Last Saturday the missus n me decided it was about time we got down to Clacton for the day. We used to go there most weekends in the good old days when our summers lasted more than three days, and as it seemed there was going to be a break from the recent Biblical style floods, we thought we’d grab the chance to get some sand between our toes.
For the un-initiated, Clacton is along the East coast not far from Colchester and actually boasts an award-winning beach, mostly sandy and mercifully free of used condoms and hypodermic needles!
If you’re a lover of ‘kiss me quick’ hats and inflatable ‘killer whales’ then The Pier is the place for you with an array vomit inducing and probably ferociously unsafe ‘fairground’ rides. At the end of The Pier sits the ‘Jolly Roger’ café . . . with my hand on my heart I can honestly say it’s the most un-piratey place I’ve ever visited in my entire life . . . I’ve seen slaughter houses with more ‘yo ho ho’ about them!
That notwithstanding it’s all a bit of a lark for a good old British day out. Granted it’s not a place you’d want to spend your annual fortnight but geographically it’s near enough to make a daytrip there a good option.
As the Met Office had been no help at all in giving us any kind of accurate forecast in the five days building up to our excursion – unless predicting that every conceivable type of weather condition from Sahara Sunshine to Rainforest precipitation, might prevail on the day, counts – we acted on the only course of weather calculation left open to us . . . we opened the bedroom curtains Saturday morning and said
“Yup, the Suns out . . . Tally Ho . . . Chocks away . . . Last one in the sea’s a homo”
A few texts later and our mini posse were all informed of the meeting point and time. ie “our house, half ten”
And so it was with songs in our hearts and shorts in our rucksacks that myself, Karen (gridgirl) Hayden, Debbie, Terry & Karen headed north up the A10, Great Cambridge Road.
I really don’t like leading a group very much, but as the only person who kinda knew the way it seemed a little churlish to argue the point.
“A10 for a few miles then right onto the A120 . . . nice relaxed speeds, no rush . . . everyone ok with that?”
‘Relaxed speeds’ to H & Terry obviously mean something slightly different, in as much as they have to be measured in terms of ‘ballistics’ and I think the Millennium Falcon would have had trouble keeping pace!
Consequently when we turned off onto the aforementioned A120, Messrs H & T were nowhere to be seen. A quick call from Karen established that they’d got halfway to Cambridge and somewhat abashed, they would turn around and come and join us. Echoes of the Tortoise and the Hare?
The A120 is a fab road . . . Ranging from dual carriageways dropping down to 30 mph residential roads thro small villages. Twists, turns, hills and dales make this a great road to ride in the sunshine. After that a few miles on the A12, and then picking up the A133 all the way into Clacton. As a kid I was always so excited at that first sight of the sea and 30 odd years later nothings changed . . . it’s still a vast expanse of water . . . just kidding . . . I mean of course that I still get that buzz when I get that first glimpse of the Ocean and a whiff of the old ‘briney’ . . . whether it’s the Atlantic Ocean or in this case the North Sea.
Six motorcycles, riding in a row, along Clacton seafront must be something of a rarity, given the amount of slack jawed looks we achieved from the fish n chip saturated day-trippers as they dragged along their candy floss drenched children.
There are a few residential streets running off of the sea front so getting bikes parked isn’t a problem, which is handy as there doesn’t seem to be any allocated parking of the two wheeled variety. Naturally, once everyone had parked up and secured their machines, the car parked between my bike & Karens, moved.
20 minutes later and everyone had run back to their bikes, unsecured them, ridden them 20 yards down the road and re-secured them. Six bikes all sitting pretty, all in a row.
First stop. The Marchello Inn for a well deserved pint. It’s right on the sea front and does reasonable ‘pub food’. I doubt Gordon Ramsay would go out of his way to eat there but for a hungry biker it’s not half bad.
The weather improved as the day progressed and the Armageddon-esque clouds that had threatened so ominously, gradually dissipated and it turned into a great afternoon of fun n frolics on the sand (I might add at this point I was the only person with big enough cajhoonas to actually go in for a swim) and a lovely late afternoon stroll along the beach.
Inevitably we felt the near magnetic pull of the pier and ended up having a mooch about there for the last hour or so. It was at about that time that I discovered that walking around in leather bike trousers with a fine layer of salt & sand dusting my thighs and slowly but surely removing the top ten layers of skin, is not the greatest sensation in the world.
Back to the bikes. . . “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6” . . . they’re all there so it’s a good start to the 80 mile journey home. The roads were fairly quiet on the way out of Clacton and at times along the A120 we seemed to be the only people using it!
Needless to say we didn’t for one moment abuse the miles of empty tarmac stretching out into the sunset . . .
One thing I do need to ask the more seasoned veteran riders among you though is this;
Is there a universally recognised hand signal for “Please pull in at the next services as my bladder is close to bursting point” or does pointing in the general direction of ones crotch suffice???
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