Hampshire Test Valley Roads

A 600 km loop

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Why this ride

Scenery first, traffic last, with checkpoints that make sense on a bike. Out of Royal Tunbridge Wells and back again: 600 km, roughly 12 h 30 in the saddle. It goes by way of near Chartham, Scenic stretch near Stansted Mountfitchet and Towcester. in Silver End is the high point. Long stretches are under trees.

Roadbook

1. Fuel stop near Royal Tunbridge Wells fuel

   Tunbridge Wells owes its existence to a rusty spring. In 1606 a young nobleman, Lord North, was resting in the woods here and noticed a pool with an orange scum; he tried the water, felt better and told the world. Within a few decades the court was coming down from London to drink it, and the Pantiles, a raised, colonnaded walk with trees along it, became the place to be seen taking the waters. The town was granted its Royal prefix in 1909 by Edward VII, and has been the butt of letters to the editor ever since, usually signed by someone disgusted.

   None of that matters much on a motorbike, but the setting does. Tunbridge Wells sits on the High Weald, an old ridge-and-valley country of sandstone, ancient woodland and hedges so thick the lanes run in tunnels. Right on the edge of town at Rusthall is Toad Rock, a lump of weathered sandstone that does look like a toad if you are generous, and there are many more outcrops in the woods round about. The riding south and east is some of the best in the southeast: narrow, hump-backed B-roads and unclassified lanes with blind crests and wet leaves for six months of the year. North is Penshurst and the Medway valley, west is Ashdown Forest and the road to Sussex.

   As a stop on the way back to London this is a place for sensible things. It is a proper town of nearly seventy thousand, with every fuel brand, plenty of cafés in the old Pantiles and along the high street, and public toilets by the common. If you have been out in the lanes since morning, it is a gentler re-entry than going straight onto the A21. Traffic into the town on a Friday evening is slow, so leave before four or accept the queue.

   Remember that most of the lanes around here are signed for far lower speeds than a bike wants to travel, and farm vehicles, horses and cyclists use them in numbers. Assume there is a tractor round every bend, because eventually there is.

2. Food stop near Chartham food
3. High point in Silver End pass

   This is where the road stops climbing.

4. Scenic stretch near Stansted Mountfitchet scenic

   Most people know Stansted as an airport, but the village of Stansted Mountfitchet, just to the west of the runways, is much older and more interesting. Its brick tower windmill, built in the late eighteenth century, is one of the best-preserved in Essex, and on the hill above the village, a Norman motte-and-bailey castle has been reconstructed with wooden palisades and buildings, giving a vivid impression of what a castle looked like soon after the Conquest.

   The countryside around Stansted is classic north Essex: gently rolling farmland, hedgerows, small woods and villages with timber-framed houses, thatched cottages and flint churches. Saffron Walden, a few miles to the north, is a beautiful old market town, named for the saffron crocus once grown in the area, with a turf maze on the common and the great Jacobean house of Audley End nearby.

   The riding is pleasant and relaxed. The B-roads and lanes wind through the villages and across the farmland, with gentle hills, bends and good views. Surfaces vary, and some lanes are narrow. Traffic can be heavy around the airport and on the M11, but the minor roads are quiet. Watch for farm traffic, especially at harvest time.

   Fuel and food are available in Stansted Mountfitchet and the surrounding towns. As a start and finish, it is convenient, with easy access to the M11 and the airport. The planes roaring overhead are a reminder of the modern world, but the lanes around the village feel timeless.

5. Near Towcester, on the way back swim

   Silverstone is six kilometres away, and on Grand Prix weekend you will know it: the roads around Towcester clog with traffic, the sky fills with helicopters and the whole district hums with engines. On other days, this is quiet south Northamptonshire, a landscape of rolling fields, stone villages and woods, with the old Roman road of Watling Street running straight through Towcester.

   The town was the Roman settlement of Lactodorum, a staging post on Watling Street, and later a coaching town, with old inns along its main street. Charles Dickens stayed at one of them and wrote it into The Pickwick Papers. Easton Neston, a grand house designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, stands in parkland on the edge of the town.

   East of Towcester, the Grand Union Canal passes through Stoke Bruerne, a canal village with a museum, a flight of locks and the southern portal of the Blisworth tunnel, one of the longest navigable canal tunnels in Britain. It is a lovely spot for a drink by the water, watching narrowboats work through the locks.

   For a swim, there is little here. The canal is not for bathing, and the rivers are small. The honest answer is a pool in Towcester or Northampton.

   The riding around Towcester is good, with lanes winding over the hills and through the villages, and the A43 and A5 offering faster routes. Traffic is heavy on race days and on summer weekends. Towcester covers fuel. On a quiet evening, though, make the short hop to Stoke Bruerne instead and sit by the top lock, where the only engines are narrowboat diesels chugging at walking pace.

6. Photo stop near Blewbury photo

   Blewbury is a village of thatched cottages, chalk streams and old cob walls at the foot of the Berkshire Downs, south of Didcot. It has the slightly enchanted feel of a place that has been left alone, and it is no surprise that Kenneth Grahame chose to live here in the years after he wrote The Wind in the Willows. Wander the lanes and you could easily imagine Ratty and Mole somewhere among the willows by the stream.

   Above the village, the downs rise in long, smooth curves of grass and arable, crossed by the Ridgeway, an ancient track used for thousands of years, said to be one of the oldest roads in Britain. Racehorses train on the gallops of the downs, and on an early morning you may see strings of them cantering along the ridges. The views from the top stretch over the Thames valley towards the Chilterns.

   For riders, the roads around Blewbury are a delight. The A417 runs along the foot of the downs through a string of pretty villages, while the minor roads climb onto the downs with long, open views and fast, flowing curves. Surfaces vary, and some lanes are very narrow, with high banks and blind bends. Watch for horses, cyclists and farm traffic.

   As a start and finish, Blewbury is peaceful, though services are limited in the village itself. Fuel and food are available in Didcot and Wantage nearby. For a photo, the downs above the village offer sweeping views, especially in the early morning or late evening light.

7. Near Woodford Green finish

   On fine weekends half the bikers of north-east London seem to end up at the same tea hut in the middle of Epping Forest, at High Beach, drinking from paper cups among the hornbeams. This finish lies just south of the forest's tip, between Walthamstow, Highams Park and Woodford Green, and the forest is the last green thing you see before the city closes around you again.

   Epping Forest is an ancient royal hunting ground, saved from enclosure in the nineteenth century and run ever since by the City of London. Its pollarded hornbeams and beeches, cut for firewood for centuries, have grown into strange, many-armed shapes, and in autumn the colours are wonderful. At Chingford, Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge is a timber-framed Tudor building from which the court once watched the chase.

   Woodford Green has a statue of Winston Churchill, who was the local MP for decades. Walthamstow, to the south-west, was the birthplace of William Morris, the designer, poet and socialist, and his childhood home is now a gallery of his work. The Walthamstow Wetlands, a series of old reservoirs turned nature reserve, is full of herons, cormorants and wildfowl, a surprising wilderness in the middle of the city.

   Coming back from the Weald or the Test Valley, the M25 and M11 deliver you to the edge of the forest, and the A104 runs through it towards Woodford. The forest roads are lovely but heavily policed, with speed limits and cameras. Watch for deer, cyclists and horses.

   Fuel is easy on the main roads around Woodford. And if you still have energy, the detour to High Beach is short: one last tea among the trees with a hundred other riders comparing notes on the day.

8. Back to Hampshire Test finish

   You are near Speldhurst, a quiet Kent village a couple of kilometres north-west of Tunbridge Wells, with Rusthall and its sandstone outcrops just to the south. The oast houses with their white cowls, built to dry the hops, are still scattered across the fields, though most are now houses.

   Speldhurst church is known for its stained glass, much of it by Edward Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelite artist, and in the village there is an old pub that claims a very long history. It is a good example of what the area does well: small, local, a little overlooked. Rusthall's Toad Rock, a mushroom-shaped block of sandstone shaped by wind and rain, is close by, and the sandstone crops out all over these woods, giving the lanes a sunken, rocky character that looks like Devon.

   The riding is enjoyable but slow. Around Speldhurst the lanes are narrow and shaded, the surface is patchy and in winter it can be greasy with mud and fallen leaves, so give them your attention. Farm tractors, delivery vans and horses all share these roads. The route north toward Penshurst and Leigh is lovely in spring when the bluebells are out, and to the south are the ridges of Eridge and the long, quiet roads toward Sussex. Most of the character comes from being slightly lost.

   For practical needs, Speldhurst is too small to count on a petrol station, though the village has a pub and a church. Tunbridge Wells, about six kilometres away, has everything. That makes this a reasonable place to be on a long return: you are quiet, close to supplies and still in good riding country. Take the last miles gently and keep a good lookout for cyclists, and you will arrive home having enjoyed it.

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