Blue sky? Sunshine? On the day of a 6 hour bike ride? What luck is this in early March! Alas the March winds were out in force and, whipping across East Anglia’s famous flatlands, it was pretty hard going for much of the day. Made even worse by my legs basically freezing/cramping/going numb about a mile in to the ride. We stopped for lunch 20 miles in to the ride and I dethawed. The 5 miles back to the car were a breeze, pity about the other miserable 20 miles. Lesson learnt.
What curious places we cycled through, my favourite being a tiny village called Pixey Green. Alas no signpost to photography, or pixies for that matter.
We stopped here for a quick map check/attempt to resuscitate legs…Wilby…Foals Green…starting to sound a bit Austen like I thought
Introducing Grethic, my reluctant to be photographed cycler buddy. Her legs were fine, just for the record. Not jealous, not at all…
Fast forward another excruciating 5 miles and we’d reached the half way point of our ride. This was a mixed blessing for me. On the upside, we were half way through. On the downside, I knew exactly how far I had to cycle back. Thankfully we stopped for a reviving cup of tea at a very remote and rather wonderful arts centre called Wingfield Barns. What a stunning spot, I so wished I’d had my proper camera with me as I was itching to try to capture such a special place. That said, standing up was becoming quite troublesome and probably the weight of the beastly D700 would have made me keel over anyway.
I was totally blown away by Wingfield Barns and was all for jacking in the ride and calling for our backup truck to rescue us, whilst we just ambled around the galleries and drank in the peace, the sunshine, and resisted the temptation of buying every piece of sculture, pottery, art in the place. When we arrived the Barns were closed, but the general manager came out and opened it all up for us, throwing in tea and biscuits on the house for good measure. What a welcome! I can’t wait to go back, they have a fantastic programme of exhibitions, concerts, film showings, drama and talks. Yet another hidden gem of Suffolk finally revealed to me.
The less said about the second half of the journey the better. The sun shone, the birds sang, the countryside was spectacular but all I could think of was my poor, aching legs. After about 4 years we arrived at the very splendid Dennington Queen for lunch. If they had a website, I’d link to it. Isn’t that a bit puzzling? In my world, if you don’t have a website you don’t exist. But the Dennington Queen is definitely real, I definitely had a fabulous lunch there, and definitely spilt my drink absolutely everywhere.
I was quite certain I would seize up entirely during lunch and would be walking the last 5 miles, weeping. Quite the reverse happened. My legs warmed up, the muscles relaxed and I breezed back to the car. A lesson learnt a very hard and painful way. My head, body, hands and feet were cosy in a couple of layers each. My legs, the bit that was actually having to work, were exposed with just one layer.
We saw so few cars and people, and we hit some very remote parts of Suffolk. I only wish I could have snapped more photos than I did, but I didn’t dare stop too often in case I couldn’t get going again. My snaps were limited to map stops which were reasonably frequent as Grethic’s iphone battery died so we couldn’t get our directions from her map app, and it was too sunny to see the screen anyway. And gloves meant she couldn’t manipulate the screen. But other than that it was a GENIUS plan…right up there with wearing one layer on my legs.
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