RIDE CLUB – ISLE OF WIGHT
We all have our favourite rides, whether it’s a training ride, a café ride or a veiled excuse to have an ice cream on the seafront. The best thing about these rides is taking new people along, so we thought we’d start sharing our favourite rides and asking our friends to do the same.
Each ride will have a few facts, map, profile and a downloadable GPX file for your Garmin Edge unit. First up is a lap of the Isle of Wight.
Following this route on the Island couldn’t be easier because those wonderful Islanders have put permanent signs up all around the route directing you! You can go clockwise or anti-clockwise following subtly different coloured signs for each. On this, anticlockwise lap, you’ll be looking for a blue sign. You can start the route from wherever you like and simply follow those signs, but this one starts at the ferry port in Ryde. Principally it starts there because we got a train to Portsmouth, the train platform spits you out at the Fast Cat port so it couldn’t be simpler. Or faster!
The Fast Cat is great fun and, as the name suggests, fast. Dropping you off on Ryde Pier you ride towards the seafront, taking in the smell of salt water mixed with chips, ice cream and — luckily for us —sun cream. We got our bearings and headed vaguely East where we quickly started spotting the blue signs pointing us in the direction of Cowes.
A series of small town roads leads you to the next quirk, a chain ferry. At this point we quickly settled into the idea that this was a ride for sight seeing rather than keeping a high average pace. Fine by us! The chain ferry is free for foot and pedal passengers and drops you off in West Cowes for your first bit of coastal riding.
After Cowes you start to head inland for a while, skirting around Parkhurst Forest through winding lanes on rolling hills. There’s over 4,000ft of climbing on this route but you rarely feel like you’re ever ‘climbing’. It’s an undulating route, with the only hills coming on the south of the island. Those hills come with beautiful views, so if you’re not keen on going upwards you can easily distract yourself.
We found our path obstructed a few times by the locals — ducks, rabbits and, the longest stop, cows. Total cattle gridlock.
We decided to have our first stop 25 miles, at Yarmouth. There are plenty of shops, delis, cafés and pubs in Yarmouth — we opted for a quick coffee and a chelsea bun whilst watching some sailors struggle with an unruly sail. Setting off from Yarmouth the route takes a surprising turn, sending you down a cycle path which essentially a gravel track. We were fine on our 23mm road tyres, but there are plenty of walkers strolling along so don’t expect to smash a strava segment down there. It made a nice change of pace, this route really is about making the most of the day!
The track spits you out on the south coast on the famous Military Road. This road has some incredible sights — white cliffs a plenty! We met our only real hills along this road, but they’re not long enough to cause you any issues and nor are they particularly steep. The classic cars buzzing around probably had more issues!
The road south takes you all the way to Ventor where the official route takes you on to Luccombe. We decided to head down into Ventor for a spot of lunch though. The Spyglass Inn on the Ventor seafront is famous for its fresh crab sandwiches and we weren’t going to miss out!
Well fed and sunkissed we set off again, up the ace zig zag road out of Ventor and onwards towards Shanklin for the last leg. Shanklin has a collection of quaint little shops, the archetypal seaside village. If we hadn’t long stopped we would definitely have been up for coffee and cakes there. A windy road through the village wends it’s way past sweet shops, cafés and pubs before heading on our towards Sandown.
Riding north there are options to head towards Bembridge for more seaviews but we pressed on to the ferry port. The ride can be as languid as you like but we were keen to keep riding time to about 4 hours, which is a sedate 15mph average.
Arrived back at Ryde we were lucky enough to catch a waiting Fast Cat back to Portsmouth, 60 miles in our legs and morning’s sunshine on our skin. I, stupidly, didn’t wear suncream so my nose was a lovely shade of crimson.
On a sunny day this route is everything a British ride should be — plenty of chatting, hard work when you want it to be, café stops and sight seeing. Perfect.
Download the GPX file of the ride here.