What’s the BIG Deal?
It was 1am (or was that 2am) and clouds of steam rising from the clothes of eight cold, wet and slightly broken men saturated the already damp seaside air in our little flat in Whitstable. We stared blankly into our bowls of pumpkin soup with tired, half closed and bloodshot eyes. Several sense of humours had been dropped from the back of our little peloton some hours ago. You’d be forgiven for thinking that we were at the end of an epic adventure. In truth, it had only just begun.
We were just over a quarter of the way through the inaugural nocturnal cycle event, The Big Deal. Conceived by myself as a replacement for the Dunwich Dynamo – a mid summer, overnight, 120 mile cycle on tarmac from East London to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast – The Big Deal was turning out to be a match for this event… and more.
The Dynamo regularly sees in excess of 1000 riders turning up for the challenge. The only problem is, unless you book yourself on the coach home, or have a lovely person pick you up (cheers Joe), your ride can end with a problematic journey back to London. (There is always the option of doing ‘the double’ but this is really only for the brave or slightly mad – I have indeed done the double and won’t say which of those I am). So The Big Deal aimed to turn the tables on this logistical problem and starts with a train ride from London to Deal, on the East Kent coast, followed by a leisurely 110 mile cycle back to Greenwich, overnight.
Many of us had been keeping an eye on the weather forecast in the run up to the big ride. Each had their favourite forecast. I was looking at forecasts for Canterbury and Rochester and had up to the minute observations from our tea stop in Whitstable. 6pm – all was well. However, it was quite a different story 30km away in Deal. I think it was at Sandwich when I first suspected something was up. The doors of the train opened to reveal what looked like a good dusting of snow on the platform and a numbing chill in the air. It turned out to be hail – surely the most random and unpleasant form of precipitation. I suppose we had it coming really – attempting a ride like this at the end of October. Our team of nine cyclists (and one caterer) headed to Middle Street for some of the best Fish and Chips you’ll ever eat. Bellies fuelled, bodies wrapped up warm and accompanied by a brisk Arctic wind we set off at our proposed start time of 8:30pm.
Our route plan was very simple – to follow National Cycle Route 1 from Deal to Greenwich. We would ride the route with no exceptions, be it on tarmac, gravel, mud, on or off-road. Between us we were well (or perhaps ill) equipped with road bikes and lots of lights. Andy, who I think told me he’d only ridden his bike once in three months, was even sporting a set of fairy lights on his pack! We had six geared bikes, two single speeds and one fixed gear. Five aluminium frames, two steel, one carbon and of course the Splinter bamboo. With a first-aid kit, foil blanket, spare tyres, loads of tubes, patches, spare chain links, zip ties, gaffa tape, a Leatherman and plenty of bike tools, what could possibly go wrong…
3km in. Raining. Arctic head wind. Numb faces. Numb toes. Numb fingers. Crunch! Crack! Snap!
No it wasn’t the sound of a new breakfast cereal or the bamboo giving up the ghost (it’s very resilient you know). It was Simon’s beautiful carbon Look bike having a serious shifting malfunction. You hear those noises all the time from guys crunching their chains as they hit the bottom of a hill, realise they are in the wrong gear and try to change down under heavy pedal pressure. The thing was, we were on a pan flat road and I wouldn’t expect that kind of behaviour from Si anyway. Nope, we had a problem. I only realised how much of a problem as I approached him and spotted his rear mech on the wet tarmac before me. (For non-cyclists – this is the thing at the back of the bike which is responsible for tensioning the chain, changing gear, and keeping the bike in gear. It is vital. In fact, if you are a non-cyclist you may want to skip the next paragraph)
The derailleur hanger (a replaceable metal component, fixed to the frame, which holds the rear mech (or derailleur) in place had snapped. This had sent the rear mech and chain into the spokes of Si’s revolving back wheel and snapped the mech in two. There was a glimmer of hope though, as the wheel and chain were intact. I knew immediately that the only solution was to shorten the chain, by removing some links, and try to find the ‘magic ratio’. This would be the perfect combination of chain length, front chainring, and rear ‘cog’, that would keep the chain under sufficient tension to stay in a single gear. The Splinter is designed around a magic ratio as, unlike most singlespeeds, it doesn’t have ‘track ends’ that allow chain slack to be taken up by sliding the rear wheel backwards. So we had to bodge a singlespeed from the nicest bike on the ride! I spent an age trying to release the ‘quick release’ link from the chain. All the time the rain came down. It was probably about this point that Rob’s Garmin recorded the lowest temperature of the ride at 1.6 degrees Celcius. I could feel the group losing hope in my plan so I gave up and ‘broke’ the chain by pushing one of the pins out with a chain tool. Now we just had to find the magic ratio. We had two options at the front and ten at the back. The rear choice would have to be somewhere in the middle of the cassette to keep the chain in a straight line to help it stay put. I think I settled on a 39×17 ratio. The chain seemed pretty straight and tight. I was confident and sent Si off for a test ride. It didn’t work, and the chain slipped down the cassette, thus creating a very slack chain and eventually became useless. Balls. From my favourite magic ratio calculator, I see that a 39×12 could have been the solution. The main problem with bodging a singlespeed from a geared bike is that the teeth on the cogs of a geared bike are all truncated. This allows the chain to move efficiently from one cog to another. It’s not the teeth that hold the chain in place, as on a proper singlespeed, it’s the rear mech that has that job.
In hindsight, with 108 miles to go, there was no ideal solution and it was game over for Si. Train and a lift back to London. Gutted.
We said our goodbyes and set off into the wind and rain following the same road until I saw one of the Route 1 signs off to the right. We regrouped at this point and took our first bit of off-the-road cycle path beside a river and into the pretty town of Sandwich.
Soon after, the rain eased up and we had 23 kilometres of quiet, almost traffic free, tarmac to look forward to. The skies were clearing all the while and eventually revealed a bright, nearly full moon. So bright was the moon that it cast shadows on the road and I could ride (fairly) safely with no front light. It was beautiful.
Spirits slowly lifted and got an extra boost (or was that just me) at Fordwich when we hit our first sustained section of off-road path. One by one we negotiated the gate and single-filed our way down the dark track, our skinny tyres snaking around on the mud and fallen leaves. The fun was cut short one kilometre in with puncture number 1. I’d got my hands dirty on the first mechanical so stepped aside for this one. Quickly sorted, the off-road fun continued for another couple of kilometres and eventually brought us to Canterbury. A short pedal North took us to the start of the first of our King of the Mountains climbs. KOM number 1 – Eliot Hill – a challenging flood-lit path up to the University. We half-heartedly fired up the Strava apps on our phones and took turns at dodging drunk students up the hill. It ended with even less gusto than it had begun as I hadn’t managed to properly communicate to the team where the top of the climb was. They all stopped short and so no KOM were won on that effort.
Never mind. Next up we were treated to my favourite section of the ride – the six kilometres of off-road tarmac, gravel and mud path which forms part of the Crab and Winkle Way. This would take us without incident up into the woods and down into the seaside town of Whitstable and our tea stop, albeit a couple of hours behind schedule.
Naomi had been up early baking cakes and making pumpkin soup which, along with the warmth of the flat, just about brought us back to life. At least enough for James, of Media Velo, to remember that the Hell of the Ashdown entries had just opened and somehow managed to persuade everybody in the room to get online and enter. We sat around in my living room for a couple of hours before setting off for the final 130 kilometres (80 miles) of Route 1 to Greenwich.
To be honest I don’t remember that much about the next 65 kilometres to Rochester. There were several decent sections of gravel / mud. About four more punctures. A few minor crashes. Regular questioning about the distance left to go. Possibly some less than truthful answers to those questions. Some lost looking faces. Maybe some on-the-bike micro sleeps (a few seconds is all I could manage before beginning to lose balance and waking myself up). What I do remember is that the team finally started to get the hang of looking out for, and following, the little blue cycle network signs that had been there all along but went largely unnoticed. We even did a little bit of Sustrans Ranger work and re-oriented a sign to point in the right direction.
We rolled into Rochester just as the sun was rising and stood for a while beside a decaying submarine in the Medway to take in the first light of day. It always feels good to see the dawn break but I’m not sure it was enough to take the sting out of telling the boys we still had 60 kilometres to go. KOM number 2 was just ahead of us and I’m not sure anyone actually contested it. We followed undulating roads up on to MOD land and beyond until we arrived at the old Thames and Medway canal and another section of gravel. This time it was fast and flat (it’s a canal) for 2 kilometres in a straight line to the outskirts of Gravesend and our first views of the Thames. Gravesend is every bit as lovely as it sounds (cough) and you can’t help but think that the next section of path up to the river-side promenade is a place where no man should go dressed in lycra on a road bike. Maybe a full face helmet, body armour and a mountain bike with 2.5 inch tyres would be more appropriate. The path cuts through an old industrial area with ramshackle buildings on either side. Broken glass, rubbish, car tyres, old oil drums and graffiti all come together to make you feel very unwelcome. Inevitably came punctures number 7 and 8. I kept up my record of not fixing punctures and rode off around Gravesend trying to find a cafe that was open. Without luck we settled for a coffee at a petrol garage.
We were really dragging our heels now. Still 40 kilometres to go. Lots of off-the-road tarmac took us past the big hole in the ground that is Bluewater shopping centre and into Dartford. On our way we tackled the final instalment of the KOM contest with all the enthusiasm of a teenage burger flipper doing the late shift at McDonalds. It was a non-event which saw us climb the second biggest hill on what was a very flat ride and provoked a few moans and groans in the process.
General enthusiasm had all but gone and I’m not sure how much the team appreciated the last section of gravel across Crayford Marshes to Erith. Johnny had previously torn the side wall of his rear tyre whilst on a recce here and had obviously decided he wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. The child in me elbowed my way past the others to catch him up. I don’t know why but I can’t resist going quickly off-road on the most inappropriate of bikes. Fun, fun, fun (and another puncture for Andy – and another job for Rob). Five kilometres of gravel and mud later and we were in Erith where we lost Sam to the railways as he had an appointment to keep.
All that stood between us and the Cutty Sark was 20 kilometres of the Thames Path. Joy. Actually, it wasn’t that bad but it had been over 15 hours since we set off and I, for one, was feeling very sleepy.
Two hours later and we were all sat in a pub in Greenwich eating the food of champions – burgers and chips. Due to our late arrival, we were in a little bit too much of a hurry to get home so our adventure ended somewhat abruptly. But, two weeks on, I think we can all look back and give ourselves a big pat on the back. Well done team.