Me and Jon completed the 110mile Tour de Essex (sportiveuk) … but, we rode to the start and rode home after, total 400km!
We set off at 4am, heading to the Redbridge cycle center, via Bourne, Haslingfield, Fowlmere, Barley, Clavering, Bishops Stortford, various villages East of the M11, across the M25 and arrived around 8:15am, collected our numbers and located two friends who had driven down.
By the time we sorted, we set off at 08:50am, chasing down our two friends, who decided to switch to the medium route, we left them and went for the first feed station. As we was about roll our and head to the Blue egg (skipping the 2nd station on way back), our friends rolled in, said “HI” and that was the last we saw of them. Arriving at the Blue egg, we were told it was 45min wait, we left and grabbed a sandwich in Finchlingfield, with the Mods and Rockers.
The sportive route was a good test, up and down continuously, but was especially tough in the last quarter coming back down through Toot Hill and inside the M25. We eventually got back to the cycle center just after 4pm, where we was faced with a timed section around the Redbridge circuit (cool, couldn’t resist).
The event conclusion, The Route was truly wonderful, fees stations edging on poor side (energy drink was very weak, High5), organisation on the start was a bit slow compared to UKcyclingevents (wiggle), signage ok, but direction signs were easy to miss, due to size.
This is the Strava ride in full, feel free to “save as” pics from there https://www.strava.com/activities/570019518
James Barlow
