Dunwich Dynamo 2010

lots of riders waiting at London Fields

2010 saw the second time some cakeriders entered the Dunwich Dynamo.

For those who don’t know this is a 120mile ride overnight ride from Hackney to Dunwich. This semi organised ride sees around 100 folk decide for no sensible reason to ride through the night to the seaside.

A waffly report of cycling overnight…

As opposed to last time we did this (4 years ago) the forecast was for no rain and even the possibility of morning sunshine.

Meeting at 7.30pm on Saturday 24th July we purchased our route guide and eventually after much searching for Barry (the organiser) got out coach tickets.

This year I decided to do this on a brand new bike (thanks Ali) only purchased the day before and only ridden from Vauxhall to Camberwell – hardly the longest test ride. It seemed to be working pretty well in those couple of miles so what could go wrong…

new bike laden down with spares and light for DD2010

The bike worked flawlessly with the only issue being me getting used to a Compact chainset and on more than one occasion finding myself in a slightly odd gear combination. The other issue was not thinking that possibly doing a 120mile ride on a saddle I had not used before was possibly not the best move. Though using the Hope Vision 2 was a better idea allowing me to light up the road enough on quiet country lanes to avoid the many and varied potholes.

There is a general moving of people from the start from just before 8pm. We decided to wait a little while so we could at least follow people who may know where they are going.

To be honest the first few miles out towards Epping are not the most fun cycling but it is quite amusing seeing people being slightly confused by hundreds of cyclists making their way out of London on a Friday night.

The ride takes you out in to Essex and what is referred to on the route map as “bandit country”, the scenery between towns is good but when you get in to the towns there are a surprisingly large number of inebriated residents who seem to take pleasure in abusing the people riding through. So the general tactic is to smile and carry on pedalling…

This soon gives way to quieter roads with rolling fields as scenery until darkness falls, as darkness falls it is something to behold just following other peoples lights in the distance. Though could not quite work out the phenomenon of how there ended up being some quite large groups of lights and then big gaps with nobody.  We found ourselves in these gaps a couple of times and because we had been lazy in following other people and not looking at the route plan starting to worry about if we were going the right way. In truth this led to a couple of missed turns but everyone was in the same boat and super helpful.

The one and only feed station came pretty quickly at 50 miles (around the same point realisation that a brand new saddle was not the best idea) so a stop for sarnie and tea was made. Unfortunately for Paul one sip of the tetley nectar before he knocked it over meant the stop was cut short. Upon leaving the feed station we seemed to be in an unofficial race with someone on a trike who we eventually shook off after a good couple of miles.

Plodding on through the night we were making pretty good time and enjoying the feeling that riding on a dry and reasonably warm night gives you, most noticeable was the not noticing of any small hills as you were just churning away on the pedals. As the light came up we could see more and more of the countryside that surrounded us.

energy food

It was with some relief that we arrived at Dunwich at bang on 6am, perfect timing as cafe opened at that precise moment. So the bikes were dropped and we straight away joined the queue for breakfast and much needed hot drinks. As you can see from the picture of energy bar wrappers I think we needed some “proper” food.

The dry weather had made the whole experience much more enjoyable and certainly reduced the levels of pain and anguish.

So we now just had a good number of hours to kill before the coach back. Lots of people were tucking in to post-ride cans of beer but we decided that this was not a good idea as could lead to falling asleep on the beach and all sorts of missing coach issues. Instead we comforted ourselves with a surprisingly large number of cups of tea to keep us warm. A little sit on the beach watching those brave soles who went in for a post ride dip before loading the bikes and more tea.

bikes being loaded

They do an excellent job in packing and transporting bikes and people back from Dunwich. Though they did struggle with Pauls rather sturdy Surly touring bike and had to make quite a lot of effort to stop it rolling out of the van once put in. I was also a little upset when getting my shiny new bike back to notice that it had suffered a noticeable scratch to the headtube in transit. Bikes do get scratched and have to accept that but having such an obvious battle scar after the first ride on it was less than idea.

As on the previous time we did the ride home from Smithfield market was not nice, this is mainly ’cause of trying to motivate yourself to get back on the bike again. Managed to get home by about 4.30 to watch the final stages of the Tour de France with a beer in hand, pretty much spot on.

Would happily do the Dynamo again but have to think of a different transport back option I think.