A gravel ride in the Dedham Vale AONB
It's early February and I am waiting to have a meeting with a publisher. I’m looking for them to give me the final nod for my ride choices for a book on gravel rides in the South East of England. I have itchy feet and despite it being officially the depths of winter a period of high pressure makes for long, bright sunny days and blue skies. I had a big Audax ride coming up on Saturday in Bristol but the temptation to sneak in some research for the project got the better of me and I dived into planning.
One of my main goals with this guidebook is to illustrate just how many great opportunities there are for bikepacking adventures in the southeast of England. It may not have the hills of the Lake District but the forgiving landscape makes for great gravel riding and a chance to leave the city and head into the wild landscape just a few hour's train journey outside the metropolis.
I had a couple of rides in the area already mapped out, one along the Suffolk coast and the other heading east from Manningtree so initially, I thought I’d try one of these but there was a snag: both included ferry journies and these ferries don’t re-start until spring proper in May. Back to the drawing board (in my case OSMaps).
The planning
When I’m designing a ride for this project I move from the macro to the micro. Firstly, where looks interesting? National Parks and AONBs (Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty) are a good place to start. These places are protected because of their unique character. Secondly, how long is the ride going to be? I want to make sure the route touches as many highlights of the area as it sensibly can. If it's hilly, how many metres does a day's riding include? If it's flatter how many km in total distance? Thirdly, ingress and egress. Since deciding to give up car ownership as a small nod to reducing my carbon footprint I always travel by train. Ticket price is a factor. Sometimes one train station a few miles from another, but on a different line can be considerably cheaper to reach. Once I have narrowed my options down to a train station I start to scour the map looking for POI and regional centers. I look at tourist websites for an area and try and get a feel for the landscape and its heritage. Unlike a MTB route where exhilaration is the goal, here I am trying to build a route that pulls in great eye candy, history and plenty of options for tea shops and pub lunches and of course, off-road riding!
Gravel riding, anything that's not on highways IMO, takes you under the skin of an area. Firstly, the minor roads get you away from the busy towns but then the off-road sections they lead to, Bridleways, Byways and permissive Byways force the rider into the wildest, rawest parts of the landscape, and by their nature its not always plain sailing.
Whilst I was looking for inspiration during the design phase I came across this map. It includes both the Debham Vale and the Upper Stour Valley. The three regional centres from east to west are Manningtree, Sudbury and Haverhill. Initially, I had thought to build a route that took in all three, beginning at Sudbury and rolling anti-clockwise in a figure of eight first to Maningtree back to Sudbury and then onto Haverhill before heading back for the train at Sudbury (I like a figure-of-eight route when there a lot to see in an area and a circular route might force you to exclude worthy sections).
So I started plotting the route, weaving around the local towns and linking up as many viable byways as I could find whilst still allowing the rider to progress effectively without feeling they were being dragged from pillar to post. Getting all three regional centres from the map in was looking doubtful as I realised I had clocked up 137km so I took it as far west as Brokley Green before turning the route east again.
Final Route
When I had something that looked achievable, I checked the weather forecast once again. The next day looked great and crucially the weather was closing in next week. I booked my bike onto the train via the Greater Anglia service centre and booked a day return. I factored in an average speed of 13.5km per hour, if I started the ride at 08.00 am and rode for 10 hours (plus allow 1hr for as yet unknown issues) I could catch the 20.54 back to London.
With tickets brought the die was cast and I dragged my gravel bike out of the shed and tweaked it for the ride. I wasn't staying out overnight so it was a slimed-down setup compared to my standard bikepacking one.
Kit List
- 3 litres of water inc electrolytes
- Gropro
- GPS head unit
- Toolkit
- Space blanket
- Head torch
- 8 gels inc caffeine versions (yum)
- Dynamo front light, charged backlight
- Charger and battery pack
- Gloves, hat, baselayer, winter bibs, Paramo, synthetic down jacket and mtb shoes
I got an early night. Got up at 05.00 am. Had a big bowl of porridge and a double expresso, made a hefty cheese and pickle sandwich and headed to Liverpool Street Station for the 7.00 am train.
Manningtree is a market town at the east of the Vale of Debham, 1hr outside of London. Greater Anglia’s Ipswitch train stops at Colchester and Manningtree before it reaches its destination. The train journey was uneventful.
There is always a sense of trepidation before starting a ride like this. There are lots of things that can go wrong. But it felt good to be walking along the platform full of commuters knowing that I had a days riding to look forward to whatever it may hold. Out of the station I turned left and dropped down to the main road and into a very solid queue of traffic. After crossing the bridge across the wide neck of the Stour River I was quickly taking a sharp left into a green shoot heading alongside the field and the adventure was off to a great start.
It was a big day. Twenty-five percent of the route was off-road. Seventy percent of that was really fun. There is a change I make on my GPS head unit before a ride like this: turn off the pause record on stop feature. Normally this is handy when you are interested in your pace generally but when the duration of the ride is a key factor and time is tight, I don’t want the ride to pause when I stop. If I turn this feature off then I know if my pace is going to be fast enough to get me around in time. If the ride was 137km and my pace could be kept over 13.7km per hr then I would be okay for my return train.
The first 50km flew by. The morning mist had been replaced by a perfect blue sky. The temperature was around 5 degrees celsius. My pace was 14.7kmph and I watched this rapidly drop to 14kmph as I sat in the sun and ate half my sandwich.
The next 20km beyond Sudbury were mixed. The byways were no longer leafy and dry, instead, this was replaced by black mud. When the route took me onto a bridle path running alongside an open field the mud turned to clay and this began to stick to the tires. It got worse. Each rotation of the wheels would see a further layer of clay and leaves, twigs and grass. The wheels were refusing to turn. The tread on my gravel tires were a little worn and the clay wouldn't budge. I came off a couple of times as I crawled along slipping from side to side. Checking my os app I could see a road coming up in a few hundred metres. It took an age to reach it. Reaching the road I stopped and used a stick to scrape mud off the bike. The chain, the forks, the chain stays and even the rear mech was completely clogged up with thick clay. Riding fast on the road helped clear the mud from the treads.
IMO the countryside above Sudbury in the Upper Stour Valley is pretty unremarkable when compared to the Debham Vale (sorry). Even before I got back to Sudbury I was working out to re-design the route. One section that did stand out was Belchamp Walter. The minor road dropped into this ancient hamlet with an old Norman church and great views of Belchamp Hall but the short section of footpath that I had intended to walk with my bike was blocked by a tall gate and I decided to hedge my bets and head back on myself and make a 2km detour to get back to the original route.
After heading past Sudbury the landscape began to change. The Dedham Vale is more varied and peppered with ancient Georgian halls, Edwardian farms, and Elizabethan coaching Inns. Each village has a green, often flanked by a duck pond, and each sports a wooden sign bearing a tableau and the name of the village.
The Vale is more undulating than the Upper Stour Valley; short climbs into hamlets deliver you to green lanes. Often a higher vantage point reveals the valley floor and the adjacent hill on its north side. This is the land of the artists' Constable and Gainsburgh and you can see the draw (hoho). It's easy to avoid big, fast roads and you are never more than a few miles from a welcoming pub.
There were some great off-road sections in the last third of the ride. The golden hour was in full effect and I could imagine artists, agricultural workers, and country squires from centuries past working the land to one end of another.
By the time it got dark and I was closing in on the final 10km I was glad of my powerful Signewave Breacon dynamo light as I pushed through the final short climbs before joining a faster road back to Manningtree. I reached the station with one hour and thirty minutes to spare before my train’s departure. There is a great little bar on platform two so I grabbed a corn beef sandwich (it's a good idea to take on some protein soon after you stop :-) and a pint of cider and managed to hop on an earlier train with no problem. I was back in London by 07.20 pm.
Accommodation
There are half a dozen campsites en route and a few decent opportunities for wild camping.
Conclusions
The final route design will make Sudbury its western apex and also head east from Manningtree to Harwich via Alton Water. The route will then include 3 mainline stations; Sudbury in the west, Manningtree in the centre and Harwich in the east. This will give the rider the option of heading home back to London from any of these stations. The route can also easily be ridden as two separate day rides, one west of Manningtree into Dedham Vale and the other east of the station along the south bank estuary before the ferry to the north shore and the ride west to Manningtree.
