Great winter ride near Selbourne

The picture below, taken of All Saints Church in Upper Farringdon by David Pack of Hampshire Cam, is here because it was a really grey, cold afternoon for taking photographs so the camera stayed in the bag - but a great cycle ride nonetheless.

I drove down the A31 to Chawton (near Alton), then parked the car at Upper Farringdon, which is a quiet, unspoilt village with some notable old buildings, this church, and The Rose and Crown pub - four streets, not much else - lucky the car isn't any bigger or I'd have found it difficult to park. I picked up a ride listed by Nick Cotton that takes in the Meon Valley and Petersfield, but it was going to be too long so it was unceremoniously cut to just 16 miles. The barometer read 961 when I left the car, and the sky was full of heavy rainclouds. Fortunately the wind was on my back as I followed the little road down to Selbourne. This village was the home of Gilbert White (1720 - 1793), the famous natural historian and some say Britain's first ecologist. His house and gardens are open to the public now, along with a rather good tearoom, which I summoned up the willpower to ride past...

From Selbourne, the route took me past Goleigh Farm, Church Farm (and its lovely manor house), Hawkley, Vann Farm, Newton Valence, and Newton Common, before turning right for Pies Farm and Lower Farringdon. Stopped for a brew at 3pm just off the road behind a high bank with coppiced beech trees creaking in the wind. I pegged out the tarpaulin this time to keep the rain off me, but it stopped before I got moving again. The landscape here is dominated by quiet, narrow lanes among steep-sided wooded hills known as hangers. The riding alternates between highly energetic climbs on impossible gradients, and long flowing descents back to the valley floor; it's a magical area on a windy afternoon with rooks cawing in the trees, or later on in the dark, picking out the road between high overgrown banks by the light of a headtorch.