Cycling the South Downs Way: Winchester > Eastbourne

Towards the end of last year I set myself a target, I wanted to complete my personal 'big three' cycle rides in a calendar year, one of which I had never done before...

Ride 1: May 2015, The Isle of Wight Randonee.
 A nice introduction to the year with the annual Isle of Wight ride, organised by the Wayfarer CTC each year on the Sunday of the early May bank holiday weekend. This is a nice ride, 100km of hilly roads around the island, and it's a great day out with a few thousand or so people (depending on the weather).

Ride 2: June 2015, The Dunwich Dynamo.
 From London Fields to the Suffolk beach of Dunwich, this semi-organised event takes place overnight on the Saturday closest to the full moon in June. 186km of road to cover over the course of the night - and morning, this event is all about the atmosphere, the fellow cyclists, the people cheering us lunatics on from outside their houses during the night, and the pop-up refreshment stalls put on by budding entrepreneurs along the route. This year was the second time I took part, and was the reason my bike is currently covered in LEDs :) It was great fun, and the weather held out, which meant that set up up for the treble...

Ride 3: August 2015, The South Downs Way. In one go(!)
 I've attempted to cover large swathes of the South Down on two previous occasions, the most recent being the day-long trek to meet with friends in Brighton, but this time I wanted to do the entire 100 mile route in one go. I knew it was going to be a long hard slog, so I put a lot of thought into the best way to attempt it. I set aside the August bank holiday weekend as the prime target to attempt the route, thinking it would give me several days to choose a good weather window. There was also a lot of back-and-forth when deciding in which direction to do it, and when to start - I had initially thought that starting in Eastbourne would have been a good plan, allowing me to set off in the direction of home, with the knowledge that I didn't need to arrange any transport back, but I would need to commit to a particular night in Eastbourne. However, when I found out that there would be a full moon out Friday/Saturday night that sealed it, I would start from Winchester, but in Dunwich Dynamo style, I would cycle overnight. When it came to it the weather was looking decidedly dicey, so I decided to attempt the ride on the Friday night, effectively cycling all day Saturday, starting at midnight.

In the week leading up to the attempt I built up a Google map, plotting the route, along with major hills and the all important water tap locations. bikedowns.co.uk was an invaluable resource to help me locate the taps, and the pictures gave me a good mental picture of what to look out for when I was approaching them.

Knowing that I'd be cycling from midnight, I had a good 5-6 hours of darkness to navigate and thus needed a good supply of illumination. I loaded my bike with two lights, and three battery packs, which would hopefully be plenty to allow me to have full beam on for the entire time, with a healthy buffer.

To power the disco/rainbow light on the bike frame I packed both of my LiPo batteries into the saddle bag, and with the new code that gave me brightness control I had high hopes that the two batteries would last much longer than they did during the Dunwich Dynamo (I think I only got around 2 hours out of each battery on that ride).

To help my phone stay charged through the entire route I also had a 5v charger in my back, containing many, many amp-hours of capacity - more than enough to keep it fully charged for the whole day.

Apart from batteries, I also took a backpack containing the usual spare tube, cycle tool, bundle of medical supplies, and lots of food. In the end I forgot the pack the sausages, but I did take 10 energy gels, 6 oaty bars, 5 bananas and two packs of Jelly Babies.

The start:
After getting home from work on the Friday, I loaded up with pasta and had a nap, setting my alarm for midnight. I ended up taking about half an hour to get ready, and at 00:30 I set off.
Heading down through Winchester I passed the usual array of late night stragglers, and once through Highcliffe it was into the pitch black darkness of the night...
I saw no-one. With nothing but my thoughts, some occasional singing, and intent staring into the dark to plot my way I peddled, peddled and peddled some more. Up to Cheesefoot Head, down through the remnants of the Boomtown Fair, and on to the first water stop at Lomer Farm.

The first tap, 18km in at Lomer Farm

I continued all the way down to Warnford, the long slog up Old Winchester Hill, and back down the other side through the fields of sleeping cows - at least I think most of them were sleeping, it was very eerie as one occasionally stirred and gazed at me as I cycled past.
As usual, Salt Hill was too much, and the steep rocky gully got the better of me. It started badly with the very muddy flat section which then led me to fall off into a bush as I attempted to power through it. I got halfway up the hill itself before I admitted defeat and took the easier walking option.
Onwards to Butser Hill, by which time a heavy dew had formed on the grass, and made the blast down the rabbit-hole ridden slope more treacherous than usual, not including needing to weave to avoid hitting rabbits running across the path. Over to Queen Elizabeth Country Park and my first pitstop to use the loo, get some calories in me, and fill up my water bottle.
Up and out of QECP, and over the undulating hills to Harting Down, I passed under electricity pylons making an incredible buzzing sound - it must have only been the damp air, but it certainly made me pay attention as I approached.

Harting Down turned out to have more interest in store as I descended down a steep and particularly smooth section of hard-packed clay covered in dew, and my bike stepped out from underneath me... I came down on my right forearm and wrist and slid for a bit before coming to a stop. I lay there fore a moment or two, with pains in my arm, and hoping that nothing was seriously damaged I gingerly got up, to see my bike illuminating the entire path with all the colours of the rainbow only a few metres below me. I soldiered on.

Dawn breaks somewhere between Harting and Cocking

With the sky gradually getting lighter I had another scare trying to avoid a large number of huge nettle bushes encroaching onto the path, and much like when I came off at Harting, my rear wheel stepped out and started to come past me on my right. Fortunately I held it, but it did mean I broadsided the nettles full on, which was unpleasant to say the least!

I was treated to a magnificent sunrise on the approach to Cocking.

This photo doesn't do it any justice at all, it was spectacular.

As I pulled up to the water tap at Cocking, surrounded by the full chorus that dawn brings, it was clear I wasn't going very quickly. I was intentionally saving my legs and not powering up hills as I knew I had many miles to go, so this was fine by me.

Many more km later I approached Amberley. After a short detour to the pub by the river to top up water supplies once more I re-joined the 'Way and faced the hill I knew I couldn't get up. Amberley Mount. And the one after it, the gratuitously placed Rackham Hill(?). Short, steep, and somewhat impossible to get up I relented and walked up as soon as came off as it was impossible to even try and get back on, and I didn't want to use all my energy up before half distance!

On I plodded, and by the time I got to Chanctonbury Ring around 10am the sun was out and the day was beginning to look rather pleasant

Looking back on Chanctonbury Ring

Having managed to miss the water tap at Washington I carried on knowing the next one was at Truleigh Hill YHA, at the top of a huge hill. Passing through Botolphs and over the river Adur, a huge hill imposes itself in ones vision. I had thought this was Truleigh Hill, but it seems to be Beeding Hill that then rolls into Truleigh Hill. From river level it rises some 160m and I was determined to beat it.

The surface was relatively good up this hill and I made it all the way up, with only one brief stop sort out a gear slippage, and was greeted by yet another spectacular view

From the top of Beeding Hill, just before Truleigh Hill

When I cycle I like to do so at a generally leisurely pace so that I can appreciate the views, and this cycle was no exception. Riding 100+ miles with your head down all the time isn't a lot of fun, so the view is my reward.
A quick pitstop for water and a loo break at the YHA and I was back on the bridleway, targetting an early lunch stop at Devils Dyke.

11:45 and the pub wasn't open, so I, like a load of other people, had to wait

Lunch rations, a 9oz burger and chips

I afforded myself an hour off to wait for the put to open and then get food, and by 12:45 I was back on my bike again. At this point I was going into uncharted territory. The last time I cycled any great distance on the 'Downs I was going to Brighton, so this is where I left the trail. Any hills I came across from this point on would be new to me. The profile section of the bikedowns website indicated I was in for a treat: massive hills!

Down, up, and down to Pycombe, and then up again through the golf course I started the trek up to Ditchling Beacon. I was surprised that this wasn't as bad I thought it would be. I have heard stories of Ditchling Beacon from those who have done the London-Brighton ride, but either I was coming at it from a different direction and it wasn't as steep, or I have lots of gears on my mountain bike, or I was just in the zone, I made it up and over without any dramas :)
Down to the A27, and then up and over another big hill to get to Southease where once again I managed to miss the water tap :(

Next up was the rise up to Firle Beacon with the bulk of the height gained up Itford hill, and this was a beast!

The imposing track could be seen curving up the hill from the river crossing

From the river I could see the initial sweep across the hill which looked doable, and I settled in for the long slog. As I approached what would be the point at which I double backed on myself I saw people right at the top and though that surely I wouldn't need to go right to the top... Alas it was true, but I was so determined on this hill and ploughed on through. I managed to make it all the way to the top of Firle Beacon some 5km from the river without stopping (apart from a couple of gates). At this point I was feeling rather pleased with myself for conquering what looked like an unfeasibly steep hill from the bottom. I was definitely helped by the grassy surface, something I would not be so lucky with in the upcoming hills...

Down to Alfriston, and at sea-level once more I knew there were only two more major hills; Windover Hill and then one smaller one about half the height. Not far now.
The signage in Alfriston was terrible. No signs at all that I could find in the village, which meant I was forced to look up the route on my phone. Over the river, and then more confusion as it seemed I should be going along the road for a short section, but the sign pointed along a boggy riverbank. Some more phone checking and I chose to backtrack a bit and take the road. It turned out the field would have been OK, but it didn't look good - probably fine for walkers, but not really for bikes.

Windover Hill

Windover Hill was not nice. It was rocky and rutted, and at parts very steep. I somehow stayed on my bike, helped once again by the easiest gear my bike could offer - it had had good use this far, and would still be needed again.

Down to Jevington, and I was on the look out for the church where I would have my final chance to get a much needed top up for my water bottles. Thankfully this stop was right on the route, and I found it without trouble, and had a quiet moment knowing there would only be on more big hill. I also had half a bag of Jelly Babies :)

Going up what I knew would be the final hill I still hadn't caught sight of Eastbourne at all by this point. Unlike heading to Brighton, which you can see from miles out up on Chanctonbury Ring, Eastboune is completely hidden from view until you clear the last hill and are practically on top of it.
By this point someone had marked the trail with spray painted orange arrows, which meant progress at junctions was nice and quick - I assume some race had been by this way recently.

At 7:06pm I got my first sight of the legendary end of this epic route, surely it's all downhill from here :)

By this point I was beginning to think that it's be dark by the time I made it down to the pier, where I intended to formally end my route! On I pressed, and followed the signs for a little bit longer, but I began to have doubts as to where they were taking me to when I didn't do much turning left to head into Eastbourne. Eventually after a quick check on my phone I abandoned the signs and headed down to the seafront. Upon later inspection, the signs were taking walkers to the cliffs to join the route along the coast, whereas the bike route should have headed straight down sooner.

In the end, I made my own way down :)

Speeding along the smooth tarmac felt wonderful. My body had been shaken and rattled from the final stony, chalky hills and rolling down the road was bliss.
When you go to the beach, you find a spot and take a picture with the local pier right?

Made it!

I spent a few minutes on the beach, and having been on the move for 19 hours I was still remarkably awake.
The final tally was:
Start: 00.28, Finish: 19:26
Distance: 167.6km
Climbing: 2900m
Calories burnt: ~5000ish
Times I nearly fell off: Many
Time I actually fell off: Twice

See the full details on Strava

In the gathering gloom I had hoped that this would be the end of my adventure, but thanks to the man at the station trying to save me £5, it wasn't over yet...
Now, had I been more awake, I would have asked more questions, but the guy at the station ticket office sold me a ticket from Eastbourne > Winchester along the south coast costing about £13, claiming via London would be a lot more expensive. He said I had just missed one train, but the next one would, via a couple of changes in Brighton and Southampton Central, get me back.
Once on the train, I realised that this train combination would in fact be three changes, and would get me in at 00:35. Given my increasingly state of delirium due to lack of sleep I clearly had impressed upon the ticket man that I would be willing to pay any amount to get into my bed faster than this merry jaunt would take.
So, out with the phone, and I tried to sort out an alternate route. There was a train leaving Brighton heading to Clapham Junction approximately 4 minutes after my train was due in. OK, so I'll just buy a ticket from the guard, and then hop across platforms when we arrive. Oh, the guard doesn't have a ticket machine, clearly this is going to be interesting...
I hared it from the train to the ticket machine, and tried to buy a ticket, with a railcard to Winchester. The touchscreen was not cooperating, and put in two "W"s in the destination field and backspace refused to work. Some internal expletives later, I got a ticket, and ran. Thankfully Brighton station was not very big, but large enough to have plenty of barriers for me to aim at, clutching my ticket. With the train about to depart, and my bike stowed in the appropriate area, I was on! Phew.
Next up, trains from Clapham Junction to Winchester, and I'd have 10 minutes to get to the appropriate platform. Easy. No such luck. By Croydon it was clear we were running late, 5 minutes by my reckoning. Getting to Clapham I was poised, ready at the door ready to race up some stairs to wherever platform 9 was... Up, down, and with no train yet there, I had made it! A minute later, and my train pulled up, I parked my bike and I was back on good old South West Trains...

At this point I was now due in Winchester at 22:52, some 1:45 sooner than Southern Trains' ridiculous route would have got me in. It might have cost me a wasted ticket from Brighton to Winchester along the slowest possible route, but it was totally worth it.

Back home by 11pm, a quick shower to remove the layers of accumulated dust and evapourated sweat, and then a soak in a bath... Finished. Sleep. Zzzz.

LED Disco Bike

This year I decided to ride the Dunwich Dynamo, having done it once before in 2012. For those of you not in the know, it is a 186km ride from London Fields in Hackney, out to the Suffolk coastal town/village of Dunwich, done (mostly) overnight. It's a relaxed, friendly affair - definitely not a race, and the light-hearted nature of the event attracts a wide range of people and bikes. Included in this last category is the increasing number of people who choose to illuminate their bike in some way.
When I last rode in the event I saw a guy with fairly lights on this bike, and thought that was pretty cool. In the week leading up to this years event I recalled seeing that guy's bike, and fresh off the back of the Dance Floor project, I decided that I would do something to bike.

First, a word about my bike - unlike most people on the ride, I had a mountain bike. Don't get me wrong, there are always a vast array of bikes on display, from carbon road bikes, recumbents, Bromptons to Eliptigo bikes, but we, in the non-road bike camp, were definitely in the minority.
My bike is about 5 years old, and I'm not over-protective of it, so didn't think twice about the possibly of taping many LEDs to it. None of what I've done is permanent, but once everything is removed it will probably be just as much work to put it all back as the first time I did it.

Here's a sneak preview of what my bike will look like during the day, and at night:

Ingredients:

• 1x 5m reel of WS2812b addressable LEDs 30/m (sometimes marketed as 'Neopixels')
• 1x Arduino (Due in this case, but anything that runs at 5v would do)
• 1x 11.1v 2200maH Lipo battery
• 1x 12>5v 10amp DC/DC converter
• + Wire, Solder, tape

I started with the LEDs: I bought these on eBay some time previously, and hadn't got around to using yet. I had a 5m long strip, where the surface mount LEDs are soldered to a flexible backing, with 30 LEDs per metre.

I ordered them from an eBay seller in China, costing me £24. (I've had overwhelmingly positive experiences with sellers in China / HK / etc, but your mileage may of course vary). Naturally they took a few weeks to arrive, so it was useful that I had these lying around for my last minute project. 

Next, I needed to check they were working, so I brought up a quick Arduino sample sketch from Adafruit's Neopixel library. Knowing that these LEDs are rated at 9W/m, I was wary about running them all from my computers USB port (normally only rated up to 500ma), so I changed the 'strandtest' example sketch to only display a limited number of pixels:

Looks good!

Next I had a think about how I would go about arranging these 150 LEDs around my bike to get the best coverage and also how to go about wiring them - naturally I wanted to get as many as possible onto the bike.

First it made sense to think about where on the bike the Arduino, voltage converter, and the battery/batteries would go - my saddlebag was the obvious place to store the batteries, so I started there. A note about Lipo batteries - they don't particularly like getting damaged, so I was reluctant to expose them to the elements. The saddle bag gave me the option of putting multiple batteries in there, as well as them being easily removable for charging, and I could also wrap them in some padding if I was concerned for their safety. After the battery, it made sense for the voltage converter to be close, as well as the Arduino, so I decided to cable-tie the converter under my saddle bag, and the Arduino would be attached to the frame somewhere in the vicinity. Here is what I came up with:

2.2 Amp Hour Lipo Battery. One of two I have, so both were stashed together in the saddle bag

The 12/24 > 5v 10amp converter (another eBay purchase I had lying around) was cable tied under the saddle bag.

The Arduino, nestled in some bubble wrap, attached with some more cable ties, and also some tape.

Next, the wiring of the LEDs, a nice little puzzle to solve - how to route a single string of LEDs around the bike minimising doubling-back and thus having to use lots of extra wire.

The good news is, that starting at the base of the saddle stem you can go all around both sides of the bike, covering all the major frame pieces, as well as the rear mudguard with minimal doubling back (on the front-forks only) ! Here's a diagram to explain the ordering, starting from the red dot by the saddle:

• I cut the reel of LEDs into appropriate length strips to fit each frame section, with one eye on the total number of LEDs available so as to share them out evenly. The strips cut easily with a pair of scissors, so this bit was a doddle.
• I taped each of these sections of LEDs to the appropriate parts of the frame. I used regular selotape in a few places to make sure they would stay in place, but I wasn't too concerned about using an excessive amount because I was planning on covering everything in a much wider clear tape at the end in order to provide some amount of protection against dirt and moisture
• I soldered the data cable from the end of one section to the beginning of the next according to the diagram above, having made sure that the LEDs were correctly oriented when they were first attached (they have an IN and an OUT) - I used white wire for this.
• Finally I soldered the 5v and ground wires up with red and black wire respectively. In order to avoid a large voltage drop at the very end of the string of LEDs I joined a number of sections from both sides of the bike together at junctions where they all coincided, such as at the crank and up by the handlebars.

The forks were the only place where extra wire needed to be used because each legs of the fork is effectively a dead end - I had to bring the data cable back up on each side

Here you can see that the data cable (white) goes down the bottom tube and heads towards the back wheel, but I've joined all 3 (in fact 6) pairs of 0v/5v cables together to even the voltage

I tried to be as neat as possible, using heat-shrink tubing everywhere (yellow)

It was a bit busy around the seat post with power from the battery coming down to the Arduino as well.

The last bit of wiring was to take a switch up to the handlebars so that I could turn the lights on and off, or more importantly, change the pattern that was on display. I had a two way, centre off, momentary switch lying around, so I used that. When it came to it I only used one side of the switch, which simply toggled through the different visualisations with each press

Handily, my main bike like battery was velcro'ed on here, so it provided a convenient way to attach it in an accessible place

Finally, all that remained was the firmware for the Arduino!

I had spent two evenings on the project by this point, so there wasn't a lot of time to throw the code together, but the heavy lifting was done by the Adafruit library, so when it came to it the test code took all of a couple of minutes to get going.

In order to display some more interesting bike shaped patterns I had in my head I needed to work out the position of each LED and it was this that ended up taking most of the rest of the second day of construction - I fancied having a strobing effect running from front to back, so I wrestled with arrays and offsets of each strip for a good while before things came out looking right.

I have put the code up on github for anyone else that fancies taking it and either running it as is, or extending it. The code is originally based off the 'strandtest' sketch in Adafruit's Neopixel library.

In the end I had a number of visualisations I could select between:

1. Off - useful during the daylight hours
2. Road Mode - the front forks were white, the rear mudguard all red
3. Rainbow 1 - The full colour wheel was visible across the entire bike
4. Rainbow 2 - A moving window of the colour wheel was visible, which caused the bike to have a general hue of e.g. green, before seamlessly drifting into red, blue and back around again.
5. Strobe - Lights flashed from front to back
6. Disco Mode - All LEDs were one of the combinations of Red/Green/Blue excluding black and white, giving us 6 really bright colours.

I did a few back of the envelope calculations based on what my bench power supply said the current draw was for each of these options, and it was clear that Disco Mode was the most battery hungry (every pixel was full on for at least one of R/G/B). All said, I thought maybe I'd be able to get a couple of hours out of each of my two batteries.

In the end I think it was probably closer to 3 hours total, but I think I may have used the more power hungry ones for longer than intended.

Improvements to be made:

1. Provide a mechanism to dim the LEDs. They don't need to be on full brightness all the time, which would help extend battery life considerably
2. Make the switch work a bit better. It seems unresponsive at times, which could be a software problem, or it might be a break in the wire somewhere!

Overall it was a big success and I got a lot of complements from other riders, and it made me happy to hear that it cheered people up during the small hours of the night. The batteries lasted well enough, but power conservation will definitely help for next time.