Shanghai

The end of the trip – the metropolis of Shanghai. People say it’s like no other Chinese city, and it certainly had a more European feel in many ways – not least the hundreds of coffee shops everywhere – but it is still undeniably China, with electric scooters running amok, nobody standing politely in a queue for anything, and so on.

I did a lot of walking and not many main sights, having decided I’d seen enough temples and pagodas and what-not earlier on. I did do the Shanghai History Museum on arrival day, which was great; well laid-out and interesting, and QUIET, so it was possible to browse the exhibits and read all the information without jostling for space with other people. In the evening of day 1 I caught up with the two girls who had been our key organisers for the Asian Games, one of whom is studying in Shanghai and the other who was down for the weekend, and we ate fried dumplings and saw the lights on the Bund.

Day 2 dawned beautifully sunny and bright, so I took advantage of the weather to go up the Shanghai Tower. It’s China’s tallest building and the third tallest in the world, and also has the world’s highest observation deck at 562m or 118 stories. The views were superb. On the advice of friends I paid for the full package which took you to the 126th floor to see the building’s damper and the huge jade sculpture which sits atop the damper, which they’ve used to make a sort of music and light show. It was pretty cool.

Modern art was the theme for the rest of the day – a poke around the M50 contemporary art area, where a bunch of artists have colonised a former industrial area and put in galleries, and then on to the Jing’an Sculpture Park. There was a free concert in the park I hung out at for a little bit too. I had a bit of a food nightmare in the evening; Googling night markets suggested there would be one near my hotel, but when I arrived, it was non-existent and I spent half an hour wandering around until I found somewhere which would serve me some food. Apart from that, it was a good day.

The last day was, as last days can be, a little aimless. I went to the French Concession, the old colonial area where the French used to run their businesses, and did some last-minute shopping. I wanted to go to the arts and crafts museum, but it was closed for lunch when I arrived, so I had another wander until I managed to find a mall and a restaurant for something to eat.

Then it was generally more wandering up to Fuxing (French) Park and on to the modern, flashy Xiantiandi area, where I’d hoped to find some food but it was way too posh and Western. So the trip finished back in the Yu Garden area where I’d been on the first evening to graze on random snacks, and then to the hotel for a last beer on the rooftop.

By this point my payment app, Alipay, had decided I’d spent too much and declined to let me pay for the beer (luckily normal card payment came to the rescue). The holiday was clearly ended.

Practicalities:

• Shanghai’s metro is the best way of getting around although stations are not always close to sights, and there will still be a lot of walking
• You need a passport to buy a ticket for the Shanghai Tower. I just rocked up and walked straight in – queues were developing later, however I couldn’t work out how to book online
• If you see a branch of Yang’s Fried Dumplings stop and eat there

Suzhou

Between Nanjing and Shanghai, and on the course of the Grand Canal as it runs north from Hangzhou to Beijing, is the old town of Suzhou. Of course these days a lot of it is modern and it’s not so small, but it still has quite a lot of old amid the high-rises and development.

Suzhou is famous for its gardens. The imperial Chinese loved to build complexes where a house meets a garden, with wooden pavilions giving way to ponds, rockeries and trees in a way that feels natural and symbiotic. The pavilions are the sorts of places where you would spend the afternoon reading or painting, while your koi carp swam around in the pond just outside.

I had a day and a half in Suzhou, which I spent wandering around the gardens and failing to wander around museums. The first half-day, after arrival, involved a ‘scenic area’ with a pagoda and a temple in a little park hard by the city walls and the canal. I walked out of it along the canal and up to the next garden, and finally on to a last garden for the day, and then I walked back along streets with interesting shops and plenty of cafés and so on, with a stop for a beer en route. Near the hotel I found some food and was randomly stopped by a guy who wanted to ask if I was ready to marry and move to China (I ran away).

 

Day 2 was a little less successful and a little more meandering, although mostly I enjoyed it. The temple with the pagoda which started the day was nice, but then the museum was so busy the only time slot I could reserve was in the evening. And the Humble Administrators’ Garden next door, the real draw of Suzhou, was insanely busy once I’d finally worked out how to get into it. I crawled around following queues of tour groups and wished it was less busy.

The other gardens of the day were much less bad, however, and it was nice walking along the touristy street, Pinjiang Road, which is another of Suzhou’s big draws. But the other two museums I had earmarked were closed – at least, one was definitely closed for renovation, and I think I walked past the other but there were no signs or open doors. As it got muggier I got progressively more tired and eventually called it a day, giving up on the evening museum slot.

Despite this I did really like Suzhou, it was walkable and had lots of character.

 

Practicalities:

• Getting to Suzhou from Nanjing was easy – 90 minutes on the train
• Suzhou’s metro is small and easy to navigate, although misses out a chunk of the area you want to visit
• Take your passport when visiting the gardens as you’ll need to show it to get tickets

Nanjing

 Getting off the train in Nanjing felt weirdly familiar - like being back in Hangzhou, after visiting the more rural areas of the past few days.

And yes, Nanjing does have some similarities to Hangzhou, but it's a little less manicured. Still, I liked it, despite a few small difficulties along the way.

I had the late afternoon and evening of my arrival day, so headed to visit the Confucian temple in the Fuzimiao area near my hotel, as well as a museum dedicated to the civil service examination system pioneered by early Chinese emperors and which lasted about a thousand years before they finally ditched it. As night fell the temple and museum and surrounding streets were all lit up and it was very pretty, and also quite nice to be able to continue sightseeing past sunset. I finished the evening at a bar in a new shopping mall which did craft beer and pizza, because I was desperate for something that wasn't rice or noodles.

For the remaining two days I sat down and planned everything based on the Lonely Planet, which promptly let me down at stop number 1. The Nanjing Museum was, it claimed, open until noon on Mondays, so I toddled off there to discover ... it was closed on Mondays. Cue some re-organising of the schedule and rather a lot of walking, to take in some of the sights in the Zhongshan Scenic Area which includes various temples and so on, including the tomb of the first Ming Emperor, Zhu, in a forest on the side of the Purple Mountain that overlooks Nanjing. My mammoth day included walking up to the top of the mountain, catching the cablecar back down, and then walking on towards the Xuanwu Lake and finishing along the city walls. On the way home I had a good dinner at a gimmicky, Qing Dynasty-themed restaurant which is so popular you have to wait for a table. It was tasty and the atmosphere, with music playing, was quite fun. Then a couple of craft beers at the local brewery bar next door.

So I was all set for another good day on day 2. It started with a sobering visit to the Memorial to the Victims of the Massacre of Nanjing, built on one of the many sites where thousands of Nanjingers lost their lives when Japan invaded in 1937. Some 300,000 were murdered and over 20,000 women and girls raped over the first months of the invasion. The museum is thorough, doesn't hold back with images of the slaughter and video testimony from survivors, and was also absolutely rammed. Way too rammed, in fact, for somewhere which is supposed to be thought-provoking, as the first couple of rooms were too busy to appreciate anything properly. It did get better. 

 

Then things went downhill. I went back to the Nanjing Museum, which is free. It has several exhibition halls. I thought perhaps I'd start with the art one. I was directed firmly away from the entrance and towards the history gallery, where I was pointed towards the corner where a lady was taking foreigners' registration. Only you also needed to reserve a slot, but I couldn't do this easily because my WeChat app is blocked and their website is terrible, and in Chinese. Eventually a nice guy from Hong Kong helped me and we emerged triumphant with slips of paper acting as tickets, which were then immediately taken off us again once we'd got through the entry gate. Basically, the museum is free, but you still have to go around it in order and once you're in, you're in.

By this point I wasn't really in the mood for a museum but I wandered around glancing at stuff for a while. There were some interesting items, but I called it a day after a couple of hours, and moved on to the next destination, the Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum. Sun Yat-Sen is considered as the founder of the Chinese Republic, key to overthrowing the Empire, and they built him a magnificent tomb not too far from the Ming Temple. To get there, I wanted to get the sightseeing bus from the closest metro station. Only ... I needed WeChat again. It took way too much translation app before I could persuade the guy to take my money and let me get on the bus.

The rest of the day improved a bit; the mausoleum was beautiful, and the last stop, Linggu, was quiet and peaceful, so all in all, a good end to the stop in Nanjing. 

 

Practicalities:

• Nanjing is modern and easy to get around, with a good subway system
• there are plenty of malls for easy food options
• the city has two main train stations - Nanjing, and Nanjing South. I arrived into Nanjing South and left from Nanjing, and the Fuzimao area was a decent choice as a place to stay 
• as mentioned above, functional WeChat is a great advantage for booking touristy stuff. Passports are required for foreigners for everything I did in Nanjing
• there is a separate entry line for foreigners at the Memorial
  

Hongcun and Xidi: ancient villages of Anhui

Leafing through the Lonely Planet for stuff to combine with Huangshan, I'd spotted mention of the ancient villages of Hongcun and Xidi - locations for Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and a remnant of the old China preserved on the Unesco heritage list.

You can stay in the historic sites but I found tracking down a hotel really difficult. Few of the homestays in Hongcun seem to have websites and calling them from the UK to book just didn't seem practical (language barriers, predominantly). So I resorted to third-party websites and found a very reasonably priced option outside Hongcun village proper. On the plus side, I had a huge, comfortable room with incredibly friendly owners for £25 (220 RMB) per night. On the downside, I didn't get to wander Hongcun by night, which was a shame. 

Still, I enjoyed my visit to this area. The villages were founded about 900 years ago but most of the houses are more like 200-300 years old, I think. The streets are narrow and the villages built around small lakes and lots of narrow channels carrying water for washing and so on.

On day 1 I started with Hongcun. Initially I got stuck between a couple of large tourist groups in the first couple of halls, but managed to break away from them for a much nicer wander around the streets, popping into the various buildings that are open to the public and mooching around the souvenir shops (wood carving, jewellry, tea, mostly). I found a nice café for a coffee and a sit-down and tried one of the local pancake-y things filled with some sort of vegetable for lunch. 

In the afternoon I got a bus (after a bit of a wait, because I missed a bus) to nearby Mukeng Zhuhai, a bamboo forest and a village amid the forest - another Crouching Tiger location. It was good to be away from the crowds and the bamboo was beautiful. 

On day 2, I got the bus to Xidi in the morning. I liked Xidi a lot, possibly more than Hongcun, as it was a bit less touristy and a bit more lived-in. Still the same kind of buildings though. Both villages were filled with young art students painting and drawing the scenery, some with great skill.

I finished up with a visit to Lucun, which is near to Hongcun and is even more lived-in than the other villages. Lucun is famous for its wood carving and some of its halls had spectacular grilles carved out of wood with scenes of daily life and battles and nature and so on. Best of all, it was a free visit, possibly because I got there after 3pm?

Although the three villages have similarities they all had their nuances and I was glad I'd seen all three.

 

Practicalities:

• I got to Hongcun from Huangshan with a direct bus from the Tangkou distribution hub for 25 RMB, which took about 40 minutes
• Entry to both Hongcun and Xidi was 104 RMB, which gets you in only once - if you stay in the villages I think they check your reservation each time you go in and out. They did not ask for my passport but I carried it just in case
  
• Bus #1 runs between Hongcun, Lucun, Tacuan and Mukeng Zhuhai, leaving the West Gate bus station about every half hour - but not on a strict timetable. The route also goes on from Hongcun to other places, so make sure you get on it going in the right direction. It's 2 RMB for a one-way fare, payable by cash or QR code. Last bus from Mukeng is 17:00
  
• Bus #8 runs between Hongcun and Xidi, with the journey taking about 30 minutes. My bus left Hongcun at 09:10 and I caught the 14:30 back. I think they're hourly. Last bus from Xidi is 16:00. Fare was 6 RMB each way, payable by cash or QR code
• The bus to Huangshan North also stops at Xidi but not sure it's a good option for day trippers
• Plenty of restaurants both inside the villages and on the main street outside the village in Hongcun
  

Huangshan Mountain

The Asian Games kindly gave us two weeks on our accreditation as a visa for visiting China so I was determined to make the most of it. It's not often someone pays for your travel and visa to a country that normally involves a bit of effort to get in and out of!

I bought the Lonely Planet and delved in, toying with ideas of seeing Beijing or the Great Wall or stuff like that. But, especially as initially we were being asked to fly in/out of Hangzhou, I decided to stick with the region around Hangzhou (roughly). In the end I was able to book return flights to Shanghai, but I still think it was probably a good choice.

Anyway, I always like to get out of a city I've been in for an event and find some nature, so Huangshan (Yellow) Mountain looked appealing as one of the choices of where to go. It's not too far west of Hangzhou and is on the Unesco heritage list, as are some nearby 'ancient villages', Hongcun and Xidi. My original plan had me heading to Hongcun first, but then I realised that would land me in Huangshan on a weekend, which is specifically warned against by the LP, so I shifted to head to Huangshan first from Hangzhou.

It was an easy train-bus-bus journey from Hangzhou to the mountain, with my suitcase deposited at the 'tourist distribution hub' nearest to the mountain before the second bus. I was helped a bit by a Chinese-American couple who were on the first bus in terms of finding the way to the second bus station - although it's a tourist destination, English language signs are few and far between, and nobody really speaks English. A translation app is essential if, like me, your Mandarin is severely limited. 

Again, following Lonely Planet advice, I'd settled on hiking up the mountain via the Eastern Steps and down by the Western Steps. I'd booked two nights in a hotel on the top of the mountain so I could properly enjoy it - I could possibly have got away with one night, especially if I'd used the cable cars, but I'm glad I took it more leisurely. In the middle day I did the West Sea Canyon loop, which took me down into the depths of a canyon before taking me back up the other side. Going down was busy with people, until the bottom of a cablecar, but it was super quiet after that until I got back up to the summit area again. I also got up for sunrise both days.

The mountain has been a destination for Chinese visitors for several centuries, and there is an immense network of granite steps (apparently 60,000 of them) and pathways to channel you around. Compared to the sorts of paths I'm used to on mountains and hills at home, it was a bit manicured, but the volume of visitors is immense and anything less solid would just erode insanely quickly. The steps cling to the side of the mountains and the gradients are often insanely steep - I ascended 400m in just 1km of walking at one point.

The views from the top are spectacular. I got two sunny clear days, devoid of the 'seas of cloud' Huangshan is famous for, but giving me uninterrupted views of the karst peaks. Sadly the views also make it a huge tourist destination, with many people coming in groups led by guides wearing portable amplifiers. At the top, between the cable car stations, you cannot escape the hordes, even in the week AFTER the national holiday when I'd hoped it would be quieter. I saw people in all sorts of clothes and footwear, including fancy dresses and nice leather shoes; velvet suits; silk shirts; Crocs; and a few others in what you might call hiking gear like me. Some had even dragged up small wheely suitcases. 

The worst was Lotus Peak, the highest point, which was on the way 'down' towards the Western Steps. It was cloudy when I started that day and I was in two minds about whether to bother with Lotus Peak at all, but it was still early and the weather improving when I got to the bottom of the steps up. My map told me it was less than 500m with 100m of ascent, and I scoffed at the sign that told me it would take three hours to get up and down - I'd been routinely smashing the suggested times for climbing things. And indeed it took only about 15 minutes to get most of the way up, before I hit a queue to complete the climb. 

Basically Lotus Peak has two ways up/down and the top is a bottleneck for the two routes to converge, through a narrow cleft that can only fit one person at once. So you have hundreds (if not thousands) of people all wanting to get to the top along narrow paths, and a one-way system at the summit proper. I queued about 40 minutes to get to the top, where the views were admittedly superb, and then decided to go down the other way. The line going up on that other path stretched at least halfway down the mountain and I can't imagine how long those people will have waited for their 30 seconds at the top. Safe to say I was devoutly grateful to finally escape the crowds and start on the Western Steps down (allegedly 6.5km and four hours; actually about 2.5km and less than 90 minutes).

Practicalities:

• From Hangzhou I caught the train to Huangshan North railway station, which was about 90 minutes
• Leaving the station, turn right and follow the signs for the scenic buses. Ask for a ticket to Tangkou (19 RMB) 
• The shuttle bus drops you in Tangkou town, and then you have to walk about 500m following signs for the tourist distribution hub to get the next bus (another 19 RMB) which will take you to the Yungu cablecar station
• The information desk in the Tangkou hub will store bags, 15 RMB per day
• If you have WeChat working or a Chinese number attached to Alipay you can buy your ticket to the mountain at the ticket desk at the entrance to the distribution hub - ask for help. Mine wasn't working, so the lady photographed my passport and that got me through to the bus station. I then bought my entry ticket to the mountain (190 RMB) at Yungu, through the app with help from the nice lady there, after I'd changed my phone number in Alipay!
• Your passport number will be required for all the buses and tickets
  
• Take snacks - food and drink on top of the mountain is expensive, although there's a reasonable choice and water was just 8 RMB for a 550ml bottle
  
• If you have dodgy knees take a stick, or buy one in Tangkou. I didn't, it was okay, but it took three days for my legs to recover ...

Hangzhou

Everyone's heard of the Olympic Games, but outside Asia, it's a safe bet few have heard of the Asian Games. Yet this huge multi-sport event, which like the Olympics takes place every four years, is as big or bigger as its better-known fellow in terms of number of sports and athletes. 

The 19th Asian Games were set to take place in Hangzhou, China, in October 2022; they were then postponed a year due to Covid-19, so were rescheduled for October 2023. I was asked by my Olympic friend and colleague Alan to be part of the team he was setting up to work as the Asian Games News Service - a team of experienced foreign journalists to produce news and quotes in the same way as we do for the Olympics. Of course I said yes. 

I wasn't sure what to expect from Hangzhou. Like many other Chinese cities it's huge (a population of around 12 million) and not somewhere I'd ever heard of. It's inland of Shanghai on the banks of the Qiantang River, which is tidal, and from a visitor perspective is best known for the West Lake - a lake surrounded on three sides by hills, and on the eastern side, by the city, which has featured in many a picture. Hangzhou is also the starting point for the Grand Canal which runs all the way north to Beijing.

Around the lake there are a few areas where the old buildings survive, or have been restored, but a lot of Hangzhou is ultra-modern high-rise. They've built a lot of new infrastructure for the Games, including new stadia and arenas as well as significantly expanding the metro system (the metro is great; fast, cheap, clean and cool). 

We spent three weeks in Hangzhou, staying at the purpose-built media village, and got a little time to explore amid the work. 

Early on, before the Games started, a group of us went on a full day tour to test out some of the cultural visits they were setting up for journalists. I think we basically got several shorter visits all stuck together. 

We started out on Hefang Street, which is one of the older streets, and today is full of touristy shops selling food and souvenirs. Along it we stopped at Hu Qing Yu Tang pharmacy, which is both a working pharmacy that celebrates its 150th anniversary next year, and a museum of Chinese medicine. It was interesting to see the range of natural products which go into Chinese medicine and the popularity of the pharmacy today. 

Next stop was the Deshou Palace - a palace of the Southern Song Dynasty (late 12th-early 13th century AD). It was destroyed by fire in 1206, but they have been uncovering its ruins for some time and now they've basically built a replica palace on top of those ruins, and turned the ruins into a museum with video and light installations to show you what it might have been like. It was all quite impressive.

Then we had lunch, a feast of 'Chinese medicine' food that is supposed to be good for you - like lotus root and eel. After that, it was on to the Grand Canal for a boat ride and then an explore of another old pedestrian area and the Gongchen Bridge, a notable stone bridge across the canal. They also took us around a handicrafts museum to see stuff like bamboo weaving and paper making. It was a good tour, although we were being filmed and photographed and occasionally interviewed all day for the official games social media (and other channels, possibly) which got a little exhausting. 

 

We were however disappointed not to have a boat ride on West Lake, which was originally part of the plan. I had a bit of free time later in the week, although it was raining, and managed to pop over there to grab some pictures of the lake. Then on opening ceremony day a few of us got on another tour to West Lake for a boat ride, after first visiting the West Lake Museum to find out about the history of the lake and see some of the artefacts they've dug up from it over the years - it's very shallow and full of mud, so ideal for preserving Stuff. (I think for some of the younger visitors to the museum a group of random Europeans were more interesting than the museum itself).

The boat ride was nice, it was good to see some of the islands in the lake, but I did want to walk more around the shores and when I had a rare morning off in the middle of the Games I took the chance to explore the hill on the northern side, which has lots of paths and temples and a great view of the lake and city from the top. Definitely worth it, although it was the national holiday and therefore fairly busy. 

On my last day in Hangzhou I ventured south of the lake area a bit to visit the China National Silk Museum, a large, superbly curated and FREE museum all about the history and manufacture of silk, the Silk Road, and fashion. It was excellent and thoroughly worthwhile. 

Away from the West Lake area Hangzhou has loads of malls and interesting architecture. There was a great lightshow on each evening along the riverbank by the curiously globe-shaped InterContinental Hotel, looking over towards the stadium and back over the city, which showed this off to great effect. And there is also a good night market with plenty of souvenirs and street food opportunities on Wulin Road.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Hangzhou, although with the caveat that a major sporting event always shows off a city to its best advantage. It is a vibrant, modern sort of place with lots of green and water. In late September-early October of our currently strange climate it was hot and humid and sometimes wet, but I basically lived in shorts and t-shirt the whole time. The metro makes it easy to get around and although foreigners are clearly a rarity we were welcomed warmly everywhere we went. It might not be an obvious tourist spot in China, but it's worth a look.

King Alfred's Way

Just over two years ago, Cycling UK unveiled a new, 350km bikepacking route named the King Alfred's Way (KAW) - new in the sense that nobody had put this particular trail together before, but old in the sense that it takes you through some of England's most ancient landscapes and along some well-established tracks. It sounded good. I decided to try and do it one day.

Well, I've now succeeded. And it was good. It was also pretty tough! I'd like to think I'm on the fitter side of fit and I've done loads of cycling lately, but I found the KAW hard going in a lot of places. It's almost never flat and it's mostly off-road, and given the wet summer we've had, the trail is often muddy, eroded or overgrown (or all three together). I finished the route with my bike covered in mud and chalk and my legs tired, scratched, stung and bruised. But I did very much enjoy it. 

Day 1: Winchester > Orcheston (72.6km/45.1 miles, 958m/3,143ft elevation gain)

I arrived in Winchester to rain, which wasn't the start I'd hoped for, but after waiting 15 minutes for a torrential downpour to ease I zipped up my waterproof jacket and set off. The route quite quickly gets you off the road and on to the first farm trail, which was deeply rutted and a bit muddy and which I found quite challenging. I got better at this sort of track later on after I learned (through stop-start experience) to look further ahead to pick the best line, and to just barrel through the sticky bits. I did take a couple of road detours to avoid bits which just looked too muddy.

Stopped at Old Sarum to look at the remains of the ancient castle and cathedral there; it had stopped raining finally. I'd planned lunch at Old Sarum as I'm sure I read there was a café, but there wasn't, so I carried on a short while to the excellent Bridge Inn in Upper Woodford, where they kindly served me a prawn sandwich although the kitchen was technically closed. The trail from here on was much easier going and the sun was out; I got to Stonehenge in good spirits. You can detour off the route to see Stonehenge from outside of the fence and avoid the even longer detour to the visitor's centre, so I did that. It was then a fairly short ride to Orcheston and Stonehenge Touring Park, a nice little campsite convieniently right on the route, where I spent a pleasant evening devouring takeaway pizza.

 

Day 2: Orcheston > Evelyn's Garden (82.4km/51.2 miles, 1,103m/3,619ft elevation gain)

The route out of Orcheston went almost straight up an off-road climb, and then into tricky rutted farmtrack and my average speed after an hour was about 11kph. I'd had a couple of slow-motion sideways falls and was feeling a bit gloomy about the day's prospects. Luckily I finally hit some harder ground with a road and gravel track alongside the military firing range - the red flags were out, but the route doesn't go inside the danger zone. And then I got a rear puncture, or possibly just a failure of the mended tube we'd put in on the Lon Las Cymru last year. I actually did a reasonable job of putting in a new tube, and didn't entirely waste my CO2 canister in inflating it, but I still decided I would head down the hill as there was a bike shop (Finely Tuned Ride) very close, and I was worried that one spare inner tube and one spare CO2 canister might not be enough for the rest of the trip. That involved a fairly narrow, slippery descent and I walked half of it, but got my tyre properly pumped up and restocked tubes and canisters before continuing onwards. But it had all cost me an hour's time. 

 

The next bit on to Avebury was pretty nice, with a stiff climb and a nice descent, and I rolled into Avebury feeling better about life. I lunched at the National Trust café in Avebury and then walked the ring of the stone circle. 

After Avebury the route heads upwards once more on to the Ridgeway, which is one of the National Trails and runs along to Buckinghamshire. It's shared with walkers. After the initial climb there was a really muddy part which I honestly tried to cycle on, but I found the combination of slippery mud and deeply eroded ruts completely impossible. I gave up and walked for what felt like ages, though it was probably only about 10 minutes. But once past that, the Ridgeway was great! I paused to look at the Neolithic barrow of Wayland's Smithy, where a man who said he was a wizard asked if I was visiting the crop circle in the nearby field. 

I stayed that night just off the Ridgeway at Evelyn's Garden, a basic wild camping/glamping site with lovely views over the fields.

Day 3: Evelyn's Garden > Greywell (87.7km/54.5 miles, 719m/2,359ft elevation gain)

A good, uneventful day. Lots of easy riding on good gravel trails and even quite a bit of tarmac. I'd dreaded the climb out of Goring on the Thames Path because I'd walked down it three years ago, but apart from a flight of actual steps it was fun and rideable. Generally I zoomed along and hardly had to walk at all! It was nice to be alongside the Thames for a bit.

I stayed in the pretty village of Greywell, about 4km off the route, at the Fox & Goose pub which has a large field and allows free camping if you buy dinner at the pub. I was there so early I had time to go for a wander in the village before dinner.

 

Day 4: Greywell > Nyewood (82.6km/51.4 miles, 1,077m/3,533ft elevation gain)

I had been worried about this leg because the official guide talked about navigating deep sand on various commons, and I don't really like trying to cycle through deep sand. It wasn't actually as bad as I'd feared but there were a couple of extended sections which just had to be walked. 

I picked up a front puncture coming into Farnham, discovering it as I was about to head off after popping to the supermarket, so opted for a lazy fix at Hoops Velo where they made a much quicker job of it than I would have done. Later discovered one of my panniers had a loose screw, which took much longer to mend than it should have done due to general incompetence. 

 

The big climb of the day was up to the Devil's Punch Bowl, a kind of natural amphitheatre near Hindhead, which also has a National Trust café at the top (a lunch win). After that there was more up and down, a really nice short section on an old railway track to Liss, the longest wait at a railway crossing ever, and a short detour from the route to Clarefield Copse Wild Camping for the night - a big open field, with a great shower that I thoroughly appreciated after two nights without showering. 

Day 5: Nyewood > Winchester (56.4km/35 miles, 913m/2,995ft elevation gain)

It rained overnight, and kept going into the morning. I lay in my tent listening to it until I forced myself to get up and make breakfast under the shelter which also housed the campsite loos - glam - while checking and rechecking rain radar, and asking route advice on the KAW Facebook group. Then I spent another hour or so in the tent until, around 11, the rain finally eased off (and stayed away for the rest of the day).

I'm glad it was a short day as it was still hard-going. The paths - predominantly the South Downs Way - were actually surprisingly good given the rain, and I only detoured off the route once to avoid what is described as a technical, slippery descent which I wouldn't have enjoyed in the dry. I had to walk up a couple of hills: Butser Hill, which is a really steep grassy slope; and another couple where it was chunky and loose under the tyres and I failed to find the right traction to keep moving! A lot of gates on the SDW also slowed things down. 

Had a truly excellent lunch at the veggie Beech Café at the South Downs Sustainability Centre, a walk around the old fort site at Old Winchester Hill, and finally, with tired legs, rolled into Winchester just before 5pm. Had it not been for the rain I'd have spent more time in the city, including going into the cathedral, but as it was I just took a couple of pictures and headed for the train home. 

Conclusion

I rode my trusty Dolan GXA with 35mm Schwalbe G-One tyres. Something slightly better on mud would probably be beneficial and a lot of people do this route on mountain bikes. As I was camping, I had a reasonable amount of gear, and B&Bing would certainly require less stuff and less weight. 

I was mostly really happy with my equipment: my 35mm tyres were generally fine; my Garmin 1040 Solar paid for its very expensive self by not needing to be charged at all really (I gave it a quick top-up to 50% on the last night, when it was at 34%, and it was back down to 34% at the end of the last day); my Alpkit Soloist tent remains dinky but almost perfect save for the tiny porch.

The route is great, but it's important not to underestimate how long it might take you. On tarmac, with the gear I was carrying, I can average 20kph easily. Off-road, my average speed dropped significantly and even the last day took more than four hours' riding time - not counting stops for food, photos, gates and so on.

KAW is a superb way to see this bit of England though, and makes you appreciate the beauty of the landscape and the history of the country from the unique perspective of a bike. Highly recommended.