Road, 104 m over 2.6 km by Garmin’s reckoning. It isn’t steep, but 200 km into a day it didn’t need to be.

The lanes beyond it were lovely, through Bighton and Ovington to Avington under big skies. At half past one I reached Winchester, and the Guildhall was the backdrop to another half-hour stop.

I stopped on the Itchen Bridge to look over Southampton’s lights, then Bursledon, Titchfield, Fareham and Portchester ticked by, and I reached Portsmouth just before nine in the evening, 20 hours and 16 minutes after leaving home.

That made 353 km, with about the same climbing as Forty-Three Climbs, my 263 km day in the Algarve a month earlier. 1,104 vehicles passed me and Strava handed out 52 PRs along the way. That beat my old best by 47.7 km, with 16 hours and 43 minutes of it on the move. It was a new record, and the only way home was to do it all again in the morning.