Category: touring

The following first appeared in ‘London Cyclist Magazine’ – without the hyper-text – in May 1998 as promotion for Dunwich Dynamo VI, when the DD was still a pay-to-enter event with routing signs and a location breakfast on arrival at Dunwich Heath. The DD is now a free, traditional event, like Christmas, only with less eating and more travel.

Then there were a couple of hundred, now nobody has to count how many happy pilgrims pass. Some details of route and stops have changed and the road to Dunwich Heath is still hanging on against the hungry sea. Mostly it’s the same.

“I began riding out to the Suffolk coast on moonlit summer Saturday nights in the far-off country of the 1980’s. Jez Hastings , editor and publisher of the tricycle fanzine ‘One too many’, suggested that this tradition could become a public event. On Sunday mornings races and rides, for larks are plentiful; how about one on Saturday night for the owls?

Jez ran a small wholesale business and his links with the bike-trade brought sponsorship from Mosquito Bikes whose location on the Essex Road has a pleasing psycho-geographical resonance. In 1992, the Dunwich Dynamo had it’s first edition.

At Eastway, the London Boroughs of Hackney, Waltham Forest, Newham and Tower Hamlets abut. The river Lee has been the divide between the old London County Council and Essex and before that Middlesex and Essex, and even earlier a peace line between the Danes and the Saxons. From Eastway you ride up Leyton High Road, the hill to Chingford and into the hanging glade of Epping Forest. After a wind through Moreton to dodge the A414, you join the Dunmow road at Fyfield. Unfortunately, many excited riders miss the first control at Leaden Roding where Mr. and Mrs. Knight and their extended family offer bread-pudding and coffee.
North of here on the roman line of the Dunmow Road the land is flat and the heavens wide. Early starters are not too late for chips in Dunmow.
Great Bardfield and Finchingfield are so cute they even look like picture postcards in the dark. The Hedinghams, last towns in Essex, feel out of commuter influence. At Bulmer Tye the road from Castle Hedingham sweeps into the highway for Sudbury. After the winding, rolling lanes of North Essex, this runs broad and level. If that’s not enough to spur you on, gravity soon will as the road begins – gradually at first – to descend.
Almost hidden in the rampant hedge is a big white sign that – for administrative convenience of putting all of Sudbury in one county – marks the borderline. The real crossing comes at the bottom of the hill where – after a shallow right-hand bend – the road bridges the river Stour and leaves the timber villages of Essex for the pink plaster of Suffolk. You feel the pattern of the country better without the distractions of the day.
Beyond the control at Great Waldingfield are the Suffolk prairies where once over-lit American cold-war bases are falling derelict; not all change is for the worse. Needham Market and the crossing of the River Gipping takes the route into its penultimate phase, silly Suffolk; silly is the old word for holy.
Ruined monasteries poke out of the woods and if the sun’s not up yet, it soon will be. Sometimes temperature inversions leave mist in the river valleys, while the fields between are sunlit. Foxes, rabbits and crows stare arrogantly at the bag-eyed townies.
From Coddenham to Pettaugh the way is once again pencil-straight. Does the hamlet of Stone Street commemorate a time when this was paved and all the rest was the kind of mire the 1990’s would call off-road?
If you ever ride this route alone, pick a line through Framsden and Framlingham and Bruisyard. For the tired sheroes of the Dunwich Dynamo, lulled by signs on every turn, this might call for too much thinking. They are sent along the A1120 whose sharp hills can make it a via dolorosa if the hot sun catches you still labouring.
A last phase running down behind Yoxford sees the soil turning sandy and the farmland drifting into heath. Too many bike rides end with an anti-climax, so the Dynamo promises a monster breakfast and, should you require it, a nice piece of cardboard on which to snooze away the morning.
For unconducted travellers the café on the beach opens at ten o’clock in Summer. Dunwich was once the capital of East Anglia and 800 years ago was as big as London. A storm blocked the river which killed off the port. Over centuries what remained of the town was washed away by the relentless tides.
The Dunwich Dynamo is the only bike ride that gets shorter every year. In years when the event runs at a loss and I am tempted to jack in the task of promoting it, I look forward to the season when the finish route will have to be changed because the road on which it now runs has been washed away; five more years is the latest estimate.
The inexorable transformation of the coastline reminds us that the permanence of change predates the modern cult of ‘progress’ and will out-last it even if we do succeed in recreating a sustainable way of living.

• Jez Hastings went to Islay,  watches birds, paddles canoes, contributes to the Washing Machine Post and is now Scottish.
• Mosquito Bikes are still in the Essex Road, all their stock is nice.
• I’m still dreaming of becoming a cyclist.
• The Dunwich Dynamo has spawned many ‘tribute’ events. The Exmouth Exodus – which runs form Bristol in August – is highly recommended
• The DD now has a useful alternative – the Dalston Dynamo  – which may develop into a Dynamo de l’avenir?

“London’s best bike ride”

Jack Thurston

Play sound.

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.