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And of course, being the Fens, there was a random burnt-out car with a load of unburnt go-kart tyres inside. A mystery for another day.
Michael Carroll's legacy?
#rep for the ride (and write up) although your map shows a Peterborough to Kings Lynn route but not down to Dunwich unless I'm missing something?
jdp-
Thanks for the heads-up! I'd linked to the wrong image.
On the Michael Carroll tip, normally I see loads of strange fenfolk about on my journeys east but this time I skipped the villages until past Thetford and I was blown away by how picturesque the communities were on the Suffolk/Norfolk border. Really enjoyable to ride through.
Ptown
Having missed the opportunity to join the Dunwich Dynamo this year I thought I’d run my own version from my hometown – albeit setting off a little earlier. Ride totalled a 195 miles (300km) of mostly quiet A and B roads with a bit of gravel thrown in.
Prep involved throwing as much food, clothing and general supplies as I could in an Ortleib, creating a Garmin course and then setting off. Would far rather have too much than too little on my first 300km ride.
Set off at 7.30am to beautiful weather and the slightest hint of a headwind. Despite being on the usually treacherous A47, it was fairly quiet and allowed me to focus on keeping HR as low as possible. The Garmin numbers just seemed surreal at this stage.
Then came the first off-road section. I’d scoped it out briefly on Garmin connect and it looked like a dead straight towpath but evidently I didn’t check well enough. I thought of just turning around and detouring using my back-up route but it had been dry all week so took my chances. It started out with the concrete slabs below before transitioning to grassy tractor tracks.
Finally, I got to the on-trend part of the route and had a couple of miles smashing along at more than 10mph. And of course, being the Fens, there was a random burnt-out car with a load of unburnt go-kart tyres inside. A mystery for another day.
Then it was back on quiet A roads all the way to Diss. Up to this point I was pretty downbeat about the whole ride. Why was I doing it, what did I hope to accomplish? Or prove? I could just turn around now and I’ll still have covered more distance than ever before. I was running low on water so stopped at a café for an espresso and a bacon bap. And it completely rejuvenated me. Maybe I’d been following the TCR too much, but the whole time I was sat there, waiting impatiently, I just wanted to get going and start smashing out the distance. This positivity stayed with me for the rest of the day and I really started enjoying myself.
There were a few points of interest on the way there, lots of lost CTC riders staring at maps on beautiful hand-built steel bikes, a gorgeous stately home and loads of wildlife. The roads were a lot quieter now, the sun was out and I just had a daft grin on my face the whole time, despite the constantly rolling terrain (I’m a fenboy at heart).
A shade after the first sign for Dunwich and I hit my first big milestone – 100 miles to go. 115 miles til home was a nice sight, it’s a distance I’ve done before, but 100 miles suddenly made it feel really achievable and like I could finally pick up the pace a bit.
Then, I arrived.
The beach was beautiful but I was already 90 mins down on schedule and, despite knowing I’d have a tailwind home, I couldn’t afford to sit around. I took some pics for the gram, went to the toilet to apply some cold chamois cream (this might’ve been the highlight of the trip) and then got back on the bike to head home. Truly felt surreal to be 95 miles in and only halfway round.
The route home seemed to fly by, ticking off markers I'd passed on the way there. I’d tried hard to keep out of the red the whole time but now I resorted to getting out of the saddle for nearly every hill. By the time I was back on the Fens, I’d really just got into the zone milemunching and with the traffic managed to keep a good average speed for the final leg.
With an hour to go, it even got dark enough to pretend I was on the Dynamo.
I got home 14 hours after I started. On the bike I felt strong but as soon as I started to try and walk I was wobbling all over the place. Big sense of achievement, minimal saddle sores, a successful day out.
Food count:
• 30 flapjack bites
• 6 pancakes
• 6 hot cross buns
• 1 bacon bap
• 1 double espresso
• 1 ham and egg sandwich
• 2 Emmi caffe lattes
• 8 ¼ litres of water
Garmin issues:
• Innumerable. Constant off-course warnings, poor routing through Thetford (my fault I guess) but I probably only lost 10mins total time to navigation issues. Next time I really need to make sure that breadcrumb trail points are closer together so that routing through towns and on parallel roads is clearer.
So, yeah, good times!