A Paradocs Abroad

We spent our recovery day after the Mildenhall 300 km brevet lazing around the Mildenhall Rally, watching the grass track racing, and chatting with new and old friends.

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Breakfast was a leisurely, late affair in the sunshine on the patio outside our room at the Grosvenor House B&B. We found that the 2 other couples staying there were also in town for the Rally. One was cycling this morning and planning to visit the vendors' tents this afternoon. The man of the other couple had ridden the 300 yesterday, finishing after us.

We wandered over to the Rally a little before lunch time and found a pleasant patch of grass on the back-stretch of the track. It turned out to be right at the start line for the 400 m events.

The main event of the day on Sunday was the UK Men's 400 m National Grass-Track Championships. Interspersed with the qualifying heats for that were other events, both serious (women's 1000 m time trial, and 400 m pursuit), and less so (hoops races - like musical chairs on bikes, and a 1-footed-1-handed slow-bike race). There are lots of photos on the Mildenhall Rally web site.

Wandering through the vendors' tents was fun. We didn't buy anything because we had only our rack packs to get it back to Cambridge in, and beyond that, severe weight limitations for our flight back to France. Nonetheless, it was sort of a super-sized Rivendell catalog brought to life. And there was some really retro stuff too. I was standing looking at vintage Campagnolo components at one table when the guy beside me asked, "Do you have any parts for really old bikes?"

I almost laughed because most of the parts in front of me hadn't been on production bikes since 1960, but the guy behind the table said, "Like, how old?"

Customer: "Well, I've got an 1898 trike that I'm restoring..."

Vendor: "Oh, well, these pedals here are of that vintage, and there are some wheel nuts over here..."

As the afternoon progressed we met and chatted with various people who had ridden the 300 yesterday. Then we met Stuart and Sharon Dalziel, and 2 of their children, Cameron and Jenny. Stuart is a graduate student colleague of Susan's from Cambridge, and now the director of the lab that they both worked in. They are an avid cycling family, and had told us by email that they might be at the Rally today.

We chatted for a while, and then rode back to Cambridge, into a stiff headwind, with Stuart, Cameron and Jenny. Sharon was travelling by van. Cameron and Jenny are about 11 and 13 years of age, and it was very impressive to see how well they cycled on the 45 km trip to Cambridge.