Bike Route: Poole to Dorchester 30mi 1000ft climb. Mile 3: Sandbanks Ferry, 2 minutes across estuary.
Accommodation: Little Drey, Relaxing and Charming Bedroom Home from Home (Airbnb); host Claire. One-bedroom guest suite with bath, microwave, refrigerator. No washer or range.
Dinner: The King and Thai Restaurant. We went all-out and ordered the three-course set menu for two, with a platter of assorted starters, four (!) main dishes, and handmade mango sorbet. The owners/chefs are emigrants from Thailand, and the food was made with fresh local ingredients and was simply wonderful.
This trip is turning into an eating adventure. I'm sure we'll settle down eventually, but our hosts keep recommending incredible restaurants, and we keep getting hungry, and... Oh, well. We only live once.
Geoff and Gill served a Continental breakfast with cereal, fruit, croissants, and coffee. We enjoyed talking with them before gathering our bikes from the garage and heading back to the road.
We started straight downhill to the Sandbanks Ferry, which was loading as we arrived and for 1 pound each saved us a 25-mile ride on the A-road around the estuary. We had such an easy day, with basically no climbs at all. The first 10 miles were on a gravel/mud/dirt track through National Trust lands, parks, farms, and forests. This was the first bank holiday Monday of the spring, and people were out everywhere hiking, biking, walking dogs, enjoying the warm weather and day off work.
We were making good time and the light breakfast was wearing off, so about noon we pulled into a pub near the bike route and shared a duck salad and a plate of bread, olives, tomatoes, and cheese. We were joined by a young couple from Poole who were also biking, heading back home after a three-day weekend.
By just after 15:00, we were checking into our studio apartment in Dorchester, where we would stay for two nights and get a day of rest. After showers, we walked the few blocks into town, wandered around some old buildings, bought a few groceries, window shopped on the High Street, and then ducked into the Thai restaurant recommended by our host. Perfect end to the day.
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| Our gravel/sand/mud trail through the woods... |
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| ...eventually turned into a mud cow path through farm fields. But all was good: we stayed upright and our bikes made it through the muck just fine. |
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| About halfway through the forest, we caught up with a group protesting a company that had recently had a bad oil spill in the area. The banging drums and pink hazmat suits, plus signs and chanting, caught our attention. One of the leaders stayed behind to tell us what was going on. |
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| We thought this farmhouse looked like a perfect fixer-upper. |
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| Fields of rape in full bloom. |
