WHITWICK TO SKEGNESS

The idea of cycling all the way to the coast was something I wanted to do since I was young. Having met people who done long bike tours (some round the world) it’s one plan I have on the shelf if I ever find myself out of work again. So when a group from the pub announced they were doing a charity bike ride to Skegness I up for it straight the way. I wanted to do it just for the experience of doing the distance.

It was a bit of a last minute thing so I didn’t really have time to get sponsors but I’m sure the other 8 who finished raised a good amount. We met up at 7:30 on the Saturday morning, I was working lates the night before which didn’t help at all.

10 of us were going on the ride plus a “support car” to carry drinks and all our stuff like clothes and puncture repair kits.

 

The route was all by main roads for ease of navigation. We were going have a rest at each of the main towns on the way Melton Mowbray, Grantham and Boston. I wasn’t at the meeting due to work but I would have chosen a more direct route, avoided main town centers and given everyone pre printed maps of the route.

We set off from the White Horse at 7:30am, the first few miles were all downhill. It felt like a 20 mile race instead of a 100 mile ride. The high pace continued onwards at we went onto the A6006. My heavy mountain bike with rear suspension was probably the worst choice of bike to have for a ride like this. On the first hills even the less fit smokers seemed to ride up effortlessly while I had to power out of the seat struggling to keep up. Three of the group had proper racers and I noticed that they easily gained several hundred meters just rolling down hill. I was going to have a seriously hard time keeping up with them. I kept losing sight of people in the thick fog that lifted later on.

 

After 1 hour 50 minutes and 39.7KM we arrived at the first rest point in Melton, one ill prepared person dropped out so we were down to 9. This was a marathon not a sprint and I knew that if they tried to keep that pace up any longer some serious damage was going to be done.

As we headed out the town the pace had slowed down to something a lot more sensible and I started to enjoy the ride more. I didn’t bother trying to keep up with those on the racers in front and just went along at my own pace.

After 3 Hour 5 minutes (not including breaks) and 63.5km was our second rest in Grantham, at this point we all grouped together but had been spread out over about 25 minutes compared to the 5-10 minutes at Melton.

 

The hill coming out of Grantham was the point that everyone seemed to be the most concerned about. When I looked at the G.P.S data the next day it seemed that we had already done the worst climb coming out of Melton. I didn’t find it much of a problem as i’m used to hills anyway and it came straight after the rest break.

The hill did quickly split everyone up, by the time I got to the top the 3 racer bikes were out of sight ahead and the rest were out of sight behind. Those 5 I didn’t see again until they arrived at Skegness. This was the point at which that fast first hour started to haunt some people.

The general feeling was once Grantham was out of the way then it was almost completely flat all the way to Skegness as shown above. I like everyone else thought flat=easy, it turned out to be the worst stretch of the trip. The open landscape was fairly windy which was in the face all the way. For over 2 hours everywhere looked the same with endless cabbage fields so you didn’t feel like you was getting anywhere. 90% of that time I was alone, I did briefly catch one of the racers in front. Probably the worst was that there was hardly any shops for food and drink. It was possible of course to stray off to a nearby village but with no phone I would have been in serious trouble if I had a puncture so it wasn’t worth the risk.

I started to struggle when I found a service station throwing down a drink, taking one on board and 2 bars of chocolate to consume on the go. Within 15 minutes I picked up indicating lack of fluid and fuel and not fitness was the problem. I hardly eaten anything since breakfast.

I found the 3 racers outside a pub in Boston ,they arrived 20 minutes earlier and I stayed with them for 40 minutes. Our support car arrived and we were informed the rest were down the road with 15-20 minutes to go. Not wanting to wait any longer we informed the support car and set off, a decision was made (not by me) to take the inland route A16 - A158 instead of the more direct A52. The reasoning behind this was that the more coastal A52 would be a lot more windy which we had more than enough of by that point.

At the time of writing I just measured the 2 routes and found that ours was 6 miles longer which has made me question if it was worth it. It was very demoralizing to switch on my G.P.S direction finder to see 20km and the arrow point left then half an hour later switch it on again and see the exact same thing.

It seemed ages until the turnoff, I caught up with on of the racer bikes on the run in, but I was starting to struggle again so I had one last stop off at a shop and ask directions to the clock tower. I arrived after a total of 8 hours 20 minutes of riding, 161 km / 100 miles. The first 2 had arrived 15 - 20 minutes earlier and the 4th only minutes after I did.

The rest were not so lucky taking a wrong turn that resulted in them arriving around 2 hours later. It was a bit of a nightmare for them as most didn’t have the foresight (like I did) to book a room on the internet in advance.

Most of us went into a couple of local pubs despite the long day, felt it was a bit rough but then again I didn’t have plans for a late night as I still didn’t know how I was getting home at the time.

As far as I was aware everyone made it home ok. The ride turned out to be a success and at the time of writing talks were all about doing the same again next year………