Peter arrived at 6.30 on time, but we didn't get to our start control until about 7.15 so we started about 15 mins late. It was still dry, but windy - mostly behind us for now so we made reasonable time.
As we arrived at Lavenham (53km) the rain started and my Swallow got its first taste of being wet. Money was exchanged for a pair of bananas and a receipt, and we pushed on. The rain was now steady, but it wasn't too cold so it felt not to bad.
We arrived at Harwich and made our way down to the docks where there's a cafe on the pier, and had coffee and food - very nice. We set off back out of Harwich and were now into the wind, so the rain was into our faces, and the pace dropped considerably. It was starting to feel like hard work, and the schedule wasn't helped by discovering that we were in Dovercourt and still hadn't got a receipt. We traced back about 300 yards to Harwich, whose location on the GPS map is rather deceptive. As far as addresses go, 50m from "Harwich" the addresses change from High St Harwich to High St Dovercourt. We probably wasted 15 minutes on this, and we were down to less than 1h in hand.
On we pushed into the wind, occasionally turning north for some respite, retracing to Manningtree, then following the Mildenhall 300k route back to Saffron Walden. This included a skogtastic bridleway and a fork left down a steep, gravelly muddy descent which Mr Larrington will no doubt remember well. The council have helpfully sprinkled an inch thick layer of gravel across the road in an effort to improve grip.
Also during this section I almost came off the bike due to sudden loss of rear wheel traction whilst honking up a hill in the granny gear and I had to stop, recover my composure, and then sat in the saddle on the rest of the ascent to keep more weight on the back. Slight loss of traction occured a few times also - Mr Bontrager, your tyres suck. More on this later.
Had to stop for bonk rations (flapjack, red bull, and squeezy gel all consumed which sorted out the flagging energy levels), as we rode across the exposed countryside being blown about. The rain had lulled but it returned and it became clear Saffron Walden by dark would be a no-no. Plus with the extra-thick cloud cover, dark came very early. On the way into Sampford I decided I wanted to have my reflective vest on, so Peter pressed on at reduced speed whilst I donned the spacker top.
Was about to get back on the bike... what's that odd noise? Sounds like... hissssss. From the back wheel. Ah, a visit. What's that other noise. Sounds like hissss. From the front wheel. Ah, a visit. Marvellous.
I called Peter to leave a message letting him know I had problems, and set about fixing it. Had hardly got started when he reappeared, due to having to rebattery my headtorch first, and we decided to just swap the tube on the rear, as the front was a slower puncture. However it transpired after 2 more miles that the bike was becoming skittish again, and we decided it would need doing as well. Removed the offending glass from
the tread, put my last spare tube in, and off we went again, now hopelessly behind intended schedule, having cost the best part of an hour fixing punctures in the dark and rain. Then I realised my 1203D was playing up, running very dimly and flickering, and so I had to rely on the 1303 but wasn't sure about the battery level so mostly ran it on lowish power.
We did a quick control at Saffron Walden, and then Peter navigated out as he knew a better route given the control location - not what I'd originally intended. The rain stopped, the sky cleared, we had a full moon. The 1203 started to improve and when the 1303 went into low power emergency battery saving mode, I switched it off as the dynamo light was now bright enough - seeming to only want to run one LED.
We finally got back about 9.15, so it was about 14h for 223km (offically 214km) averaging 16.1kph overall.
At least I've got the 51 points now... not a particularly enjoyable ride given the weather. Having Peter along
made it much more bearable.
