Meet: 08:50 at Liverpool Street Station for the 09:18 train to Harwich map

Distance: 52 miles

Phone: Ian - 07986 872 205

All day ride. Medium paced. We'll take Sustrans Route 1 from Harwich to Colchester. From Colchester it's quiet country roads to Maldon. Maldon to Chelmsford stays close to the River Chelmer.

Pub lunch.

Entirely on roads - suitable for all bikes - make sure you have an inner tube or two.

Report

Four of us at Liverpool Street for the 9.20-ish train to Harwich: ride leader Ian, Robert, Cathy and me.

Harwich International seems a rather grand name for a place that ships people and stuff to Holland. It all looked a bit abandoned. The roads around it were well-surfaced, though, and good to ride on as they were almost deserted of traffic. That didn’t last long, as we soon passed through Harwich town, which was having a regular Saturday of shoppers and cars.

Soon left behind, and we got into the Essex countryside, always very pleasant. I think Essex gets a bad name because of its towns, I guess, but they are surely no worse than towns in any county. The countryside is great, anyway; low-lying, and so with big skies. There are good roads, in general. Many of the fields were at that dug-over stage – possibly something to do with the harvest? Quite a way inland there was a fishy smell in the air by the fields, and I wonder if farmers use fish by-products as fertilisers. I’ll examine my potatoes carefully in future for any signs of mackerel… Elsewhere we saw many landscaped areas of lawn, side-by-side with fields, which seemed odd. We passed farms and grand country houses, including a row of newly-built colonial-style places with columns round the porch, and caravan parks; some of them were residential, I guess, and some were for holidays, one of which was having a sort of festival with stalls, and a stage, with an air-guitar competition in progress – we weren’t tempted to stop. We saw a retro cats’ holiday home called the Catlins cattery, and wondered if they too had competitions…

There had been drops of rain in London early on, and most of the day looked like it was about to rain, but it didn’t happen. The skies were grey, but I cunningly had yellow lenses on, which made it look brighter than it was. Didn’t put on a rain jacket all day in the end, and the sun was out after lunch, and I even got to change those lenses for dark ones. All in all, perfect cycling weather.

We made one stop early on, at the edge of the Colne River, just watching the few boats and the short queue either for a bus or the ferry, which wasn’t due to go for some hours. We left that and got on to a few miles of broken road and a rough path that covered us and the bikes in red clay, and tested our (mostly) skinny tyres a bit. The tyres did their stuff; no punctures all day…

Ian set a cracking pace and we kept in a constant group, so there were few stops on our way to lunch. We rejected one pub as it looked quite crowded outside, but then had to plod on another 10 miles or so at an increasingly desperate speed. At the village of  Tolleshunt D’Arcy we saw a mirage: pub on a corner. Only when we got up close to it we realised it was closed down. Due to lack of interest or a competitor? Thankfully, a competitor, and we found it inside a minute, the welcoming Queen’s Head. The sign outside said meals served at lunchtimes and evenings. It was ten to two, and we got in just in time, as they stopped food at two. It had an excellent extensive menu, and I kind of wished I didn’t have to get back on a bike so as to take full advantage of it… The range of puddings will have to wait for another visit, I guess, when I can afford a rickshaw and chauffeur.

We saw another mirage in the afternoon, a genuine optical illusion, when you’re on a downhill and the road ahead looks as if it’s rising almost vertically; then you get there, and the gradient’s nowhere near what you thought it was, and your momentum carries you up most of the way anyway – always a bit of a relief.

There was only one hill the whole day, and that was the steep slope up to the centre of Maldon, a relatively busy street to the shops at the top. We began our climb, and a guy on an MTB or tourer loaded with tons of luggage suddenly came past us. I was about to be impressed till he stopped dead, a yard from the kerb, and gave up. I nearly collided with him, and the cars began parping merrily at him – and I would have too if I had something to parp with. We didn’t see him again. A middle-aged lycra lout did pass us near the top, and carried on. On a country lane outside Maldon a bunch of teens asked us how to get to Maldon, and we told them it was by then a couple of miles back – this was kind of weird: shouldn’t they have been in some dark interior listening to chav hip-hop or logged on to a chatroom? Essex kids reclaimed by countryside walks… hmm.

It was great to get to Chelmsford, especially as we got there with 10 minutes to spare before the London train, and we were back in Liverpool Street by about 5.15, having clocked up between 50-60 miles (none of our computers seemed to agree).

Great ride!

Nick Sweeney.

The GPS said the distance was 55 miles – Ian.