Brighton: a power trip up to the Downs

Ahead of Sunday’s London to Brighton bike ride, Tim Lott tries the route... with a little help
Wheels of fortune: cyclists tackle the steepest part of the route at Ditchling
Alamy
Tim Lott17 June 2016

I am an enthusiastic cyclist. However, many of my cycling contemporaries would claim that I am not a cyclist at all but a pretender, a fake and a fraud.

In the puritanical, Lycra-led world of modern urban cycling, people such as me are heretics — because we use powered bikes, cycles fitted with a motor and a battery. We are not “connected with nature” sufficiently.

Yet you still have to pedal, and the bikes still keep you fit. Power bikes simply mean ordinary cycling with the unpleasant bits taken out — perfect for someone on the wrong side of 60. I keep the power off or very low most of the time unless I’m struggling up a hill, when it is a godsend. This means you’re inclined to travel further and more often than you would with a “natural” bike.

I would never have dreamed of going on Sunday’s annual London to Brighton bike ride, organised by the British Heart Foundation. A five-hour stretch with some daunting hills, particularly the 248m Ditchling Beacon (the “Green Monster”) towards the end of the ride, I would have run a mile — which would have been infinitely preferable to cycling 54 of them.

But my wife and I decided to try the route, independently, on two of the latest models of e-bike. One, the Sparta M8i Stepthrough, a more powerful cousin of my own Sparta Koga, is a heavy, chunky machine, albeit not unattractive with its sit-up-and-beg handlebars and sky-blue frame. The other was a great deal more discreet, in fact barely noticeable as an electric bike — the only give-away being a slightly plumped-up front strut and a row of tiny blue lights on the crossbar. The Coboc Rome is a beauty — hardly distinguishable from an ordinary cycle, in weight or appearance, with no gears or power levels, just a button that you switch on or off according to need (and it’s so light you don’t need it much). If it’s switched on, the rest is done automatically.

We set off from Clapham Common, the starting point for the official London-to-Brighton route. The clear blue sky offered no threat — unlike the endless series of HGVs that thundered past us as we made our way to the southern edge of London. I was feeling rough — it’s not a good idea to have a few beers the night before a 54-mile ride — but after nine miles, during which I’d hardly used the electrics on the Coboc, I persuaded my wife to stop for an ice cream at a café by a duck pond in Carshalton.

Refreshed, we had to negotiate our first gradient, Park Hill. Lacking gears, the slick, modern Coboc seemed to have more trouble getting up the gradient than the old-school Sparta. I was puffing while my wife cruised past.

Fun on track: struggling uphill in costume
Jordan Mansfield/Getty Images

We carried on for about another 15 miles before we stopped at the Inn on the Pond pub in Nutfield for lunch. I took one mouthful of a Stilton and mushroom pie and was violently ill (my hangover, rather than the pie). Undeterred, we set off once more. By this point, my wife, who loved the Coboc, had taken it for her own. But our troubles were not over, as the thunder in the distance suggested. Five minutes on the road and we were subjected to a hammering from the heavens, with machine gun thuds of hailstones whacking me in the face.

I hid under a tree, waiting for the lightning to finish me off while my wife went cycling merrily on (she quite enjoys this kind of suffering, which she believes is good for her). I discovered that my waterproofs were not up to this kind of storm — and my wife, ever the optimist, wasn’t wearing any. Eventually we found a pub — the Dog and Duck at Outwood in leafy Surrey — and did our best to dry off under the electric hand driers.

Sodden but refreshed by a Mars bar and a pot of tea, we set off 45 minutes later on the route for Brighton again, the rain still coming but with less intensity. Now we were in the heart of the countryside. I felt like I was in one of those Japanese Studio Ghibli movies — all billowing, vast cloudscapes, cobalt skies and glistening emerald fields. We cruised down Rookery Hill, into Smallfield and then to Burstow Scout Hut — roughly tracing the route of the M23 to the halfway mark near Gatwick. From there we rode through the pretty villages of Ardingly and Lindfield — and slightly less picturesque Haywards Heath — before the final push up to the top of the South Downs.

The Inn on the Pond pub at Nutfield
Jason Dodd Photography

I was using the power on the Sparta more often than the Coboc, despite its gears, and it was running low already — and there was no way I was going to lug it up Ditchling Beacon with a flat battery.

Just as the Beacon hove in to view — and it really was green and monstrous — my power gauge was running at five per cent. Too little, I knew, to get me up even on the easiest gear, so we stopped at a cake shop in Ditchling. This historic village, settled since Saxon times, was the subject of the 2007 Storyville documentary A Very English Village. While stuffing our faces, the kind owner of the cake shop brought out an extension lead so that we could plug our bikes in for a re-charge (although my wife didn’t need to — after nearly 50 miles, she still had 40 per cent charge on the Coboc).

Three cakes and half an hour later, I’d topped up the battery to 14 per cent — just enough for the 20-minute ride up the sharp ridge of the South Downs to the Beacon, and to the gorgeous views — which revealed the South Downs National Park spread out for miles like a verdant tapestry, the rolling chalk hills below in full spring livery — at the top. From there it was only a few miles back down to Brighton, from where we were taking the bikes home on the train.

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I wouldn’t do it again and I’d never do it on a manual bike with 27,000 witnesses to my lack of fitness. Cycling for five hours — even with a little bit of help — is not for those with a faint heart. Or, more to the point, a flat battery.

Details: London to Brighton

Bikes were hired from Just e Bikes, 318 Portobello Road, W11 (justebikes.co.uk). The Sparta Stepthrough costs £1,889 plus battery (£339-£699), the Coboc Rome costs £2,999.

Southern trains run from Victoria to Brighton and Thameslink between St Pancras, Blackfriars and Brighton (08457 484950; nationalrail.co.uk).

The BHF London to Brighton ride takes place on Sunday, with an off-road ride on September 24 (bhf.org.uk). Alternative charity rides include one on September 11 (londonbrightoncycle.co.uk).

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