With the World Naked Bike Ride out of the way and a ferry reservation to show up for, we made the 80 km haul back from Brighton to Portsmouth. We were still quite full of food from last night's delicious vegetarian birthday potluck, but nevertheless managed to work through a bit more of the chickpea salad and roll out along the coast on our bikes. Less pressed for time than we were during our previous rush into Brighton for WNBR, we opted to follow the South Coast Cycle Route, which avoids the direct but less-than-scenic A259 and A27 in favour of smaller roads closer to the coast. It was a good deal nicer, especially with the occasional slight tailwind sweeping in off the water!
We made another stop by the tea house at the pick-your-own farm along the way, where we surprised ourselves by each shoving a full Ploughman's Lunch complete with Victorian Sponge Cake and tea down our respective throats. The lunch was essentially a collection of food on a plate - bread, mature cheddar, ham, chutney, salad, slaw, and a pair of delectably pickled onions. There is more than a grain of truth to the assertion that we're eating our way through Europe - but it's all justified when your energy requirements for the day top 5000 kilocalories. (We're not actually sure what the total would be, although this seems reasonable for 8 hours of moderately intense cardiovascular exercise. In any event, we've been eating about this much daily with no adverse health effects. Anyone want to do the calculations for us?)
After that, we continued on through a succession of towns until shortly out of Portsmouth, where we were again forced onto the major highway for a couple of exits. This is incomparably more harrowing than the relative luxury of Danish bike paths, particularly when you're being passed by transport trucks that could crush you without stopping. We worked our way through that part to reach the final bike paths into Portsmouth, whereupon we promptly downed our last official pints of pub-poured ale before grabbing some snacks and cider for the ferry.
The ferry station itself was packed, and we were shunted off to the side with a group of four cyclists who were heading over to Bretagne for a quick three-day bike trip. We shared some tales from our travels so far, thus adding to the already considerable number of people who think we're absolutely crazy for doing this...but it is refreshing to talk to cyclists about these things; there's a sort of informal kinship that develops around the trials and tribulations of sharing roads with angry motorists and inclement weather of all descriptions and signs of questionable navigational utility. And why not? Although cycling continues to become more popular as we inch away from the automobile age, we're still considered inferior to cars; in many countries, dedicated cycling roads are scarce, so that the decision to bike is at least partly a conscious undertaking of not inconsiderable personal risk.
Óh, we also uploaded a video of our daily stretching: here it is.