It was a couple of years ago that I first biked over to Cissbury Ring to watch the sunrise, take one or two photos and bike back in time for a couple of hours back in bed. Tom suggested it would be good to do it again but this time with him and taking breakfast… to cook. Checking the weather it looked like this weekend would be a good time, the hottest day of the year and all that. Sunrise was just after 4am still which seemed a bit unrealistic to get a teenager to agree to get up in time to bike over and watch the sun. We settled for a still rather early 6am knowing we would miss the sunrise but it would still be early enough to not be too hot, for no-one to be around much, and to be a breakfast adventure.
We packed sausages and the small backpacking camping stove. We took my Raleigh Royal touring bike and Tom’s (my old) Highway hybrid. I could had taken the mountain bike but I knew the Royal would be fine, maybe not the most comfortable for long descents on stony tracks, but I hadn’t been on it for a very long time.
We woke up at 5:45am and were on our way by 6:10am which was pretty good going on Tom’s part. Biking up to Lancing Ring we were able to see the mist in the low areas not yet burnt off by the sun which while high’ish in the sky was comfortably cool. Passing various early morning dog walkers we good the byway around the bottom of Steep Hill and turned left to head for Cissbury Ring. We did stop for a bit to marvel at the poppy display in the fields.
The feeling of following long forgotten highways thousands of years old to be ancient ‘metropolis’ of Cissbury up on the safe highland is always hard to escape from. Tom however did, rightly, state that it’s not there now so it’s just a path leading to a hill… no sense of history.
We got to the top where it was now pretty hot but only just 7am. We rested on the bench by the tree, cooked our sausages, marveled at how good my penknife was at doing almost everything, and eat breakfast.
A bit of a walk around, mingling with the loose ponies and cows, before we set off home. This time a more direct route but one that was downhill all the way along an off road track. It look it’s toll on our arms but got us back to the normal world within no time.
