July WARTY/CycleChat Ride.Wowbagger, Mrs Wow, Uncle James and I have ridden and refined the route today.
We would like a 10:00am start at Manningtree Station.
Trains go from London Liverpool Street to Manningtree approximately every 15 minutes with a journey time of 1 hour or a bit more.
The Station Café is highly recommended for breakfast before we set off. The menu includes the Half Breakfast which is an excellent source of fuel before we set off:
I will be at the station from at least 9:00am, earlier if anyone else thinks they will arrive earlier!
So... off we go...The ride begins as did my Tiptree one in May - into Manningtree (the smallest town in the UK), along the river Stour past all the swans to Mistley, then up the hill from Mistley towards Bradfield Heath. There are very few hills on this ride, this is probably the worst.
From Bradfield Heath we head down towards Wix, at which point we depart from the route taken on my Tiptree ride and instead venture forth towards Stones Green and then Beaumont-cum-Moze. There's a nice downhill from Beaumont (although the road is rather badly surfaced, I'm afraid) and if you look to your left as you whizz down the hill you can see an unusual thin tower... that's our tea & cake destination, the Naze Tower, visible over Hamford Water.
We then cycle through the village of Kirby-le-Soken before arriving at Walton-on-the-Naze, making our way through this rather pleasant English seaside village towards the Naze Tower.
The Naze Tower does light food although we're planning this for a tea and cake stop. The ladies serving were warned that a bunch of cyclists are coming and are planning to make some extra flapjacks.
From the Naze Tower you can see Sealand, that rather unusual republic in the North Sea, also known as the Roughs Tower. Here we can see Uncle James and Wowbagger contemplating the North Sea.
Onward after the cakes...So now we are heading off along the beach cycle paths all the way from Walton to Clacton, via Frinton. The cycle tracks vary in quality, with rather good at Walton to rather bad at Clacton. Please note, this ride includes some cindery track, some rutted concrete paths, many sandy corners, but is mostly reasonable asphalt. But not always. Do not bring your skinniest tyres as you will find it bumpy at times!
Walton joins relatively seamlessly with Frinton which has wonderful sandy beaches. However we won't be stopping here for our swim, we'll leave that to a bit later in Clacton to make the most of the lunch stop.
Bikes aren't allowed all the way along the Frinton sea path (as we discovered today!) so we have to go on the road for a bit of it, but we're back on the path beside the sea defences soon enough.
We will pass through Holland on Sea and then arrive at Clacton. Clacton is rather more rough-and-ready than Frinton and that becomes evident fairly quickly.
We have planned to stop for our swim and lunch at 'Beaches Café' which is a fairly traditional seaside café full of buckets and spades and dinghies. Food is of the sandwich/burger/jacket potato variety with some choices for vegetarians and with reasonable prices. This is where those of us brave enough will swim. This is about 25 miles into the overall journey of 44 miles.
After the swimNow we head further into Clacton where the cycle path does stupid things (requiring us to ascend 30 steep steps unless we cycle up a steep hill on the road... which we will do). The path continues in a rather concrety/sandy manner towards Jaywick which isn't the nicest part of the world, one might say.
We pass lots and lots of holiday mobile homes and then eventually make our way to the road that goes from Jaywick to St Osyth.
We cycle through St Osyth and pick up the quiet and smooth country roads towards Great Bentley, the village with the largest village green in the UK at 43 acres.
At Great Bentley we stop at the Plough Pub for a beer and our chance for a game of rounders. Please note that The Plough is having its kitchen refurbished so there is no food available (apart from crisps/pork scratchings) and they can't make tea or coffee either. The beer choice is a bit lightweight but will probably serve to refresh for the final 7 mile journey to Manningtree.
Final leg.The final trip to Manningtree is via the village of Little Bentley, first crossing the rather busy A133. Although this road is single carriageway in each direction it's pretty busy so we may be stuck waiting to cross for a little while.
We approach Manningtree Station down the wonderful Cox's Hill which is a chance to test out your bravery on fast descents, but it's a lovely smooth and wide road so is good fun. As long as your brakes work for the roundabout at the bottom!
Manningtree Station Café is, of course, a good place to sample a beer whilst awaiting your train.
Total journey distance is 44 miles. The route can be found here:
bikehike.co.uk - Course CreatorThe cycle path bits are done as well as we can do them using Google Satellite view but may not be 100% correct.
Riding this route took us four and a half hours cycling time today with an average speed of 10mph. Large portions of the journey are on shared use cycle paths so you can't go very fast, so don't expect to whizz round this course. It will be a leisurely ride in good company in (hopefully!) sunshine. Look forward to seeing you all there!
