Ordinarily with a cycling event I’ll turn up the night before, camp, do the ride, camp again, and get the train home the next morning. This was the draft plan for 2025’s Brother Big ‘Un ride in Kent, which is a loop starting from and ending just outside Faversham, but events conspired and I just didn’t finish and get home from work until around 7.30 pm the night before. The good news was that I’d been lent an electric van to go with, so my thinking was I’d just drive in the morning and do the ride. This is a post about what I learned and observed in so doing.
Probably best to not rush your bike mechanic-ing the days before, or you might end up mistakenly splitting your chain like I did
One of the tasks I had to complete in the week leading up to the Big ‘Un was changing my chain. I’d recently ‘downgraded’ the drivetrain on the Voodoo Bizango from 11-speed to 10-speed, but I’d kept the 11-speed chain on just since it wasn’t yet worn. When the chain had reached 0.5% worn on my tool, I’d sourced a 10-speed chain from Halfords click and collect. I was a bit displeased when it turned up, and it was a ‘joining pin’ type chain rather than one with a quick link – I suppose that’s a hazard of online shopping. Anyway, I ended up not being able to do this until a day or two before the ride, and it may not have been a perfect job with regard to fettling the rear derailleur after fitting the new chain. I think the higher limit screw might in hindsight have needed winding out in order to allow for the slightly wider 10-speed links.
Because I’d been in a rush, and the week had been rainy in the lead-up, I didn’t do what I should have done and go for a test ride after fitting the new chain at home. Consequently, getting to Kent and starting on the ride, I found it was a bit slippy and grindy when in top (the hardest) gear. This really bit me in the bum because about 10 miles in I was climbing up a hill and the chain split. Thankfully, I wasn’t giving it full aggro – I think the damage had been done from riding in ‘top gear’ with the chain slipping a bit owing to bad limit screws.
Anyway, I had the equipment with me to separate off the broken bit and rejoin the chain. I used my comparatively new multi-tool which includes a chain tool. I didn’t actually have a 10-speed quick link – the one taped to my mini pump is 11-speed – so I just pushed a pin back in to join it. I should add that fixing broken chains in this way is in the syllabus for the ’emergency fixes’ class that I teach and is well worth knowing how to do. With practice, it’s a 20-minute or so process, maybe quicker depending on the weather.
I actually just decided to do the rest of the ride without using the ‘top gear’ in case I’d bought the wrong kind of chain somehow. It later transpired this was indeed a 10-speed Deore chain, so it was compatible, but I might have damaged it a bit with the badly set limit screw. Looking more closely at the photos, it may actually have been the ‘joining pin’ itself which failed. Anyway, I’ve since sorted this out – hopefully it doesn’t happen again. We’ll see.
You really do need to start early, and in September, 10.30 am is too late, if you want to do the whole route but don’t want to ride in the dark
In my view, if you want to ride in maximum daylight, you shouldn’t start the 110 km Big ‘Un loop and later than 8am or so. I just wasn’t able to do this, so I made a call at around 60 km and trimmed about 30 km off. I did have lights with me, but just really didn’t like the idea of riding in darkness from the standpoint of wanting to be able to clearly see any technical terrain ahead of me, especially roots. And, frankly, I just wanted to head back in. Thankfully, it was very easy for me to navigate to Canterbury using Komoot, sync that route onto my Wahoo head unit, and then from there rejoin the Big ‘Un route, which left a 30 km or so shot remaining to base camp.
There is no one pointing a gun at your head and compelling you to do x or y at the Big ‘Un. The route (and its bigger 155 km version, The Bigger ‘Un) are made available to you but I met a heap of people just mooching around and doing their own thing. I do think Kent is the most slept-on region of England to go cycling in, not least because of its closeness to London and ease of access, so even though I was kicking myself a little that I’d started late, I didn’t regret going at all.
Big tyres mean you need big pumps – even ‘mini’ ones
I came across someone riding back to base on a very nice Salsa bike but with a very saggy and deflated rear wheel, which was fitted with a large mountain bike 29er tyre. It turned out their tubeless setup had failed, either from one too many thorns getting into the tyre, or maybe their sealant hadn’t worked. They’d put an inner tube in to get home with, but they just hadn’t been able to pump it up hard enough using the mini pump they’d brought along.
I promptly lent my Decathlon MTB mini pump, which was approximately twice the size and weight. This got their back tyre back up to pressure very easily. It just goes to show that while the smallest and lightest pumps might look attractive, for large-profile tyres like 2.25-inch 29ers, you need a high-volume mini pump to get them to work. The small-profile micro pumps just don’t cut it for me. The sad irony is that I later found out that this person’s inner tube didn’t even stay inflated, as it turned out the tyre had so many thorns and other sharp objects in it, they ended up getting through and puncturing the inner tube. Food for thought for the ‘just put a tube in if it goes wrong’ brigade, I guess.
Churches – yes, you really can ‘just go in’
I am actually a little reluctant to write this up for fear of someone going and vandalising a church. But you can, as I found, just let yourself into a church and have a look around. I was a bit pushed for time but did do so at St Mary the Blessed Virgin Church, in Crundale, which is a bit mysterious with regard to documentation. It was restored using private money in the late 19th century, but where it really came from is unclear. It’s been alluded to in 14th-century documents but isn’t noted in the 11th-century Domesday Book. What is quite ha-ha funny is apparently the restoration was done by someone called Edgar Brock, whose approach to this job and others was so ‘drastic’ that he ended up having a massive feud with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), which I didn’t even know existed until I started writing this blog.
Anyway, the main thing is that yes, you really can often just let yourself in. Maybe this could be useful cycling information for you e.g. if thunder and lightning begins. Be sure to close all the doors behind you on the way out. It was nice for photography also.
Sleeping in vans is actually great, and I can see the appeal, but there is a caveat
Before I forget to mention, I’d been lent an electric van to use for this event. It was hugely cheaper and easier than getting a train; a full charge on the fast charger was about £30. Train tickets to Faversham and back would have been about £50. But what was a real surprise to me was how much room the mountain bike took up. I’d presumed I’d be able to have a cavernous amount of space remaining, but it really is quite a big bike. It made me reflect a bit harder on whether ‘van life,’ if not permanently then maybe in the short term, could be for me. I’d imagined I’d be able to just flop all my stuff out with the bike still in the van. It was very nice to be able to just lie down on the sleeping mat and sleeping bag, and a huge convenience compared to a tent, but this is something I’ll bear in mind in future.
So, if you ever do fancy doing a trip like this, just be ready to have to get the bikes out to make room for yourself. You could probably benefit from finding a way to use a cable lock to lock the bikes to the van if you’re a security minded person like I am. But one big advantage is that it’s dark inside a van’s bay and easy to get to sleep. I couldn’t believe it when my alarm went off at 8 the next morning and it was genuinely time to wake up, on account of it being so dark inside.
It reminded me of the value of getting out there and making the most of the light and the season while you can
Changing seasons is a really hard time for a lot of people. As winter approaches, threatening us with short days, boggy ground and needing to take 4 layers of clothes out with us on any trip, it can really get you down. But September-October still does have days worth making ride plans for. I was really glad I’d made it to Kent for this weekend, even if I’d had to trim the ride a bit short in order to make it back in time for sunset and a hot tea.
The Big ‘Un route does have some gnar, but for this time of year, it catches the terrain just before the autumn and winter conditions make it so much harder. You also get to catch Kent in its prime apple harvesting season, and I was sure to pick a few as ride snacks. Get out there and enjoy the early autumnal conditions while you can.
Wrapping up
Firstly, a round of applause to the Brother Cycles team for putting this all together. I warmly look forward to being back with them in Purbeck next summer. Their events really are tremendous and worth going to. I met a few people on the ride who’d been to the Munich Brother in the Wild event also and had only good things to say. Read more here https://www.brothercycles.com/events/
I don’t really have off roading events ‘booked in’ for the remainder of the year. I do have plans, but at this point, you start having to be ready to cancel them in case you catch a weekend of abysmal rain or sleet conditions. But I will keep trucking where I can, and hope you do too.
Calum On Wheels 