So, User10571, Adrian and I set off from Cutty Sark Gardens at a little after 1 in the morning. (The fourth member of our little team confessed to a date mix-up when we woke her at five before one.) And we slid gently through Woolwich, passed the Ghost bike at the Blackwall Tunnel approach, and then took to the back streets at Abbey Wood and pootled along to Erith. This was the first of our recce questions - whether taking the low road was a practical proposition at night, and with sixty riders, and we think that it is. It will certainly save some heaving over four hills between Greenwich and Dartford, including Shooters Hill.
So we went on, and answered out second question - is the Dartford by-pass do-able at night - and we thought it was, although we'd have to be careful about getting spread out, and the TECs (I'll be one) had better be pretty assertive when the peloton is being overtaken by artics. Which takes some thinking about....
Up and down, and up and down, and up and down again, then to Greenhithe, Swanscombe and Gravesend (there to marvel at the wonders of Higham Street, sufficient to stiffen the plus-fours of Georgian Architecture fans), and here we split. I took the road, slowly, to Lower Higham and User10571 and Adrian took the canal path. They arrived six minutes after me, and that, I think, answers the third question - those of you coming next week will do the canal path, and may the spiders' webs not entirely freak you out. And you'd better be charmed by the chorus of frogs.
And then we made our way north to Cooling. Cooling was the word. When we dipped down to sea level the temperature dropped three or four degrees centigrade. And then, as we rose, the night air got steamy, and then, foggy - really foggy, so we were pleased that User10571 knew the way, because navigating by map would have had its moments.
Cooling Church is unremarkable, but, visiting the children's graves it was easy to see why Dickens was moved. They are much smaller than the photographs lead you to believe. Pathetically small, and not arranged with any degree of grace. The great maker of Victorian sensibilites toward children had his own reasons for caring so passionately about the plight of the vast majority who were simply at the mercy of chance, but, if these graves put him to the task of setting out his cares in literary form, the children didn't die entirely in vain. We didn't know what carried them away, although User10571 told us that malaria was rife on the marshes until they were drained.
As we left the churchyard the first rim of venetian red, and then dark orange appeared to our northeast. The roads were dark - User10571 barely saw the fox that ran across the road a few feet in front of his wheel, but, by the time we cleared Chatham, at about four, the orange was fierce and the sky above deep blue. Mist lay over the fields, and the warm moist air bought a million rabbits out. How we didn't hit one, I don't know, and I don't expect Friday's ride to be entirely bloodless. The dawn chorus blasted out from hedgerows, and swifts, or swallows, shot along the road ahead of us taking insects on the wing. I've done a lot of these rides, but I can't recall seeing early moring nature on the move like this before.
We caught the first train back from Sittingbourne, to beat the Southeastern's 7 a.m. deadline, and so that I could be home at 7 to escort the Babe to work - this she declined, having decided to go by public transport and, one suspects, give herself the option of having a drink after work. So, I was asleep by half past, and now, partly refreshed, able to stroll down to Balham for a light lunch. Pip pip! As Dickens would say.
