The weather was glorious for our trip to the Isle of Wight as Vanessa, Mick, Graham, MarkS, MarkW, Ray, Brian and I met up at the ferry terminal in Southampton for the 10:00 sailing to East Cowes. As usual the bikes boarded first, so we were first in the queue for the best seats and the coffees. This time we were taking a different route to the south coast, heading out on the Round the Island cycle route on the east side of the River Medina as far as Wootton Creek before taking a shortcut cross-country to Ventnor. This is a much hillier route than the usual one using the Red Squirrel Trail.

 

Graham's bike had been making a clicking sound for the last couple of trips and riding behind him, I could see that his rear wheel was slightly buckled. We were going to have a look at it at the lunch stop but it got worse so we stopped to fix it - about 70% of the spokes had worked loose, so I tightened up the worst ones, some required 2-3 turns. Entering Ventnor, we followed the Zig Zag Road down into Ventnor and stopped at the Winter Gardens for lunch sitting at benches overlooking the sea under the hot sun. The coffees/beers came quite quickly and while we waited for the food I adjusted the spokes on Graham's wheel and improved the rim out of true. The food was great when it arrived.

 

Leaving, we continued down to the beachfront and started the climb back up to the Undercliff Road - 15% average with 25% for about 20m around two hairpin bends. We followed the Undercliff Road past the Ventnor Botanic Gardens and through St Lawrence to Niton. This used to be the main road, but the landslip a number of years ago means that there is section for pedestrians and cycles only, making it lovely and quiet. At Niton Undercliff, we started climbing again over the cliffs and through Bierley then taking the back roads to Godshill. On a downhill section, I ran over something that caused a blowout in the front tyre. There was a convenient gate to a field open so I changed the tube there - a pinch flat. As I was about to put the wheel back on, a fire engine drove across the field to our gate so we had to move the bikes to let him out back onto the road.

 

At Godshill we picked up the Red Squirrel Trail for the run into Newport and then along the west side of the River Medina to West Cowes. We pushed on a bit as it looked tight for time for our preferred ferry back. The replacement passenger ferry across the river to East Cowes [the chain ferry was out of action yet again]  was packed with bikes and people but we got to the main ferry terminal with a few minutes to spare for the ferry back to Southampton.  A good day's ride in lovely sunny weather and light winds with the hillier route being more scenic - 37 miles and 674m ascent [more than twice the ascent that the usual Red Squirrel trail route]