Bike Route: Shepperton toChawton 42mi 2100ft climb
Accommodation: The Garden House (Airbnb); hosts Markand Kate. Double bedroom with king bed, private bath, large drawing room with open fireplace, wifi. Breakfast in dining room, in the old part of the cottage once owned by Jane Austen's brother.
Dinner: Greyfriar Pub. Traditional British pub food with a modern twist, natural local ingredients. I had roasted pepper hummus and a ratatouille tart, Ken had BBQ ribs, chips (fries), and roasted peppers. Excellent.
We could not have had a more quintessentially English day. The weather started out cool and drizzly and gray. As we expected, much of our riding the first part of the day was beside (sometimes on) A- and B-roads, which are chaotic highways with tangled intersections. We quickly fell back into the pattern of following RWGPS and Wahoo guidance through it all.
Coming up through the edge of a forest near Ockham, we saw a handwritten sign advertising Britain's Best Butties! Well, who could resist. We pulled into the parking lot and placed our order for one to share.
Back on the road, we began to lose a little of the London suburb road wrangle, and started to wind our way through open fields, small villages, hamlets, and parklands.
We had tickets to the Jane Austen Museum in her former home in Chawton at 15:40. Although the biking went well, it also went slowly, and we missed that deadline. We also had reservations at the Greyfriar Pub across the street from her house at 18:00. That deadline we made--just barely.
Our accommodation in the gardener's cottage at the top of the farm on the edge of town was perfect. Mark answered the door and helped us store our bikes in their open garage. We quickly cleaned up a little and ran back down the hill to the pub, where we had an excellent dinner.
On our way back to the cottage, we walked around the outside of the house where Jane Austen spent the last six years of her life and wrote her novels, across the street from the pub. We strolled down the road past Chawton House and Home Farm, and around the church just beyond the house.
As we came in the door back at the cottage, Mark again met us and chatted for a few minutes. We found out that he had sold advertising for a newspaper in London, Kate had just returned from skiing in France, and they had four grown children. We shared stories of our children and grandchildren, and petted the dogs.
After warm showers, we crawled into our feather bed in our quiet room with its view over the village and its set of Jane Austen novels on the dresser. We felt very happy and safe and steeped in history.
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Yes, the Bacon Buttie is exactly what its name suggests. No, we don't need to have another one. But we could not pass up a local specialty on the side of the trail.
 | There will be lots of steep hills on this tour of England.
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| No comment needed. |
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| At least half of our route took us through parks and forests with stunning views. |
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| Ken can't seem to stop himself from petting the animals. This little guy was wandering the fence line crying for his mother--who was calmly chewing grass just a hundred feet away. |
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| Thatched roofs often have animals perched atop them. The animals are actually finials made of straw. We spotted this one on the edge of Chawton as we came into the village. |
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| The Greyfriar Pub was a short walk down the hill from our cottage. |
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| We missed our reservations at the Jane Austen Museum, but we were able to get a view of the garden. |
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| The Jane Austen Museum is across the road from the Greyfriar Pub. |
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| Jane Austen's mother and sister are buried in the cemetery behind this little church at the edge of the Home Farm. |
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| The Gardener's House, where we stayed, has had only two owners since Jane Austen's brother owned it. Our hosts built the addition on the right, and the former owners built the one on the left. Our room was on the second story on the left. We ate breakfast in the dining room at the back of the house, in the original part of the cottage. The surrounding gardens and stone walls are exactly as they were when the Austens lived in the village. |
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| A field of daffodils behind the Chawton Home Farm. |
