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According to the map I traced a zig-zaggy course down the Suffolk coast, starting at one ruin (St Andrew Covehithe) and ending at another (Leiston Abbey). About 25 miles, I guess, and mostly flat. Wonderful cycling country.

But maps don’t tell you anything. The journey I really took was through 1,000 years of history. The grandeur of these 15th-century churches attests to a scarcely credible era when Suffolk’s coastal villages were rich and powerful trading hubs.

But the sea silted their harbours and swallowed chunks of land. Then, in successive centuries, a vast heritage of exquisite medieval art — stained glass, statues, wood carvings — was destroyed by the henchmen of Henry VIII and Cromwell.

You marvel that anything still exists. But it does. And to cycle from one breathtaking edifice to another, each towering over the tranquil landscape like Gulliver in Lilliput, is to be astonished by the ingenuity of those medieval craftsmen who achieved such majestic proportions, beauty and symbolism without electricity, machines or computers.

Seven churches, or their atmospheric remains, are on this route. We start at Covehithe (two miles east of the A12, just north of Southwold), where the gaunt walls of the medieval building enclose a remarkable thatched church built in the 17th century.

Then we cycle south to two great parish churches. St Edmund Southwold is a magnificent 15th-century building with grinning (or grimacing) gargoyles and a medieval screen depicting the Apostles. A few miles west along the River Blyth, Holy Trinity Blythburgh is even more thrilling, with its 12 angels “flying” in the roof.

You could head south from Blythburgh but you will find a quick loop east to St Andrew Walberswick well worth a detour, as they say in the Michelin guides. This, too, is an immense, dramatic ruin — with a smaller church from a later period tucked inside.

But the most famous ruin is a few miles south, at ghostly Dunwich. Some people say that there were once 50 churches here. Either way, they are now submerged by the ever-encroaching waves. And in 50 years, probably, the romantic ruins of Greyfriars Monastery, perched on the cliff, will join them. Hurry while stocks last!

Holy Trinity, Middleton, a little way south, is still standing — but it was a close-run thing. A monstrous fire ravaged it in 1955 but, miraculously, left its chief glory intact — a big medieval wall painting of St Andrew, uncovered only a century ago.

Finally, pedal your way to Leiston Abbey, another imposing 14th-century ruin but one that has been given new life as a music school run by the charity Pro Corda. If you are lucky you’ll hear sweet serenades wafting over the flowerbeds, a fittingly harmonious end to your bike ride through history.