I only decided to do this ride a couple of weeks ago, following legal advice, so as I wasn't able to get a bike reservation, I had a cunning plan, and decided to emulate Stu in bringing a rucksack although mine had a bike bag inside, in case there was a jobsworth on the train...........which there was.
After rapidly loading our bikes on the train, as 2 other cyclists then turned up with bikes one of whom is a regular, being a musician with a French horn or something similar in 1 pannier and a bottle of red wine in the other, who I remembered from the Cleethorpes ride in 2010), the jobsworth then started requesting bike reservations as we walked out of the guards van. Rebecca, being the honest person that she is, volunteered that she didn't have a reservation, so he insisted that her bike was off loaded as they could only take 5 (despite having space for far more). He didn't however ask to see a reservation from me, as he clearly thought he'd got his victim! The bike bag was then quickly deployed and Rebecca's bike was partially dismantled and shoved in the bag, and surprisingly, Mr Jobsworth then said it could go in the guards van (presumably on the basis that it was now luggage and not a bike).
Arriving at York Minster, a steadily increasing number of cyclists then started turning up, including Crinkly Lion distributing cake in the manner of a certain bearded messiah distributing fish. Manna from heaven.
York's much easier to cycle through at night (fewer cars & bikes getting in the way) and we were rapidly out into the countryside heading past Elvington. The roads were almost down to Bucks standards unfortunately, so as mentioned above, there was lots of calling out of hazards. I know from cycling around here previously, that there are a number of power stations dotted around, and their sodium lights lit up the towers and the columns of water vapour gushing up and then blown sideways by the wind. In the distance, the orange glow looked like the evil forges of Mordor............
One down side of the terrain past Goole, is that there aren't many trees, so the half way stop (with its toilets) was a welcome beacon. Heading off again, it was a bit colder initially, but the sky was soon starting to lighten.
Heading down the B1392 parallel to the River Trent, towards Keadby and Gunness with the massive embankment on our left hand side, it was slightly interesting seeing how much water was leaking across the road, and thoughts of the broken levees in New Orleans from 2005 danced around my head for a while. Unfortunately I'd missed the empty kilometre mentioned above, but until this point, I hadn't really looked at my GPS, other than to occasionally look at the map and think "we're in the middle of nowhere, and there's nothing around", but then it came in handy as I got to do something useful by escorting Pamela to Scunthorpe station, and then do a high speed zoom along the A1077, where I caught up with the tail end in South Ferriby. For the 5 miles prior to then, the Humber Bridge was slowly growing bigger and the sheer size is obvious when you realise how slowly the vehicles seemed to be going across it, when in fact they were going fast but were very small.
I've only gone across the bridge once before, on the 2010 Cleethorpes ride when we went in the other direction, and I remembered the long downhill at the end. Going the other way of course it meant a long uphill........
I'd also forgotten that after the half way point, the other end is flat, so there was no balancing downhill unfortunately!
The roads into Hull mainly consisted of wide avenues, often with half a carriage way marked out for bikes. However Hull itself certainly doesn't seem to have many cyclists unfortunately. The tail end of the ride arrived at Cafe Pasaz at 7.45 am and after a quickly demolished breakfast, further sustenance was rapidly obtained.
As always, thanks to Simon for the planning and excellent stops, and everyone else involved.
Having had a break from night rides for almost a year, what was nice to see, was how people have become better cyclists, able to handle distances better/go faster/climb better/(even drink more), thanks to things like the FNRttC.
The rest of my photos are shown
here.
