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branwen
@LHL
So this was a ride I'd been looking forward to for a while. Firstly because I love rides out to the coast (feels like an achievement), and secondly because I had it earmarked as my long ride of the summer.
It didn't start particularly well. Rolled up far too late to meet any forumungers, so got a route sheet (the lady selling them split a 20!- thank you!) and set straight off. Fifteen minutes later got a puncture, and duly faffed around fixing it in one of the parks. Loads of folks asking if I was ok- nice.
Followed the twinkly reds out to the countryside, and ended up riding three hours before my first stop for a sarnie. Starting again and realised I had another puncture. Went to sit of a verge and kicked up the most amazing quantity of wildlife, insects, spiders, millipedes, moths and other moving stuff. Thank fully settled down pretty quickly, though found a field spider making a web on my bars a couple of hours later.
Only made one more stop after that, to get a much-needed bacon buttie, and rolled into the beach at 5am to an awesome sunrise. Spent an hour split between the cafe and beach, then got back on the bike and started riding back. Spent the next three hours smiling, waving, and pointing people down the right roads. Some seemed pretty cheerful, some were wrecked.
Made a pit-stop in Sudbury as things were starting to hurt, and immediately fell out with my Garmin which demanded a complete lap of a car park (?!?). I refused, and it got its revenge by taking me off route up 'sandly lane', so called because the bastard thing was covered in inches of sand. Managed to fall off half way, and spent five minutes shouting incoherently at the Garmin (I was a bit tired by this point).
Carried on and spent the rest of the ride getting gradually slower. Managed to jump onto a local chaingang which towed me most of the way into London, and then another bloke doing it both ways who got me to south Londonshire. Eventually fell into bed at 3pm and went straight to sleep for six hours. Woke up to find pizza waiting from a housemate :) .