Bike Travel in the Far East

After much pouring over weather charts, climbing guides and bike maps, we eventually came to a decision about where to head to and what to do for this weeks adventure. Once a route had been established, we loaded the bikes into the van and assembled the small about of kit and equipment we’d need for a bicycle tour of the far east. And by far east, I mean Norfolk, not Japan… (a destination due to be the warmest and driest place in the UK this week, and somewhere we’ve never been!).

As can often be the case on a well planned expedition – the plan can soon fall to bits once you’ve got started. After getting up in the dark and making an early get away from The Cottage, we soon ran into trouble on the A55 (the main road in and out of N.Wales), which became closed in both directions and with us stuck between junctions! On the plus side, my friend Mike from Uni, happened to be in the lane next to us as we ground to a halt, so we had a twenty minute catch up before crawling on.. The only junction off the road that we could escape from led to a marina, so we decided to pull off and take a walk on the beach rather than sit in the car, as it looked like things weren’t getting moving anytime soon, with the Conwy tunnel completely closed.

The Conwy Morfa beach was deserted and provided a nice change of state. (It’s usually less than 20mins to drive to this point, and had taken us an hour and a half!). With no where to go by road, we made the most of things by going for a second breakfast at the Marina pub which had just opened! Bonus!

We were about three or four hours later than expected when we eventually reached Fressingfield, feeling like we’d just driven to the Alps. It was super seeing James and Daniel’s faces as we knocked on the lounge window, as they didn’t know we were coming! We all had a fun night together of games and music, and got to walk with the boys to school in the morning too, which was a nice treat.

From another ‘Morrisons Car Park’ (this time in Beccles), we finally began our eastern cycle tour!

Having never really spent much time in this part of the world, I was surprised at the abundance of animals we came across!…

No cycle lanes for this tour, but plenty of quiet back roads. Most drivers were actually quite courteous, though we had few delivery vans giving white van drivers a bad name!

The scenery was good, the terrain gently undulating and this was our worst traffic jam of the day! Ha ha!

We even passed a Norfolk Vineyard as the sun came out.

We stopped for lunch on a bench outside a village hall in Craxton, where we made a sandwich, and later were delighted to find a pub by the river and some outside seating in the sun, just as we were getting tired.

A nice coffee and some bird spotting made for the perfect cycle stop off, before moving on to some more adventurous terrain! We could have avoided the single track trail, but the short cut saved us a few kilometres!