Newspaper Article

Cycling breaks in England: Sponsored by VisitEngland: Essex: escape to the country: Max Leonard discovers a disarmingly rural and none too hilly side to the home county

Leonard, Max

2014

Overview

This summer, those lanes will see even more serious cycle traffic than usual: the Women's Tour, the inaugural Tour of Britain for the world's elite women cyclists, has already visited Essex and the Tour de France will follow in July. After a Grand Depart in Yorkshire, taking in two days of tough riding up hill and down dale in God's own county, the men of the Tour de France will probably see this stage - from Cambridge to the Mall in London - as a rest day. Even so, it's nearly 100 miles of rolling countryside, passing through Saffron Walden before looping east and approaching London through North Weald and Epping. The first miles of this ride take those same roads, but in the opposite direction. They're also the route of the Dunwich Dynamo. Reputedly started by London bicycle couriers in the early '90s, when they decided to cycle to the sea after a night in the pub, the annual unsupported 120-mile overnight ride to Dunwich in Suffolk is now run by Southwark Cyclists and attracts up to 1,000 amateurs each year. Epping is its last contact with civilisation before it plunges into the night, and you should take the opportunity to pick up supplies at the supermarkets and convenience stores in town. Then it's off into the countryside; the Dynamo route is, if anything, even more enjoyable in the daytime, with the added benefit of the views denied to the night-time crowd. The skies become bigger the further north and east you go, and here at Essex's northern extremes, close to Suffolk and the market town of Sudbury, you're in Gainsborough country; in the autumn the fields are brown, the mists hang low and you'll surprise shooting parties in tweeds, Barbour jackets and mustard-coloured socks out bagging pheasants. In the spring, however, many of the fields shine yellow with oilseed rape - made popular during the steam age for its oil's lubricating properties.

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited