I’ve just come back from the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, where I re-rode a route I did a few years ago. It’s a really great weekend away so this is a short blog about how to make the most of it and what I learned on the ride (and the camp).
We used a route called ‘the Purbeck bimble’ off of Bikepacking.com which a friend had taken me on a few years ago. I’m using a photo from that trip just to illustrate a point I’m making and will say so in the caption.
‘99% rideable?’ Still a fantastic ride but adjust your expectations
The author of the bikepacking article, Cass Gilbert, claimed that ‘with the right gearing’ that 99% of the route is rideable. From our experience, we spent quite a lot of time pushing. In part because of the steepness of the inclines, but more often, because the rocky and chalky terrain is liable to make your wheels spin out (maybe unless you have very tacky soft compound MTB tyres). This was probably made a little harder by me riding my hardtail with enormous DMR V12 flat pedals, which seemed to strike every other rut and root I came past, and the 14kg bike I was riding with approximately another 10k of stuff in the bags didn’t do much to help. But the flat pedals did come in to their own, because I just wear regular walking shoes while cycling, making the pushing sections a lot easier for me than my two compatriots who were using SPD clip-in pedals.
If you’re really hot stuff and especially if you’re not carrying much you may well be able to get up the stuff we were pushing on, but your work is definitely cut out for you. If you want to make it a bit easier for yourself, I’d suggest finding an easier route than the bit that goes by the Purbeck golf course in the first quarter or so of the route.
). One of my friends on their ride snapped their chain trying to get up this incline. Photo from the 2021 trip.
Make the most of the trip with an early train from Waterloo (if coming from London)
Wareham, where the route kicks off from, is about 2.30 hours from London Waterloo by train. It’s a direct line, so no need to change, but it isn’t exactly a rocket ship service, so it’s well worth making an effort to get the earliest train you can. We got the 6.30am service which got us to the start point for pretty much bang-on 9am, giving us the whole day to get a ride in, and meant we weren’t ever feeling in a rush. In fact we stopped for a cooked breakfast at the Salt Pig in Wareham which I’d warmly recommend to you. So although it did mean I had to be up and riding to Waterloo at around 5am on a Satuday, it was worth getting going early.
It also means you can really ‘break the back’ of the ride on day 1. Although the full route is about 98 kilometres (61 miles), that’s assuming you do all of the little trails down to the beaches and back, so by the end of our first day, we’d completed two thirds of the ride, and even made time to stop for a dip in Chapman’s Pool (which is a cove). Even with some long stops and the swimming, we had plenty of time to get to our campsite, Tom’s Field Camping, and their stellar evening pizza oven service.
Tom’s Field Campsite is terrific and we made it work without a tent
When I did my 2021 trip, we wild camped. This was a lot of fun (and it was in great part because there were social distancing regulations that meant we couldn’t really hang around indoors a lot of the time anyway). For this trip we wanted to be able to use a loo and have a nice shower so splashed out on a campsite pitch at Tom’s Field, which was the very reasonable sum of £9 per person per night (on a hiker’s rate, so no car parking).
The showers are wonderfully warm, the pizza oven cooked us up some lovely fresh scran, and the location is right on the route. Because we’d done the biggest and hardest portion of the ride on day one, we had a lazy start for the second day, just waiting out the rain in the sheltered canteen. I had some delicious oat milk pancakes. The phone signal was even good enough to catch the football.
One of us had a lightweight bikepacking tent (by a brand called Big Agnes), but us other two simply pinned down a 3×3 metre DD tarpaulin and stretched it over our bikes, tethering it down with the guy ropes. We angled the tarp so that it was against the wind, which kept us from getting cold at night, and fully blocked off the rain the next morning. We used inflatable mats, bivvy bags and sleeping bags under the tarp to stay warm. I’m definitely going to use this method in future, especially if there aren’t any handy trees to hang a tarp under.
Ending and find out more
I warmly recommend the Purbeck Bimble ride to you. What I would say is that it is definitely more of a mountain biking route than a gravel one. I would do a more moderate ride like the leg of the ‘old chalk way’ from my previous blog first, and if that is smooth sailing, give this one a crack next.
Get the route and find out more here: https://bikepacking.com/routes/purbeck-bimble-dorset-uk/
Email Tom’s Field and make your reservation here: https://www.tomsfieldcamping.co.uk/
Calum On Wheels 