We headed out for another lap of the Isle of Purbeck to explore some new bridleways and connect with others. Up on to the Ridgeway or Knowle Hill above Church Knowle, west past Grange Arch folly then a steep drop to the road. Near Steeple campsite a bridleway rose south into the woods but soon got quite steep, stony and overgrown, much to the Mrs’ chagrin whose Lapierre HT is half her weight. Not all bridleways are ridel-ways, as I learned in Snowdonia the other week.
We emerged onto the downs close to some fluttering red flags bounding the army range and where the slow pick up on my old iPhone’s OS Map App led me astray again. The location shown was close but clearly wrong. Is it my SIM-free phone (no 4G), the app, the presence of a nearby army camp (as it had been in Dartmoor), or the darned Russians? I think it’s probably the 4G. Luckily the Mrs’ iPhone (with 4G) worked and we followed a nice wheatside descent behind Kimmeridge Bay.
Being a weekend the range walks should have been open but they weren’t. It may have explained why the Purbeck trails were so busy with walkers, including lots of school-age kids with full packs, perhaps doing some outdoor challenge. How retro – good for them! We’d hoped to ride steeply up to Swyre Hill, Purbeck’s highest point (203m) for the great sweeping traverse down behind Encombe House to Kingston, but it looked too busy this sunny Sunday.
So we took a little used link I found down in the Corfe river valley a couple of years ago via the Orchard farms. As before, it got quite mucky and overgrown but I kept that from the Mrs and she hacked her way through without protest. Next, was a nice climb up through Kingston Woods, and down to Chapmans Pool for a seaside lunch (above, below). The crawl back out to Renscombe was of course no problem for our e-bikes.
Back on the Purbeck downs we picked up the Priests Way trail east to Langton, skimmed north around the back of Swanage then took new-to-us C roads along the base of Nine Barrows Down back to Corfe and the usual way home over Stonehill Down, with a tea break at East Creech Tea Rooms.
My Tero X5 is stuck in Trail or higher mode until I take it to the menders, so I’m not short of power unless I turn it right off. So I ended the day down to 35% after only 45kms, while admittedly less tired than I should be considering the near 1000m of elevation gain. All this obsessive switching down to Eco and Standby must pay off for range after all.
With more trails ticked off in Purbeck, soon it’ll be time to put together the ultimate see-it-all Purbeck Cycle Explorer Loop.
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