The Dunwich Dynamo, the dun run, the French might call it ‘the beautiful madness’. Whatever you call it, the dun-run is a whole lot of adventure packed in to a single night.
I’ve taken part in this iconic event three times; 2011, 2013 and 2014. In this article I’m sharing the account of each ride. My hope is that these short stories will inspire you to take part in the next Dun Run in 2021.
Way back in 2011, Adrian and I cycled 20 countries in 100 days for Re-Cycle, the bikes to Africa charity.
In late 2012 Adrian had the pleasure of visiting the inspirational tea fuelled powerhouse that is Re-Cycle HQ over in Colchester UK. He spent the day learning how to donate a bike to charity and how you can too. What a day it was. Read all about our Charity Bike Ride for armchair inspiration!
Zagreb was eerie and quiet, It’s Sunday morning. We park our bikes against a wall, take stock on our losses and figure out where to stay the night. We’re amazed by how thoroughly the thieves have gone through our stuff, right under our noses. They’d even taken care to remove cash from our wallets then carefully place them back in our bags. We’d been fleeced good and proper. We carry on looking. Phone, cammera, yep, gone. They’d even taken Jim’s jeans. We were livid, scratching our heads in bewilderment, how didn’t we wake up? Did they really gas our cabin? The truth is we’ll never know but we arrived in Zagreb feeling pretty down about it all. The weather had taken a sudden winter-ward snap. The cold fog was sucking the life out of us as we sat dejected on the pavement.
Albania has a bit of a dodgy reputation for some reason. We approached the Balkan’s very own wild west with apprehension, I didn’t know what to expect. Peasants shitting in the streets, bent cops after our cash, gun toting drug barons lurking in the shadows and desperate thieves sniffing around our wheels! If rumour is to be believed then these are some of the sketchy folk we’re likely to come across in this part of the world… It’s a good job we don’t care about rumours, but is this really the most backward country in Europe? Is cycling here as dangerous as people say? What are we getting ourselves in to? There’s only one way to find out…
A surreal feeling came upon us as we approached the Greek boarder, it could have been a small dose of culture shock or perhaps it was the drop in elevation going to our heads. It was certainly surreal. As we rolled through the baron scrub of no man’s land the customs and excise complex stood looming ahead, a structure of standards far excelling any buildings we had encountered on our passage through the Balkans. The significance of our arrival to Greece, the geographical pinnacle of our journey, added to our bewilderment. I presented my passport to the official, he looked at me and my vehicle. He actually laughed, an unexpected sign of emotion from a boarder rozzer, he waved me through then took a look at Jim “you bicycle from UK?…” Jim nodded. Yes we have!
It was like we had travelled back to time somehow. As if cycling through one of my granddad’s memories of Staffordshire when he were a lad, we start our Serbian journey in little farming villages. Buzzing with activity, real work, real places, real people. As we pass them by everyone says hello or waves us on. Old folk watch the world go by their doorstep, farm workers ride on tractor trailers, children play in the streets and half a dozen escapee piglets scuttle off squealing down the road. People still grow their own food and collect their own fuel. Village shops, fascinating dimly lit little grottos, sell just about everything under the sun. Welcome to the Balkans!
There are a million different ways to cross Europe by bicycle so picking a good route can be quite a task. Most of our route planning happens while we’re on the road, combining map reading and intuition to find the best cycling roads as we’re going along. The great thing about riding in Europe is that you’re not just confined to riding on roads, there are thousands of cycle paths all thrown into the mix too. We don’t have any maps of these cycle routes, we just seem to find them, or they find us. Many of Europe’s finest cycle paths follow the course of rivers, taking advantage of nature, so watercourses and their bike paths will no doubt play a critical part in navigating our way across the continent.
In many ways it feels like this journey has shifted up a gear, the past week has been a tough one but probably my favourite so far. The first couple of weeks were such a whirlwind but life on the road is beginning to feel normal at last, we’re adjusting. I feel different, much more relaxed, more calm.
It’s a very strange life, cycling around like this. Riding the bikes is the easy part, time on the bikes feels like a rest sometimes just because there’s so much to think about as soon as we step off them. This life style is a completely new experience, It feels to me a bit like what being a gypsy or nomad must feel like. It’s like we’ve slipped through the net of normal society and already the stresses of modern life are beginning to feel a bit pointless. When you’ve only just enough time and energy to think about what’s immediately important, like how much water we have and where we’re going to sleep, a different perspective begins to settle in. It’s taking a bit of getting used to but we starting to get the hang it now. It’s a good feeling.