Day 1: 52 miles to Crawley

 Why oh why would I pick the longest ride for our first day? Now because it is over it doesn’t seem so bad but there were some evil hills and one huge lovely sweeping downhill. We managed to get out of Our friends home by about 7 and made excellent progress to the center of London. We stopped in Battersea for a coffee and croissant, so far so good. The day was sunny and warm the hills fairly gentle. Further out in that part of South London ghat is marked on my mental map with “here be dragons” the hills became longer and the sun a little warmer. Eventually we did push the bikes up to Farthing down and sat on the lovely grassland for our packed lunch. Rolling ups and downs till we hit the 30 mph downhill stretch. From there a long slog through urban sprawl brought us the the holiday inn where we now watch the gentle rain fall before we begin day 2 which should be a much shorter ride. 





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