This is an old diary, and does not reflect anything recent…
So. The night before we made sure we ate properly. Made sure we had something healthy and good for you. We got the menu and ordered a Chinese…i had sweet and sour chicken, with egg fried rice and chips.
Lovely!
Anyway, i crashed out about 23.30 with the alarm set for 05.37 the following morning.
Got up, had a massive bowl of shreadies, a cup of tea and set about sorting out the bikes on the back of the car.
We left by about 06.30 and headed towards Stratford. The journey took a little under an hour, with a little bit of a detour on route, we weren’t lost, we just took a longer route…
Anyway, we got the bikes off and sorted them out – there were loads of people around with all sorts of bikes. You could tell how serious the person was by the amount of lycra they were wearing. Some people were very serious and had some seriously scary clothes on. One woman, well, lets just say it didn’t flatter her at all!
Anyhow we got the part of the park where we were meant to start. We checked in with the tent and got our stuff together for the off. We had those power drinks with us as well as some normal drinks.
We got to the start line to find THE QUEEN, yes the Queen was there! Can you believe it!! sHe cut the ribbon for the charity event to start. I must be honest, sHe looked a little more masculine than i remember, was a little shorter and spoken funny. But everyone insisted it was the Queen and not (as i thought) some bloke dressed up as the Queen putting on a voice…
At 07.43 we started.
The group we were with wasn’t big. A mixture of old and young. One person had a BMX bike – completely mad if you ask me!
Now, we started off a bit quickly; but we slowly came back to a reasonable speed. Some people were coming flying past us. I was warned before we started that people would start off really quickly and we shouldn’t follow them. We were going a bit quicker than we should have but we werent going as fast at some people.
Quite a few of them would going flying past us and we would then see them about 2 miles up the road having a rest.
The ride was ok to start and we got to the first check point fast enough. We didn’t stop for long. But just long enough for me to hurt my knee!!
The first check point was about 10 miles – it was a pub, nothing special and to be honest there wasn’t that much there. It was just a pub, it was called The Maypole just outside of Chigwell Row.
It was important that we stopped to take on some fluids.
Going from the start to the first check point took us through a few exciting places. Hackney (which is where near enough where we started and where my family is from for the last 200 (Two hundred) odd years!), then on to Leytonstone, Woodford Green and then onwards through Chigwell. We went down a road called Manor Road – this was an amazing road with many of the houses massively hugely bigger than any houses i have seen before. They were about the size of four standard semi-detached houses. Fantastic houses.
The following check point was about another 10 miles after that. The second check point was through Essex and places like ……..
You’ll have to read teh next update to find out!!