July 2, 2012
North to Ash Street, Needham Market & Stowmarket
onwards to Diss
It's a grey and after breakfast we ride around the village again, looking for the building Patterson drew.
The tourism office is open and the lady I show the print to instantly knows where it is – just at the bottom of the street. It's the hotel we just stayed in - right where we’d asked the postman the previous day... strange how we’d not twigged.
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Once we’ve taken a snap of The Swan, we head south-ish, towards the village of Kersey and venture along the A 1141.
It isn’t long before a sign by the roadside says there's an old chapel – tucked down a footpath – so we prop our bikes against the fence, open the swing gate and go to have a look.
St James' Chapel turns out to be a simple, rectangular structure and the walls – as is often the case in this area – are built from a mix of split pebbles (flint) and bricks.
The humble place harks back to 1250 and it seems as though no one used it for a long time. Inside is bare, save for two simple wooden benches, parked adjacent the solid door, and there's a table at the alter end. The floor is compact earth and it's quite dark as the few windows are narrow and let in little light. Maybe it's because of all this that it has a magical quality.
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Kersey is not far away and we ride via Ash Street. Patterson sketched the narrow strip of road there, but we can't locate the exact spot, so ride on to Kersey.
It starts to drizzle as we get there, so we shelter under the overhang of a house’s roof and wait it out for about 20 minutes.
Frank Patterson drew a couple of spots in the more or less one-street village and the stream that flows across the main street makes one very easy to locate, but the other is impossible.
We ask a few villagers, but without any success and conclude that perhaps the dwelling has been totally changed or maybe it burned down.
It'd have be nice to have had a bite to eat, but the one village pub is closed on Mondays so we go without.
There's a steep hill out of Kersey, which warms us up, and our direction has changed and we're heading north now, towards Needham Market.
At the edge of Needham we pop into a supermarket and buy some bargains – chiefly a small box of raspberries and a carton of Greek-style yogurt which we share outside. We're ready for it.
Our next step is to get a train from Needham and alight at Diss, a short trip up the line, but there aren’t any trains stopping at the empty station and we have to ride a bit more - about 10 km - to Stowmarket.
The fare from Stowmarket to Diss hits me: it's over 7 quid each for the one-way 20-minute journey. In Taiwan you can travel for a couple of hours for that money. At least the bikes are free.
Our map shows the small Suffolk town of Diss has the closest station to a small village called Dickleburgh, where my friends live.
The ride there from the station is quite nasty, as we're stuck on a main road and to keep as safe as possible, we cycle along the A 140’s gutter - a wide concrete trough – and zip along at quite a pace, trying to get the stress over with ASAP.
Dinky Dickleburgh is just off the highway and even though I’ve not been to my friend’s house before (they moved in recently) finding their abode doesn’t take too long. It's a one-street village. They're taken aback to see my face peering through their window, and it's good to know they're actually home after the crap ride here.
Although it's July, the temperature is not what you'd expect and a log fire gets lit in the living room's large fireplace, adding to the cosy vibe created by the low, oak-beamed ceiling. The village pub is a hardly minute’s walk along the street, so that’s where we end up before long.
Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 3,820 km (2,372 miles)
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