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@Fox
Did the Green and Yellow Fields audax with spybot, which starts in Manningtree at midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning before heading up north to just east of King’s Lynn, briefly runs alongside the north Norfolk coast then heads back south in pretty much a straight line, dirverting only slightly to pass through Wymondham and then flirt with the edge of Ispwich before heading back into Manningtree.
It was colder than we expected. The low was 1 degree, which combined with rain before the first control left us wet and cold. Neither of us had brought winter gloves and as I’d packed in a daze I hadn’t brought overshoes or a hat. Which was silly. By the time we reached the garage at Mildenhall which acted as the control, I was shivering and my socks were soaked, but we managed to warm up with a hot chocolate.
This whole section of the route had lots of lovely smooth A and B roads, which were very quiet due to the time of night. You’d have loved it actually rositybendix. The long, straightish road which spends a good 4 miles alongside the edge of RAF Mildenhall (a massive US Air Force base for F-15 jet fighters, complete with military police patrolling in 4x4s) was a particular highlight for me, it was eerily quiet and after the Air Force base the road passes through Thetford Forest, which I’d always wanted to ride through. The smooth tarmac and the fir trees on both sides of the road made it quite magical, although that could have been the southerly wind at our tails…
We saw a particularly magnificent stag in the grounds of Houghton Hall, and some cute ducklings in a pond in Docking, before joining the coast road for a well earned breakfast at Burnham Deepdale at the 96 mile point (almost exactly halfway), then turned south (into the southerly wind, which was then not quite so magical, although at least it wasn’t continuous) and starting to head back down to Manningtree.
The control at Wymondham, 135 miles in, was a Waitrose and we asked a moustachioed man for directions as we set out into what had become (again) pouring rain. It turned out said man had seen my Orrell before, at the halfway point on the Dunwich Dynamo. Small world. Bet he’s on here too. If so, hai!
The rain stopped after not too long, and if I remember it right, I was ok up to about 150 miles but after that, things definitely got tougher. By the 160 mile point I was definitely struggling: I don’t think I’d helped myself by not eating and drinking enough (really need to get better at that), not having enough miles in my legs, or insisting on bringing the fixed bike. I took a few much appreciated tows from spybot then, 165 miles in on a bend on the B1113 I had a bit of a strop and pulled in at the side of the road and had a sit down and a drink, despite Stowmarket only being a few miles away. This may or may not have been around the point where I felt so tired I suddenly really wanted to cry, which was a very odd feeling. Obviously I crushed it into a ball along with all my other emotions, although it was definitely a physical, not an emotional thing.
After another slightly bleak stretch between Stowmarket and Needham Market, where we had a ‘low blood sugar’ moment sat in a bus stop, things seemed to get better. We suddenly realised we were pushing it for time to catch the train we were booked on, and were determined to make it, so we did the last 18 miles faster. While it was an effort I didn’t feel like I was struggling like I was before. We got to Manningtree just after 5.30 with 189 miles on the clock, giving us a ‘generous’ time window of about 12 minutes to get a receipt from the station bar and get to the right end of the platform to load our bikes.
In my head I was always going to finish the ride, so I’m still pretty happy that we made that train and avoided the jobsworth SPORTIS bearing inspectors of National Express East Anglia. Although to be fair we had nothing but service with a smile in the east, from the friendly petrol station ‘operative’ in Mildenhall to the café chap who let me fill our water bottles in his sink, to the lovely Mrs Ryan in Elton House News in Needham Market, who was not only happy to give us a receipt but congratulated us on getting that far and urged us onwards to the finish, so I'm sure they would have been lovely. Unless they came from London.
I’d definitely like to do some more riding in East Anglia :)