Well, that was an absolutely wonderful little ride. Only 17 miles, but what a lot we packed in!
Del arrived to time and we set off on well-trodden paths past Southend Hospital, but towards the Borough Boundary we dived into Belfairs Woods. Del, it turned out, had never been that way. Jan & I used this route on one of our first ever tandem rides, an 11-miler one Sunday morning which we achieved in a little over an hour and which was really the starting point of my dream to do LEJoG.
A bit of circuitous riding along lanes that time forgot and soon we crossed the A13 at Hadleigh and then followed Benfleet Road, with its plush residences, whereupon we reached Essex Way. I'd never cycled down it before, but what a magnificent ride it makes! Dez has been into the details and we won't dwell on them too much other than to say that there will be repercussions of an as yet undecided nature... 43.6 mph indeed!
However, it demonstrates clearly that Essex is hillier than Lancashire: on LEJoG, Jan & I only managed 45.2 on the Nick of Pendle. 45.9 mph today, almost as much as we managed descending Glen Convinth coming off the Highlands (46.2 mph). We maintained over 40 mph for quite some time after we entered the 30 mph limit, but we didn't catch up with the car in front of us.
The vagrant visitor erstwhile,
My colour-plate book says to me,
Could wend by hedgerow-side and stile
From Benfleet down to Leigh-on-Sea.
This we did, stopping for a couple of pints of Young's Special at the Barge Gladys, the Club Barge for the Benfleet Yacht Club (non-members and visitors welcome), which Betjeman doesn't seem to mention. Thereafter, we had a rather bumpy Rohloff-testing ride (the peloton had two Rohloffs to one derailleur) along the sea wall into Leigh. There weren't many hedge-rows but there were three stiles, two of which required the bikes to be lifted over. We wended our way behind the cockle sheds and had another pint at the Crooked Billet, being the only ones sitting outside as the penalty shoot-out was under way, before carrying on past the "No Cycling" signs along the sea front, up Shorefield Road and home.
Summer evening cycling - dontcha just luvvit?
