Dunwich Dynamo 2009

Better late than never - here's my Dunwich Dynamo report for 2009. A depleted Team Badger consisting of just Spratticus and myself made it to this year's ride. We'd both done a lot less training than last year though I was at least buoyed up by the prospect of putting my new bike through its paces. After a mid week pep-talk on the phone we were starting to feel a bit more gung ho and having loaded up on pasta and watched a bit of the prologue at Beho,we set off into the sunny late afternoon for London Fields, feeling positively up for it. In the park we hooked up with fellow Resonancer DJ Original Bear and his team, Clare and Jodie. They were all Dynamo debutants but had put Team Badger to shame by clocking up an impressive amount of miles in training for the ride.

The customary pint of Adnams and last minute fiddling with the bikes attended to, we set off. The increase in numbers on the last couple of years was evident from the get-go and at times the ride out of London had a distinctly Critical Mass atmosphere. As usual this year's ride was a very broad cycling church - a mix of road bikes, hybrids, cyclo crossers (including me!), bromptons, single speeders, tandems, recumbents and a few tricycles, which I don't recall having seen on the ride before. There was even a penny farthing, which I believe should more properly be called an 'ordinary'.

First half of the ride went fairly well and without any major incidents. The sheer number of riders meant that there was never a point at which you couldn't see another bike - it was like a continuous line of cyclists stretching from Hackney to Dunwich. Pretty amazing. As usual we resisted the temptation to stop off at any of the Essex pubs en route but it was interesting to note the increasingly inebriated condition of the locals walking the street in each town we rode through as the night wore on. It must have been about 1.30 when we reached Sudbury and saw a bloke walking though the streets without his trousers on. He was carrying the pantaloons in question in his hands and I imagine that there must have been a point when he thought 'Oh dear, my trousers appear to have come off and I fear I am now too drunk to put them back on. Never mind, it's 1.30am so there's unlikely to be anyone else around so I'll just walk home without them on'. Little did he suspect that he was about to be met by a hundred or so cyclists pedalling down the street. I wonder if he remembered any of it the next morning.

Anyhoo, we reached the feeding station at Great Waldingfield, where the queues for food were stretching out of the village hall. Thankfully, we'd come prepared with our own provisions and spent a very amusing half hour or so discussing the art of the sandwich made from one piece of bread, or the 'bendover' as it is officially known. Then, on into the darkest hour, just before dawn, or the 'suicide hour', as it is apparently also known. This bit of the ride wasn't as bad as I remembered it from previous years, perhaps because it was already getting light - being early July seemed to make that much more difference. Mind you, the knees were starting to ache and the relatively mild hills were beginning to feel decidedly steep. The real misery came in the last couple of hours when the rain set in. It's not so bad when you're riding in it but we were all dreading the prospect of arriving at a rainswept Dunwich with no chance of getting in a cafe packed with earlier arrivals and no other shelter. It looked like I would have to make a call to my Mum and ask her to put the kettle on and some newspaper down in expectation of 5 muddy cyclists turning up on her doorstep first thing on a Sunday morning.

As luck would have it, though, the rain stopped just as we hit Dunwich and I ended up getting sunburnt after falling asleep on the beach. After the customary pint in the Ship, the rest of the newly christened Team Bendover headed off for London by coach and I pedalled back to the ancestral seat up the road for food, a bath, sleep, more food, watching the darts and then more sleep. Bloody marvellous. Woke up fully refreshed the next day and cycled back to Ipswich to get the train for London.

Another great Dynamo, despite the soggy last couple of hours. Brilliant company once again - can't wait for next year's ride.

Dunwich Dynamo 2008

Bit of a difference from last year. Almost perfect weather conditions - clear sky and a back wind. Sadly, Nick and Marc weren't able to accompany me this time but I'd managed to swell the ranks of Team Badger with three men good and true: L - R: Iwan, owner of the only pair of calves larger than mine this side of Argentina, with a training regime that had consisted of watching Lord of the Rings: The Musical that very afternoon; Spratticus, a man whose shit is very much ON and who will be well known to regular followers of this blog; Richard, recently returned from two years globetrotting and riding on a borrowed bike with NO training whatsoever but a secret weapon in the form of a giant slab of flapjack from the 99p shop. Richard, Spratticus and I gorged ourselves on pasta in Borough before heading up to Hackney to rendezvous with Iwan and about 500 other masochists.


We also hooked up with Tom (of Merchant and the Courtesan fame) and lady friend Helen,all revved up for their first Dynamo.



Had an hour in London Fields, in which we indulged in a bit of voyeuristic bike porn, ogling other people's machines (and in my case feeling woefully inadequate about my own, but hey, it's not about the bike apparently).There seemed to be fewer recumbents and Bromptons than last year but possibly more single speed/fixed wheel riders. We downed a pint of Adnams to put us on the Suffolk scent and then, lo and behold, the routes are handed out, the toilets are visited, final adjustments made and we're off, cycling out of East London. At one point I was riding behind a girl in high heels, which I thought would be the ultimate fashion statement if she was doing the Dynamo, but she took a left turn after a couple of miles leaving me to ponder the practicality and marketability of combining stilettos with cleats. We started to get a false impression of darkness from the trees in Epping but it was still pretty light when you looked up at the sky and we seemed to zing out of London remarkably quickly.



Then, suddenly, we've left the street lights behind and are riding in the countryside proper, with the moon out and the LED's snaking up ahead of us. With the wind behind us, it seemed particularly quiet, which also gave the impression that we were going a lot faster than we really were for some reason. We stopped at 10:45 for what people who run training sessions invariably and annoyingly call a 'comfort break' - in our case this meant having a slash and breaking into the food stash - in some ways the Team Badger Dynamo is a bit like a mid-life crisis sleepover and midnight feast on 2 wheels. I also tested my blood sugar at this point and it was a pleasingly low 3.8: very unusual for that time in the evening, meaning I could munch away on dried fruit and binanos (which is what Bez calls bananas apparently) with impunity for the rest of the ride. I did, however, have to forego the 'Go' biscuits which Spratticus seemed to have in endless supply.





The first 50 miles or so seemed to fly by pretty quickly and uneventfully but I guess we were ready for a break by the time we hit the food stop at Lavenham, about 70 miles in. The queues were as long as ever but we had enough of our own provisions so only had to line up for hot drinks, which Richard gallantly volunteered to do. I bumped into Jack from the excellent resonance Bike Show and we had a bit of a chat that turned into an interview. Quite a few people took the opportunity to catch up on their sleep at the food stop but I felt wide awake and we were back on the road by 3.00. I'd ridden in short sleeves up to Lavenham but it felt a lot colder when we left so on came the warmer clothes. The rest of the team already had their tights on but the Badger shins remained unfettered for the whole ride.

The cold does make you want to pee more though. Here's Spratticus having a moonlit 'comfort break':




We saw quite a few bats flitting about on the next bit of the ride but then the clear skies meant it seemed to get light a lot earlier than last year and it was a real moment when the sun started to come through. It was a spectacularly beautiful morning as we started to reach what the route called 'Silly Suffolk'. From around midnight through to six we barely saw a car and had the road to ourselves. The first sight of another person on the route came at Coddenham, where there was a bloke fixing the church wall at 5.30 am! This was also where the strain started to tell a bit as well and, like last year, some of the hills seemed a lot less gentle than they might normally feel. I suffered a lot more than the rest of the team here, I think, and it was like a lorry struggling up a hill sometimes. I'm not sure if it's an age thing, or a bike thing, or just a general fitness thing, but I'm definitely not a contender for the King of the Mountains jersey, even in the Suffolk Alps. I like to think of myself as the Mark Cavendish of the Dynamo, though without the sprinting, obviously.



The last 15 miles or so from Framlingham was pretty tough, though our spirits were buoyed by a woman and her toddler cheering riders on in the back lanes behind Sibton Park. Richard and Iwan had shot ahead and missed a turning so Spratticus and I rode into Dunwich on our own with our knees creaking and thighs aching, finally making it to the Lost City at around 7:30, with the rest of Team Badger turning up only 10 minutes later despite having taken a pretty significant detour.








Met up with my folks, who arrived with a flask of coffee and more binanos, and my brother, who cycled over from Leiston in solidarity, perhaps hoping to bask in the reflected glory but looking suspiciously fresh compared to every other cyclist. Also caught up with Tom and Helen again, who were looking a lot more sprightly than I felt, the young swines. Breakfast in the cafe was followed by a quick paddle and a kip on the beach - too cold for swimming, though it didn't put everyone off. Then a swift pint of Adnams before escorting Richard off to Darsham station, where the bastards from National Express were only allowing 5 cycles on each train, forcing Richard to cycle back to Ipswich...into a headwind! That would have been a bridge too far for me, but he made it - 'chapeau' I say. I just about had enough left in my legs to limp back to Yoxford and collapse on the parental sofa.

All in all, then, a great ride. The final reading on my computer when I got to Yoxford was 126.66 miles (from Borough), average speed 13.1 MPH, max speed 29.1 MPH and total cycling time of 9 hrs 37 mins. The weather made it a lot easier and more enjoyable than last year, though the last bit somehow felt harder. A lot of people do the ride on their own, but I couldn't do that, so it was great to have such a good team...cheers lads! Hopefully next year (4th July) we'll be able to combine the veterans from this year and last, as well as a few newbies, to form Team Uber-badger. Tips for 2009? Book a coach ticket - don't rely on getting the train back. I think I'll try to carry less stuff too and who knows, I may even invest in a new bike by then, so I'll only have age to blame for my slow progress on even the mildest gradient.

Check out the ITV news report on the Dynamo, featuring cameo appearances from Team Badger here

D-Day

Me and Spratticus got some more miles in our legs with another tootle around the North Downs, clocking up 57 miles this time, passing the rather sinister Scientology country retreat on route. So we're now as ready as we'll ever be for tonight's Dunwich Dynamo - 120 miles from Hackney to the Suffolk coast, for the uninitiated. The forecast looks more or less ok, so all that remains for team blaireau is to load up with carbs and smear on the vaseline. Allez!

Rudos y Tecnicos

Me and Spratticus finally got round to getting our shit on for the forthcoming Dunwich Dynamo with a gruelling afternoon clocking up 50 miles up and down (but it felt mostly up) the North Downs. Hard work, but good to get out of London and put some miles in the legs. Went to the Lucha Libre at the Roundhouse on Friday for a fantastic evening of Mexican Wrestling. It's a lot like 70's British wrestling a la Giant Haystacks but with the added spectacles of midgets, masks and 'exoticos'. I got some funny looks cycling home through the night in my newly acquired wrestling mask. The cultural extravanganza continued yesterday with an all day Nick Cave conference at the University of Westminster, with talks featuring Cave and the Presley Myth, Gothic Modalities, 'Ghosts of the Civil Dead', using Cave lyrics to teach poetry, Post Industrial Punk Bohemia and the Murder Ballad Tradition. Sadly, Cave himself didn't carry out his threat to turn up and heckle from the back but it was great stuff nonetheless.

Brighton Breezy

Starting to get in training for this year's Dunwich Dynamo, I spent a couple of days cycling in East Sussex with Spratticus and Ian. The weather was pretty extreme, and on Thursday we went from being pelted by high velocity icy needles of hail to basking in glorious sunshine within 45 minutes. Picked up a discarded baseball bat on the way and stopped in for a couple of marvellous pints at the Harvey's brewery tap in Lewes, just across the road from the brewery itself.It was at this point that the sun started shining, which is as much evidence as I've ever seen for the existence of God. From there we went upwards and onwards in a 40 mile loop before returning to Brighton to claim a magnificent joint 3rd in a pub quiz. For me blood sugar and cycling exist in a carb-on/offsetting relationship so with all those miles under my belt I felt I had licence to indulge a little more than usual. In addition to breaking my usual 3-pint rule this also meant a massive fry-up the next day at the Carat Cafe at Portslade, where we sought refuge from even more horrendous weather. Looks like I just about got the balance right as I'm still registering respectable blood sugar readings. Top laughs too - cheers chaps!

Dunwich Dynamo

Yes, we did it! Here we are at London Fields enjoying a preparatory pint before setting off into the night. Check out Nick's old-school arm-warmers. Must be a Belgian thing.We're off! After picking up a copy of the route, we hit the road at around 8.30pm, slightly earlier than scheduled. After some confusion getting out of Hackney we were on our way. I'd expected us to be among the older of the riders but there were plenty of silver cyclists with at least 10 years on us, some even older. The range of bikes was pretty diverse too - lots of fixed wheel single gear jobs as well as tandems, recumbents and fold-up bromptons. Some riders were better prepared than others: I donated one of my rear lights to a girl who was riding with no illumination whatsoever. It wasn't clear why she hadn't realised lights might be useful on an overnight ride!

Once we got into the Essex countryside proper and the street lights ended, the sight of the line of red lights snaking ahead was really inspiring but didn't stop the weather doing its best to dampen spirits. The rain had started as we left London and didn't let up until 5am, so the camera had to be stashed away to stop it getting wet, thus no pictures from stage 1 of the journey. I'm not sure if they would have conveyed the full extent of the grimness of the ordeal anyway. We made good progress but the rain made it hard work. We reached the halfway point just outside Sudbury at 2am, where hot food was on offer in a village hall. The queue stretched out of the hall into the rain and we stood shivering for an hour for cuppasoup, then spent another hour wringing out our socks and warming up, then fixed Nick's flat tyre and got back on the road. This was the hardest part of the ride. Being freezing cold, soaking wet and on a bike at 4am with a 60 mile ride ahead of you is nobody's idea of fun, least of all mine, and it was pretty hard to get going. Not exactly what I'd expected when I first heard about this moonlit night ride in the middle of summer!The darkest hour was indeed just before dawn. Eventually we warmed up again and got back into our stride, as the first glimpses of daylight began to appear. Nick's socks were from Sainsbury's - in fact they were carrier bags.As we pedalled further into Suffolk, the places we went through started to become increasingly familiar: Cretingham - I've been to the pub here! Kettleburgh - my first band did a gig at the village hall! Framlingham - my mum was at school here! We were getting there.The sun came out at around 7 and we rolled into Dunwich at around 8.30. Not bad going considering the rain and the fact that we stopped at the halfway point for two hours. We were greeted by a reception commitee of my folks, my brother, his wife and their kids, which was a real boost, especially as we were able to load the bikes up into my brother's van and be whisked back to my parents' house in Yoxford for scrambled eggs and a hot bath.Nick got a train back to London and Marc flew back to Holland from Norwich. I stayed in Suffolk and clocked up another 30 miles yesterday, extending my tour of memory lane and stopping in Dennington, where I spent my first 7 years, for lunch and a pint, kept company by the pub cat.
All in all a really tough ride, mostly due to the weather, though the number of hills also came as a bit of an unexpected surprise, even to a local boy like me. None of them were individually that bad but cumulatively they really started to take their toll after a while. The one at Castle Hedingham stands out as particularly cruel and unusual punishment; hats off to the riders on single gear bikes. Nick and Marc did a brilliant job of keeping spirits up through the toughest parts of the ride, as did the bloke on the recumbent eating chips off a tray on his lap, who unwittingly provided us with amusement for several miles, along with the cyclist known only as 'duck-legs'.

Would I do it again? Yes, I'm already thinking about next year, but not if the weather forecast is the same as this year. Top tip for anyone considering the ride next year: take your own cuppa soup and avoid the queue for food at the halfway point!