After setting off from home at 7am and driving 120 miles, I dropped my bike off at Stratford St Andrew @10.30, before driving to Brandeston for the start of my 18-mile recce for the day. It was grey and overcast with a chilly northerly breeze but nice to get started.

The route quickly left Brandeston following footpaths and bridleways through woodlands, down tracks, alongside field edges and over streams, between small villages. Framingham was the first notable settlement of the day with its impressive college and castle and home to Ed Sheeran apparently. Interestingly its Gala Festival is being held over the same weekend as the 100, and includes a Duathlon on the Saturday afternoon and perhaps an impromptu performance from ES ? Could be chaotic !

As well as being flat the route was quite hard underfoot due to the lack of rainfall in the region. It’s worrying to see the ground cracking so early in the year.

Whenever I’ve recce’d 100 I’ve always bumped into other ‘recceers’ so was unsurprised to do so again just after lunch. However, this was a LDWA legend. Having stayed over after supporting the Marshall’s event over May Day weekend, Jill Green was walking with a few other recceers. Talking to her she completed the last of her 30 LDWA 100s in 2023 at the amazing age of 80. The inspiration for this blog started from Richard Askwith’s book, ‘The Race Against Time’ and being the oldest woman to complete a LDWA 100, Jill is inspirational and would be deserving of inclusion in a future update.

On reaching Easton I came across the crinkle crankle wall, also known as a crinkum rankum, sinusoidal, serpentine, ribbon or wavy wall, built with alternating curves. The style originated in Ancient Egypt, but is also found in Suffolk.

Part of the reason to recce the route is to get familiar with the style of the route description (RD). First impressions were mixed; while it was succinct, this came at the expense of place names, two point location reassurance (eg TR at the FPS, 10m after the pond) and my biggest gripe its own set of abbreviations for example ‘and’ was represented by ‘n’ (as in fish ‘n’ chips), not ‘&’ and hedge I found out was ‘HG’. Thankfully none of this was to blame for a frustrating 20 minutes trying to escape from a wood by a ‘pylon’. Like buses, I found two pylons but neither seemed to be the right one as I emerged on a busy main road about a mile away from where I should have done so in Parham. Frustrating ‘now’ is far better than frustrating ‘during the event’. I also had a couple of other ‘misinterpretations’, which to be fair were probably my fault.

So after 18+ miles, I arrived back in Stratford St Andrew at @4:30pm and then had a 10 mile cycle back to the car.

Checking in at my B&B, it was rather compact and for the first time in my life got to experience what tall people have to endure more often than me with low ceilings.

Feeling low on energy I needed a good meal and got it at the Ottomans Turkish restaurant, as one of the few places open in walking distance from my B&B.

It had been a harder day than it should have been due to confusion with the RD which left me feeling apprehensive about the next 2 days and the event itself.