Feeling fresh-faced at the start, on London Fields
Over the weekend, four Nosy Crows – Mary, Will, Kristina (formerly of Nosy Crow and now of Bloomsbury, but an honorary Crow for the occasion) and I – bravely – some might say foolishly – participated in the Dunwich Dynamo, a 120-mile night time bicycle ride from London Fields to Dunwich, on the Suffolk Coast.
We set off just after 9pm on Saturday night (with the aid of a round of enlivening G&Ts), and several loo breaks, one or two pub stops, two punctures, two slipped chains, and eleven-and-a-bit hours later (around nine and a half of them spent cycling) we arrived at Dunwich Beach, just before 9am on Sunday morning – tired, achey, and triumphant.
The four of us on Dunwich Beach
Some of us, it must be said, found the journey harder than others: Will, who was using the ride as an opportunity to train for the Prudential London-Surrey 100 (a shorter ride but one with far more hills) – coasted along with dignity and poise, pausing only to take pictures as the rest of us caught up, while Kristina heroically pushed through every hill and mile on the heaviest bicycle in the world… and the biggest challenge for me was, I think, just staying awake.
Cycling through the night
And even though the scene that greeted us at Dunwich was a very long queue for the coaches home, it couldn’t dampen (much) our relief at having finished. Thankfully I don’t think it’s put any off us of bike rides: even though I SWORE I’d never get on a bicycle again, I still cycled to work this morning… and Mary is already making ominous noises about next year’s Dynamo. So well done team Nosy Crow!
If you’d like to show your support for Will’s brilliant London-Surrey challenge (which he’s doing to raise money for Great Ormond St Hospital) you can sponsor him here.
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