Last year Lolly and I bought each other a mountain bike. Whenever we go away we take them with us, occasionally we just hop in the van with the bikes on the back, drive somewhere that entertains mountain bikes and go for a ride.

About 45 mins drive from us is leith hill and just beyond that is Coldharbour, a tiny village you can easily end up at if you go for a walk or ride around Leith Hill. All around this part of the world are bridle ways and tracks for walkers and riders as well as horses and the odd crosser that’s not supposed to be there.

We started at the plough inn as you can park up there and it’s a good reference point if you are using the map below.

The idea was to go and do some of the trails and then grab some lunch. Didn’t quite go to plan, the next couple of hours ended up as a kind of freestyle ride / hike with the added fun of potentially wandering into a pheasant shoot, luckily we didn’t but we did think someone might mistake us for some wildlife and crack a shot off.
We came across some pretty cool woods well worth a photo of!

The trails on the map weren’t that well signposted and as you can see below we went a rather odd route.

Before setting out I booked us a table for 15.00, past experience of the Plough Inn and trying to get a table for lunch was a bit of a failure due to it being heaving. As luck would have it our random ramble brought us back to our starting point at exactly 15.00, below is stravas account of our adventure.

While I put the bikes back on the van lolly went to meet the two horses and their steer that rocked up about the same time as us.

The pub was pretty quiet when went to our table but very quickly all the tables were taken. The plough does some great local ales and some pretty potent cider too, we were both fairly hungry so we dispensed with starters and went straight for mains, I had the plough inn burger with added cheese and Lolly had-the same.   The burgers were excellent, really tasty, good size portions and not particularly expensive.

We shared a chocolate brownie with chocolate ice cream for dessert, it was epic!

The Plough Inn is nice pub with a mix of walkers, cyclists, and families, there is a nice garden for when the weather is better and dogs are welcome all year round, if you’re ever in that neck of the woods give it a visit.

We had a really good day out, we’ll be back later in the year to try and find the trails and give them a good hammering.

As is customary with my travel reports, a picture of our van, bumblebee parked up near the pub, the namesake of this blog!