Waking up with the sun at 5am isn't something I'm used to but I wish I did more often, especially when there's a full 360 view of the ocean. You’ll be glad to hear we didn't wake up surrounded by cows, they had ambled on to another location luckily and considering the constant fear of being trampled in my sleep, I slept incredibly. It was chilly in the morning and the grass was covered in a fine dew, softly evaporating as the sun rose; the keeno runners and walkers began emerging at 5:30. In order to not look like weirdos camping out in a bush, (we rather think of ourselves as “cool bike packers”) we decided it was probably best to pack up the bikes and just start riding. After munching on a Belvita, we headed off at 6am, don’t think i've ever been up this early for a ride or will ever be again! Our second location was at Culver Down in Bembridge, our route involved a fair amount of off-road climbs to get there and after many sketchy chalk descents, some bodging of broken bags and a pastry stop (very necessary) we'd arrived. However, being the speedy queens that we are, we got there in only 2hrs so ended up extending our route another 2-3hrs along the infamous Red-squirrel trail and through the IoW Garlic farms. Before heading to the beach Kara popped into the coop to pick up “the essentials”: water, snacks and... a whole quiche, alright okay who's carrying that the last stretch then!?
I unwillingly strapped the quiche to my bag. The beach we were heading to was only accessible by boat or by foot, meaning less people, screaming children and more sleeping opportunities, win-win! We had our own private beach for the whole afternoon, using the ocean as our shower and a way to wash our cycling kit. Yes, we only brought one set of kit for 3 days, why?... simply less to carry, it's all well and good having a light bike but if you're carrying unnecessary kit, those bike gains are useless! At sunset we rode up to Culver down memorial to eat dinner (the hefty quiche) and set up camp for the night. Unfortunately, It was the smaller more insignificant animals on this trip that caused the biggest problems rather than the larger scarier ones. The fun began just as it started to get dark, we were getting cosy in the perfectly sheltered stargazing spot when the first mosquitos came out to play.. It got to 11pm and we had battened down the hatches, shutting ourselves in the bivvy bags hoping the mosquitos would ease as it got cooler, oh how we were wrong. Where we had picked a sheltered spot there was no breeze and were in a pocket of humid air, the perfect mosquito breeding ground and we were their food source for the night. Now the logical decision would be to move spots, but in our weary sunburnt states we decided to stick it out and attempt to ignore the high pitched buzzing by our ears, bad plan. We ended up lying in constant fear of being bitten, and as it got more humid it caused us to be overwhelmingly uncomfy shut inside the bivvy bags, but darent risk opening the hatch and letting in the mozzies! It's safe to say I didn't sleep at all. Getting up at 4am to watch sunrise was easy this time, we escaped the feeding frenzy and headed back up the hill to be greeted by a cloudy sky, ‘gutted’ doesn't even cover our emotions at this point. As the rain began we changed our ferry crossing to 8am and dragged ourselves back the last 1hr ride to the ferry port for a soggy crossing home. Although a sad ending to our trip ,it was definitely an adventure which has me craving more, i'm officially hooked. Now 6 months on having mostly recovered from the mosquito PTSD we have planned a few trips for next summer (hopefully some abroad) so bring on more bike packing adventures :) Thanks for reading Amy :) x
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