This gallery contains 24 photos.
Not many words in this post and in no particular order: Tarkovsky, Strugatskys, Vandermeer, sauna, ceramic obsession, hipster-burger, hail, sub-zero, hotdog, gravel, trust, love, Gilles Berthoud, Öresundståg, osprey, hare, elk, moose, auntie, weird b&b, memory, meatballs, past-present-future.
So, it’s come to this. I am re-bran
ding as an adventure-commuter. For too long I have ridden the same route in and out of work, once or twice a week. But since I am no longer an aspiring ultra racer (one race completed one race completed, no further plans) or randonneur (two SR Series but havent finished a brevet for over a year now) and have less time for weekend riding (although I will be cyclo-camping on holiday) the obvious thing is to upgrade my routes from Hebden Bridge (and probably also Manchester) to Leeds.
My current ‘fast’ route is fairly direct and follows the main roads (A646 and A58 mostly), dicing with the trucks,vans, buses and other lunatics. An adventure of a kind, and there are some wonderful vistas (such as the entry to the Calder Valley in the night). I kn
ow this route so well that I can identify the organic development of road defects and even recognise people walking to work. It takes about one and a half hours to two hours door to door, not much slower than train plus Brompton, my other default mode. And although it isn’t flat I only need the small ring once.
I have had a range of other routes, taking in the Aire Valley Cycleway (bit of a detour via Shipley), and bits of the Calder Vall Cycleway but I have failed to fully commit. I tend to baulk at a ride longer than two hours, but why stop there? Earlier this week I rode out of Hebden Bridge up the steepest hill (via Birchcliffe) and proceeded to take in as many climbs as possible before descending to the cycleway in Skipton (the first part of which is axle-breaking rocky path) and on into Leeds. Took about 3 hours. On the way back I descended into Luddenden Foot and rode along route 66 through the woods by the railway and river. The next phase will be to set off earlier and ride a more extensive loops up North or South, avoiding main roads and mixing in paths and cycleway as appropriate. Eventually I plan to set off for work from work, riding all night to arrrive back at work by morning. I could also add in a level of complexity by using trains to get me further from work, but that might be a different pursuit.
No wonder I am tired all the time. But sleep is for wimps.
(I would have written a blog about lovepacking, but that’s too private, and far too serious).
#adventurecommuting
My first contact with the Netherlands as a tangible concept was through the writing of J. M. Coetzee. In his book, Dusklands, he writes two narratives, one centred around the Vietnam War, the other around a hunting expedition in South Africa. In the latter, the bounded and manufactured environment of the Netherlands, where the narrator (Jacobus Coetzee) grew up, appears as a narrative and symbolic contrast to the unbounded nature of the South African veldt. At one point, alone and more than slightly mad, Coetzee (the character) describes how he becomes just an eye, swamped by the visual information that envelops him.
Only the eyes have power…. I become a spherical reflecting eye moving through the wilderness through the wilderness and ingesting it. Destroyer of the wilderness, I move through the land cutting a devouring path from horizon to horizon. There is nothing from which my eye turns, I am all that I see.
The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee,”Dusklands”, J. M. Coetzee
Of course, the mythical flatness of the Netherlands themselves have perceptual consequences, but this flatness is real only as a stereotype. Where I lived in Nijmegen in the late 1990s had both flat polder and dike as well as hills and forest. And as I have just discovered, the terrain of Limburg (apart from Weert) is about as flat as the hilliest parts of Yorkshire.
So, this is an essay about a race, and for once, not a race I watched or read about, but one I entered, started… and finished. All of these things are new: I haven’t competed in a bicycle race in my entire history of cycling:
I’ve ridden two Super Randonneur series since returning to the bike after my kids got a little older (in 2014 and 2015), but I have been riding long distances and cycle commuting since my 20s. I ride on and off road (but mostly on), rode a fixie in London in the 1980s, have toured unsupported in England, Wales and France (including the big climbs of the Alps and Pyrennees), and currently do a few solo DIY audaxes as well as calendar events, I spent a year working in Nijmegen in 1997/8 and loved the cycling (the route also passes near Wassenaar, where I ran a conference at the NIAS in ’98), and brought my bike on a shorter stay in 2004. My passion is to ride far, and look after myself, and I think it is time to race 😉
So for want of a better structure I’ll pick some themes that seem important as I write this after two days back in my reality of trying to be a normal person with a job, a family and a house.
The Race Around the Netherlands (there’s Facebook group here with much discussion and many photos) is an unsupported fixed route bike race with a time limit of eight days: you basically get a gpx file (about 1670 km, which I added turn-by-turn to) and after that it’s all yours. Navigation is just following the route and deciding where and
when to stop. The mesmeric nature of some of the long, flat straight and car-free surfaces was perfectly illustrated by the northernmost left turn, at one of Europe’s largest data centres, which is home to much of Google’s data, as well as many of the other big IT names. My saved can of Fanta (keeps your sandwiches cold in your musette I find) went down well on the approach, and shortly after the turn I stopped at a bus stop to change my tracker batteries and eat something.
Well what can I say: I had planned to do more camping (both wild and tame) but decided just a few days before the race to try using Airbnb as an alternative (every night but one in the end).This was a risk as I had never used it before, but it just looked like a good solution, and I could always sleep rough it if went wrong.
I discovered very quickly how this was both extremely practical and emotionally uplifting. I decided roughly where I might stop for the day each evening, and then about mid-morning I would book my place. All my hosts were fine with a late night arrival and an early
disappearance, and some even allowed me to bring my bike inside (or had a shed, garage or back garden). And wow, what lovely people I met: so thanks Jochem, Roelie, Elies, Esther, Annet and Klaus, you were great to meet, however briefly! A special mention goes to Annet, who, through her son’s expert translation, established I wanted to leave before 6 am, and made me a packed breakfast and loaded up the coffee maker in advance, but all did something to make me feel looked after.
The one night I camped was at a fantastic campsite (a natuurkampterrain) in Weert, just off the
route, called Camping Wega. I emailed ahead the day before, and ueed my green card for the first and only time. It was one of the best sites I have stayed at, and after a good shower and some eating I whipped out my bivvy and slept under the stars.
I’m not sure about camping as a solution every night, but here they take check-ins until 2100, and of course I was off early, just before dawn.
If you’ve read any other posts on this blog you may know I have a position on drugs. Well, reader, I brought some with me, and used them. I had half a packet of paracetamol, half a pack of ibuprofen. I used all the ibuprofen (but below the max dosage) to keep the inflammation in my achilles (from about day 4) under control. I really don’t think I would have finished without medicine, the pain was intermittent and never too awful, but I think it kept it under control. I certainly wouldn’t recommend prophylactic use of ibuprofen but it did its job as a response to the battering my underprepared body was taking I guess.
I rode most of the race on my own, if you don’t count my attempts to catch and pass Dutch kids on traditional bikes: I was so destroyed by the first day that the final 20 kms into Enschede were aided by yo-yoing behind a girl and her younger brotther who were much amused by my inability to maintain any kind of speed as the light dimmed in the evening and the temperature fell. However, I did ride side by side with two fellow victims of the race, Onno and Marc, both for long enough to find out a little about their motivations for racing and their life outside cycling.
Given the importance of wind direction and strength for riding in the Netherlands it seemed particularly apt to ride for a bit with Onno on my second day of racing between Enschede and, in my case ter Apel and my second Airbnb, given his life at sea. I had had a late start, having to stop at Bagels & Beans for a “power breakfast” on my way out of Enschede. I think we had both had a rough start to the race, and Onno had not had much sleep, staying in a hostel. It was a welcome change chatting with someone, and although I couldn’t quite match his pace and had decided to make a short day to compensate for the ugly start and my lack of pre-race fitness, the brief time we had together was a priceless reminder of why I do this kind of thing. It’s the random nature of the focused human interactions, against the background of being alone. Onno was to maintain and extend his lead over me, despite an achilles injury (which seemed to be catching, as two days later my left achilles started to hurt).
It really isn’t, although some aspects of my setup desrve a mention, like the excellent wheels purchased from bikediscount.de (xt hubs, front dyno, dt 466d rims), faultless charging and lighting from B&M, and the completely flawless Vittoria Corsa Control 28 clincher tyres, run with inner tubes, no punctures and run at low pressures for smooth riding. Less satisfactory was my decision to use xt spd pedals and RT86 shoes: the slight rocking this setup allows contributed to ankle and foor pain, and I would use spd-sl pedals and more supportive shoes (probably my Bonts, which I have completed a 600 in). I did very little walking and the achilles problems I suffered nearly ended my race. Similarly, I had considered either using my race bike (with the same tyres, they just fit) or transferring the di2 onto my Whyte: after the first day (cold and wet then hot) my hands were covered in splits which just got worse over the course of the race. By the time I reached Limburg on the penultimate day I could barely change gear it was so painful, and braking became an issue. I had very few other physical issues, and unusually for me, my back and neck were pretty cooperative throughout.
Third placeAlthough I felt pretty disconnected from the pointy end of the race, the podium deserve special mention. I chatted with Colin and Tjerk a little before the start and they both seemed pretty sorted (Colin is a TCR finisher) and experienced. I didn’t speak with Joris, but I remember looking him up before the race and thinking that he looked one to watch. I was interested to see how the real differences in finishing
Second placetime seemed to derive as much if not more from rolling average speed, but from time on the bike. This is not an unfamiliar pattern for races of this kind, but it’s a lesson for anyone who wants to try to win. I was sleeping for about 6 hours a night and taking photos, and even if I had been better prepared (i.e., not ill for 3 weeks before the race and able to ride) I think I would have struggled to continue at such a speed with less sleep.
The winnerThere was scandal at the front of the race. That’s all I’m saying…
The other rider I spent a few hours with was Marc Wismans, who was riding in support of Forza4Energy4all, and lovely to talk to. Marc was struggling at the beginning with back trouble, but was keen to get full value from the ride, meeting with kids his charity works with along the route, and having a clear plan to use the full 8 days. It was a pleasure Marc!
I did much of my eating on the bike, often purchased from service stations (although I did stop at a great sandwich shop somewhere or other and even an Aldi which did a nice pizza slice):
I cooked for myself once at Elies’ Airbnb (pasta with honey), having had a lucky encounter with a late-night Turkish convenience store. I did eat two McDonald’s meals, one late in Scheveningen after a long day prior to meeting Esther, my host for the night; one in Malden, on the outskirts of Nijmegen where I felt the need for cooked breakfast and coffee on the final day. I did eat some ‘proper’ Dutch food (uitsmijter twice, hamburger speciaal (!!) and appeltaart (yum)).
The service station food was a mixture of squeezy yoghurt, sandwiches and a variety of snacks. I had a musette with me which was useful for stuffing full of all the food I could buy at each stop for easy access – and I could fold it up into my back pocket when empty. Getting water and food on the two national holidays was bit of a worry, but I never actually ran out of anything.
There were really only two kinds of weather on the race: cold and wet on the first morning, and increasingly sunny and hot for the rest of the race. The temperatures reached the 30s celsius on the penultimate day in Limburg, and the winds varied from strong and gusty (only really a problem on travelling East prior to Limburg) to just a breeze.
Scorchio!
I saw sheep, goats, rabbits, was raced by hares and was surprised by wild horses: I actually slept next to horses one night on Elies’ farm, they were literally in the next room and I could hear on of them snoring! I was also serenaded by crickets and frogs! Oh and geese!
A special mention has to go to the organisers, especially Mark and Michael, who set us off and welcomed us with such good cheer. The organisation was pleasingly low key and clear, and I am keen to see what their other events turn out like. Adventure Bike Racing seems a good thing, and this particular race was a really great stepping stone for me into the world of unsupported racing. Also it was nice to start from such a fabulous venue in Amerongen, the Cafe de Proloog.
Exiting the Hoge Veluwe on Day 1The Netherlands is famous for its built environment, and much of it is below sea level thanks to Dutch engineering prowess. But we were routed through to near wilderness areas: the Hoge Veluwe and the Dunes of the West coast. Both were magical, and although I have ridden in the former before, it was 14 years ago, and the bike paths weren’t as good!
All the finishers!
What can I say. My major goal was to get to the start, and get back for my younger son’s birthday, so actually finishing the event within the time limit was great. It is particularly resonant given that the previous two seasons have been plagued by unfinished and unstarted events, and some really horrible physical and mental collapses. I really didn’t think I was going to start until a few days before when my cough began to subside, and given I hadn’t ridden a bike for three weeks until I rode from Schiphol to Amerongen (about 70 km) the day before the race. Maybe I could do it a day quicker, although I’d have to be fitter and stop less!
Just before the turn onto the Cauberg
I was really worried about the Limberg climbs (we did three of the Amstel Gold ones) due to my achilles: I live in one of the hilliest parts of Britain, so normally I wouldn’t worry. It was a relief to find that 36:36 bottom gear was enough and my achilles actually hurt less than on the flat into a headwind!
The Cauberg was a shock to the system and the Keutenberg was a pig, but the third big one (Camerig) was really beautiful, worth the previous kilometres on its own. There are some great views to be had in Limburg, I will return.
Ah, the Afsluitdijk, one of the moments I was really grateful for aero bars. 32 kms of straight, two-way flat cyclepath, next to a main road… in blazing sunshine. With a plague of buzzing midges which came at me like black clouds. Quite the strangest piece of cycling I have done, and when I finished shaking the bugs out of my helmet on exit, I really felt I had been in the Netherlands.
The sea was an often present feature, sometimes bizarrely unseen, behind a dyke, at other times the dominant visual feature:
And where there is sea, or rivers and canals there must be crossings:
Although I didn’t ride for three weeks before the race due to illness, and hadn’t ridden more than 160 km since the previous September, I did ride about 160 km per week throughout Autumn and Winter (at a fairly brisk pace (for me, anyway) at times), including a completed Festive 500. I actually think three weeks off the bike was a blessing in disguise, although it was touch and go… It will be interesting to see how I fare on June 16th on the BRM600 I have entered.
One of the nicer aspects of the race was passing by my old workplace and street in Nijmegen, I spent a year here as a Postdoc in 1997-8 and came back for some research leave in 2004.
Just over the road there is a brand new cyclepath shortcut into Nijmegen!
And returning to the polder and the hills around Mook was a curious mixture of seeing how little time touches places, and how much. The dyke roads were unchanged, but the addition of huge cycle infrastructure investment was really apparent on the outskirts of Nijmegen (as well as the new McDonald’s in Malden).
The map is not the territory … The only usefulness of a map depends on similarity of structure between the empirical world and the map…
Science and Sanity, A. Korzybski
Near the end, looking for a geldautomaat 😉The proprietor of de Proloog who lent me his jersey to ride the race in (mine was mothed); the Turkish shopowner who insisted on giving me free figs…
https://twitter.com/HerbieGreen/status/993978271657230337
Being followed and encouraged on social media was a fantastic experience, thanks to all of you wonderful people, but I think Herbie takes the prize for obsession, with some stiff competition from Robert:
Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus
no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force
On Strategy, H. Von Moltke
Julia Freeman had a painful couple of days on the race with injuries before very sensibly calling it a day. I was touched that she came to see me finish, and guided me to Schiphol via train and a lovely wooded route.Tot ziens Julia and dank u wel!
I stayed in a rather posher hotel at Schiphol than I had wanted, but it was probably for the best. And there was a moroccan buffet, and Belgian beer. Inevitably I had one too many, but I managed to get up for my plane, and had time the next day to take pictures of jets for my aeroplane obsessed older son.
I couldn’t have done this wihout the support and encouragment of my partner, Alison, who kept me positive when I felt like self-sabotaging before the start. And it was great to return home to see my younger son becoming a year older! 
There is a card in the game Fluxx which allows you to remove new rules. My attempt on the Festive 500 started with a fairly simple schedule, but with the premise that I would just ride some of my normal local roads, adjusted for the weather.
In the end, after a hilly first fit on Christmas Eve, and painful sinuses on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, I decided to… simplify.
One of my least interesting but least weather prone routes is straight out to Hollingworth Lake on the main road. It’s not flat but as it is along the valley until the little climb to the lake it is somewhat sheltered and generally well gritted and snow free.
So I just rode out and back… repeatedly. In some cold, windy and then very wet weather.
Simplify.
You’re a big man, but you’re in bad shape. With me it’s a full time job.
There’s a missing post before this one which was too dark to share. So tangentially, I pass over a completed 300 and get to a failed 400 with a long name: a night in a beautiful bus shelter and a great ride cut short by my inability to sleep enough in the days before. You don’t want the details, so instead some impressions and images, and the connections made by my head.
The text of the missed post included the assertion ‘long distance cycling is not a death cult’. And it isn’t: as I write this I am listening to Matthew Bourne’s version of Chaplin’s Smile, and my last event was, despite wind and then awful rain in Holyhead and a spot of exhausted vomiting, a good match for my mood:
A standard pulled apart and touched gently.
And if there was violence, it was only in my head…
I experienced the death of Diana Spencer in a rather bizarre manner: in a taxi to catch a plane to a new life before most had heard the news, the black-bordered rush newspapers in the airport shops, and then in the series of bizarre and intimate condolence emails I received due to my name (which I only wish I had kept). I never mixed with royalty, although my father once received a rather lovely letter from Diana’s then husband. And I experienced the huge and bewildering outpouring of Elton John-shaped collective grief that ensued from afar. I was asked by one of my housemates in Nijmegen what I thought about it at the time and I was… nonplussed.
I have never really understood death, and public death even less. When my father died it had a lengthy and distressing impact on my well-being and was a major factor in my nervous breakdown of 2006. The public celebration we had of his life was an important event (and reading Tennyson there more so). Although it has became clear to me that such events are distinctly odd, and construct and relive sometimes false memories, they are important sites for setting the dead in context (as I write this Spotify serves up Dead Souls, and I’ll return to music in good time).
I had never found the death of public figures affecting to me until the last few weeks: despite my sometimes fragile emotional state I can’t remember a single public death making me cry until this year. Two events changed that enviable record: the sudden deaths, both to traffic, of two people I have never met. Both were cyclists, and although that might seem an obvious factor in explaining my feelings, I never cried when Marco Pantani died, although this was a similarly sudden shock. One was Steve Tilford, the other Mike Hall – I do not intend here to pay tribute to either, I would rather leave that to such as Juliana Buhring, Seth Davidson or indeed Bill Strickland (sometimes the best tributes are written when the subject still lives).
My strong reaction to these two deaths has challenged my view of public grief, but has also after reflection impacted on my understanding of why I continue to ride long distances. On many of my rides, completed or otherwise, I have had major physical or emotional crises which although not life-threatening, have felt pretty awful: I have sat on the grass in pouring rain in Bowland, tears streaming down my face (finished); I have experienced the despair of simultaneous navigational and lighting failure in the middle of the night (finished); more recently I’ve found motivation hard to come by due to nutritional collapse (vomiting and exhaustion; emergency bus shelter bivvying; DNF). Perhaps most distressingly I remember the sense of desolation at oversleeping on my final PBP qualifier and losing out on a four-year goal. Being close to disaster is a common feature in my riding. Even on my last 300 which was surprisingly trouble-free I ended up dazed with cold in a bus shelter chewing an energy bar held with senseless hands.
Is there a false equivalence here that makes me feel simultaneously moved by Mike Hall’s death yet uncomfortable? I don’t race, and I never think of what I do as actually dangerous (statistically speaking it isn’t). Do I fear that the next step in the epification of long distance riding is for it to become a death cult? Overcoming (and managing) a certain level of risk is one thing, but cycling does not have the relationship with risk of motor racing (although not quite as risky as Lauda claimed) or mountaineering (read Joe Simpson) . In the field I work in, music, the sanctification of musical martyrs is an object of study, one which I first experienced as a music fan, writing as a teen about Joy Division and the reasons why the suicide of Ian Curtis were both relevant and irrelevant to their music.
Of course, like any thing worth doing, long distance riding can become pathological – like crack or heroin (or indeed the prescription painkillers I know so many have become addicted to) – first it giveth, then it taketh away, so to speak. I’m still learning about this, as are we all I hope. My last ride (revisiting the Plains 300) was close to the edge, but I finished, and despite a dip 48 hours after finishing, I’m still OK.
Another North West Passage 200 completed (#4), and with it the realisation that I’ve fallen out of love with Audax. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of randonneuring, but as with many ideas, a collision with reality is never far away. The weather was the best it has been for four years, just a little drizzle towards the end, and a bit of battling into headwinds after the turn.
About 160 km in I started feeling grim, and eating and drinking didn’t help – the same sensations as on my last two failed events, and although this one I finished I was in no fit state to ride home and had to ask my long-suffering partner for a lift home (I did ride the 25 km to the start). I hadn’t ridden for a month before this (apart from a quick spin on the Brompton) which probably explains the earlier onset of these sensations, but I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my string of unpleasant audax experiences. Continue reading
There was a time when throwing up in the middle of the night in a Northern town might have involved drink and drugs. These days I’m better prepared (bivvy bag) but it’s cycling that drives me past the point of physical no return. Two rides in a row now have ended in physical and mental collapse around the 300 km mark. You may think this is normal and unsurprising, but in over 20 years of long distance cycling I’ve only ever quit three audaxes: once through over sleeping and running out of time and the other two this season, in similar circumstances and in close succession.
My most recent ‘failure’ is particularly telling: having ridden 200 or so km to Glasson in the Fylde, and managed to navigate around a closed bridge and a swiftly mended puncture (first this year), I descended into chaotic failure mode surprisingly quickly. I clearly hadn’t eaten enough before reaching Glasson (where I inhaled a burger) and wasn’t functioning properly. I was following a mandatory route and hadn’t really had any navigational issues but my Garmin routed me in completely absurd way following my stop, dumping me onto a bizarre network of minor roads and cycle paths, all in roughly the right direction but none anywhere near my planned route. In a better mental state I might have noticed earlier, but I had clearly gone into ketosis and that state where the body is OK but brain is starved of fuel.
Hence, Colne at around midnight, opposite a full hotel. 307 km but a fair way still from home. Sick twice and shivering. I was offered help by a lovely taxi driver and a BMX bandido, but by that time I’d called for help from my angelic partner as I was in a worse state than on the Old 240.
Learnings: I’m switching to using my smartphone and ride with gps app for navigation if I ever do this again. I’ve done two DIYs before with no issues but this was a complete navigation disaster. And some thoughts about taking on more fuel (possibly liquid). The main realisation though is that as I get older I may need to reduce the intensity of my training and ride longer distances (there’s lots of good advice from ironman triathletes on this it seems): I’ll let you know how I get on.
I’ve had a mixed experience riding long distances, mostly AUK randonneur events – which are a beautiful thing. I had a few inklings last year, on the way to my second Super Randonneur series that all was not well. At time I put that down to poor sleep hygiene before events and the added pressure of attempting to qualify for Paris-Brest-Paris. This year was going to be a mammoth year: Mille Pennines (1000 km with 10 km ascent) which I failed to start, and another SR series (looking unlikely now). I think I learnt a few things on the way from three of the long rides I did, and I’m going to share some of these in the hope they help others understand their relationship with motivation and capability…
The three rides were very different in all but length, making for an interesting comparison. Two were AUK rides, one a calendar event, the other a permanent ridden with friends. The third was a solo ride mixing on and off-road sections. All were about 300 km in length and involved some night riding. But as you will see they mainly differed in my motivation for riding, and as a secondary factor, British weather.
So then, motivation: I rode a permanent with Gavin and George starting in Kent because I fancied riding in company – and on fresh roads. I started (but didn’t finish) the Old 240 from nearby Mytholmroyd because I fancied challenging myself as an alternative to the flatter Not Quite the Spurn Head 400 which runs the same day (and I’ve completed three times – also it’s the first 400 I ever rode, over ten years ago). The third ride was a solo trip to Brecon from Hebden Bridge, motivated by a sense of familial pilgrimage, with a postscript ride half way back after 24 hours in Brecon. All three of these rides were challenging, but two felt much more genuine. I’m wondering if the near disaster on the third was more about my head than about the physical and meteorological challenges I faced.
I’ve written elsewhere about my excellent ride with Gavin and George so I won’t cover old ground. My ride to Brecon, however, hasn’t been covered here despite being in July, and my second attempt at the Old 240 deserves a post-mortem before my mind blocks out the good bits!
So, Brecon. Literally the land of my father. And his father. It is the site of the Brecon Depot and Regimental Museum of the evolving Welsh Regimental (South Wales Borderers) and Brecon Cathedral. Also the Brecon Jazz Festival which should be more up my street. My father’s side of the family were unashamedly military, hence a paucity of relations. They carried out the orders of their superiors all around the world, however absurd or horrific. My childhood was full of strange and exotic stories and photographs of foreign lands and exotic peoples. Maybe I’ll write about that in a bit more detail one day. I never met my grandfather, and only really knew my father only as a rather creative teacher of English (who used to try to bring set texts alive through acting them out with his pupils, often outside).
The route I took mixed NCN paths of hugely varying quality and signage with a few sections of busier roads and a majority of minor roads. I had pretty good weather and got horrendously lost through and around Manchester’s supposedly bike friendly routes. I left early but an hour later than planned due to Garmin issues, and hence was against the clock as getting to Brecon in time to reach my guest house was always going to be a push – in the end my hosts stated up specially late after a slightly ill-advised long-cut and Garmin crash! I arrived… knackered – and went to bed after a shower to quell my shivering. The weather had been rather good, unlike my trip with Gavin and George, which I thought at the time to be about as bad as British weather can get…
The following day was all business I guess. My visit to the Cathedral to see the two plaques in the Regimental Chapel was really tough. I cried on my own in a pew and then walked in the beautiful and secluded grounds before a pie and pint and a trip to the bijoux yet extraordinary Regimental Museum. Having arrived purely by force of will felt good, and the trip back to get a train or two from Shrewsbury was fast and broken by tea and scones in Stretton.
My second and failed attempt on the Old 240 was a real paradox. Beautiful weather and riding for about 12 hours then turning cold on Yad Moss the gathering clouds turned to torrential rain. I’d been feeling good until then but increasingly cold, sick and weak (couldn’t eat any solid food at Scotch Corner at 11 pm) I ended up climbing Kidstones on foot. Here it was that the Gods of Audax smiled on me and I was caught by a fellow rider (thanks Paul) who firstly paced me then when my sorry state became apparent lent me his bivvy bag and pointed me at an audax hotel before setting off for the finish through the rain (he got a brand new bivvy bag in return). Turns out I wasn’t the only one struggling on this ride…
I slept a few fitful hours that night just 60 km from the finish in Mytholmroyd in Kettlewell on the bench in the lovely bus shelter (en suite facilities too). I was soaked through and shivering. and the cataclysmic thunderstorm storm right overhead before dawn was pretty terrifying. It might as well have been another 340 – I was done. I still couldn’t eat: after my saviour had left the night before I had tried to eat an emergency gel and threw it straight back up… I have only quit on two audax rides, and this was the second, thankfully not so far from
home that my loving and understanding family couldn’t rescue me by car.
So – riding for family or with friends is one thing. For a badge another. At least that’s how it seems to me. Yet so much left unsaid…
Receipts
A handful of receipts to be stapled together and posted with a card to a man I have never met. That is the goal. And it is a good one.
Don Quixote – Sancho Panza – Rosinante
Offshore wind farms in the distance make me ponder a future without fossil fuels: throughout the night I am haunted by Mad Max visions of a post-petrol world, the lack of traffic signalling a world dominated by pedal power and wind.
Rain in a park
In a park, on a path, as the rain steadily turns from annoyance into a heavy and unwelcome presence. The riding becomes dirty and sightless. All I can see is reflections from the water droplets on my glasses.
Peloton
George, embedded in the Ashford peloton, deep in conversation as Gavin and I drift on and off the back, enjoying the stimulation but unsure of the pace.
A Thousand Plateaus
After the rain and the joy of an increasingly dry early morning, the gaps in our trio increase. We ride as increasingly silent and isolated units, becoming social only at the controls, but even here it is a grim task eating and drinking.
Birdsong
The volume and diversity of bird song after the deluge, even before the sky changed from black to blue is an assault on my ears. A seagull tells me we are close to the coast again, but I rarely see the sea.
Navigon
Only Garmin could manufacture a device which guides you perfectly along a route until an unpredictable moment where it ceases to do so. It is like a map for spies, designed to destroy itself before capture.
Grimpeur
Early on: a hill. Heart rate reaches 159 never to return. Later undulations register only as minor annoyances, slowing me down but making little impact on my increasingly depressed heart.
Route 2
The joyless disappointment of the National Cycle Network – it is telling that the worst part of the route is dedicated to bicycles: what a sign of British failure.
Mambo Italiano/Mama Mia
Before. Renato Carasone. A Peroni. Ham, rocket and buffalo mozzarella. Chicken Risotto…
No particular order/moment form/mobile/Stockhausen
After. It always comes back to me like a Stockhausen piece. In this case a mixture of Goldstaub and Sternklang. And maybe a bit of Stimmung.
And if you want to ride it:
http://www.aukweb.net/perms/detail/DWI02/
Gavin’s post about it here
cyclismespandelles 