isle of wight | Life on Two Wheels

At the weekend we set off in a mini adventure, to cycle around the Isle of Wight.

Armed with our road bikes, energy drinks and Bounce Balls we set off from Shanklin and headed towards Ryde heading North East along the coastal path. This part of the Island is the most built up, travelling through Sandown, Bembridge and into St Helen the scenery changed from holiday resort to quaint English sea side village with twisty streets and white painted buildings. Sea View is the next village along the coast, which offers plenty of cute coffee shops, ice cream stalls and fish and chips, a perfect place to stop and take in the view of Portsmouth, however today we were on a mission. A mission to train for Ride London, we have two weeks until the event and so today wanted to keep stopping minimal!

The sun by this point was blazing down on us and when we reached East Cowes we had a banana stop and refilled our water bottles whilst waiting for the chain ferry. Just over a quarter of the way round we were making good time and were happy with our progress. West Cowes is a bustling sea side village which on a bike will test your slalom skills as your navigate through tourists, shoppers and buggies!

Munching on Jelly babies and Bounce Balls at intervals we were feeling strong having covered a good proportion of our ride.

From here the landscape changed from coastal road to country roads with plenty of twists and turns and a great deal of hills! We made a stop in Freshwater a beautiful little bay on the west coast which today was packed with tourists soaking up the sun.

We rode up to the Dandelion café where we got a take away sandwich and sat on the cliff to eat.

As welcoming as this rest bite was, getting going again we were hit with a long hill climb this was the start of the coastal road which weaved its way up and down the edge of the Island.

With not much wind this was a sweltering part of the journey in the mid day sun and we took on a lot of water. The open road was often the only thing we could see for miles as we kept spinning towards our destination.

Blackgang with only £1 left of our money I made our last water run to a shop in Niton luckily a 1 litre bottle was 65p which kept us going on the hilliest part of our journey so far. A road closed in Ventnor meant a gruelling diversion before the last climb up through the old village into Shanklin.