“London’s best bike ride”
Jack Thurston
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Anyone who rides a bike regularly has a journey that amounts to nothing; maybe a jaunt just long enough to make getting a bike out worthwhile, instead of walking or – for those of a more leathery disposition – the distance that can be ridden on an empty stomach without thinking of how to refuel. A long trip is just a lot of short ones run together. With careful preparation, good morale and deft use of the formula X x 0 = 0, any voyage can be reduced to the status of ‘nothing’.
The hardest thing about travelling on a push bike is the idea.
If you think 187 kilometres is a long way stop worrying about the idea and use the time and energy saved to deal with technical problems as they present themselves.
Never persuade anyone to ride the Dunwich Dynamo. If they do there’s certain to be a point on the trip when they wish they were at home in bed. When that moment comes you don’t want to be held responsible for their regrets. If you think somebody is under-prepared try and put them off. Alternatives are available and there’s always next year; but – if they must go – support them. The chances are they’ll succeed and love it.
Reasons to ride the DD include…
- It gets shorter every year.
- If the weather is wet there’ll also be tail-wind.
- Epping Forest means you exit Outer London quicker than on any other radius.
- Moonlight doesn’t burn human skin or give you cancer.
- You don’t have to get up early to join in.
- There’ll be no tea-shops, folk museums or other visitor attractions open to tempt you off the road.
- The darkness is dramatic but dawn comes early and from then until breakfast time the only other traffic on the empty roads is dopey pedal bikers.
- However ill-prepared you are you’ll meet other pilgrims who are in a worse state than you.
- It crosses soft country, no deserts.
- What’s the worst thing that could happen?
- Salt water is antiseptic, cold water analgesic, the big, briny bath at the end is both.
There are many reasons to ride but the best is this…
Ride the Dunwich Dynamo and for the rest of your life – while you live in London, and keep a bike – you can glance at the clock as evening falls and ask yourself the question; ‘shall I ride to the Suffolk coast tonight?’ You never have to go, but your World will always be bigger.
DD XX
London Fields, E8
30th of June 2012
You’ll know when the time is right.
Back in the day there were nice ‘T’ shirts from Mosquito. This year, to celebrate TWENTY years of pointless lunacy it’s time to launch the Official Dunwich Dynamo product range.
Scientists are working on a luminous skin-cream that offers spooky zombie conspicuity in the dark then becomes a high factor sun-block after dawn, but what kind of fragrance and can it be rain-proofed?
In the meantime COMING SOON the Dunwich Dynamo Souvenir handbag. You know it makes no sense.