Great Roads You Must Ride In The South East
An outing to Box Hill...a pillion’s view by Katharine Drew
Ever on the look-out for an excuse to ride our shiny new GS1200 Adventure, we soon found good reason in the shape of our friend Ouston. During a random conversation, he announced he’d not been to the well-known biker’s meeting place at Box Hill since he was a boy...
As an act of kindness, we offered to escort him there, us on the new BMW and him on his Yamaha TDM. We took a pretty route from our home in Eastbourne, through little villages and side roads, and marvelled at how warm we were. We’d been to the Isle of Wight a few weeks before and had absolutely frozen, although Phill hadn’t been so cold as he was holding the heated grips, lucky beast. I would have tried to reach forward and grab them myself but he could have seen that as dangerous so I thought better of it.
But I digress... we were on a popular bike route, taking the A272 and seeing loads of other bikers along the way. One thing I love about being on a bike is the camaraderie, you can wave or nod to anyone on two wheels and they’ll pretty much always wave back. There was one time, when we were en route to Wales a few years back, a couple on a Harley Davidson didn’t wave back. I initially thought this was a kind of snootiness, until I realised they were trying to catch up with us again so that they could get a wave in. If you’ve never tried the A272 I highly recommend you give it a go – as I say, the route is popular with bikers, I think because of the wide sweeps of apparently clear road that suddenly surprise you with a challenging bend just when you’re taking a glance at the scenery. There are signs up that say it’s an accident black spot particularly for bikes, but this doesn’t dampen people’s enthusiasm.
At Buckbarn there’s a conveniently situated McDonalds, where lots of bikers stop for a cup of tea and, if needs be, a warm-up. That wasn’t necessary for us today – we swung easily through the corners and swished along the hedgerows, taking it in turns with Ouston to ride in front. The journey itself passed annoyingly quickly and before we knew it we were at the roundabout that directs you off to Box Hill and Ryka’s, the biker haunt.
This said roundabout has always been something that makes me a bit uneasy as a pillion – it has a really bad surface and it’s always just at the point where you take the exit that there’s a big rut in the road. On previous bikes this has resulted in a bit of a wobble and a few swearwords from my rider, but on the GS Adventure we barely noticed. I guess when your bike is built for mountains, deserts and off-roading a bit of churned up tarmac isn’t even going to register.
We pulled in to Ryka’s. Being a sunny Sunday it was absolutely packed with bikes of every description, and we ended up in the overflow parking. I am always slightly hopeful that we will see the dog we saw here before – it’s more the way that it rides here on a bike with its owner that impresses me. The rider has a kind of harness that goes round his middle that he straps the dog into – the dog’s legs poke out the front of the device and off they go. Genius.
We ordered chips and drinks and took a seat outside while we waited for them to bellow our food order number out over the tannoy.
Ryka’s really drags in the crowds – it’s not just bikers that go there, families use it too, sitting out on the grass on a nice day and playing games. Of course, most people are there for the bikes, and we are no exception to that. On any given day you can see trikes, old customs, new GS Adventures like ours (complete with dinked luggage), race bikes, trailies, big old cruisers and even a few scooters... eww. Sometimes the police are there too, like today. I’m not sure if it was a promotional “we understand bikes too” thing, or if they’d just stopped for a cup of tea.
Back in the day, there was a strip of road outside Ryka’s where riders would show off their stunts, pulling wheelies and burnouts and racing each other. That strip of road is still there, but unfortunately now it’s been lined on both sides with tall hedges so you wouldn’t be able to see anything and there’s nowhere to stand. It’s also monitored by the Police for such naughtiness too. I know it’s all about safety, but really – where’s the fun? No fun without excitement, no excitement without danger.
We decided to ride the bikes up to the top of Box Hill – something that we initially regretted as there were a lot of cars driving very hazardously down the steep road that is only wide enough for one car – two bikes would be fine, but put a bike like ours (that’s pretty wide) together with a car (whose owner doesn’t know how wide it is) and you have a potential disaster looming. Add to that the fact that some people were slogging up the hill on push-bikes (madness) and you can see the issues we faced.
Up at the top, we read the parking meter board. It charged £3 for all vehicles, which we thought was about as steep as the hill itself. Luckily, a kindly ranger from the National Trust directed us to a piece of grass that’d had some paving slabs chucked down in it for bikes, so we were ok for free parking.
I wouldn’t risk it otherwise, but really, where are you meant to put an “I’ve paid for parking” sticker on a motorbike? Less scrupulous people than myself might help themselves to it.
The sun was really warm and we were glad to have a bike that we could lock crash helmets on and put jackets in – it was definitely worth having the upgrade to the luggage. It even expands, so you can increase your capacity for souvenir-buying. The only thing with the side boxes is that you do have to remember they’re there – squeezing between cars using the width of your mirrors as a guide is pointless when your boxes are a couple of inches wider on each side. We’d stuck a Frisbee in the top box and took it out with us to what we thought was the lookout point – it wasn’t and we ended up walking a lot further than planned before we could chuck the Frisbee about. The boys spent most of the time retrieving it from the bushes anyway.
Later, we rode our bikes out of the car park and spotted the lookout point on the way. Grrr. We took a different road to the way in, and found it very scenic - lots of holiday homes and caravan parks, ice-cream sellers and swooshing corners.
We took a different route altogether on the way back home to Eastbourne, stopping at a garage for a quick bottle of coke, which we sat on a wall in the sunshine and drank. Ouston was on a time limit when we’d first started our journey but this was soon forgotten about when we were taken over by riding. Southern England is beautiful when the sun shines, and being out on a bike is the best way to enjoy it – there is no other way to feel so much a part of the elements as when you are riding along and can smell the crops in the fields and feel the new warmth in the breeze.