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meet up with me. We had calculated that I would be there about 5am, but I had been going faster than planned which rather messed up the arrangement! Anyway he set off in pursuit with a view to meeting up at Dunwich and luckily met by chance a friend of his from Diss cycling club, Alex, who was also doing the Dynamo.
Wayne and I arrived at Dunwich beach at 5.55am and went straight in to get our full English in the tearooms. No queuing, which I gather is rather unusual at the end of the Dynamo! We sat on a table with a young man from Cambridge who had done a fast dash from London and arrived at 4am. He was still waiting for his friend to arrive at 7am. At 6.25am Amit arrived and was rather surprised to see me already there! However he had been led astray by a faster group he had joined and had had to cope with punctures.
After a cup of tea with Peter and Alex we all set off for Darsham station so I could try to catch the 8.45 train to Ipswich and they could get on their way back to Eye and Diss. I had really slowed up by then having stiffened up quite a bit whilst at Dunwich, but got to the station in good time only to find 21 others there including Amit and Wayne.
When the train arrived the lady Guard was not at all happy to be faced with 22 bikes! “It will never happen again” she said. Then at Ipswich she said One Railway was cycle-friendly but we should make alternative arrangements to get home in future or book a bike space on the train. As you can’t book on this line at weekends, that rather fell on deaf ears! At Ipswich we were not allowed to join the first train to leave for Chelmsford/London but were herded onto the second one. Amit, Wayne and I sat together on this train and I got home to Chelmsford about 11.10am. I was tired but still on a bit of a high. My right knee had suffered from standing on the train from Darsham to look after bike and move it for passengers joining and leaving.
It was a great shame about the rain, but cycling in the dark is fun! My lighting worked really well and at no time did the ride feel unsafe. I was pleased to make a reasonable time for the ride and enjoyed meeting an interesting variety of people with whom to share the adversity and the challenge!! Hopefully some of us will stay in touch and maybe meet up for a repeat next year when we are bound to get a lovely dry balmy moonlit night – aren’t we?!
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