Dunwich by daylight (well, nearly)
Posted on Thursday 3 July 2008 by John Snuggs
Usually, if you get off the District line at Mile End you can sneak onto a Central line train for the one stop you’re not allowed to take a bike through. But not last Sunday. For the first time ever, I was spotted. Anyone else ever been chucked off?
But it didn’t end there. After riding eyes-out to Leyton to get back on the tube, I discovered a signal failure that stopped trains as far as Woodford. Fortunately, I also found Dr Bob, so had someone to ride with (remarkably, without getting lost) to Woodford where, at last, there was a train for us.
We finally arrived at Epping only a few minutes late. But we still didn’t get going – we had a phone call that there were more coming on the next train.
We finally left about 0935 with George Ong, Roger Cline, Ken Peters, David Milner, Jon McColl, Catherine Walker and Peter Reupke, and I quickly discovered some people had taken their fast medicine that morning. Which was all right, as long as we weren’t going uphill.
I’d had a call from Keith that he and Naomi were going to start later and catch us up, which they did near Fyfield after riding even faster than we were. But then they did ride up Mt Ventoux two weeks ago, to train for this ride.
There was a plan to stop for coffee in Dunmow, which I blew completely by confusing Dunmow (coffee shop at top of hill) with Thaxted (coffee shop at bottom of hill) and not realising this until half a mile out of the town. So it was on to lunch.
After trying the Ken Peters method of slowing down a ride (see below), which didn’t work, I finally got fed up with leading the ride from 50m behind and got the others to slow down, with the “help” of Dr Bob, who did an excellent Corporal Jones impression.
We stopped briefly in Finchingfield and met up with our Esteemed Secretary, Inez and Rory who were doing an Audax from Chelmsford, and then rode to Castle Hedingham, where we were entertained at the Bell with just the right amount of lunch, excellent beer and dodgy trad jazz. At least I could recognise some of the tunes. Roger, George and Bob decamped to ride back towards London, so then there were eight.
After Sudbury, Peter’s back tyre was slashed in the sidewall by some pointy thing on the road. He managed to get himself mobile again using a boot and headed back to Sudbury with Catherine to catch a train.
Then there were six to ride through the massed ranks of affluent middle-aged Suffolk jaywalkers promenading blindly all over the road at the Chelsworth open gardens day. I never did get the fascination of staring at plants’ genitals and respiratory organs.
Ken suggested continuing to Bildeston and then heading to Manningtree (edge of the Network Card zone) for a train, and we concurred, since some people take going to work on Monday mornings much too seriously.
We had a quick ride back to Manningtree, via Hadleigh, (where we found coffee and Suffolk CTC at the pub). I finally managed to lead from the front by doing what I’m good at on the downhill between East Bergholt and Cattawade.
Brakes are only for use in an emergency.
By the time I got home I’d done 140km in 5h30. And it felt like it.