Dynamism

Cycling is a sport that seeps tradition. It hasn’t changed much since those first safeties and velocipedes rolled out of arms factories in the late 19th century. Two wheels and a pair of legs, that’s all there is to it. When you roll out for a ride, you cross over the same routes as all of those who pedalled before you. Some things seem intemporal, utterly timeless, even if they’re actually rather recent. In the grand scheme of things, the bicycle is an almost brand-new invention. And so, when I think of dynamos, I think of a storied tradition of cycling through the night. Specifically, I think of the Dunwich Dynamo, an overnight bike ride from Hackney (London, England) to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. I’d always taken it for granted that the Dunwich Dynamo had been around as long as the dynamo itself, but it hasn’t. It’s only been around since 1992, well, formally anyway.

Dynamos have been used to power lights for a long time, though—a certain Mr Bosch is credited with first rigging up a bottle dynamo to a bicycle front light in the early 1920s (that’s the one that rubs against the wheel). Hub dynamos are actually a lot older than you might imagine, too. Sturmey Archer - because who else? - started producing them in the 1930s. Despite being incredibly practical and serving as the gold standard of bicycle lighting for decades, at some point, dynamo lights lost their cool. For a while there, I only saw them on Dutch tourers and German town bikes. Frankly, that makes sense when you consider that the best hub dynamos on the market are more readily available in Germany than anywhere else in the world. Seriously, I know they are German but just look at the map of SON dealers in Germany and then compare it to everywhere else. Crazy.

I could write about the various efficiencies of different models and brands, and there are some notable differences, but I don’t think I can ever do the subject as much justice as this bikepacking.com article, which goes over everything you might ever want to know about dynamo hubs. The bottom line is, the more expensive hubs tend to be more efficient at around 20 km/h, causing less drag than their cheaper counterparts. Though the differences are normally minimal. The real distinction is in durability and serviceability. Some things last a long time.

As in most things, we really ought to be talking about application rather than the parts themselves. Because, yes, dynamos are sick. But what’s the use if you don’t go riding out through the night from time to time? Heck, you don’t even need a dynamo to do that! Just some well-charged LEDs.

Every year as the sun sets on the east London borough of Hackney, thousands of cyclists of every age, experience level, fitness and preparedness descend upon a park called London Fields. Their goal is to pedal 120 miles through the night, powered by pizza, beer and of course, their dynamos, ending up in the mythical Suffolk village of Dunwich. There, they take a dip in the North Sea, have a few sandwiches, maybe a couple of pints, and then make their merry way back to the English capital for more pints - whether by train, coach or bike.

They’ve been doing this since 1992. The story goes that after seven or eight pints too many, a group of London bike messengers over-exuberantly began pedalling east. And they didn’t stop until they hit the coast. If they were after a beach, they could have ridden to quite a few littoral towns that would have been much closer (yes, including Brighton). But they didn’t; they went to Dunwich. That they should have ended up in such a fabulous village is perhaps why the ride became as much part of cycling folklore as Dunwich itself is. Most people in Britain know two things about Dunwich, if they know anything at all. The first is that there are a bunch of nutters who insist on cycling there once a year. The second is that although today there are only a couple of hundred inhabitants, Dunwich was once as big as London, and probably more important. In the 12th century, it was a colossal port town, with a cathedral. In fact, it was the capital of East Anglia, an Anglo-Saxon kingdom. That today, there are only a handful of buildings left is due to coastal erosion and a tremendous flood that dragged most of the city to the bottom of the sea in the 15th century.

That is to say, the great city of Dunwich is actually still there. It’s just underwater. When you arrive at the beach and gaze out over the North Sea, you gaze out over the lost houses, churches, schools, port, marketplaces and lives. It’s Atlantis. I presume that someone has ridden a Rivendell Atlantis on the DD at some point, but if they haven’t, they really ought to.

It’s a place steeped in history and folklore, with stories of a wild spectral black dog called the Black Shuck stalking the Suffolk coastline, burning red hot and leaving scorch marks across the thresholds of the buildings it passes. There’s even a local frame builder who named one of his models the Black Shuck.

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Despite being a relatively recent cycling tradition, the reach of the DD has spread far and wide. With thousands starting the ride every year, there were bound to be some folks who thought to export the concept. There are certainly tens of copycat rides around the UK, and a few abroad, including the annual Montreal Dynamo Ride. Here’s Julian with a little run-down of what it looks like.

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“Since 2016, friend of C&L and ex-Londoner Matt Ai has been emulating the overnighter dynamo concept here in Montreal with a ride every year on the Friday night nearest the summer solstice. We leave our Villeneuve shop’s patio around 10pm and ride 120-160km through the dark night, blue light pre-dawn, and eventual scorcher sunny summer morning. The destination is always somewhere fun with a lake, casse-croûte breakfast, and plans to do nothing at all and laze around all day in recovery. It’s difficult, a bit surreal, but always one of my favourite nights of the year!”

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The B&W pics are from shop mechanic and photographer extraordinaire Troy from this year’s ride.

And these are from me.