What was planned to be a ride of approximately 16 miles sadly had to be aborted after roughly 7 when I managed to get a puncture in my front tyre a short distance from Rowfant Mill Pond.

All started out well as we set off from Ifield in the sunshine and took our normal route to the start of Worth Way via the Dingle Subway, Town centre, Paymasters and Tilgate Drive. On reaching Worth, instead of turning right to follow Worth Way, we turned left along Church Road to join Turners Hill Road as I wanted to visit Crabbet Park which, was unfortunately all locked up.

By now the sun was disappearing behind cloud, so the ride was rapidly going down hill and this was compounded shortly after joining the northbound footpath from Turners Hill Road, close to the old level crossing, when I discovered that I had a puncture (marked with a red cross on the map). Faced with the prospect of walking (or riding on a flat) the direct 6 miles back home, I decided to call my wife to come out in her car with the bike rack, but the 'should have stayed at home today' pattern continued as she had a more pressing emergency to deal with. Thankfully my Mum was available to help (good old Mum!) and she drove over with the rack and met us shortly afterwards on the Old Hollow.

We finally managed to complete the ride, without incident, on 29 June 2019 and those photos can be seen here.