Tuesday, 5th September 2023. Gatwick.

    AM:  The weather is forecast for 31 Centigrade today, and warm all week. We are still both feeling shell-shocked from the flight. Les had a very bad night and we both woke up at 5.30 am.

   However, we are now feeling much better after a cup of tea, some yoghurt and some digestive biscuits.

   The WiFi reception in our room is very weak, which is frustrating. We're going to ride to Crawley today just to test our offline phone map efficiency, and make sure that there are no issues with the bikes.

   PM:   We've discovered that Google Maps and the other map apps won't work on my phone once we leave the hotel internet range! So, as soon as you go out, the navigation stops working (even though we downloaded South England on to our offline maps storage.) The only one that works is Maps.Me, so we used that. The problem is that it tried to send us along busy roads not suitable for bikes, and also the route it chose had been gated off by the extensions being done to the Airport Carparks. We spent a good hour and half trying to ride down to Aldi in Crawley. I think that Maps.Me would have done better if it hadn't been stymied by the unexpected construction works.

   Eventually, almost by accident we managed to find where Route 21 to Crawley came through the Airport area, and we were able to ride to Crawley to do some shopping at Aldi's.

   The bottom line is that we seem to have to buy a local SIM that provides universal WiFi coverage. We did 19 kms today.

This is the well-hidden path which is where Route 21 comes from London through Gatwick Airport on it's way to the South Coast.

These metal cast signs are dotted all over the country along the Sustrans routes.