Don't stray from the path

[Mussels]

I finished work a bit early on Friday so decided to go exploring the salt marshes a little bit, this is a picture of the edge looking towards the big smoke. It is also the least isolated part of the marshes.

Below is the river I needed to find to navigate my way off the marshes and home.

Not the most welcoming sight.
The one and only time I had gone across the marshes before I stuck to the approved cycle route, the first part of this runs along the top of an exposed dyke and through a couple of those awful motorbike barriers so I decided to take a shortcut that I noticed the previous time. When I say I saw the shortcut I mean that I saw the other end of it and assumed I knew where the beginning was. So happily I set off on the service road that goes to an industrial estate in the middle, I reached the gate and the nice security guard pointed me to the byway saying there was a gap to walk bike through. Everything going well apart from a couple of fading light batteries I headed off to my short cut and slogged it through the mud to get to the gate.
First thing I noticed at the gate was that the gap was narrow and I needed to repmove my panniers to get through, all fine and good until I snapped one of the pannier mounts trying to get it off. It's cold and dark, I'm ankle deep in mud with fading lights about to ride onto the marshes proper, I didn't want to turn back though as it would mean pushing my bike up the steps to get across the railway bridge. I think I was lying to myself about the bridge as I just didn't want to give up.
Anyway, through the gate I reassembled my luggage and headed off up the mud bath labelled 'byway', thankfully it wasn't very long and I soon came to the gate the other end. As I prepared to go through the cycle gap I found there wasn't one, just the remnants of a 5 bar gate and a style. I found I could just fit the bike through the gap if I held it at an improbably angle, still in good spirit I looked at my next obstacle - the dyke. This is it, about 20 feet high.

That picture didn't work, you can see some taken in more favourable conditions here if you scroll down to Crayford Ness.
I'm going to post this now as I'm afraid I'll lose it if I carry on, next post to come.

 

[Mussels]

All I could see in front of me was a hill of just over a 100% gradient, my reduced gearing was still not much help there so I set off to take it at an angle and fortunately made it up without incident. So far so good, even though I was a bit muddy and a bit late I knew where I was - there's only 1 dyke.
I set off down the dyke and finally found the shortcut I had been looking for originally, I'm not making that mistake again. I selected the right path and set off in the direction of Dartford. It firstly seemed a bit sandier that I remembered then I noticed I had a puncture, great. I managed to pump it up without repairing it which was nice, I didn't fancy trying to do a puncture repair in those conditions. I carried on and the track dipped down a bit which I don't remember from before but I carried on going with squashy front tyre through the night until I came to the end of the track. It turns out I had followed the shortcut after all but in the wrong direction! Very tempted to go back and round I had to admit defeat as even I knew that riding out into a deserted marsh with a puncture and fading lights was a bad thing. To top it all I still had to ride to the railway bridge and push my bike up all the steps to cross it.
I had about 3 miles left to go and set off down the cycle path with spongy tyre looking forward to home. I stopped a couple more times to put air in the tyre and with about a mile left stupid me decides to see what caused the puncture, I found the big tack and pulled it out of the tyre. Of course the tyre would then not hold any air even when I pushed the tack back in so I had to walk the last mile wet and muddy with a flat front tyre, when I came to repair it I needed 3 patches.
I'll probably have another go when the snow has gone but this time I'll try and prepare a bit better.
Oh and the 'Don't stray from the path' reference is because that's the American Warewolf line that went through my head when I first headed onto the marsh, why don't I listen to myself?

 

[Vikki]

Because if you did listen to yourself you wouldn't get the experience to say 'why don't I listen to myself'

Nice read that was. Sounds like you had one of those moments (or several hundred moments one af the other). I've done similar things in the past and wondered 'why on earth did I do that?' Usually because it seemed like a good idea at the time, hehehehehe.

Vikki.