With the sun shining again I couldn’t resist getting my Mountain Bike out this morning.  My plan was for a gentle ride on the road to Henfield where I would pick up the Downs Link to Shoreham and jump on train home.  My time to Henfield is a reasonable indicator of my performance – alas today I missed the hour mark for the 13.5 miles by 5 minutes. But things picked up on Downs Link and by the time I hit the South Downs Way crossing I couldn’t resist hitting the Downs and headed up and east.

Looking up towards Truleigh Hill from the A283

I almost made the climb without stopping but lost my momentum hitting a flint just as I was sandwiched between someone pushing their bike up and someone cycling down.   I got restarted and all was good.  I then followed the SDW almost to Devil’s Dyke before cutting down to Hove and cycling along the seafront and then up a busy West Street and Queen’s Road to Brighton Station. I finshed off with a couple of circuits around Seven Dials while waiting for a train.  All in all I clocked up 35.8 miles at an average speed of 10.3 mph, climbing c 2,500 ft – so still someway to go very pleasing progress.