Day 43 Portsmouth to Bournemouth - rise total 3,325 k, 20,474 m

Stephen and Peter both enjoy their Barista made coffee first thing in the morning or as near to as possible from what I have observed. So today we had two waves of riders leaving the accommodation - First wave was Peter and Stephen off to find their coffee and some breakfast and then followed a little bit later by me. I found that the supermarket sell one serve portion of Granola and yoghurt and along with a banana and a cup of tea that I can make myself I've got my breakfast sorted and that's what I did today.

I met the Boys down at the Gosport Ferry terminal (Gosport is just a stones throw across the Portsmouth Harbour and has a very good regular ferry service that only takes 5 minnutes it seems). They only sell return tickets! Oh well there's another reason to come back to Portsmouth however I will have to plan to come at it froom the Gosport side and also remember to keep my ticket!

I was lead navigator today and once off the ferry checked everyone was okay and I got the affirative and so off I went - again an easy route to follow - basically keeping the ocean out to our left. I was followed by Stephen. At about the 5 km mark Stephen says "We've lost Peter". So we stop to check how far back he was. Well he wasn't, He was heading off inland towards Fareham (where I used to stop with John and Pat)! We make a phone call to him which goes through to his French Pone cards answer service (all in French) and hang up. He calls back and we have to let him know we are not in front of him but out to the South! The best thing we could do was to say let's all meet up at Warsash where the route crosses the water.

Stephen and I arrived there just after 9:00 and decided to ride the extra km or so to check out if there was a ferry - well we found a blackboard with a chalked message (see photos) that gave us some hope however we were still a wee bit dubious. We doubled back to a pub that I saw advertised that it does breakfasts so I guessed it would alos do coffee. It did and I had a cup of tea and some toast while we waited for Peter to rejoin the group.

Our learning from this was we need to make use of the 4x4 and Jet Boat protocol when travelling in a convoy and that is - you are responsibe for the person behind in that if you lose sight of them you stop until they appear.

It was an overcast day and pleasant for riding and it once again got e close to the 100 km's but not quite - this time I was 1.4 km shy of the 100!

th we paest the "Hovercraft" museum however it wasn't open otherwise I would have been keen to check it out. 

We did venture inland in order to cross some of the inlets that stretch into the surrounding countryside and it took us down some lovely typical Enh=glish country lanes and then on and through the "New Forest" for quite a few km's - the New Forest is a huge area of natural forest country that has herds of ponies grazing freely throughout - they all appear very docile and quite used to having people, cars, bikes and dogs roaming freely among them and vice versa. Part way through theNew Forest we came upon the Minstead Village Summer Fete which was everything you would imagine an English Village Fete to be. It was close to 1:00 p.m. so an ideal time to stop for lunch and we had homemade egg and cress sanwhiches with some quiche and a cup of tea.

There was an older Lady there getting a lot of joy out of feeding the donkey and she was happy when asked if I could photograph her - she had her 2012 London Olympic hat on with the Union jack on it. She was quite chuffed that I had asked if I could take her picture feeding the donkey.

After leaving the Fete we entered the New Forest and a good chunk of that was on gravel and as we were cycling along a group of about 12 gravel bike riders who ahd also stopped at the Fete for lunch came up on us and as they weren't travelling too much faster that I was I decided to ride with them for a few km's and found out they were out on a 100 km Saturday morning ride and one of their number was a Kiwi from AKL/ZQN (Queenstown). They were amazed that this was our 43rd day out from Rome (funny how the bit of where our ride starts always gets into the conversation) like it did while we were waiting for the little pink Ferry to take us across the water from Waesash and the young Mother with the two year couldn't believe that we had ridden all that way with only the couple of dry bags she could see on my bike.

We rode on and through Southampton and saw three large cruise ships in port and because we kind of skirted the CBD we missed out on finding somwhere for lunch. We did ride past a large BBQ outlet that had a BBQ Kitchen in operation from the kiosk out front so we decided to pop in their for lunch. When we rocked up and asked "do you sell food" he said "no it's free - help yourself" it was lovely too, Roasted chicken and salad in a wrap and a good "small" portion size - enough to make you want more but not enough to satisfy ones lunch yearnings and because it was free we really couldn't ask for another couple please!

Anyhow as it worked out we had a fun lunch at the VIlage Fete.

Both Peter and Stephen have not been feeling the best today with a bit of a cough and the like  sso for them it's been a reasonably tough day and then Peter has his extra 10 km on top!

We were later getting to the accommodation today (5:30) and to start with they said the room was not ready! However Peter who was on the organising committee to day (remember we are strict with the numbers on that committee that must not have more than one on it) - he perservered and lo and behold suddenly our room became available!

All in all another good day and one that we will remember for sure.