Our First Day on the Bike

July 14, 2012

After 2 nights at Gable End Guest House, the home of Mary and Joseph, we departed, excited to begin our journey, but as with all good experiences, sorry to move on. We can see why they rate 5 stars on Trip Advisor - their hospitality is rare in its generous sincerity. We were made to feel at home with all the comforts of home. A good choice.
Having noticed our enjoyment of our morning pots of tea, Mary appeared at our final breakfast with a pouch full of the tea for our breakfasts at camp.

What a great choice for a guesthouse. We were picked up at the airport. Mary and Joseph were wonderful hosts.

On the bike and ready to start our adventure

We can never miss visiting a local bike shop, so a stop had to be made at the local Horley bike shop, “ “Mellow Miles. The owner, who told us interesting stories about his past experiences with and as a pro cyclist, helped us with our pesky drag brake....and of course, we talked about the current Tour de France and the strong showing of Britain’s Bradley Wiggins.

We had been feeling some trepidation about cycling on the roads in Britain. Narrow roads, no shoulder and fast drivers gave us some concern.
We headed out with the plan to head south to Brighton - the GPS was not being very helpful, and without a paper map to rely on we got lost. We ventured in to a WW II Bomber museum to seek advice. The volunteers working at the museum were most anxious to help and even tore a map out of their atlas to help us. Indeed, we could see that we had made some wrong turns at an earlier roundabout. Derrick, an avid cyclist, pointed out the roads with “lumpy” bits to avoid. He told us with amusement, that as publicized, Sussex is not flat.

At Handcross, we sat on our Walkstools by the road and ate our lunch that we had bought at a local corner shop. The Walkstools are proving worth the bulk and weight.

As we sped down a steep hill,with the brakes not working well, we saw a delightful pub, The Jolly Tanners in Staplefield. Feeling ready to stop I went in and asked the barmaid for advice about accomodation in the area. With the encouragement of the locals, she called the owner and offered us a place to camp in the back garden, as long as we ate dinner here. We took her up on the offer....and what a wonderful surprise. The back garden is vast and beautiful. We found a private place for our tent and had a delicious lamb roast dinner, a Sunday specialty. We have been missing veggies since leaving home. Our meals have been dominated by meat since arriving in England. This roast dinner made up for that: roast potatoes, parsnips, cauliflower, carrots, cabbage, yorkshire pudding. And of course, we followed up with a homemade pudding, (dessert in England) shared Sticky Toffee Pudding with ice cream.

We stopped at this bike shop in Horley to have our rear drag brake adjusted.

The volunteers at this World War 2 Bomber museum were incredibly helpful. The museum looked amazing.

We camped in the back garden of the Jolly Tanners pub. What a beautiful spot to camp.

The ground was quite damp. In some parts of England there has been severe flooding.

It was very interesting to spend the whole evening in the pub watching the flow of locals who came and went. The owners' dogs were happy to hang out in the pub,too. Winston was found wandering on a highway. He was very happy in the pub but very insecure and agitated outside. He was not very happy to see our tent in his back garden.

We had a wonderful experience at the Jolly Tanners pub. They were very generous to offer us free camping in their back garden.

Today's ride: 22 km (14 miles)
Total: 22 km (14 miles)

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