Day 11: The heavens are empty

Molehill Green to Snodland (52 Miles)

Once asleep, it can prove very difficult to wake me up again, in fact, I class it as one of my greatest skills. Last night in the tent, my skills were severely tested. Stansted airport lay just a few hundred metres away, providing a conveyor belt of airplanes all through the night. In addition to this, I was being punished for two days without rain, with what sounded like angry rain battering down on my poor wee tent. However, once again, neither factor seemed to affect my sleep at all and I woke with surprise when my alarm went off. The rain hadn’t subsided at all, I lay in the tent for quite a few minutes, hoping that it would, lying to myself that it looked like the sun would immanently break through and cheer the whole situation up. Alas, it never did, so I set about getting ready and packing up in the pouring rain. It’s pretty miserable setting off for a day’s cycling when you are already wet, fortunately after yesterday’s good day, I only had 50 miles to go to my destination.

To compound today’s misery, it seemed that the route for the majority of the day would be on busy A roads. After about 10 miles, from the tips of my toes, to the ends of my luscious hair and everything in between, I was sodden. I stopped briefly for some food at a petrol station but apart from that I cycled without break for the first 30 miles. My mood was lifted slightly by a sign advertising a “secret bunker”, I certainly wasn’t in the mood to check it out, but I was left questioning whether advertising for the bunker had possibly removed some of its secrecy. Perhaps it was such a well-kept secret that it was effecting its profitability as a tourist attraction and they decided to rectify it.

I would describe myself as an extremely fair weather cyclist, if it is bad weather (or looks like it might be bad weather), then the bike stays in the shed and my best laid plans are put on hold for the rest of the day. On this trip, I’ve had little option to abandon this terrible attitude and have reluctantly been forced to cycle in a lot of adverse conditions. Honestly, cycling in the rain is not that bad, the experience is so miserable that it overpowers any previous grumbles. You don’t feel that niggling pain in your ankle, you’re not worried about your gears occasionally slipping a bit and you don’t get disheartened with slow progress. The only thought in your mind is how wet you are and how you’ll probably never be completely dry again.

The roads continued to be busy, with drivers seemingly utterly unaffected by the conditions, continuing to treat cyclists with as much respect as a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe (I’ll discuss British drivers a bit more in my summary of stage 1). If yesterday’s miles passed by unforgotten, todays will live long in the memory. Finally, I reached Tilbury just as the weather started to improve. Tilbury sits on the banks of the Thames and would require a short ferry ride across the river. Whilst waiting for the ferry, I got chatting to two guys around my age that were cycling to Amsterdam on a tandem bike. The bike, which was older than me, had been causing them quite a few issues in their short trip from middle England, although they seemed confident that the issues were now resolved and would stay resolved until they reached their destination. Looking at the rickety old bike, I wasn’t so sure.

The ferry only took about 10 minutes to cross (once again, I did vigorous exercise the whole way across to avoid being accused of cheating) and the weather remained pleasant throughout. Once across the river, I only had about 15 miles to go until my destination, where I would be staying with Ryan, a friend from my time in Dubai. The ferry lands in Gravesend, a place that I was relatively happy to be leaving. The route out of Gravesend required a bit of climbing, which was hot work now that the sun was out. I was still layered up after the earlier rains and considered stripping back down for the last few miles. Mostly due to laziness, I decided to leave all my clothes on and carried on. This turned out to be an excellent decision as shortly after, I was to get reacquainted with the rain. The route then flowed through some nice little villages before a last busy stretch into Snodland. The rain had really picked up for the last few miles, so despite drying off on the ferry, I arrived at Ryan’s place in quite a sorry state.

I’ll be staying here tomorrow as well, so should have plenty time to dry off. A pretty grim day on the bike, but after a beer and a great dinner courtesy of Ryan, things were starting to look up. Snodland sits around 50 miles from Dover, I’m beginning to smell the sea, almost time to get the Speedos back on!