East of the Medway, where Men and Maids of Kent reside, is the site of my yearly pilgrimage to Stelling Minnis and The Lord Whisky Animal Sanctuary, run by Nick and Tina Marsh. Every late May Bank Holiday, or Whitsun as it was known in my youth, they run an excellent sportive from the grounds of Park House around the lumps and bumps of the Weald and out over the marshes at Romney.
It's quite a trek on the day for me and, of late, the missus to take part but it's one sportive I hate to miss. No sponsored feed stations, no sophisticated timing chips, just a good, old-fashioned halfway food and drink break and a man with a clipboard and a stopwatch.
The cyclists who take part do so in the same affable manner as the hosts run it, it has a charming carnival air to it, from the piped music playing all day to the BBQ and the cake stall, heaving with high-calorie rewards for weary finishers and their supporters. It's limited to just over 300 participants, with entries on the day making up nearly half of them - Nick never seems worried, he knows they'll come as they do every year.
I've done five of these now and finishers receive a different commemorative mug every year. There are two routes available, of 72 or 50 miles, the former really being a spin around a 20 mile loop on the Weald before merging back with those burning briefly but brightly on the shorter course before the single feed station. There are several mild climbs at the start of each route but none that inconvenience any cyclist with a compact chainset. The roads on the course are chosen to be generally car free - unless that's just a consequence of the M20 and M2 sucking the poison from these arterial lanes and the signage, when not sporadically interfered with by a minority of killjoy locals, is clear and excellent.
Everyone takes advantage of the feed station, and the children's playground, at Appledore which is a traditional affair (much in keeping with the rest of the event) with a folding table resplendent with old-school treats like bananas, flapjack, tins of cola, bottles of water, and bread pudding so dense and heavy, light has trouble escaping from it. Once through the village, we descend past the Royal Military Canal and on to the Marshes for a good 20 miles.
The flatness may at first seem appealing after the undulations of the previous couple of hours, but with no freewheeling and with a gentle, yet seemingly constant, headwind the novelty soon wears off. It is peaceful, however, and there are plenty of opportunities for wildlife spotting in the air, on the verges and, if they're particularly unlucky, spread over the roads. However, after meandering back and forth from west to east through farms and caravan parks, the escarpment of Port Lympne begins to loom menacingly, like a mini Mount Ventoux.
It may be a slight exaggeration, comparing Lympne Hill to The Giant of Provence, but after a couple of hours on the flat, hitting the bottom of the climb at West Hythe is like a hand pushing on your chest. Grown men and women have wept at the base of this climb and those who haven't are usually crying by the top.
This is not the place for out-of-the-saddle, big ring heroics - the majority, like me, are happy to drop to the granny ring, pick a saucer sized cog at the back and trundle at near walking pace. I always forget that this climb has a sting in the tail. As you mount the summit and turn on to the main drag, you're presented with a further 200 yards of low gear spinning, regretting every mouthful of super-dense bread pudding still undigested in your stomach.
From here on in, it's back to the up and down stuff, cruising past Port Lympne Animal Park, under the M20 and back north towards Canterbury. As a kind of epilogue there's one more slog in store for all riders who have to a man (and woman) forgotten about the whizzy fast descent down from the start to the course split in Lyminge. Longage Hill just about caps your day and if you have anything left in the tank, this empties you completely. After that, it's downhill for the last mile and the welcome sight of the bunting-festooned finishing line.
The Lord Whisky Cyclo-Sportive, for me, is a welcome change from some of the hyper-organised and dare I say, slightly soulless events I do. It feels less like a sportive and more like a group ride with 300 mates. It's why I come every year - that and the mugs.
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