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@Oliver Schick
And that leaving early thing. I mean, I do understand the desire to 'beat the crowds' (quoting Niki), but it thins out so much even along the A104 that it's never seemed a problem for me. I remember riding it fairly fast one year and we caught two people who said they'd left at 4pm. They were incredibly slow, though. I can completely understand it for that reason. I suppose it's good if you just want to do the DD more slowly, e.g. stopping a lot (all the most experienced riders try to do it as slowly as possible and doing it fast is really a beginner's mistake), but what it leads to, in my experience, is just the start getting pushed further and further forward, as people tend to do the same thing as other people. Overall I wish people would leave at roughly the same time, and I've always found 9pm ideal, as it's calculated to take in the whole night and then the dawn across the Suffolk prairies. Mind you, with this year's World Cup-caused late date, the dusk was earlier and the dawn later.