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.
The bike rolled along quickly on the glass like surface. For the first time in months there was not a blemish to be seen on the road. I was relieved, the past 98 days had been hard on the old steel horse. It was time to run free once more.
Having crossed the Alps in some pretty cold weather Kyle and I agreed to spend a few days at Lake Bled to rest our legs and enjoy the scenery. Slovenia is a very beautiful country and Lake Bled is the centre of attention, popular with tourists from across the globe. We arrived on Friday evening to a busy lake and expensive campsite. Chatting with a few folks on the grass down by the water we learned that the hostel over in town would cost less and provide much more. So with our new friends Lauren and Kendall we set off to check in at the Castle 1004 hostel.
Living with the weather is as much a part of the challenge as any other aspect of a world cycle. Your waking hours are spent in it, your movements can be determenined by it and your sleep can be disturbed by it. The weather is your everything. Obvious as this may sound, the last few days have been a stark reminder that on a long trip you really need to be prepared for the worst and ready for anything.
At length, I finally made it to the boat. What a week. Since leaving the family home from the Village in sleepy rural Staffordshire on a fully laden bicycle it feels more like I’ve been riding a rollercoaster than a bike. I’ve toasted friends’ birthdays, drank endless cups of tea with Grandmothers and conversed with World cyclists. I’ve not even left the country and I’ve already been gifted numerous meals, stayed with a wonderful couple in Rawdon (thanks Dave & Sue) and been loaded up with more cake than you can shake a stick at. People are lovely. I feel blessed.
Maps and Apps
Finding one’s way around on a bike is one of those tricky things that every cyclist needs to master. Back in the days before the internet, GPS and smartphones the only options we would have had would have been to either be very good at navigating or carry paper maps with us. Indeed, to a lot of people that is still the case (and it can be a much more reliable way of navigating when out of battery or signal reception). One invention that didn’t quite catch on back in the 1950s was a map that you wore like a wristwatch.
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.
Where have you been? What have you been doing? Why have you left us hanging for the last 77 days, 19 hours, 57 minutes and 21 seconds…
Well, it turns out that life on the road is WAY simpler than life in the ‘real’ world. We’re truly sorry for the delay in getting this final post together and published but I’m certain that if you read this post you will be satisfied that we completed the trip in proper Really Big Bike Ride fashion…
How much fun was Albania? I’ve just reread AJ’s post and its taken me back there. Awesome! Like so much of our journey Albania for me most clearly demonstrates how we get along and as lucky as we do. The trick is to have a loose idea of where you want to go, what you’d like to see and then get on and see what happens. As you’ll have read Albania took us for the ride and not the other way around, sort of grabbed hold of us and swept us away of its own accord, much to our enjoyment and satisfaction. You really have to just roll with it, and because we did it’s easily the most exciting place that we’ve visited.
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…