Coast and Castles Route – 3
According to the official Sustrans map (yes we have a copy at great expense) the whole of the Saturday section is along the 0-50 metre altitude, in short that means no hills, or at least no hills like Hartside, no hills at all like crossing the Pennines, there are some “mere undulations” as we traverse the very few headlands, for instance there is a mere undulation on the maps above at Embleton which rises to 50metres above sea level, we may need oxygen at that altitude.
Just to put it into context the climb out of Nenthead on the first C2C took us up to 609 metres.
No Gentlemen, there is nothing to fear on this Saturday ride and for the novices among us, the first time riders, you will be left pondering on what all the fuss was about for the past two years, tales of daring do on the mountain stages of the last two rides will go straight over your heads, maybe one day we will take you back there, point at Hartside and whisper in awe, “We rode that hill, one day”.
The good news (for Andy) is that on that third map there is a little detour near the bottom to a little coastal port called Craster, its a detour that Andy will want to make and I’ll say no more other than to recommend that he clicks this link.
The bad news is that these three sections of the map only represent half of the Saturday ride for in total we have to cover almost (probably a little more than) 70 miles on that day, that’s further than we’ve ever done in a single day, I will leave you to ponder on that fact as you wonder now whether you have done enough preparation – just to make you feel better I have not done any yet.
Coast & Castles Route – 2
Leaving Berwick on the Saturday with 40-something miles in front of us we follow the coast, literally, National Cycle Route One follows a cycle path and C road route along cliff tops with few contour lines to cross, I just hope its a sunny day or we’ll be lashed by wind and surf, but eventually we reach our quandary.
Now if we’ve timed this right on map two (above) you’ll see a diversion out into the sea, as long as we reach here at or around noon (12.30 to be precise) then the causeway to Lindisfarne will be uncovered by the tide and the option of a slight detour and luncheon on the island is at our disposal.
Time is our friend on this route and there are so many places to stop and admire the view on this Saturday section that I really am spoiling you, if we reach the Lindisfarne diversion too early then fear not for there are plenty of other distractions further down the coast, and Andy will be savouring the moment we arrive in Craster, but thats for later.
The journey continues…
Coast & Castles Route – 1
The first part of the route (Friday afternoon) is shown above, this is about two thirds of the route (total distance 62km, 38 miles) and follows down the coast on National Cycle Route 78 before climbing 150 feet to cut across a headland and drop down into Eyemouth. Climbing out of Eyemouth to 200 feet it follows the usual Sustrans C roads down to Berwick and our first nights stopover, a couple of climbs to remind us what its like and some spectacular cliff top views, should be a very pleasant Friday afternoon start.
Click the images to see more detail
Full map http://www.opencyclemap.org/ search for “Berwick upon Tweed”
Eyemouth to Tynemouth
Sounds good doesn’t it ?
Rolls off the tongue.
Eyemouth to Tynemouth
Old Gits Bike Ride 2011
It’ll actually be a bit further north than Eyemouth which is only a freewheel from Berwick so I’m proposing that we start from the village of Thorntonloch which stands in the shadow of Torness Nuclear Power Station right on the coastline.
The Sustrans route runs through Thorntonloch and sticks to the coastline for a while before swinging inland and taking a route through forest and moor to the border with England and our first night stopover in Berwick, a shade over 20 miles for the Friday afternoon session, a nice warm-up for Saturday.
A twin room at the Travel Lodge in Berwick is £45-ish but the only entertainment for the evening is the Morrisons next door to it so we’re fine for brekkie the next morning but it will be a very short drive into the town centre for the evening entertainment.
Saturday is the jewel in the crown, a forty-something miles saunter down the Northumberland coastline following the castle and coast Sustrans route taking in Banburgh Castle, Seahouses, Dunstanburgh Castle, Craster (kippers Andy, kippers), Warkworth Castle, Druridge Bay, and ending at the Premier Inn in Ashington which has the usual Brewers Fayre etc on site which is a good job because Ashington is generally quite shit.
The rest of that route though should be gorgeous even in the rain, you do know it will rain when we do it don’t you, most of that 40-odd mile of coastline is National Trust land and has lots of good beach awards, bring a bucket and spade and some of those paper sand castle flags.
Sunday leaves us with 20 miles down the coast to Tynemouth which this year should leave us with plenty of time to have a beer rather than rushing back like last year.
So £50 on accomodation so far, we could do it for £100 but shall we suggest £120 this year and leave £300 to £400 in the pot for Wheatfields ?
2011 Old Gits Bike ride
Its that time of year again, a time to start thinking about this years bike ride and we already have one or two proposals on the table…
1. The Northumberland Coast & Castles route is the chosen one this year although just how much of it we do is still open to discussion, we have a one or two night stopover option both of which will finish in Tynemouth but start either at Berwick or some miles further North into Scotland, either way the route follows the coastline and should be a little gentler than the cross-penine routes that we have grown to fear these past two years Gentlemen.
2. Wheatfields will once again be the beneficiary of any left over small change and for obvious reasons, £100 will suffice for accommodation, transport and a donation for the one night route, we may have to up the budget slightly for a two night stopover.
3. The weekend of Sat 9th July is favoured.
A pub meeting will be convened shortly
C2C – A Final Review
ORIGINALLY POSTED 24th JULY 2009
So its over, three months of planning and its over in three days.
Was it hard work ?
Not as bad as I thought it would be, back in the days when I used to do some of this stuff more frequently it was climbing the hills that really did me in, this time, eleven years since my last ride of any distance, it didn’t feel so difficult, this time we all took our own time, this time I concentrated on making the gears do the work and if you’re in bottom gear already then just slow the peddling right down, it worked.
Ah but would we do it again ?
None of the lads had done anything like this before, without exception they all said how much they’d enjoyed it, and yes, I expect that given a few months to forget the worst of the pain, they’ll sign up for the next ride.
Will there be a next ride ?
Before we’d even finished this one we were talking about doing Anfield to Elland Road along the Leeds Liverpool Canal towpath next year, thats Liverpool FC to Leeds Utd FC for those of colonial extraction – I’ve also had some other parties interested in that one so I’m pretty sure it will come off, the ladies that we left behind at home have also expressed an interest in riding a short distance next year in a flat place that has shops, we may look at a trip to Andy’s stomping ground around Lincoln.
And there’s more
There is another long distance route I’m looking into for next year – more on that on Monday
How much was raised ?
The most important point, to raise enough money to pay for at least half a day’s operation of any one of the Sue Ryder Hospice’s in this country – the JustGiving page is around £1650 at the moment and we have at least another £1000 to come in via the old fashioned “sign a piece of paper” methods of sponsorship – we’ll achieve our target and hopefully hit £3000
.
Back in March of this year a group of ten or more of us had gone inside Wheatfields Hospice for the first time to visit Chris, things were turning for the worse with his ailment and we fully expected to be told to wait outside and only have four around the bed like they do at the hospitals.
Nothing like it, Chris had been fed their bags of magic potion and was sitting up in bed waiting for us, nursing staff appeared from behind a desk, not to tell us to wait outside but to bring more chairs for us – they don’t just nurse in Wheatfields they care for the person and if the person wants ten of his mates in his room all at once then thats what that person gets, if he wants them to bring beer in then they’ll turn a blind eye to that too (“don’t forget to bring the nurses one too” was the unofficial line), its a place where people often spend their last days but its not a place for sadness, far from it.
We sat in the Three Horse Shoes after that very first visit in March and we talked about the Hospice movement and how they still relied heavily on public subscriptions to keep the doors open to those who are in their most dire time of need, and we all said that we should do something to help.
The suggestion that I made that week was purely coincidental as I’d been talking to our Ned a few days earlier about the time that he did the Coast to Coast bike ride – all of the lads accepted the challenge immediately, but not for one minute did I ever expect that three months later each and every one of them would be on the start line in Workington, I guess it was just a little bit important to them.
.
We laughed too, we laughed a lot.
We laughed halfway up Hartside when the van had parked and was waiting for us, we stopped alongside it, lungs screaming for oxygen, too exhausted even to lift our legs over the crossbar and get off, we slumped over the handlebars and wheezed for air and observing this sad sight of five fifty year olds trying to pretend they were twenty years old again “H”, on van duty and having sat in the layby for half an hour waiting for us observed that “He’s up there now – laughing at you daft buggers”, and I have no doubt that he was.
We laughed when Steve produced some “special” ointment that some cyclist at his place of work had given him, a special ointment that prevents chafing of the gentlemans parts, apparently. Ignoring our warnings that it was likely to be Fiery Jack he set about anointing himself inside the van in the car park at Workington having taking the precaution of closing the side door first, he forgot that both back doors were wide open though.
We laughed when Rod revealed that he did exactly the same thing, but with Vaseline, he’s a doctor so presumably he gets trade quantities of Vaseline, even so there was no need to scoop such a big dollop out and apply it liberally to the parts like he did, a cricket ball sized dollop of Vaseline, where on earth did he shove it down there – no, don’t even think about it.
We laughed long and often, we sometimes complained about the hills, about the brakes on our bikes, about the gear shifts, about the saddles and our sore arses, but then we laughed, we laughed the carefree piss-taking laughter of a group of fifty-something year olds who have known each other for forty-something of those years and who have no need to impress each other any more, we laughed the laughter of a group of fifty-something year olds who have been let out for a weekend of re-living the years before women and marriage claimed their freedom and sanity, and we laughed the laughter of a shared experience that will never be forgotten by any of us and can be marked on the totem-pole of our lives as “we actually did something useful there”.
And for the laughter, I thank you gentlemen.
C2C – A Review – The Final Day
ORIGINALLY POSTED 23rd JULY 2009
Ready to Enter Northumberland and still only halfway
“The worst is over” I assured the boys over one of mad Hellens breakfasts the next morning, “there’s one more hill then its all downhill today lads” I assured them.
How wrong I was, how the guide book lied to me.
Turning left out of mad Hellens driveway and we were on the first hill of the day immediately, the climb to the summit of Black Hill, at 609 metres the highest point on the C2C ride, ’twas a fine and sunny morning and the view back over Cumbria towards Hartside from whence we had climbed the previous day was spectacular.
“We’ve done it lads” I enthused, “Its all downhill from here”
How wrong I was, how the guide book lied to me.
It was around here that the complaining started.
“Can you look at these brakes again” whined H, “I pull them on and nothing happens”
I’d fitted new rear brakes on that bike just that very morning, now he was complaining that his front brakes weren’t working and after a few more miles he was at it again, his rear brakes weren’t working now – how petty can you get, fancy that eh, someone needing brakes at a time when you’re going to spend the next 50-something miles descending out of the hills, some people are never happy, I tweaked his brakes, they worked for another two miles then he gave up on them completely – for the rest of the day whoever rode that bike had to jump off when the speeds got too scary.
A long descent into Allenheads led to an unexpected sharp ascent the other side of the village but we were all well used to steep hills now and surmounted the peak as if riding in Le Tour’s peloton, nothing could scare us now “Its all downhill from here boys” I assured them for one last time
How wrong I was.
Another unexpected ascent out of Rookhope, we showed no fear, we even sat on top of the fell and had a light lunch and a little drinky-poo of Lucazade while the Red Arrows flew overhead, I told the lads that I’d arranged that fly past for them, they seemed impressed, we remounted and pressed on, “Its all downhill from here boys” I repeated, hoping to god that it finally was.
How wrong I was.
Stanhope was a nice village, worth a revisit at some point in future with no mention of the monster hill that lurked behind we sat for a while in the sun outside its victorian mock castle and then we took a leisurely turn off the main road to face it – the monster hill up out of Stanhope to the peak at Parkhead, two miles of solid, steep, climb, worse than Hartside had been the day before for we all knew Hartside was coming, this ascent was just as steep (although mercifully half as long) but totally unexpected – its actually marked on the map but I’d forgotten to look.
We pushed most of the way up this hill, a dreadful half hour of shoving your bike up the steepest hill known to man, its actually harder to push your bike than it is to ride it but there are times when your brain simply refuses to ride any longer and insists that you walk – but there was more eating at the summit and from there we could finally see the North Sea on the Durham coastline, it was still 33 miles away but the really good news is that on the summit of Parkhead there is nothing as high as you are between you and the sea, “Its all downhill from here boys” I cried, and for once they seemed to concur.
At Parkhead you join the Waskerley Way, a path which I suspect was once a private railway from Parkhead Quarry all the way down to Consett 10 miles away – its downhill all the way on a hard but sometimes quite rough surface, it was a bit tricky on road bike tyres but there were also other times when I flew down that track – a good bit of the ride with barely a turn of the pedals for an hour.
After that it was the last twenty or so miles of plain and simple flat cycle path riding through an unremarkable Durham landscape, five of us on the last leg and just Steve and Rod going for the whole distance, through Washington we rode and then along the River Wear on woodland paths, just five miles to go…
…and then we lost Rodney.
He had the smell of the sea in his nostrils and nodded his head in agreement when we’d stopped earlier and discussed the need to all stick together, but like a dog after a rabbit he shot off into the distance and on a downhill path through some woods we lost sight of him in front – when we hit the well disguised left turn (that I initially missed) we realised that in all probability he had gone straight on, so we waited for his return back up the path.
He never returned, we waited for ten minutes then left him to the wolves and picked our way through Sunderland centre to the marina and the finishing point on the seafront where Sue, (Chris’s wife), and a small crowd of disbelieving well wishers had turned up to claim their bets at the bookies that we wouldn’t finish anytime in July – amid torn up betting slips we toasted our success in champagne – and Rodney was there having finished in front of us after forging a brand new path through the undergrowth along the river – he finished on his own to tumultuous applause, rode through a puddle, put the brakes on, went over the handlebars, picked himself up off the floor and lit a cigarette to earn the weekends Comedy Gold Award from Sue.
.
The team at the finish line, from l-r, Kev, H, Andy, Stu, Sue, Steve, Me, Rod
Combined age of cyclists 370 years, combined mileage 798, total distance en route 133 miles, total cycling time 20 hours
C2C – A Review – The Second Day
ORIGINALLY POSTED 22nd JULY 2009
9am in the hotel car park, Blencathra beckons
Day Two – Hellday, the day when a 2000 foot climb was waiting and everyone was desperately trying to get a peek at the route map to pick their ideal spot to pick up a minor injury, thus causing their withdrawal at the foot of Hartside, someone even cruelly suggested that they would be following me closely to see where my next injury would appear, shortly followed by one to themselves, “When he gets on the van then I do too”, I know you said those words Rodney, I heard you.
With a still sore leg but putting on my little brave soldier act again I joined the first group of four on stage one of day two, Threlkeld to Greystoke, yes the real Greystoke, the place where Edgar Rice Burroughs based his “Tarzan of the Apes” story.
Having studied the map closely we had noticed that the C2C route started off the day by following the main A66 road, only to take a four mile detour up a blind valley on the premise that “it was a nice ride up a picturesque valley”.
Any fool could see that it was an unnecessary addition of four miles to the route, half of which was uphill, “picturesque valley my arse” was someones comment, especially when we could easily see that it rejoined the A66 just a half mile further up the road – travel four miles to gain half a mile of distance – duh, what sort of doombrain would do that ?
So we unanimously voted to avoid the blind valley route and continue on cyclepath to the side of the A66, we definitely voted to do that, I remember it well.
You can only imagine our disappointment 40 minutes later when we realised that we’d actually done the blind valley detour and only gained half a mile of real distance.
I hopped off at Greystoke – leg playing up you see, brave soldier – and gave H a go on my bike, today though I removed the Blackberry from the bag before handing it over, and the secret flapjack, I don’t mind him chucking the Blackberry away but eating all my flapjack, well, a gentleman should know better.
One hour later and well rested I remounted my steed and five of us set off on the foothills of Hartside on a cloudy but warm day.
I’ll say this about the C2C route, its popular, around 12000 people do it every year and small village businesses have literally been built on the back of it, the Saturday that we climbed Hartside was no exception and a group of much younger lads were doing the route to the same timescale as ourselves, we passed and repassed each other many times over the next few days but I’m pleased to say that we beat some of them up Hartside – how gutted must they have been to see a team of fifty-something year olds get to the summit in front of their own twenty year old bones ?
The slopes went on and on, if you’ve never ridden a bike up a mountain you won’t possibly understand, if you have then you will – when riding up a big, big hill, all you see in front of you is the bit that is currently blocking out the view of the rest of it, you can only see what you think is the summit but when you get there you see the next bit rising up again in front of you, only thats not the summit either because when you get to the top of that bit theres another rise waiting for you – and on, and on, and on…
The climb to the summit of Hartside took most of one hour, the road zig-zagged across the hillside endlessly, never giving a downhill respite you came to be grateful for the bits that weren’t sloping uphill quite so viciously, even though those bits were still sloping upwards.
Rod the medic and I tagged on together, theres something a bit disconcerting about being followed closely by a doctor who’s backpack is full of medical encoutrements, its a bit like walking across a desert with cartoon buzzards circling overhead. Onwards and upwards we slowly made our way, at one point I passed a bloke older than me who was pushing his bike up – at the next hairpin bend I was riding so slow in bottom gear that he actually walked his bike past me.
But there is a camaraderie in the suffering, one of the young twenty year olds had been left behind by his peers and so he tagged onto me and Rod all the way up and if you stopped there were always words of encouragement from other cyclists as they crawled, sweating past you, words like “Don’t give up” and “Not far now” and “Get back on you fat bastard” although that last one was Rodney to me actually.
Finally we made it to a round of applause to find the cafe at the summit heaving with people who had driven their cars up there – pffft ! can you believe that ?
I wanted coffee and cake, but it was cold up there, cold and there was a queue, we stopped for one photograph and then set off down the other side of Hartside.
Now I will say this about my bike, its got a beautiful freewheel on it, its much higher geared than a mountain bike which is a pain in the arse when you’re climbing hills, but on the flat and on downhills with its narrow tyres it pisses all over mountain bikes.
The first mile downhill on Hartside had just been resurfaced with fresh smooth tarmac, I slotted it into top gear and just clung on and hoped that the bends on the way down weren’t as severe as the ones on the way up – the last time I had a speedometer on a bike on a downhill I got it to 38mph and overtook a bus – I reckon I got a bit faster than that going down Hartside, whatever the actual speed it felt like 70mph, you enjoy it for a while and then the voice at the back of your brain starts asking silly questions like “you’re going to die aren’t you”. The last two miles of the descent were spent pulling as hard as I could on the brakes and we nearly made the C2C route turn-off at the bottom, missed it though and so had to ride back uphill.
We were within three miles of our stopover on Saturday when I decided to jump in the van again, and it was probably the best decision of the whole weekend.
By now the rest of us were the support team for Rod and Steve who were still going strong having ridden the whole route so far and with some encouragement and words of wisdom we sent them, and Andy, on their way with tales of how it was only three more miles and “just a gentle hill” to get up.
I drove the van those last three miles and “the gentle hill” turned out to be as vicious as Hartside, so steep that the van nearly didn’t get up one section, and to make matters worse the Hurricane conditions that we’d travelled up through on the Friday had wreaked havoc in the hills, washing down acres of shale and mud off the hills, turning the roads into rivers and leaving behind tons of loose debris on the road surface, not pleasant to ride on, not when you’ve spent all day long climbing up hills only to be told by your navigator that the last three miles only had “one little gentle hill”, they were not happy bunnies when they made it to our final resting place that night – Nenthead.
We all agreed that if the C2C route had not been routed through Nenthead then it would not exist anymore – once a wealthy lead mining centre it now bears all the scars of the careless industrial excavation of centuries past, which is a nice way of saying that it is a shitheap, if you’re thinking of driving through then driving round would be better.
Its community though scrapes a living on the C2C route travellers and that night their one pub, The Miners Arms was full of cyclists eating what was in fact very good food, a nice rib eye steak, a few pints and then off to bed at the Cherry Tree Cottage owned by the completely barmy Hellen Sherlock – its like staying at your Grandma’s house, if your grandma is one sandwich short of a picnic, she is crazy and her web site warns you of the fact, its shabby chic and its cheap and its warm and the beds are soft and we needed nothing more, I slept like a log until a huge fart from Steve at 7am the next morning had Rod and I startled awake, “Is that the alarm clock Steve ?” we asked, and so began the last and longest day…
to be continued
The view back down Hartside
C2C – A Review – The First Day
ORIGINALLY POSTED 21st JULY 2009
The descent down to Bassenthwaite Lake
And so we left the lighthouse-in-disguise behind and began our great adventure, five of us mounted up for this stage, two in the van, poor old Arthur the lawyer having dropped out of the trip at the very last minute due to the, quite frankly poor, excuse of being hospitalised with pneumonia on Thursday night – we will be having words.
Within 500 yards we faced our first challenge, to get from the poor excuse for a lighthouse to the actual C2C cycle route you have to cross the harbour, a task accomplished by navigating you and your bike across a footbridge that looks like it was nailed onto a railway trestle bridge as an afterthought, if you suffer from vertigo or simply do not like crossing water on a thing that looks like your five year old built it out of twigs and straw then maybe you need to start from the opposite side of the harbour.
Fortunately Workington is a small town, fortunate in the fact that its very easy to leave it behind and we were soon on the C2C route following an old railway line that now had a hard tarmac surface.
Everyone’s knees held up well on the first 10 miles to the amusingly named Cockermouth, the town of a thousand double-entendre’s but the pace was slow, very slow, deliberately very slow, we were taking it easy, chatting, turning the wheels very slowly, enjoying the liberation and not thinking of the 147 miles in front, and it was nearly two hours later that we arrived in Cockermouth – people walk faster than that.
H and Stu were hot-seating on my mountain bike and Stu had brought along his custom designed specially padded saddle for the trip, I didn’t dare ask why he needed such a thing but if it had been designed specifically to suit his own bottom then I would not wish to ponder on what that bottom may look like, it must have suited H’s bottom too for he didn’t complain at all during the times that he rode upon it – he complained about the brakes a lot but more of that later.
Climbing out of the still amusingly named Cockermouth we reached a section of “off-road” path – let me explain here what Sustrans do and what they use to define their cycleways. Sustrans are a charity who, with the aid of lottery funding, exist to cover the whole of the UK with as many dedicated cycle routes/paths as possible, and more power to their elbow, we have a long way to go before we can match Holland for the excellency of their cycle routes, but Sustrans are doing a grand job.
The routes chosen by Sustrans were often disused railway tracks upon which they laid a hard surface of some description adequate for riding on all types of bike, its often a loose surface and not necessarily tarmac but you don’t need an off-road bike to ride them.
They also often use quiet “B” roads and traffic free unclassified roads and occasionally along the routes you will see signposted “alternatives” where mountain bikes only are recommended, these are what we avoided, until we reached Wythop Mill.
It doesn’t say so on the maps but about a mile of the track over the top of Wythop Mill is actually a track across a farmers field, literally following two tyre ruts in the field, its stretching the “hard surface” definition a lot and probably accounts for the fact that my tourer didn’t cope very well with tyre tracks in a field that had taken a weeks worth of rain the previous day – so it threw me off.
I didn’t hurt my leg falling off, I hurt my leg trying not to fall off, something pulled and then it went into cramp, ouchy, very ouchy.
I’m a brave soldier though, although if I’d known what was waiting in the woods beyond the field I’d have hopped out of the ride there and then, but no, I rubbed it better, got back on and winced on through the field to the descent of Wythop through the woods with Bassenthwaite Lake peeking through the trees 700 feet below.
The descent must be one of the most exhilarating downhills that a mountain biker could ever wish for, on a non-mountain bike, in the rain, descending a scree slope of loose shale while rainwater tumbles down around you like a waterfall is not a good riding experience – we all got off and pushed, the first time that I have ever pushed a bike DOWNHILL, with the brakes on.
I dobbed out a few miles further on, the leg was cramping up again so I handed the bike over to H and left the last 8 miles that day to him, which of course meant that I got to drive the van on to the hotel with Kev, get checked in, have our pick of the best of the four rooms I’d booked, have a shower, get changed and then have a leisurely pint with Kev in the bar downstairs, hurting yourself has to have its compensations.
So I’d just started on the first pint when Kevs phone rang, it was our little group of riders calling for assistance – Andy’s bike had a flat tyre, to be more accurate his front tyre had exploded, we won’t go into detail here but Andy now appreciates that rubber tyres can perish after a decade or so and that when you see cracks in them big enough to put your finger through it usually means that the tyre doesn’t have much life left in it.
So I set my pint down, told Kev he may as well finish it as it looked like I could be a while out in the van, and left the warmth of the hotel, me freshly showered and with clean warm clothing on, outside still raining and getting colder in the evening, I drove to the end of the lane to the main A66 road, looked both ways to make an exit – and saw Rod and Stu waiting at another junction fifty yards away.
I had a mouthfull of abuse ready for them when I opened the passenger door but it transpired that they had ridden on in front and while they made their way to the hotel I drove up a very steep hill to find the rest of the party grieving over Andy’s dead tyre, loaded them all up in the van and off we went back to the hotel.
It was only later when I was unpacking a few things that I realised that my Blackberry was missing, it had been in the bag on the bike, I searched for it, it wasn’t there – H had been riding my bike for the last eight miles, I asked him, he hadn’t seen it either.
Searched all the bags and the van again, still no Blackberry, Steve suggested that we drive back up the hill to where Andy’s tyre had expired as “they may have searched through the bike bag there”.
And now here is the official version of events …
When Andy’s tyre exploded they knew that all the tools and spares were in the pannier bag that I’d put on my bike, so they had a look inside it but quickly realised that it was actually the tyre and not the inner tube that had exploded with the crack of an high velocity huntsmans rifle, so they had called Kev on Andy’s phone. The Blackberry was wrapped up in a fleece that was also in the bag and they claim that “it must have fallen out” when they were searching for spares.
And now here is my version of events…
When Andy’s tyre exploded they knew that all the tools and spares were in the pannier bag that I’d put on my bike, so they had a look inside it and quickly saw my stash of flapjack, “ooh, flapjack” they all drooled and set about eating all of it, I know this is true because I found the empty packet later. After scoffing my secret stash of energy food they then found my Blackberry, “ooh a phone” they all declared and queued up to ring their long lost relations in the far flung corners of the British Empire before flinging it into a field to dispose of the evidence.
I know which one I believe.
Steve and I drove the van back up the hill – a hill which incidentally was not even on our route, yes, they were lost and riding in the wrong direction when Andy’s tyre exploded, in fact if it hadn’t been for Andy’s tyre exploding they’d be riding still, and still lost – and when he pointed out the gate where they’d tried to fix the tyre I saw the Blackberry lying in the grass even without getting out of the van – it had had two hours worth of torrential rain on it but still worked fine, I’m going to try it in the bath one night to see if it really is that waterproof.
A fine steak pie in the pub across the road from our hotel (hotel prices too extravagant for Yorkshiremen) , a few pints and then early to bed, for the next day would be Hellday.
to be continued
Andy points out his dead tyre for the benefit of the camera
C2C – A Review – It Starts
ORIGINALLY POSTED 20th JULY 2009
By 9am we were all packed into the Transit van and Kevs car and away we zoomed, hail and hearty, up for two and a half days of riding a bike across the width of England, and it was raining too.
We were meeting up with Rod the medic in Skipton and it was while he was getting his bike off the back of his car into the van that the hurricane started, gale force winds and lashing rain, my how he got drenched while we laughed from inside the van.
The weather got worse the further north we travelled, on the M6 the rain was horizontal across the windscreen and I began to doubt the wisdom of even starting a 147 mile long bike ride if it was going to be done in these conditions, but arriving in Workington around 1.30pm it had eased off to the point where it appeared not to be raining at all – and so began the quest to find the lighthouse and the official starting point of the Sustrans C2C route.
You’d think it would be easy to find a lighthouse wouldn’t you ?
I mean, you just find the beach and the look for a big white pointy thing with a light on top.
Not in Workington you don’t. We stopped and asked some BT workmen digging up the road, three of them, all of them shook their heads and said that there was no lighthouse in Workington, one of them laughed as if the idea that something so ostentatious as a lighthouse would ever be considered for a dump like Workington, and he had a point, for the town is a dump.
I could research what the purpose of Workington is, I could just Wiki the word “Workington” but the response would be “Ha Ha!” or similar, I’m intrigued as to how the place ever founded itself in that location, there must be a reason – but not intrigued enough to go and find out – we gave Workington half an hour of our lives on that Friday, half an hour that we’ll never get back, and eventually the “lighthouse” was discovered after we’d stood at the opposite of the harbour staring at it for ten minutes saying things like “Thats not a lighthouse is it ?” and “Don’t be stupid, thats not a lighthouse” and “Bugger it, lets just start here”.
People – you do not need to go to Workington in your lifetime, I have been on your behalf just so that you don’t have to.
Photos taken in front of what passes for a lighthouse in Workington we set off, intrepid heroes intent on raising £2500 for Wheatfields Hospice after their superb care of our departed soulmate Chris in the last three weeks of his life (current estimates are that we are approaching £3000).
