There are eight of us who meet in Peckham on a Saturday night in July. We wind our way through the hot streets to London Fields for 8pm. There are hundreds of cyclists milling around outside the pub, yelling their location into their phones, checking their tyres or checking out the bikes. Then we cycle out through East London, and as darkness falls on us around the Epping forest, now there are more than a thousand of us. Every time the road rises, a wall of little red lights flashes ahead of us. At a junction, a woman shouts, unable to hold her curiosity in any longer, “Where you all going? What are you lot doing?”
We don’t stop, we don’t have time. We want to be there by sunrise. “We’re going to the coast,” someone yells, as the lights go green. Where else would 1,000 or more cyclists be going on midsummer night in July? Where else but the tiny village of Dunwich and its beach in Suffolk, 112 dark miles from the start of the route of the Dunwich Dynamo.
What makes the Dunwich Dynamo one of the most compelling challenges in British cycling? It has a great name, and a great concept. Get from London to the beach for sunrise! There’s the fact it’s a serious distance – over 100 miles – but it has a fast and fluid route with not much more climbing than club runs half the length. There’s the fact it’s officially unsupported – just turn up and ride – but from the moment you start, the hivemind and traditions mean you’re never lost, never that far from a cup of coffee, not often out of sight of another cyclist’s lights. It means you can get a coach ticket home pretty easily, too, making this a simple one way ride.
More than that, the Dunwich Dynamo makes a deep sort of sense in a weird and quite British way. The whole thing is faintly anarchic and unreal; the feeling is different to big Sportives or rides like RideLondon – less pro Peloton and more Monty Python; there are tandems, Bromptons, fixies, and bikes wrapped in LEDs. It makes sense because we city dwellers often go to the coast when it is summer, when we want to cut loose, we are revellers who often hang out into the small hours, and when we want to go far, we often find strength in being carried along by a group.
Our little team of eight moves like a dream through the little villages of Essex, faster than any of us expected; we’re driven on, dedicated to the route, all of us brought together for one night for the same miles, the same turns. Some of us have done it before, some haven’t. The route is the same as years gone by, but the rest stops shift around, and we swap tips about where the good coffee is, and whether the Fire Station will be raising money and selling BBQ. We stop often, sharing kit kats and pork pies, enjoying hot drinks in styrofoam cups, huge numbers of cyclists streaming into each stop just as we depart. A yellow gibbous moon watches eerily, and even as late as 1am, people sit in their front gardens, watching this weird unsleeping peloton roll through. They know: in the dark quiet of the dark night we are coming, following the scent of the dawn.
The sun starts early – I think it’s 3.30am when we see the first crack of sunlight, and an hour or so later the whole horizon has a light under it. Bats and moths and then all of a sudden, we don’t need our lights. Here we all are, tired, wired from the caffeine and energy gels, spinning through a gorgeous morning, no cars on the roads, the countryside yellow and green, half burnt, half verdant. The start of the day feels perfect, then hard, my legs are beginning to lose it, and the last 20 miles feel lumpy – and then “Dunwich 7” appears on the road signs – and we accelerate, and you can see sand at the edges of the road.
Then, the cafe and the beach, a steep pile of shingles and the cool swish of the sea. There are cyclists everywhere, some with sleeping bags and camping mats, others just curled up around their bikes. Some of them have got to the queue for the beers and fry-ups. Half the Peckham crew change into swimsuits and race for the sea (pro tip: bring a change of shoes, the beach is not kind to cleats). I just take off my shoes and dig my feet into the sand. We made it. We queue, a lot – for slots on the bus home, for carbs and drinks – and then we sit and laze around, looking at Strava, looking out to sea, amazed at what we just did.
It’s a three hour drive to London – I sleep half the way and wake up, somehow surprised and then proud that we came such a long way – and we hang around waiting for the bikes to be unloaded because we put ours in first, and they’re at the back of the lorry. We’re all exhausted, but you can’t help but still feel slightly elated.
As they unload the bikes, the removal team hold up a big steel bike with white wall tyres. “Raspberry Red Pashley!” they call out, and the assembled cyclists cheer and clap as its rider reclaims her ride. We all made it and it made sense at the time. The Dynamo is a midsummer night’s dream, where it’s all the more powerful being inside a mystery, even when you don’t fully understand it.
Originally wrote this for Peckham Cycle Club.
The Wired Jester 