After a bit of time off away from cycling due to other commitments and a skiing holiday (where I was constantly worried about injuring myself!), our next chance for a training ride was a three-day excursion around the Norfolk coast and up to Yorkshire before a train ride back from Darlington. On this ride the aim was to try and ride close to the distances we wanted to ride every day during the TAW and sleep rough in bivvy bags to try it out as I had never slept in such conditions. For those that don’t know, a bivvy bag (from the word bivouac) is essentially a waterproof sleeping bag lining that you put your sleeping bag into. I didn’t own one and had to borrow one off a friend, but unfortunately it wasn’t a sealed bag, so my head would be exposed to the elements. This filled me with dread as it was mid-March, so the weather was likely to be pretty crap. We were also going to try and live “off the grid” and test out our new Busch & Muller lighting systems. These were dynamo powered front and rear lights, which means you’re not relying on batteries the see the way and make yourself visible. The lighting system also had a USB output port, so enough to power our phones and Garmin head units, which we were using to navigate our rides, with pre-made routes programmed into it, think of a GPS unit in a car.
We set off on a Friday morning on the cheapest train to Cambridge before we would ride due East to Lowestoft before cycling up the coast around to Cromer. The train was a rickety old one, which I normally have no problem with, except for one point when I went to the toilet a few carriages down and on the way back managed to crush my index finder in the door between carriages, as it wasn’t spring loaded. It was excruciating at the time and almost made me vomit from the pain. So not an ideal to start a mini-bike packing tour! When we set off from Cambridge, we had a whopper tail wind, so much that at numerous times we were spinning out on our gearing (which were prototypes, so I won’t say anymore…). We made great time to Lowestoft and then turned up the coast where we were treated to a lovely sunset, although the glorious tailwind we had slowly turned into a headwind as we made our way around the coast to Cromer. After a burger dinner in Cromer and 225km in the bank, we decided we would continue cycling and setup camp at the next good spot we saw (or thought we saw as it was dark by this point), covering 245km for the day. We eventually turned off onto a rough track and decided on a spot that looked sheltered from the wind and sounded like it was near the sea as we could hear the clatter of ship masts. We went about setting up camp, with Jack’s guidance as I had no clue what I was doing. Jack was in the fortunate position that his bivvy bag was sealed from the elements and had a pole to keep the bag away from his face. So after brushing our teeth and donning our matching bright red Uniqlo down gilets (sales!), we slid into our bags.
It was a pretty horrific night's sleep for me. It started to rain in the night, pattering onto my face, which was exposed to the elements, so I had to manipulate the bivvy bag to try and shelter my head, but in doing so, my hands were exposed to the elements and my gloves became soaked through, so my fingers were very prune-like in the morning. The experience really put me off the idea of bivvy bagging for the TAW as I don’t know how I would handle the thought of getting into a bivvy bag after a 300km day, on the 7th day after being pissed on all day. It led me to start rethinking my sleeping arrangement and how to manage it. Obviously we could sleep in a B&B or a hotel every night during the TAW, but we wanted to sleep rough as much as possible, to save money (bogs don’t cost much to sleep in), time (you’ll setup and takedown camp far quicker than in a hotel if you’re shivering your ass off, or being lashed on), effort (you don’t need to worry about finding a vacancy or if the B&B is the right distance for the mileage you’re aiming for that day), and badass points (self-explanatory). I discuss our final gear choice for the TAW further on, but this was the moment I start giving my sleeping arrangement substantial thought.
After a 6-hour attempt at sleep, we got up and decamped, munching on flapjacks, pastries, and whatever we had got our hands on late the night before, and set off. The aim was to finish riding around the Norfolk coast and take a northerly route up to the Lincolnshire Wolds where we would camp again. It would end up being a rough day for several reasons, starting off with me coming off the bike. It was quite an unglamorous fall, I was on the front on the aero-bars when I saw around a hundred swans gathered in a field, which is quite an unusual sight, so I pointed it out to Jack who was drafting behind me at the time. As I did, I started to drift to the left slightly, not really noticing due to all the swans, and then proceed to drift off the road and onto the grass verge. When you’re on the aerobars, your hands are nowhere near your brakes, and your control of the bike is substantially reduced, so what happened? I went down! Thankfully we had been on a slight incline, so our speed wasn’t very high, and my tumble didn’t have any further repercussions or hinder me for the rest of the journey, it was more a funny incident that continued to raise our spirits whenever mentioned!
Remember that headwind we had the day before? It was still blowing, so the first 100km of this day’s riding were straight into it, and it was blowing hard. I said it afterwards to Jack that it was the toughest 100km I can remember doing on a bike mentally. It was just constant wind, and since the Norfolk is quite flat, there was no hiding from it. Eventually we made it to King’s Lynn and had a glorious moment of taking a U-turn to turn up north and having our whopper tailwind again. From there we sped up to the Lincolnshire Wolds making great progress and meeting some “interesting” people in Boston while stocking up at a local shop, one man looking at us and telling us “You’d find more fat on a cold chip!”. Once we hit Lincolnshire Wolds, we cycled up though the length of it and realised we hadn’t reached the distance we wanted to hit that day, so we said we’d keep going, showing the benefits of bivvy bagging, as we didn’t have a hotel booked.
Things started going poorly for me here. I ended up running very low on energy and almost bonking as we left the Wolds. It also started raining heavily at this point which made my spirits plummet even further. We reviewed where we were and aimed for a town a 10km ride away to try and find dinner and dry out our kit. By the time we got there, I was a broken man, frozen, soaked, and in need of hot food urgently, so we piled into a bar and caught the end of the Six Nations Super Saturday, when Scotland almost shocked England coming back from 31-0 down at half-time. Normally I would have very interested in this, but at the time, I didn’t have the capacity to care. We ordered food (jacket potato with chilli) and as we waited and attempted to dry out, I started to think about the bivvy bag. And I couldn’t face it, I just couldn’t bear the thought of getting into a wet bivvy bag, when I was already soaked and frozen. So, I bailed, and after some discussion and searching, we found a guest house with a cheap and warm bed for the night about a 50km ride away in Beverly. I felt bad about it, as Jack was keen to bivvy again, but I just had a mental block about it. I felt even worse because after I had eaten my dinner and dried out a bit, I started to feel good again, and once we started riding, the rain had stopped and we still had the tail wind, so the thought of bivvying seem reasonable to me, but we had booked the guesthouse unfortunately and cycled onto it. Lesson learnt, never make a call on where to sleep until you’ve eaten a hot meal! It was another big day by the time we reached the guest house, having completed 265km for the day. As we were ahead of our intended distance schedule, we had a shorter final day, so we thought that it would be a relatively easy day, little did we know…
The final day would bring us through the North York Moors National Park, so we knew there would be climbing, but we hadn’t anticipated the steepness. The day started beautifully, as we’d slept in nice warm beds, and we set off full of optimism. The scenery was beautiful and barren, which reminded me very much of the Wicklow Mountains where I would have done most of my cycling when I was in Dublin. As we got into it, we started to find the climbs and it didn’t seem all too bad. A colleague of ours had recommended a particularly steep climb as he’s from the area and knew the lay of the land. It is a climb known as Chimney Bank, and has a literal 1 in 3 gradient, so much that there’s a sign stopping cyclists from descending it (a bit on that later). A lot of climbs throw around big gradients, and I’ve cycled up a fair few of them, but this took the biscuit. I’ve never gone up such a steep climb. It was relentless, and although I had increased the gearing ratio on my Brompton, it just wasn’t enough. Jack skipped away in his lighter style, while I chugged my way up. It got so steep at one point I was zig-zagging my way across the road in an effort to “reduce” the gradient, and as I came around, my front wheel lifted off the ground it was so steep and I nearly came off the bike! Eventually I got going again, but that was a brutal climb. Even the descent was horrible, being so steep that when my brakes were fully applied, and I mean squeezing with all my strength, I was still going at a disconcerting speed. I kept thinking I’d snap my brake cables and I’d have to aim for the bushes.
With the horror of Chimney Bank behind us, we continued through the Moors with numerous steep climbs to contend with. After Chimney Bank, I was sick of steep climbs, but they just kept coming until eventually we escaped their clutches and made a break for Darlington where are relief awaited. After a quick Pizza Hut and gander at the drunk and disorderly (it was St. Patrick’s Day after all), we boarded our train. At this point, there was quite a twinge in both my knees, which I didn’t think much of at the time. By the time our train arrived into London and I cycled home, both were screaming. This ended up having a substantial impact on both Jack and me, to the point where we were both getting very concerned about the impact the TAW would have on our bodies. We started looking into bike fits and how to ease the impact on our knees, unfortunately a Brompton is very limited in what geometry it can manage. Only the saddle position and height can be altered, the front is pre-set and can’t be changed. A colleague at work had some experience at bike fits so had a look at both Jack and my position to try and set it up as best as we could. With more training rides planned before the TAW, making sure we were in a position to train was really important. The Norfolk ride was a big learning curve for both of us and how we would manage the TAW, physically, mentally and from a logistical point of view. I also got to see a load of the UK I had never seen before so that’s always a bonus. All of these training rides have really got me to see parts of the UK that I would otherwise never have seen, so even before starting the TAW, I was glad to have gotten out into the country.
Day 1 Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2215689605
Day 2 Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2218254522
Day 3 Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2220702876
