Support

As I reach the last 2 weeks before we head toward the channel from Westminster Bridge at 8 o'clock on the 9th August, I and I'm sure others will begin to face the realities of what lies ahead. How much training have they managed, whether they have the right kit and what it will be like on the road, mile after mile without back-up or support.

As far as training is concerned, I will have done as much as I possibly could have done, given the other constraints on my time. I've done a fair bit, definitely not enough to come in first of that I am certain, but enough I hope to give me a good chance of reaching the end. I have completed a couple of 200 mile cycles in the last 2 months and a 100 mile ride most weekends during that time. In between I have squeezed in night rides and short fast rides, gym sessions and time in the pool. I have been out in pouring rain and baking hot sun and have decided that the worst of all the weather is a stonking head-wind!

Being alone poses no concerns for me, since I enjoy my own company tolerably enough, but then that's because I know that I do have a growing number of followers who are and will be rooting for me.

I am grateful to Norsecare who have just joined this band of supporters and sponsors of my chosen charity, The Alzheimer's Society, and the work they do is particularly valuable to me, since they provide the care and environment in which the likes of my father now lives.

Thankfully as I my mother discovered, there are a host of people out there doing their very best to pick up where eventually we some times have to let go. I have included some information about them here and would encourage anyone who gets to hear what I am doing through the blog, the ad. cards or word of mouth to contact them if they meet your particular needs.

Live tracking remember will be at www.transcontinentalrace.com from 9th August 08:00. and I will be updatng you all on twitter @johnnymbakewell or via this blog. 

The End...of these 204 miles.

As much as I enjoy to write and I hope that for some there is at least a little of interest or humour, this particular series of posts highlights the limitations of a blog whilst I'm away. There are of course shorter ways of telling a story, such as: I left London at 4 o'clock and am now in Paris at 10. But if that's all I have time for, then I might as well Tweet.

I will do my best to find the time at the end of each day to write something more substantial, but you are more likely to be able to follow my little dot, Race No, 52 via the race website www.transcontinentalrace.com

or keep up with my progress via twitter @johnnymbakewell

I returned home via Norwich to capture the last two houses and to clock my second double hundred of the summer. I have lost the best part of a stone and am comfortable averaging about 17mph for prolonged stretches. I know that I shall need to temper this with a longer term view, since it's not the first 200 hundred that is the challenge, but the second and the third etc that are as yet unknown quantities.

I left Lowestoft toward Somerlyton and, for anyone in the emergency services, the notorious Haddiscoe bends. Slightly unsure which way to head, I followed the signs for the Reedham Ferry, hoping that it was still running and successfully caught the last but one crossing at just before 20:00.

The ferryman commented that I looked like I'd done a few miles and was genuinely shocked when I said 182. He'd been thinking somewhere along the lines of 30 or so and he and the other passengers wished me well for the challenge ahead when I disembarked. I decried my lack of promotional cards, but am delighted thanks to my incredibly helpful friend Sojan, to reveal our business cards here.

If anyone would like some to share out amongst friends, please let me know via twitter @johnnymbakewell, or facebook

From the river to Norwich, 'A Fine City' and a couple of pictures that tell the time and back in time for...sleep.

Still not sure about getting back on the bike the next day, so I went to work instead.

Reminder: Live tracking of the event from 08:00 09/08/14 will be available on www.transcontinentalrace.com

I am also now on twitter @johnnymbakewell and will be keeping you up to date here whilst I'm away, so please sign up and follow me here too. I will try to upload the odd blog entry, but they take time and chances are I'll either be asleep, eating or cycling.

Finally: there's just this
www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell

East Suffolk

The East coast of Suffolk has always been something of a jewel in the crown for me. During the 15 years that we lived south of the border/River Waveney we spent a lot of time walking the coast line between Languard Point and Benacre Broad. If you are into wildlife, then I cannot recommend it more highly. If you are into cycling, then the same recommendation comes equally highly rated and I was about to cover a good number of miles through the country lanes that border the A12. (The arterial route that joins London and Lowestoft.)

I had covered only 86 miles by the time that I left my Aunt in East Bergholt. Map My Ride www.mapmyride.com - which incidentally has been one of my primary mapping tools for both this and my Lands End to John O'Groats tour in 2010 - indicated that it would be about the same distance again if I followed the bike route that it came up with when I put in my start and finish points.

It is odd the things that you discover about cycling. The strangest circumstances throw up problems. A bit like the time that I was hit in the eye by a moth, because I had recently lost my new sunglasses that came with a pair of clear lenses specifically for riding at night.

On this occasion I was trying to hit new speed records as I descended a steep hill into the village of Stutton, when another insect, this time much smaller hit my ear and disappeared within. There are many who know me out there who will assert that they are surprised given the notoriety of my particularly elephantile wings, that I don't arrive home after every trip with enough wildlife to feed a bat colony for a week. Thankfully this is not the case because I can now testify that doing 30 + mph down a hill with a critter in your ear canal trying to find a way out is about the fastest route to madness that I have yet discovered!

Thankfully it found its way out, possibly in bits and a trip to the local A&E or probably more appropriately, Walk in Centre was not required.

Meandering through the centre of Ipswich before heading out on the Tuddenham Road toward Grundisburgh, Clopton, Brandeston ad Framlngham it got hotter as the afternoon wore on. I was noticeably more comfortable than I had been on my previous double hundred a couple of months ago and but for the stops to chat to old friends along the way, was completing 6 hour 100 mile pace for most of the time.

From Framlingham to Beccles and then Lowestoft where I called in on my third last home of the tour.

Incidentally this is the bike in its racing livery. Not much else to add. What you see is what I'll be taking.

Reminder: Live tracking of the event from 08:00 09/08/14 will be available on www.transcontinentalrace.com

I am also now on twitter @johnnymbakewell and will be keeping you up to date here whilst I'm away, so please sign up and follow me here too. I will try to upload the odd blog entry, but they take time and chances are I'll either be asleep, eating or cycling.

Finally: there's just this
www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell

Lowestoft features.

As with all other training rides in this direction, I cannot come this way without dropping in on my Dad. Each time I do so, I am reminded why I should do it more often. When you get a snap shot of someone in care, you get no real insight into how they really are. I was hugely encouraged therefore when the staff who care for him so carefully and attentively came in to give him his breakfast. They know what he can do and are encouraging and kind. I left him having some breakfast.

The best of this visit though was that unlike the last time I saw him, he smiled when he opened his eyes to my voice.

I had not lived anywhere between here, (Saxted) and Woodbridge, so I sped through Framlingham to Tunstall and Rendlesham where I met an old school friend walking his dog. Then to Woodbridge itself where I called by an old residence before devouring all of Paul's bread bin. Good thing he's known me since I was 5. Anyway, he reminded me that after completing the journey south to Bentley, I could of course head to Cornwall, Scotland or Shropshire, all places that I have previously resided. Given that, that was never going to happen, he did remind me, however, that my house in Lowestoft should definately be on the list.

Before that though this rented house in Westerfield. I'm losing track of the mileage. I just know that I had covered 86 miles by the time I had visited the two earliest houses that we lived in as kids after moving here from Scotland in the early 70s.

One of them is possibly still my favourite house in all the world. One that we shared at various times with dogs, ferrets, a kestrel, the odd injured owl, grass snakes and two guillemots that we kept in my long-suffering mother's kitchen for 6 months after finding them oiled on the beach. The latter required weekly trips to Lowestoft of all places to get bags of fresh spratts to keep them fed until their natural oils returned and we were able to let them go. 

 From Bentley to East Bergholt because my Aunt lives there and has food and then it was time to head north again to , yes, you've guessed it...Lowestoft.

Reminder: Live tracking of the event from 08:00 09/08/14 will be available on www.transcontinentalrace.com

I am also now on twitter @johnnymbakewell and will be keeping you up to date here whilst I'm away, so please sign up and follow me here too. I will try to upload the odd blog entry, but they take time and chances are I'll either be asleep, eating or cycling.

Finally: there's just this
www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell

204 miles A trip through time. The first 40.

Yesterday as a theme I took to visit each house that I have lived in, in Norfolk and Suffolk since we moved to the area back in 1970, or there abouts.

The night before I had been through my kit for the ride.....again. I still can't decide what to leave behind and what I must take. Reading other riders blogs from last year and experiences from long-distance racers, what you take seems to be tempered by how genuinely fast you are, how tough you are and probably how young you are. (The point being that I need to keep reminding myself that I am in my 50th year, I have four kids and I have a full time job that involves working nights and weekends.) The rub is that I forget that I'm nearly fifty and like a challenge/race.

I headed out at 05:30 heading south east for Old Buckenham, a picturesque village near Attleborough. I lived there from about 1999 until 2002 ish give or take. The morning was misty and cool and I rode there and for the first 40 miles in a long-sleeved warmer top. (I'm anticipating that temperatures even in August could be cool in the mountains in the early hours and since I plan to start riding each day at about 4 in the morning, this could prove a valuable layer.)

From Old Buckenham I headed further SE toward Diss and the village of Roydon. At 21 miles I was heading further back in time to the mid 80s. The times of the storm that poor old Michael Fish didn't see coming and also of two good years playing rugby at Diss rugby club. It never ceases to amaze me how your past catches up with you in the strangest places, but I shall not forget bumping into Simon, (the openside, where I played blind,) appearing on the top of a mountain in Meribel some five years after I had left Diss. I was about to ski down the mountain, he about to jump off it, skis, parachute and all. Typical Simon!

Diss was a kind of jumping off point for me too. I flew the nest and got my own flat and it was to here that I pedaled next. Now into Suffolk, I cross the A140 at Brome and followed, - what is a great cycle route in it's own right,- the road toward Debenham. Only as far as Eye though.

If you're in that neck of the woods, there are a couple of great pubs, or at least they were then and the best of them I read recently http://www.dissexpress.co.uk/news/latest-news/former-cornwallis-hotel-at-brome-bought-by-local-businessman-1-5875079 has just been bought by a local businessman to be renovated and under its original name of The Oaksmere, which is how we always remember it. Amongst other things, as you walk in, there is an amazingly deep well in the entrance way that you walk over and can look down between your feet to a depth of what must be 30-40 feet. Or was that a few pints later?

My parents house, a regular checkpoint on many of my training rides, because it allows me to call in on my father who is also cared for close by was at 38 miles and was good for a pile of toast and peanut butter and syrup. I wonder where I shall find that in France or Bulgaria?

More to the point, though I can't believe that I actually forgot on this visit for the first time EVER, not to visit the cake tins that have seen my grubby paws in them on every single visit in the past 25 years!

Your cake will be much missed  but beware the cake tin when I get back....even if there's nothing in it!

Reminder: Live tracking of the event from 08:00 09/08/14 will be available on www.transcontinentalrace.com

I am also now on twitter @johnnymbakewell and will be keeping you up to date here whilst I'm away, so please sign up and follow me here too. I will try to upload the odd blog entry, but they take time and chances are I'll either be asleep, eating or cycling.

Finally: there's just this

www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell

Breckland 100 and an Independence Day party to savour.

Just under a month to go and with plenty of distractions it has been difficult to squeeze in the allotted time on the road.

After the rain trial last Sunday I have managed two 30 mile hill circuits that despite being in the middle of Norfolk have been reasonably exacting. For anyone who does not know Ringland Hills, it is at least steep if not long.

The day before yesterday I headed out toward Watton, Mundford and the Brecklands. Thetford forest hides some gems. I remember going there as a child to seek out Hawfinches, Stone Curlews, Nightjars and Golden Orioles.
The woods are full of deer of all species and much, much more besides.




They hide Grimes Graves that is well worth a visit with or without the kids and of course Center Parcs and High Lodge where there is space for pretty much any kind of outdoor activity not involving water that you can think of. It is certainly a mecca for mountain bikers and families all year round.

From Mundford I continued South and East toward Elvedon and Bury St Edmunds before putting the wind behind me for my return North toward Norwich and home.

5 hours 39 minutes for the 100. A good mornings work. Back in time to celebrate with the American half of the family, the 4th July.

(Photos not mine.)