Norwich to Uppsala (Sweden) day 1. The Grand Depart

The Grand Depart to Sweden

Last year, child 2 (George), moved to Sweden to further his Volleyball career. On our first visit  I foolishly said that I would like to cycle out there one day. I’m not quite sure how it happened but this throw away remark became a thing and before I knew it I had a route and a ferry ticket.

I have decided to embrace the mission which obviously means there must be some goals for the trip.

1. I have to get to Uppsala (where George lives) by Saturday week at 9.30 in order to take part in the Uppsala parkrun. I have told them I’m coming and they are apparently looking forward to meeting me.

2. I plan to find the best pickled herring available on route plus decide if Danish or Swedish is better. 

3. I need to investigate if said pickled herring is a good fuel for cycling.

4. I will be searching for the best cafe between Norwich and Uppsala. Despite Brexit I still plan to use the EU approved European cafe rating system.

5. I will be awarding certificates to the local mayors whose municipality wins the best thing of the day. Tomorrow’s thing is, not surprisingly, windmills.

The ride is 1064 miles (subject to getting lost) and not including tonight’s ferry crossing. Hopefully I’ll only be using my bicycle and ferries but if necessary, to make parkrun, I might have to pop on a train.

Today was the Grand Depart as I was joined by Mrs Crusader and a selection of my favourite cycling guests, who have accompanied me on various different adventures (mostly only once), as far as Bungay. 

There we visited my number one favourite cafe Earsham Street. As always it delivered great coffee, food and atmosphere so I have excluded it from this trips competition as it would obviously win and spoil it for the other competitors.

To make sure I really went, Big George stepped up to accompany me as far as Ipswich whilst the others returned to Norwich. There was one last hug with Mrs Crusader (who remains concerned that I’ll do something silly as it’s the first time I’ve gone on an adventure without a responsible adult) and then me and Big George headed south.

It was extremely windy but we caught up with all our recent cycling and holiday news distracting us from the breeze. After a couple of hours we decided to stop at Debenham for the first cafe rating of the trip.

We chose the River Green Cafe as it was the only one open. I was very excited to see that they offered hot chocolate on a stick so I went for that plus a fruit scone, while Big George had tea and cheese scone.

Hot chocolate on a stick was excellent, as was Big Georges scone but the cafe were clearly not familiar with the old rhyme “cheese scone hot fruit scone not” as they had only gone and warmed up my scone, with the inevitable result that it disintegrated into crumbs as soon as any butter spreading was attempted. A real shame as on the European cafe rating system the River Green cafe scored a 6.68 but should have been a bit higher.

Sadly no pickled herring was available.

With my game face on we pushed on to Ipswich where I thanked Big George for accompanying me and we had a manly handshake, certainly no hugging, as we said goodbye.

And then it struck me I was alone with just my bike and a thousand mile route on my Garmin. I wasn’t sure this was one of my better ideas.

But I didn’t want to let the Uppsala parkrun people down  (as they were looking forward to meeting me) so off I set to Harwich ferry port. Fortunately the last 11 miles were into a very strong headwind which, according to the forecast, was what I could expect for tomorrows 102 mile leg, so a good practice. That in itself will be just a warm up for when storm Babet hits Germany on Friday and Saturday. But that’s for another day, first I have a rough ferry crossing to enjoy

Tomorrow’s weather forecast (who doesn’t love a 21mph headwind)

Todays stats

	Miles	Time on bike	Average speed	Meters climbed
Day 1 Norwich to Harwich	77.64	06:05	12.8	784

Todays Route