THE RIDE
Editor Matt heads back to his homeland to rediscover a joyful network of East Anglian B-roads
ALL AROUND ME are the signs that summer is here. I’m parked up on the B1123 that straddles the Norfolk/Suffolk border, a good 80 miles into what may turn out to be 2023’s best ride, basking in the warmth of a perfect evening. Next to me are hedgerows so verdant they’re almost fluorescent and the dark green of maturing wheat stretches into the middle-distance, waving in the breeze. Ahead stretches the perfect English B-road: well-surfaced, meandering and with unknown pleasures just beyond each vanishing point.
On an island that’s blessed with some of the best riding in the world, it’s easy to discount Norfolk and Suffolk. Look beyond the holiday honeypots though and there’s a compelling network of B-roads with myriad challenges and rise and fall with the gentle countryside.
My job today is to piece them all together. We start at Hunstanton: still after all these years the go-to place for Norfolk bikers. For decades, East Anglian riders (myself included) have flocked to Sunny Hunny to park up on the prom, kick tyres and eat chips.
It’s a quiet Tuesday before the school holidays when we arrive after a 60-mile schlep from Peterborough. The place is quiet and just a few bikes line the prom. Hunstanton isn’t for everyone but I love the charm of its 1970s-style holidaying, its arcades and resolute refusal to ‘go posh’. A few miles down the coast, there’s all the pastel colours and gastro pubs you’d ever want, but Hunstanton is old-school. Everywhere has its place.
Still, this is a start point and we don’t stay long. Rather than hug the coast like most East Anglia rides, we’re heading in a diagonal, never touching a dual-carriageway, barely hitting an A-road in a 93-mile squiggle that takes us to another seaside town: Southwold. Snapper Chippy and I can’t wait to get going and it’s fun as soon as we turn left at Heacham and head for the B1454. It sweeps as it cuts through the countryside, bridging the River Heacham before we head through Docking, its redbrick and flint a contrast to the concrete of Hunstanton as we flow towards Fakenham and the B1146.
Today I’m riding a borrowed Harley-Davidson Sportster S
