FNRttC Friday Night Ride to the Coast - Southwold August 8th

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

StuAff

Silencing his legs regularly
Location
Portsmouth
And then.....Ian, had you been with us, you'd have cried. Suffolk's roads do, oftentimes, have sandy bits, but this was biblical. Sand, wet and compacted across small roads and not so small roads, with stretches of water a hundred yards long and more. Steer straight, don't push, change down, and if you're coming to a stop, pedal deliberately and you'll cross sand with a bit of rear wheel wobbling - but after the first twenty times it gets a bit wearing. Our bikes got sand in places that no sand has any business being. Again, the worry went to people's legs, and we were grateful for the freshening tail wind.
Ostend (and parts westward) promenade was bad enough......
 

ianrauk

Tattooed Beat Messiah
Location
Rides Ti2
Reading all these reports reinforced my feeling that this ride was indeed one of the classic FNR's. OK I didn't do the whole shebang but what I did do was just awesome. Awesome in ride and awesome in company.
 

redfalo

known as Olaf in real life
Location
Brexit Boomtown
I really didn't want to do this ride. The previous week's tragedy has left me thinking that I should look for something different to do.

I'd taken Susie 'Up The Spanish' on Thursday evening - for the avoidance of doubt 'the Spanish' refers to Bar 61 in Streatham High Road - and Adrian, riding by on his way home from Something Very Important had stopped, chatted, and had a beer. As you know, Adrian is the living soul of optimism, and his take on an equivocal weather forecast was so upbeat that I found myself enthused. A career in motivational speaking awaits him!

I'd suggested an early start, reasoning that the roads would be covered in debris from the (departed) rain. Ten Fridayspeeps dutifully turned up. We waited for the eleventh. We telephoned the eleventh, but he switched his phone off. I sent a text. We waited until midnight and set off. If only I'd realised he sent me an e-mail at 10.58 pm! As we made our way to Hyde Park Corner!

So, having foregone the half hour leeway we set off in close order, and at a 'regular' pace, by which I mean comfortable for most of us, but close to the limit of a couple of us. We did well in getting to Brentwood at two fifteen and setting off again at twenty past, but the ford undid the timetable. And then some....

We've been through the ford (and one or two of us have been in it) and we've taken the bridge when the waters were high. This time round the waters were very high - six foot high and swirling, rushing, a maelstrom of muddy water which, lest there be any doubt, would have taken a person away, smashed them up and deposited their body a mile or more way downstream. The bridge was there, but, then again, it was under six inches of water. I conducted a silent risk assessment, but (cometh the hour, cometh the man) Greg simply strode toward the bridge, giving us the line that will, forever, be the most hilarious I've heard on a bike ride.... 'the good thing is, there is no dust!'.

I watched him go knee deep across the roadway toward the bridge before I trod a more discreet line along the verge (and through the nettles) and followed him on to the narrow concrete slab, re-inforced with god knows what kind of cheesewire, and we crossed, he confidently, me confident only in knowing that these socks were about to die, and wondering whether any of the other eight would be stupid enough to follow, which, heaven be praised, they all were. So we all made it to the eastern side. And we rode up the road. In water, for about a quarter of a mile. And, having waited for Ian to bail out his socks we turned south, to and through Stock (with stage whispers about not waking the nasty lady) and past the mill, and in to Old Stock Lane.

I knew that Old Stock Lane would be under water - it is, frequently. Veterans of the first 2011 ride to Southend will remember that I'd told people that we would have to dismount because the habitual floodwater would be frozen. But this was something else - this was four or five inches of water, sometimes more, running across the road at pace. This was a ditch filled to the brim and then some with a torrent - a noisy torrent. Knowing the road I was happy to ride through this (although happier still not to be on deep section rims) but those not so familiar with this part of Essex could be forgiven for stopping there and then.

But we went on. We had a puncture in East Hanningfield, and that cost us another few minutes (thankyou, Charlie for the CO2), and at this point the worry was getting to people's legs, so our pace was modest, but the skies were clearing and we kind of thought....maybe we're going to do this.

In to Maldon Tescos twenty minutes behind schedule, out again fifteen minutes behind schedule and down the road to East Mersea, Team Fast being waylaid by two more punctures, leaving Team Slow to make the running to the beach. Ian's photographs tell the story well - for no other reason than the meeting with landing craft on a deserted beach in the early hours, the Southwold ride is the indispensable, one and only, Top of the Pops night ride. That isn't to say that the eighteen miles from Maldon to East Mersea isn't the finest road the FNRttC travels down, but, if I can give myself a pat on the back, there is no coup de theatre quite like the Brightlingsea Ferry.

On then, to Harwich. This twenty miles or so is a bit crap in places, and our mood is dampened by a lack of sleep or coffee, but I thought it went reasonably well. The green at Great Bentley is lovely, there are some glorious views of the sea, and Harwich has charm. The people running the cafe on the Harwich pier were as stunningly disobliging as ever, so we repaired to the trailer for instant coffee and a burger and bacon buttie (with fried onions, you'll be pleased to know). And, having perked ourselves up a bit we were happy to see the ever-gregarious, not to say richly entertaining Alan hove in to view and take us across the water to Felixstowe.

Through Felixstowe. Past beach huts, Victorian villas in rich stone, concrete houses in the moderne style and the golf links to our 'proper' breakfast by the river Deben. Across the Deben and in to Suffolk Profonde, and along empty roads past cottages washed in pigs blood, stock ponds and fields bursting with fertility. And then.....Ian, had you been with us, you'd have cried. Suffolk's roads do, oftentimes, have sandy bits, but this was biblical. Sand, wet and compacted across small roads and not so small roads, with stretches of water a hundred yards long and more. Steer straight, don't push, change down, and if you're coming to a stop, pedal deliberately and you'll cross sand with a bit of rear wheel wobbling - but after the first twenty times it gets a bit wearing. Our bikes got sand in places that no sand has any business being. Again, the worry went to people's legs, and we were grateful for the freshening tail wind. By the time we got to Westleton and the obligatory ice cream stop, we were pooped.

Susie took the ride across the Walberswick marshes, over the golf course, through The Swan Hotel to the Sole Bay Inn. We drank beer. Of the ride to Darsham the less said the better - the wind was tough to beat. The train from Darsham to Woodbridge had bike spaces a-plenty, but the coach from Woodbridge to Ipswich had none, until, that is, the coach drivers found themselves on the receiving end of She Who Negotiates. If it's any comfort chaps, serious actors have signed away residuals in less time than it took you to discover the extra door to the luggage hold. We blagged our way on to the wrong train, parted company with Greg and Charlie at Liverpool Street, and, yes, I'm afraid I took Susie Up The Spanish yet again for richly deserved steak, chips and red wine.

You were great. Jenny, Mary, Adrian, Charlie, Julie, Greg, Ian, Stuart and (remind me...) Susie, you were all great. English men abed (especially those sending e-mails at 10.58pm) should think themselves accursed. This was the stuff that cycling clubs are made of.

Epic! After reading this, I'm even more gutted that I had to miss this one.
 

mmmmartin

Random geezer
I should look for something different to do
Just shut the feck up with this ridiculous idea. You know full well it's the coolest cycling club on the planet. Wet nights, floods, john o groats in a rainstorm, Ditchling Beacon in biblical floods, Southend on ice, adventure unlimited, it's what The Fridays do. If we wanted a quiet life we wouldn't have joined. Lots of people say life has become very tame, nowadays we want only to go shopping and sit on a sofa and watch the tele.
Bollocks to that.
Lots of us read this account, some wish they weren't forced to sit in some godforsaken French gite for a week on holiday.
(The Present Wife doesn't read this website)
Many of us wish we were there. If we wanted a quiet life of predictability we'd have joined a road racing club. But we didn't. We joined The Fridays. So just shut the feck up with this "doing something else" bollocks. We love it.

(And you.)



(And AH too, but don't tell her.)
 

CharlieB

Junior Walker and the Allstars
Late again, but here goes with a late ride report.
It's pretty much all been said above, but suffice to say this is the Jewel in the Crown of all the FNRttCs.
It was a tough ride for the first three hours, down to the rain and some downright ignorant impatient sweary motons as we were coming out of London.
That, and some serious assault course training through the Buttsbury ford maelström. Did anyone mention that before? @StuAff would've been swept away, but would at least have gained bouyancy from his rucksack. A gorgeous sunrise as witnessed through the lens of @ianrauk as the first ferry was sighted, after we missed the first one by dint of two visits in the space of 3 miles.
So, first big thanks to @User for a spare (pre-talced) tube.
A good breakfast at the little beach café in Felixstowe, across the Deben(?) and by now we were almost dried out for a very pleasant morning through the Suffolk lanes (more impatient and rude motorists).
Second big thanks to @dellzeqq for the icecreams waiting for us at Westleton.
Third big thanks to everyone else for the ride as a whole.
Despite indications that we were likely encounter bike space problems on the return leg, thanks to generous bike spacing on Ebullient Anglia Trains (or whatever they're called nowadays) and some negotiating skills with the coach staff, the whole journey back to London was remarkably unfraught.
Got home at 8:15 with 131m on the clock, and ordered a pizza, which was demolished in short order.
I'd had a Duran Duran earworm all night (maybe I'd heard it in the supermarket in Maldon), so I dusted off their first album from, get this - 1981, and sat down to enjoy my youth again.
I heard the opening track, 'Girls On Film', and woke up two hours later to the sound of the stylus in the run-out groove. This comment will of course be lost on the under thirty-somethings among us. At that point I decided bed would be a better place to be.

Finally, the Friday's jersey may look gorgeous on Agent Hilda but I look like second hand chewing gum in mine, but what the hell, it's staying. I like the red stars.
 

redfalo

known as Olaf in real life
Location
Brexit Boomtown
Just shut the feck up with this ridiculous idea. You know full well it's the coolest cycling club on the planet. Wet nights, floods, john o groats in a rainstorm, Ditchling Beacon in biblical floods, Southend on ice, adventure unlimited, it's what The Fridays do. If we wanted a quiet life we wouldn't have joined. Lots of people say life has become very tame, nowadays we want only to go shopping and sit on a sofa and watch the tele.
Bollocks to that.
Lots of us read this account, some wish they weren't forced to sit in some godforsaken French gite for a week on holiday.
(The Present Wife doesn't read this website)
Many of us wish we were there. If we wanted a quiet life of predictability we'd have joined a road racing club. But we didn't. We joined The Fridays. So just shut the feck up with this "doing something else" bollocks. We love it.

(And you.)



(And AH too, but don't tell her.)

^ this!
 
U

User10571

Guest
Exhibit A


6982490316_dbbd0201fd_o.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
U

User10571

Guest
6982490316_867ea4a4f9_s.jpg car.jpg by User10571b, on Flickr
Is it a Ford?
I think its a Ford inna ford.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
U

User10571

Guest
Nice to see the mag-mount aerial.
I wonder if he had a fare aboard.
And if so, did they have to disembark?
Or were they air-sea rescued?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
U

User10571

Guest
It is the same ford, but with water different to that which you went through.
This water was wetter.
I think that photo dates from a January or February ride, in the days when the Fridays had yet to venture out that way.
Like 2007 or 2008....
 
Last edited by a moderator:

BigGee

Senior Member
Well it was wet doing the RideLondon on Sunday and I was up to my axle in flood water a couple of times but it does not seem a patch on this ride. I am sure you will all remember this one a lot more than the sunny ones of the past couple of years!

I hope the weather is better for the next one in September. With three kids to get back to universities various and the clash with the RideLondon, neither has fallen for me this year. I wish I could have done at least one of them and will hopefully be back as usual next year.

Well done to all you hardy folk, definitely one for the Palmares!
 
Top Bottom