Going South

After a very tearful goodbye to dad on Monday I headed out towards Poole. The weather last week had really started to improve, with mild temperatures and little rain. Guess what …..Monday was pouring with rain and a shocker of a headwind! Of course it was! I delayed leaving until 1 then headed out along the Basingstoke canal towpath, which was quite protected from the worst of the wind….and the rain had stopped. I felt really sad to leave and really questioned why I was doing this! I grabbed a coffee at Frimley then crossed in to Hampshire towards Alton. The countryside was stunning with everything blossoming, but I rode with a heavy heart. Outside Alton it started to rain again, but then I was met with a challenge which has dogged these first days of riding. As I was descending towards Alton my bike developed a shimmy….a nasty vibration of the handlebars which makes riding very dangerous indeed. The only way to stop it is to stop the bike. I crawled to Alton where I was to stay with a warm showers host. They were a delightful retired couple who at 80 were still cycle touring. I tried to figure out what the problem was with the bike – with a shimmy it’s invariably the rear rack where it starts. Couldn’t find anything untoward.

On Tuesday I set out with some trepidation, which proved to be well placed, as Bob was unrideable for most of the day. I went through a set of brake pads as I needed to be on the brakes as anything over 15kph caused the front end to go mental! It was a very challenging 80k ride through the gorgeous New Forest…..but all I saw was my speedometer! I camped at a farm near Burley, a typical New Forest village, with a couple who had gone ‘off grid’, living in their log cabin. A great place to rest, but it was damn cold camping that night. I was truly exhausted from trying to keep Bob from throwing me off. I strolled in to Burley village at night and found a delightful country pub and consoled myself with a huge chunk of cake and hot chocolate!
Wednesday I was met with light showers and a very cold wind. I travelled across the moors of the New Forest with all the wild horses…again, truly beautiful but ruined by an uncontrollable bike! I limped to Poole, stopping at Christchurch and Poole town before getting to my Warm Showers bed for the night. Again, a wonderful retired couple who left me alone to try sort out the bike on Thursday. After hours of fuffing about it was clear that the top bag of my set up was what was causing the rear rack to oscillate, which magnified itself through the frame in to the handlebars and then through to the front wheel. Without the top bag Bob was solid as a rock but with it on….like a bucking bronco! But I had no choice but to have the top bag as all my clothes were in it and there was no space in the other bags! My wonderful uncle, who is a engineer/physicist and loves a challenge, worked out some mathematical equation as to where the bags needed to be positioned but I ran out of time to actually implement the findings. As it turned out, having supper with my wonderful WS hosts Alan and Claire they mentioned they had an old rack and set of old panniers ….’we could try fitting that to the bike’. So it was that the Aeroe rack system was unbolted and the old rack put on, with some angle grinding and drilling of an old greenhouse window frame to make up some stabilisers. The panniers were dusted off and everything was put in to them, with no need for a heavy top bag. Everything fitted in the tatty old panniers that had seen better days but….they held ‘stuff’ in and that’s all I need them to do!

So I left the Aereo system behind without a rearward glance as I headed for the ferry to Guernsey and onward to France. It was only a short ride to the ferry (which was just as well as I only just made it!) but there was a renewed sense of faith in Bob with little movement ….bit it’ll only be when I get on the road in earnest that I’ll know for sure 😊