This is my personal account of a cycle ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End undertaken in late June and early July 2009 by me, my brother Paul and my nephew John. All opinions and observations expressed are my own and represent nobody else's views on anything whatsoever.
The ride was John’s idea, coming soon after the death of my father, Jack, in June 2008 from liver cancer. It was to be a sponsored ride to raise money for Cancer Research UK, and as it was in Dad’s memory we would start on or about June 22, the anniversary of his death.
Tragically, Paul’s wife and John’s mother, Sue, passed away in January 2009. The ride would now be in memory of two much loved members of our family.
In the event, John was forced to retire by a foot injury at the half-way point, but Paul and I continued and completed the ride, recording 953 miles and raising in excess of £1500 for our chosen cause.
John’s Giant Defy 3 was the only modern bike on the trip. I had my Raleigh Randonneur hand built tourer, bought in early 1990 and the veteran of many thousands of miles. Paul used Dad’s old bike, a Raleigh Royale bought in the late 1980s.
I’m a bloke who sometimes rides a bike, as opposed to a “real" cyclist. I refuse to push myself, and I plod up even moderate inclines in low gear at little more than walking pace. I wouldn’t meet the criteria for acceptance into any serious cycling club. Nevertheless, I have considerable experience of cycling fairly long distances, and I knew I could manage the end to end ride.
My training was minimal, consisting of a few local runs with Paul and John, the longest of which was 64 miles. I struggled somewhat on these practice runs, and began to wonder whether I would be capable of regaining my fitness level of 15 to 20 years ago when I thought nothing of a 70 or 80 mile ride. Then I bought a pair of decent Continental tyres which made things a whole lot easier. I’d been using cheap tyres with knobbly treads which were not designed for distance and which made anything that wasn’t downhill hard work.
Although I’d now reached the point where I felt confident of my ability to complete the ride, I remained on a different level from Paul and John. Their idea of “taking it steady” is my idea of “going flat out”, and every time we set off from anywhere, they both became dots on the horizon by the time I’d got my feet into my toe clips. I thought of the ride as a cycling holiday which I intended to take as leisurely as possible given the daily target destinations, whereas Paul and John took a much more athletic approach. During the ride, they often discussed how few days they thought they could manage it in next time, whereas I on the other hand considered how many extra days I would treat myself to should I repeat it at some point.
Agreeing a route was difficult, as might be expected when attempted by three stubborn men, each of whom wants to go a different way. Eventually, a compromise was reached incorporating bits of everyone’s preferred routes. I was surprised to learn that Paul and John wanted to stay at home one night. I’d thought of suggesting this, but hadn’t as passing through Derby seemed a considerable diversion from the direct line.
Accommodation was pre-booked for every night of the trip. I had reservations about the resultant inflexibility, but it was reassuring to know that a bed would be waiting for us at the end of each day.
We were riding from north to south, so we needed to get ourselves and our bikes to John O’Groats. Eventually, in fact not until about a month before the trip, we decided to go by rail to Thurso, stay there overnight and cycle the 20 odd miles to John O‘Groats the next day before starting the ride proper. Having previously heard many a train/bike related tale of woe, I wasn’t expecting the arrangements to be easy. I knew that British rail companies don’t encourage cyclists and that the few spaces for bikes on trains could be difficult to secure.
When I phoned to purchase the tickets for the journey to Thurso, changing at Edinburgh and Inverness, there was predictably only one cycle reservation available. However, the nice man I spoke to, from Scotrail, reassured me that there’d be no problem if we took the wheels off the other two bikes and took them on to the trains as luggage. “That’s what people usually do”, he said in his comforting Highland lilt while relieving me of £390.
The tickets arrived a few days later.
Monday 5 April 2010
Saturday 20 June 2009 - Derby to Thurso
The big day finally arrived. I’d arranged (or so I thought) to meet Paul and John at Derby railway station, at an excruciatingly early hour - i.e. before 8am - when on a Saturday morning I’d normally be at least two hours away from waking up, but as I wandered languidly home from the paper shop, looking forward to another coffee before setting off at the last possible moment, I was jolted into semi-consciousness by a familiar voice behind me.
“All right Uncle Mick?”
They’d decided to pick me up on the way. “Pop!” went the coffee bubble.
We took the cycle path following the old canal line and the River Derwent from Allenton to the station.
From the moment we entered the depressing 1980s edifice, the stark reality began to sink in. The rail companies are not well-disposed towards cyclists. They don’t want you on their premises, let alone their trains. Everything is as awkward as they can possibly make it for you. In order to negotiate railway stations, you have to ascend and descend long flights of stairs, burdened by your fully laden bike. No doubt there are lifts, but we didn’t bother looking for them because they’d have been full of people and wouldn’t have been big enough for three bikes anyway.
We struggled down to the platform from which our train to Edinburgh was due to depart. After much searching, I saw someone who looked as though she might be an employee of the rail company.
“Er - excuse me - we’ve got three bikes but only one reservation, but the nice-man-on-the-phone said we could take the wheels off the other two and take them on as lug…”
“Well I don’t know who you spoke to” interjected the po-faced lady, “but we don’t normally tell people things like that. You’ll have to ask the train manager, it’s up to him whether he lets you on or not. You‘ll have to be quick though - the train only stops for three minutes.”
My heart sank as I realised that the advice I had been given over the phone had been mere sales patter and counted for nothing. I had no way of proving what I had been told. We were at the mercy of the whims of the Train Managers.
The nice-man-on-the-phone had suggested wrapping the two contraband bikes up, presumably to disguise them as luggage, and Paul was attempting to complete this somewhat problematical task when the train arrived. It stopped about 200 metres away from Paul and his dismantled, half wrapped bikes.
Mindful of the three minutes ticking away, I sprinted along the platform helped by my still two-wheeled bike, while Paul and John struggled along behind with their cumbersome burdens. I located the guard - sorry, Train Manager - who grumbled a bit but let us on without too much trouble once it became apparent that there was ample room for our bikes in the luggage area.
It was a pleasant journey north to Edinburgh, although we felt a niggling sense of apprehension linked to the prospect of trying to gain access to the next two trains, no doubt against the wishes of the notoriously Hitleresque Scottish Train Managers.
The apprehension proved well-founded at Edinburgh where we encountered an obstinate Train Manager who appeared to be hell-bent on putting an end to our northward progress. We argued and argued with him until he finally let us on board, with the warning that, should someone with a cycle reservation be waiting at one of the stops en route to Inverness, we would be thrown off the train - probably while it was still moving, judging by his manner. Again, this charade was compressed into the few minutes between the train’s arrival and departure, thereby maximising the stressfulness of the situation.
With the Train Manager’s stern admonishments ringing in our ears, our appreciation of this most scenic section of the journey was somewhat diminished. The prospect of being cast away in the foothills of the Cairngorms was not appealing.
To our relief, and no doubt to the Train Manager’s bitter disappointment, we made it to Inverness where we were confronted by an even more cyclophobic Train Manager. He thoroughly enjoyed fulfilling the points of his job description requiring him to be as unpleasant as possible to cyclists, and he discharged those duties with unbridled passion. In a Pythonesque scene on the platform, we sneaked on to the train while his back was turned. Possibly exhausted by his frantic attempts to prevent us from getting on, he refrained from trying to eject us.
With the final Train Manager battle behind us, we could now relax. We passed through Sutherland and up into Caithness and the flat landscape of the far north, with its strange embellishments of flagstone “hedges” and seemingly pointless derelict wooden constructions, which I assume are old boundary fences of some type.
We finally reached Thurso at about 9.45pm. Paul and John reassembled their bikes on the platform as the train departed for Wick and the dark cloud of our captivity receded.
There remained one further obstacle. The station was deserted and the main entrance, through which we could have walked straight out on to the street, was locked. We escaped via the lifts and stairs and were free.
Our B&B was easy to find and we were soon settled in, leaving our bikes in the locked garage. I hadn’t eaten for hours and was ravenous, so I went out for a short walk to locate a takeaway of some description. I came across a group of young people queuing outside the local nightclub who gave me directions to the town centre where we could get food. I was struck by their welcoming, friendly demeanour, a trait common to everyone we met in Thurso.
A little later, Paul and I went out and enjoyed really excellent fish and chips. I fancied a pint and even suggested the nightclub, but Paul declined and we returned to the B&B. I had brought with me a quarter full bottle of Talisker, Dad’s favourite single malt, and so we had a wee dram before retiring for the night.
“All right Uncle Mick?”
They’d decided to pick me up on the way. “Pop!” went the coffee bubble.
We took the cycle path following the old canal line and the River Derwent from Allenton to the station.
From the moment we entered the depressing 1980s edifice, the stark reality began to sink in. The rail companies are not well-disposed towards cyclists. They don’t want you on their premises, let alone their trains. Everything is as awkward as they can possibly make it for you. In order to negotiate railway stations, you have to ascend and descend long flights of stairs, burdened by your fully laden bike. No doubt there are lifts, but we didn’t bother looking for them because they’d have been full of people and wouldn’t have been big enough for three bikes anyway.
We struggled down to the platform from which our train to Edinburgh was due to depart. After much searching, I saw someone who looked as though she might be an employee of the rail company.
“Er - excuse me - we’ve got three bikes but only one reservation, but the nice-man-on-the-phone said we could take the wheels off the other two and take them on as lug…”
“Well I don’t know who you spoke to” interjected the po-faced lady, “but we don’t normally tell people things like that. You’ll have to ask the train manager, it’s up to him whether he lets you on or not. You‘ll have to be quick though - the train only stops for three minutes.”
My heart sank as I realised that the advice I had been given over the phone had been mere sales patter and counted for nothing. I had no way of proving what I had been told. We were at the mercy of the whims of the Train Managers.
The nice-man-on-the-phone had suggested wrapping the two contraband bikes up, presumably to disguise them as luggage, and Paul was attempting to complete this somewhat problematical task when the train arrived. It stopped about 200 metres away from Paul and his dismantled, half wrapped bikes.
Mindful of the three minutes ticking away, I sprinted along the platform helped by my still two-wheeled bike, while Paul and John struggled along behind with their cumbersome burdens. I located the guard - sorry, Train Manager - who grumbled a bit but let us on without too much trouble once it became apparent that there was ample room for our bikes in the luggage area.
It was a pleasant journey north to Edinburgh, although we felt a niggling sense of apprehension linked to the prospect of trying to gain access to the next two trains, no doubt against the wishes of the notoriously Hitleresque Scottish Train Managers.
The apprehension proved well-founded at Edinburgh where we encountered an obstinate Train Manager who appeared to be hell-bent on putting an end to our northward progress. We argued and argued with him until he finally let us on board, with the warning that, should someone with a cycle reservation be waiting at one of the stops en route to Inverness, we would be thrown off the train - probably while it was still moving, judging by his manner. Again, this charade was compressed into the few minutes between the train’s arrival and departure, thereby maximising the stressfulness of the situation.
With the Train Manager’s stern admonishments ringing in our ears, our appreciation of this most scenic section of the journey was somewhat diminished. The prospect of being cast away in the foothills of the Cairngorms was not appealing.
To our relief, and no doubt to the Train Manager’s bitter disappointment, we made it to Inverness where we were confronted by an even more cyclophobic Train Manager. He thoroughly enjoyed fulfilling the points of his job description requiring him to be as unpleasant as possible to cyclists, and he discharged those duties with unbridled passion. In a Pythonesque scene on the platform, we sneaked on to the train while his back was turned. Possibly exhausted by his frantic attempts to prevent us from getting on, he refrained from trying to eject us.
With the final Train Manager battle behind us, we could now relax. We passed through Sutherland and up into Caithness and the flat landscape of the far north, with its strange embellishments of flagstone “hedges” and seemingly pointless derelict wooden constructions, which I assume are old boundary fences of some type.
We finally reached Thurso at about 9.45pm. Paul and John reassembled their bikes on the platform as the train departed for Wick and the dark cloud of our captivity receded.
There remained one further obstacle. The station was deserted and the main entrance, through which we could have walked straight out on to the street, was locked. We escaped via the lifts and stairs and were free.
Our B&B was easy to find and we were soon settled in, leaving our bikes in the locked garage. I hadn’t eaten for hours and was ravenous, so I went out for a short walk to locate a takeaway of some description. I came across a group of young people queuing outside the local nightclub who gave me directions to the town centre where we could get food. I was struck by their welcoming, friendly demeanour, a trait common to everyone we met in Thurso.
A little later, Paul and I went out and enjoyed really excellent fish and chips. I fancied a pint and even suggested the nightclub, but Paul declined and we returned to the B&B. I had brought with me a quarter full bottle of Talisker, Dad’s favourite single malt, and so we had a wee dram before retiring for the night.
Sunday 21 June 2009 - Thurso to Helmsdale
Thurso - John O’Groats - Wick - Latheron - Helmsdale
The first day of the ride dawned bright and sunny, heralding a period of fine weather which was to remain with us almost throughout our journey. We soon saw off our rather parsimonious breakfasts and set off for John O’Groats along the gently undulating A836 with the wind against us. A couple of hours saw us at our official starting point with its unforgivably run down architecture backed by the Orkneys across the Pentland Firth. After the obligatory photos at the signpost and an expensive coffee, we were on the A99 south by 11am, still hampered by the south-east wind.
Maritime Caithness is lush and verdant, in contrast to the stark hinterland of the Flow Country. We were uplifted by the views of the rocky coast plunging into the azure North Sea and the distant Sutherland hills beyond the moorland.
We had decided to stop for lunch at Wick, so once we reached the ancient burgh we began to look for a café or pub with outdoor seating. The crime rate north of Inverness is probably negligible, but as Derbeians we imagine thieves everywhere and we wanted to be able to keep our eyes on our bikes and belongings. We found no such café or pub so the Aldi store at the end of the town had to suffice.
John eventually emerged from the shop with several baguettes and packets of various sliced meats, which we ate in the Aldi car park. Paul and John both have excellent teeth, even though Paul once went for 100 years without visiting a dentist, and their baguettes, though dense and unyielding, vanished within seconds. I, on the other hand, was subjected to decades of inept, brutal and unnecessary NHS “dentistry“, leaving me with fragile, collapsing and missing teeth which struggle, like Father William, with anything tougher than suet. I resorted to picking out the cotton-wooly stuff and tried with limited success to eat that. My dental handicap also meant that apart from this first morning I hardly ever ate all of my breakfast, as Paul’s and John’s plates were always clean before I’d finished my first rasher of bacon, and I didn’t think they’d want to wait another half an hour for me to nibble my way through the entire plateful.
Fortified by the gastronomic delights of Aldi, we continued along the A99, grinding climbs alternating with gradual drops almost to sea level, through Thrumster, Whaligoe and Lybster.
From the outset, the pattern of the ride was that Paul and John would zoom ahead of me while I plodded along at my pedestrian rate. Every ten miles or so, they would stop and wait for me to catch up, whereupon we’d have a brief chat and set off again. Sometimes I’d go so slowly that they’d get fed up waiting, and I’d see them put on their helmets and cycle away as soon as I came into sight. This didn’t save any time, in fact it took longer because I always stopped for my break anyway, and it lasted longer if they weren’t there to supervise.
However, along this stretch of road it became apparent that John was having some difficulty. Not only was he within sight, I was actually catching up with him. It transpired that he was experiencing severe problems with his right knee. He had been coping valiantly but had now reached his pain threshold. He limped along, pushing his bike up the hills, to Latheron where we stopped at a farm gate.
The A99 joins the A9 at Latheron, and twenty miles of that rollercoastal highway, including the vicious Berriedale Braes, lay between us and our destination at Helmsdale. John clearly wasn’t going to make it and was aghast at being stopped by injury on the first day of the ride. It seemed that he might have to withdraw from the trip altogether, and Paul doubted his own motivation to continue under those circumstances.
The kindly farmer, on hearing John’s predicament, gave him a lift to Helmsdale while Paul and I continued sombrely on along the A9 until it suddenly dropped off the edge of the world just before Berriedale.
Having reached the bottom of the edge of the world via a hairpin bend, we were faced with the climb back to the top again. Neither of us even considered trying to ride up. We pushed our heavily laden bikes uphill a bit, past the northbound escape pit, then had a rest. Then uphill a bit more and another rest…
Seemingly hours later, the gradient eased and we got back on our bikes. The road continued relentlessly uphill for miles until we were presented with the delightfully long plunge down towards Helmsdale, which we descended with great glee. The hostel, our home for the night, was in the centre of the village and there we found John, now in a much better frame of mind and hopeful of being fit to ride again the next day. The renowned hostel was full of nice people, all familiar with the rigours of cycling and mountaineering, and they had obviously managed to raise his spirits.
We went out and dined again on fish and chips, which were inferior to those at Thurso and half of which I threw away. Back at the hostel, we finished the Talisker as our fellow hostellers regaled us with accounts of their various epic adventures. A few hours later in the dorm, they lulled us to sleep with a symphony of snoring and farting.
The first day of the ride dawned bright and sunny, heralding a period of fine weather which was to remain with us almost throughout our journey. We soon saw off our rather parsimonious breakfasts and set off for John O’Groats along the gently undulating A836 with the wind against us. A couple of hours saw us at our official starting point with its unforgivably run down architecture backed by the Orkneys across the Pentland Firth. After the obligatory photos at the signpost and an expensive coffee, we were on the A99 south by 11am, still hampered by the south-east wind.
Maritime Caithness is lush and verdant, in contrast to the stark hinterland of the Flow Country. We were uplifted by the views of the rocky coast plunging into the azure North Sea and the distant Sutherland hills beyond the moorland.
We had decided to stop for lunch at Wick, so once we reached the ancient burgh we began to look for a café or pub with outdoor seating. The crime rate north of Inverness is probably negligible, but as Derbeians we imagine thieves everywhere and we wanted to be able to keep our eyes on our bikes and belongings. We found no such café or pub so the Aldi store at the end of the town had to suffice.
John eventually emerged from the shop with several baguettes and packets of various sliced meats, which we ate in the Aldi car park. Paul and John both have excellent teeth, even though Paul once went for 100 years without visiting a dentist, and their baguettes, though dense and unyielding, vanished within seconds. I, on the other hand, was subjected to decades of inept, brutal and unnecessary NHS “dentistry“, leaving me with fragile, collapsing and missing teeth which struggle, like Father William, with anything tougher than suet. I resorted to picking out the cotton-wooly stuff and tried with limited success to eat that. My dental handicap also meant that apart from this first morning I hardly ever ate all of my breakfast, as Paul’s and John’s plates were always clean before I’d finished my first rasher of bacon, and I didn’t think they’d want to wait another half an hour for me to nibble my way through the entire plateful.
Fortified by the gastronomic delights of Aldi, we continued along the A99, grinding climbs alternating with gradual drops almost to sea level, through Thrumster, Whaligoe and Lybster.
From the outset, the pattern of the ride was that Paul and John would zoom ahead of me while I plodded along at my pedestrian rate. Every ten miles or so, they would stop and wait for me to catch up, whereupon we’d have a brief chat and set off again. Sometimes I’d go so slowly that they’d get fed up waiting, and I’d see them put on their helmets and cycle away as soon as I came into sight. This didn’t save any time, in fact it took longer because I always stopped for my break anyway, and it lasted longer if they weren’t there to supervise.
However, along this stretch of road it became apparent that John was having some difficulty. Not only was he within sight, I was actually catching up with him. It transpired that he was experiencing severe problems with his right knee. He had been coping valiantly but had now reached his pain threshold. He limped along, pushing his bike up the hills, to Latheron where we stopped at a farm gate.
The A99 joins the A9 at Latheron, and twenty miles of that rollercoastal highway, including the vicious Berriedale Braes, lay between us and our destination at Helmsdale. John clearly wasn’t going to make it and was aghast at being stopped by injury on the first day of the ride. It seemed that he might have to withdraw from the trip altogether, and Paul doubted his own motivation to continue under those circumstances.
The kindly farmer, on hearing John’s predicament, gave him a lift to Helmsdale while Paul and I continued sombrely on along the A9 until it suddenly dropped off the edge of the world just before Berriedale.
Having reached the bottom of the edge of the world via a hairpin bend, we were faced with the climb back to the top again. Neither of us even considered trying to ride up. We pushed our heavily laden bikes uphill a bit, past the northbound escape pit, then had a rest. Then uphill a bit more and another rest…
Seemingly hours later, the gradient eased and we got back on our bikes. The road continued relentlessly uphill for miles until we were presented with the delightfully long plunge down towards Helmsdale, which we descended with great glee. The hostel, our home for the night, was in the centre of the village and there we found John, now in a much better frame of mind and hopeful of being fit to ride again the next day. The renowned hostel was full of nice people, all familiar with the rigours of cycling and mountaineering, and they had obviously managed to raise his spirits.
We went out and dined again on fish and chips, which were inferior to those at Thurso and half of which I threw away. Back at the hostel, we finished the Talisker as our fellow hostellers regaled us with accounts of their various epic adventures. A few hours later in the dorm, they lulled us to sleep with a symphony of snoring and farting.
Monday 22 June 2009 - Helmsdale to Inverness
Helmsdale - Golspie - Tain - Nigg - Cromarty - Avoch - Munlochy - Inverness
The hostel kitchen was well-equipped, but we hadn’t thought to buy anything to cook so we left hungry, intending to breakfast at Brora about 11 miles down the A9. John had recovered well and was raring to go again, and we reached Brora after a fairly easy ride apart from one sharp rise at Portgower.
John bought a knee bandage at the chemist opposite the railway station, and again we looked in vain for a café with outdoor seating, eventually settling for passably edible fare from a sandwich shop.
Continuing towards Golspie, I was initially puzzled by what appeared to be a line of hills lying out to sea. Then I orientated myself and realised I was looking south across the Moray Firth towards the mass of high ground including the Cairngorms. We were travelling south to the Highlands - a rather unusual concept.
The road swings inland after Golspie to skirt Loch Fleet via The Mound, then heads south over rolling countryside to the Dornoch Firth, which it crosses by the Dornoch Bridge built in 1991. The last time I visited the area, with my parents in 1988 shortly after Dad retired, the route was forced to the west via Bonar Bridge, increasing the distance by some twenty miles.
The two junctions with this old road, either side of the bridge, feed traffic from the north-west on to the already busy A9. This, combined with the recent “improvements” to the road from here on results in a fast, busy trunk road which is fine for motorists but highly unpleasant to cycle along. I was thankful that we’d decided to follow the recommendation of one of our erstwhile friends at the hostel, which was to cross the Black Isle and thus avoid the worst section of the A9 by turning off at the Nigg Roundabout to reach the Nigg-Cromarty ferry via the B9175.
The Dornoch Firth was holding a bank of low cloud which provided the only rain shower of the northern half of our trip and deprived us of any views from the bridge. A further mile took us to Tain by which time we were out of the cloud, and the blue skies returned.
We found a café at Tain which again only provided for indoor eating, but the proprietor allowed us to leave our bikes at the back of the building while we enjoyed a pleasant lunch. The café’s cat was rather indignant at this invasion of his territory, but he forgave us when we stopped to chat to him.
A mile after Tain we left the vile A9 for the peaceful B9175 and the half mile ferry crossing to Cromarty. After a swift drink at the pub, we took the steep A832 out of Cromarty. Upon topping the rise, we met a genial local who pointed to rising ground in the distance which he assured us was the “last” hill. He was partly right, at least as far as the next fifteen miles or so were concerned, but the hill continued for miles before finally descending steeply to sea level at Rosemarkie. We then followed the shore of the Moray Firth to Avoch, with its silent Av, where we stopped for a chocolate covered ice cream bar. It was quite warm by now, and we were soon surrounded by drips of the molten confection.
We left the A832 at Munlochy to follow the B9161 which led back to the A82 a few miles from Inverness. Cycle paths enabled us to avoid the main road and cross the Kessock Bridge into the city.
After locating our B&B and checking in, we set off in search of food, eventually choosing an Irish bar near the picturesque Ness Walk. Our food took an age to arrive, by which time I’d finished my first pint and was beginning to feel a little queasy. I had obviously done something to annoy my stomach, and I only managed half of my game stew before I began to heave and had to give up. I began to worry that I might not be eating enough to sustain myself for the demands of the ride, as I hadn’t really eaten a proper dinner since we left Derby.
A group of loud, macho types, possibly servicemen judging by their uniform haircuts, were monopolising half of the bar area throughout our visit. None of them stood still as they were constantly either play fighting or grabbing each others’ buttocks and genitals. No doubt summary justice would have been meted out to anyone with the temerity to suggest that they might be harbouring latent homosexual tendencies.
The pub was not a place I wanted to linger, and it was a pleasant walk back in the cool evening air amidst the fine architecture of Inverness. On the way we crossed the River Ness which leads to the north eastern end of the Great Glen, Britain’s most prominent fracture and our route for the following day.
The hostel kitchen was well-equipped, but we hadn’t thought to buy anything to cook so we left hungry, intending to breakfast at Brora about 11 miles down the A9. John had recovered well and was raring to go again, and we reached Brora after a fairly easy ride apart from one sharp rise at Portgower.
John bought a knee bandage at the chemist opposite the railway station, and again we looked in vain for a café with outdoor seating, eventually settling for passably edible fare from a sandwich shop.
Continuing towards Golspie, I was initially puzzled by what appeared to be a line of hills lying out to sea. Then I orientated myself and realised I was looking south across the Moray Firth towards the mass of high ground including the Cairngorms. We were travelling south to the Highlands - a rather unusual concept.
The road swings inland after Golspie to skirt Loch Fleet via The Mound, then heads south over rolling countryside to the Dornoch Firth, which it crosses by the Dornoch Bridge built in 1991. The last time I visited the area, with my parents in 1988 shortly after Dad retired, the route was forced to the west via Bonar Bridge, increasing the distance by some twenty miles.
The two junctions with this old road, either side of the bridge, feed traffic from the north-west on to the already busy A9. This, combined with the recent “improvements” to the road from here on results in a fast, busy trunk road which is fine for motorists but highly unpleasant to cycle along. I was thankful that we’d decided to follow the recommendation of one of our erstwhile friends at the hostel, which was to cross the Black Isle and thus avoid the worst section of the A9 by turning off at the Nigg Roundabout to reach the Nigg-Cromarty ferry via the B9175.
The Dornoch Firth was holding a bank of low cloud which provided the only rain shower of the northern half of our trip and deprived us of any views from the bridge. A further mile took us to Tain by which time we were out of the cloud, and the blue skies returned.
We found a café at Tain which again only provided for indoor eating, but the proprietor allowed us to leave our bikes at the back of the building while we enjoyed a pleasant lunch. The café’s cat was rather indignant at this invasion of his territory, but he forgave us when we stopped to chat to him.
A mile after Tain we left the vile A9 for the peaceful B9175 and the half mile ferry crossing to Cromarty. After a swift drink at the pub, we took the steep A832 out of Cromarty. Upon topping the rise, we met a genial local who pointed to rising ground in the distance which he assured us was the “last” hill. He was partly right, at least as far as the next fifteen miles or so were concerned, but the hill continued for miles before finally descending steeply to sea level at Rosemarkie. We then followed the shore of the Moray Firth to Avoch, with its silent Av, where we stopped for a chocolate covered ice cream bar. It was quite warm by now, and we were soon surrounded by drips of the molten confection.
We left the A832 at Munlochy to follow the B9161 which led back to the A82 a few miles from Inverness. Cycle paths enabled us to avoid the main road and cross the Kessock Bridge into the city.
After locating our B&B and checking in, we set off in search of food, eventually choosing an Irish bar near the picturesque Ness Walk. Our food took an age to arrive, by which time I’d finished my first pint and was beginning to feel a little queasy. I had obviously done something to annoy my stomach, and I only managed half of my game stew before I began to heave and had to give up. I began to worry that I might not be eating enough to sustain myself for the demands of the ride, as I hadn’t really eaten a proper dinner since we left Derby.
A group of loud, macho types, possibly servicemen judging by their uniform haircuts, were monopolising half of the bar area throughout our visit. None of them stood still as they were constantly either play fighting or grabbing each others’ buttocks and genitals. No doubt summary justice would have been meted out to anyone with the temerity to suggest that they might be harbouring latent homosexual tendencies.
The pub was not a place I wanted to linger, and it was a pleasant walk back in the cool evening air amidst the fine architecture of Inverness. On the way we crossed the River Ness which leads to the north eastern end of the Great Glen, Britain’s most prominent fracture and our route for the following day.
Tuesday 23 June 2009 - Inverness to Ballachulish
Inverness - Fort Augustus - Spean Bridge - Fort William - Ballachulish
The morning routine had already evolved into a recurring pattern - wake up, swear a lot, have caffeine fix, swear some more, get dressed, gather belongings, pack panniers, hump panniers downstairs, have breakfast, extricate bikes from overnight storage, load bikes and set off. Having done all the foregoing, we soon found ourselves ascending the long incline on the A82 out of Inverness. The perspective made the road appear flat, and for a while I wondered why I was having to pedal so hard. Halfway up the hill, I caught my badly mounted rear left pannier with my heel, causing it to release its tenuous grip on the rack and land in the road. More swearing ensued.
Within a few miles, we had passed Loch Dochfour and the vastness of Loch Ness lay before us. We stopped and took photographs. Paul and John were first time visitors to Scotland and I enjoyed being with them for their first sight of true Highland scenery, the grandeur of which increases as you progress south west through the Great Glen.
The long stretch of the A82 skirting Loch Ness is much hillier than it appeared on our inadequate map. At one point, between Drumnadrochit and Invermoriston, my bike threw off its chain in protest at my attempt to change from top to bottom gear at the start of an unexpected incline. Both Raleighs had a tendency to do this throughout the trip, and it transpired later that Paul’s had done likewise in exactly the same spot.
The chain had jammed between the crank and the frame. Song lyrics, vaguely related to whatever I happen to be doing at the time, often pop into my head during the day, and here, as I wrestled with the grimy, sweaty task of restoring my machine’s transmission, “Bat Chain Puller” by Captain Beefheart sprung to mind. The previous day, tired by the hills and incessant headwind, I passed a sign indicating seven miles to Tain where we were stopping for lunch, and instantly thought of Klaxons’ Isle Of Her and its repeated line “Row! There’s only seven more miles to go”. On the first day, as poor John laboured in agony on the A99, My Chemical Romance chimed in with “I’m not OK”. The mere thought being unpardonably callous and particularly offensive to a heavy metal fan, I didn’t tell him.
Eventually we reached Fort Augustus at the end of Loch Ness and stopped for a light meal at, for the first time, a café with tables outside. By now the weather was sweltering and Paul and John poured copious amounts of sweat from their helmets when they took them off. I was helmetless and as a result my forehead burnt in the sun, but I was rewarded later when it began to peel, providing me with the most agreeable pastime of picking bits off and flicking them around the pub.
Fort Augustus is a magnetic Highland village, and had I been by myself I would probably have inserted an extra day by stopping there to get drunk by the Caledonian Canal. No such aberration being forthcoming, we continued our journey by leaving the A82 to follow the canal path for five miles before re-joining the main road at Aberchalder after waiting for a graceful vessel to pass through the swing bridge. The ride by the canal was a delightfully flat and peaceful respite from the traffic, but the next twenty miles to Spean Bridge were much more demanding due to the heat, the hills and the headwind. I paused by Loch Lochy to cool myself down by soaking my shirt in a burn tumbling down from the hillside.
From Spean Bridge, with the watershed of the Great Glen now behind us, we rode mostly downhill to Fort William, stopping on the way to take photos of the still snow-capped Ben Nevis. The last mile or two into the town was nasty in view of the heavy traffic and the fairly narrow road, which we belatedly realised we could have avoided by a cycle track.
We pushed our bikes around Fort William for a while looking for somewhere to eat, although it was still only late afternoon and personally I wasn’t really hungry. We couldn’t find anywhere suitable so I asked a local. “No, we don’t go much on al fresco dining around here. That’s Highland hospitality for ye”, came the sardonic reply.
Leaving the Highlander to extend his welcome to the next hapless visitor, we pedalled off to complete the final stage of the day’s ride to our B&B at Ballachulish. By the time I reached Corran Ferry, at the narrowest point of Loch Linnhe, the heat of the day had subsided and the terrain was mostly flat. I stopped for a while and savoured the memory of my first visit to Scotland back in 1984, when at this spot I had met up with my parents on their Mercian tandem, built to Dad’s specification.
After rounding the coast to head east towards Onich, I caught up with Paul and John who were taking photographs of Glencoe, illuminated to perfection by the westering sun. From there only three miles remained - across the Ballachulish Bridge spanning the point where Loch Leven branches off from Loch Linnhe, then along the southern shore of the former to Ballachulish.
To my delight, our B&B was over the road from the pub, where a short while later I ate a proper evening meal at last. Paul and John retired back to our lodgings while I stayed for another pint, eventually being driven away when the sun went down at about 10pm and the hordes of voracious midges woke up.
Ballachulish was one of my favourite overnight stops of the trip, situated in some of the finest scenery in Britain at the foot of Beinn a’ Bheithir, next door to a pub and with the ridges of Glencoe and the Clachaig Inn with its legendary selection of single malts only a few hundred yards away. It will probably be the base for my next hill walking holiday in Scotland.
The morning routine had already evolved into a recurring pattern - wake up, swear a lot, have caffeine fix, swear some more, get dressed, gather belongings, pack panniers, hump panniers downstairs, have breakfast, extricate bikes from overnight storage, load bikes and set off. Having done all the foregoing, we soon found ourselves ascending the long incline on the A82 out of Inverness. The perspective made the road appear flat, and for a while I wondered why I was having to pedal so hard. Halfway up the hill, I caught my badly mounted rear left pannier with my heel, causing it to release its tenuous grip on the rack and land in the road. More swearing ensued.
Within a few miles, we had passed Loch Dochfour and the vastness of Loch Ness lay before us. We stopped and took photographs. Paul and John were first time visitors to Scotland and I enjoyed being with them for their first sight of true Highland scenery, the grandeur of which increases as you progress south west through the Great Glen.
The long stretch of the A82 skirting Loch Ness is much hillier than it appeared on our inadequate map. At one point, between Drumnadrochit and Invermoriston, my bike threw off its chain in protest at my attempt to change from top to bottom gear at the start of an unexpected incline. Both Raleighs had a tendency to do this throughout the trip, and it transpired later that Paul’s had done likewise in exactly the same spot.
The chain had jammed between the crank and the frame. Song lyrics, vaguely related to whatever I happen to be doing at the time, often pop into my head during the day, and here, as I wrestled with the grimy, sweaty task of restoring my machine’s transmission, “Bat Chain Puller” by Captain Beefheart sprung to mind. The previous day, tired by the hills and incessant headwind, I passed a sign indicating seven miles to Tain where we were stopping for lunch, and instantly thought of Klaxons’ Isle Of Her and its repeated line “Row! There’s only seven more miles to go”. On the first day, as poor John laboured in agony on the A99, My Chemical Romance chimed in with “I’m not OK”. The mere thought being unpardonably callous and particularly offensive to a heavy metal fan, I didn’t tell him.
Eventually we reached Fort Augustus at the end of Loch Ness and stopped for a light meal at, for the first time, a café with tables outside. By now the weather was sweltering and Paul and John poured copious amounts of sweat from their helmets when they took them off. I was helmetless and as a result my forehead burnt in the sun, but I was rewarded later when it began to peel, providing me with the most agreeable pastime of picking bits off and flicking them around the pub.
Fort Augustus is a magnetic Highland village, and had I been by myself I would probably have inserted an extra day by stopping there to get drunk by the Caledonian Canal. No such aberration being forthcoming, we continued our journey by leaving the A82 to follow the canal path for five miles before re-joining the main road at Aberchalder after waiting for a graceful vessel to pass through the swing bridge. The ride by the canal was a delightfully flat and peaceful respite from the traffic, but the next twenty miles to Spean Bridge were much more demanding due to the heat, the hills and the headwind. I paused by Loch Lochy to cool myself down by soaking my shirt in a burn tumbling down from the hillside.
From Spean Bridge, with the watershed of the Great Glen now behind us, we rode mostly downhill to Fort William, stopping on the way to take photos of the still snow-capped Ben Nevis. The last mile or two into the town was nasty in view of the heavy traffic and the fairly narrow road, which we belatedly realised we could have avoided by a cycle track.
We pushed our bikes around Fort William for a while looking for somewhere to eat, although it was still only late afternoon and personally I wasn’t really hungry. We couldn’t find anywhere suitable so I asked a local. “No, we don’t go much on al fresco dining around here. That’s Highland hospitality for ye”, came the sardonic reply.
Leaving the Highlander to extend his welcome to the next hapless visitor, we pedalled off to complete the final stage of the day’s ride to our B&B at Ballachulish. By the time I reached Corran Ferry, at the narrowest point of Loch Linnhe, the heat of the day had subsided and the terrain was mostly flat. I stopped for a while and savoured the memory of my first visit to Scotland back in 1984, when at this spot I had met up with my parents on their Mercian tandem, built to Dad’s specification.
After rounding the coast to head east towards Onich, I caught up with Paul and John who were taking photographs of Glencoe, illuminated to perfection by the westering sun. From there only three miles remained - across the Ballachulish Bridge spanning the point where Loch Leven branches off from Loch Linnhe, then along the southern shore of the former to Ballachulish.
To my delight, our B&B was over the road from the pub, where a short while later I ate a proper evening meal at last. Paul and John retired back to our lodgings while I stayed for another pint, eventually being driven away when the sun went down at about 10pm and the hordes of voracious midges woke up.
Ballachulish was one of my favourite overnight stops of the trip, situated in some of the finest scenery in Britain at the foot of Beinn a’ Bheithir, next door to a pub and with the ridges of Glencoe and the Clachaig Inn with its legendary selection of single malts only a few hundred yards away. It will probably be the base for my next hill walking holiday in Scotland.
Wednesday 24 June 2009 - Ballachulish to Balloch
Ballachulish - Bridge of Orchy - Tyndrum - Crianlarich - Tarbet - Balloch
Paul and John had decided to lighten their loads by posting their dirty washing back home, and I had some business to conduct by phone, so our start was delayed until 10am while we faffed about after breakfast.
Once on the road I realised that the wind, as it had been every day, was blowing against us, even though we were now heading east as opposed to south-west the previous day. The temperature was already in the mid 20s and we were faced with a continuous climb from sea level, through Glencoe and up to the summit of Rannoch Moor at 1141 feet, with no shelter from the blazing sun. I stopped many times to rest and cast my eyes around the jagged landscape, much of which I had explored on foot in past years. I revel in empty, wide open spaces and I like nothing better than to spend long days in the sun wandering across mountains and moorland far from human habitation. When I caught up with Paul and John, I found that they didn’t necessarily share my preference for solitude, and John in particular seemed to find the remoteness of the moor a little disturbing. I realised that he probably wouldn’t have liked my preferred route from John O’Groats which was to avoid the east coast by travelling west to Bettyhill and then turning south through Strathnaver to Lairg through one of the most desolate and sparsely inhabited tracts of land in Britain.
Past the summit, the A82 drops steeply to Loch Tulla and then more gradually to Bridge of Orchy. Apart from the cooling breeze and the effortless exhilaration, I had another reason to look forward to the descents. I had never previously worn cycling shorts, but I bought a pair for the trip and wore them throughout. They were very comfortable except in one respect - they made my left testicle ache, an irritation which plagued me all the way from Thurso to Land’s End. However, when coasting downhill I was able to stand up on the pedals and allow the cool rushing air to deliver exquisite relief to my beleaguered gonad.
At the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, the barmaid informed us that we weren’t allowed to eat outside the front of the hotel by the road, but we were welcome to use the rear patio and bring our bikes round the back of the building. This we did, and I had expensive but excellent smoked salmon sandwiches. I wondered why it had been perfectly OK to eat outside by the road at Fort Augustus, whereas here it was forbidden.
The next seven miles to Tyndrum consisted of a relentless climb up Strath Fillan. Although I had driven along this road many times previously, I had never noticed the gradient before and I was relieved to reach the Green Welly Stop at Tyndrum where we stopped for a cold drink. We spoke to a couple of whippet-like young guys with carbon-fibre bikes and hardly any loads who were doing the end to end trip from south to north at the rate of 120 miles per day. The mother of one of them was providing motorised back-up and carrying much of their equipment. They eyed our antique beasts of burden pityingly, while assuring us that any gradients we may have encountered thus far would pale into insignificance compared to those which awaited us in Devon and Cornwall.
Once again we were due a reward, which started with an easy five miles to Crianlarich where we met a lady with very little English who wanted to follow the West Highland Way. She listened to my directions with utter incomprehension before thanking me and setting off to continue her adventure.
From Crianlarich we coasted all the way down to Loch Lomond, at about seven miles one of the best continuous descents of the entire trip, although in places the road surface left much to be desired. The first section of the ride by the loch was delightful, the narrow, twisting un-”improved” A82 being relatively quiet by late afternoon. At Tarbet however, where the A83 merges from the west, the road becomes a fast trunk route and is much less pleasant. They’ve even sited it alongside a belt of trees in order to deprive you of all but the occasional glimpse of the loch.
I am always saddened to reach the Highland Boundary Fault, marked by an abrupt change in topography, and leave the Highlands behind. The fault line crosses the southern section of Loch Lomond, meaning that the land to its south becomes increasingly amenable to development. Our destination, Balloch, is the first settlement and is effectively a suburb of Dumbarton, which in turn is effectively a suburb of Glasgow.
The last few miles before the turning off to Balloch seemed interminable. The volume of speeding traffic increased and the cycling options narrowed. For a while there was a reasonably good track running alongside the road, but this deteriorated and then vanished, leaving only the painted white line at the edge of the road as a metre wide psychological refuge. Eventually the metre shrunk to a millimetre and with nothing left to separate us from the madness, we became part of the Wacky Races.
Balloch disappointed me. I’d hoped that a village on the shores of Loch Lomond would have a picturesque, rural feel but in fact it’s a fairly nondescript small town which merges into the larger Alexandria, and signs of urban decay such as run down, graffiti plastered shopping precincts extend almost right up to the bonnie banks themselves. This was a profound culture shock compared to the environment we had become accustomed to over the past few days. Moreover, I discovered to my horror that our B&B was nowhere near a pub, thereby condemning me to an alcohol-free night.
Our host, John Smith, was a large, ebullient chap with a military background which manifested itself immediately when he began by describing his statutory duty of care towards us as paying guests, and reciting all the rules, regulations and health and safety arrangements pertaining to his establishment. Nothing was too much trouble for John, who had been a keen cyclist himself in his younger days and was eager to help us in any way he could. He contributed to our fund and spent time searching the Internet and printing off suggestions for tackling Glasgow the following day. He and his wife prepared an evening meal for us for a very reasonable price.
Our beds came complete with teddy bears. Paul’s and John’s were three of a set - Paul had Mummy and Daddy Bear on his double bed while John had Little Baby Bear. I had a manky old blue one with his eyes hanging off. I liked my poor bedraggled little teddy, so I told him a psychedelic bedtime story and cuddled him as I drifted off to sleep.
Paul and John had decided to lighten their loads by posting their dirty washing back home, and I had some business to conduct by phone, so our start was delayed until 10am while we faffed about after breakfast.
Once on the road I realised that the wind, as it had been every day, was blowing against us, even though we were now heading east as opposed to south-west the previous day. The temperature was already in the mid 20s and we were faced with a continuous climb from sea level, through Glencoe and up to the summit of Rannoch Moor at 1141 feet, with no shelter from the blazing sun. I stopped many times to rest and cast my eyes around the jagged landscape, much of which I had explored on foot in past years. I revel in empty, wide open spaces and I like nothing better than to spend long days in the sun wandering across mountains and moorland far from human habitation. When I caught up with Paul and John, I found that they didn’t necessarily share my preference for solitude, and John in particular seemed to find the remoteness of the moor a little disturbing. I realised that he probably wouldn’t have liked my preferred route from John O’Groats which was to avoid the east coast by travelling west to Bettyhill and then turning south through Strathnaver to Lairg through one of the most desolate and sparsely inhabited tracts of land in Britain.
Past the summit, the A82 drops steeply to Loch Tulla and then more gradually to Bridge of Orchy. Apart from the cooling breeze and the effortless exhilaration, I had another reason to look forward to the descents. I had never previously worn cycling shorts, but I bought a pair for the trip and wore them throughout. They were very comfortable except in one respect - they made my left testicle ache, an irritation which plagued me all the way from Thurso to Land’s End. However, when coasting downhill I was able to stand up on the pedals and allow the cool rushing air to deliver exquisite relief to my beleaguered gonad.
At the Bridge of Orchy Hotel, the barmaid informed us that we weren’t allowed to eat outside the front of the hotel by the road, but we were welcome to use the rear patio and bring our bikes round the back of the building. This we did, and I had expensive but excellent smoked salmon sandwiches. I wondered why it had been perfectly OK to eat outside by the road at Fort Augustus, whereas here it was forbidden.
The next seven miles to Tyndrum consisted of a relentless climb up Strath Fillan. Although I had driven along this road many times previously, I had never noticed the gradient before and I was relieved to reach the Green Welly Stop at Tyndrum where we stopped for a cold drink. We spoke to a couple of whippet-like young guys with carbon-fibre bikes and hardly any loads who were doing the end to end trip from south to north at the rate of 120 miles per day. The mother of one of them was providing motorised back-up and carrying much of their equipment. They eyed our antique beasts of burden pityingly, while assuring us that any gradients we may have encountered thus far would pale into insignificance compared to those which awaited us in Devon and Cornwall.
Once again we were due a reward, which started with an easy five miles to Crianlarich where we met a lady with very little English who wanted to follow the West Highland Way. She listened to my directions with utter incomprehension before thanking me and setting off to continue her adventure.
From Crianlarich we coasted all the way down to Loch Lomond, at about seven miles one of the best continuous descents of the entire trip, although in places the road surface left much to be desired. The first section of the ride by the loch was delightful, the narrow, twisting un-”improved” A82 being relatively quiet by late afternoon. At Tarbet however, where the A83 merges from the west, the road becomes a fast trunk route and is much less pleasant. They’ve even sited it alongside a belt of trees in order to deprive you of all but the occasional glimpse of the loch.
I am always saddened to reach the Highland Boundary Fault, marked by an abrupt change in topography, and leave the Highlands behind. The fault line crosses the southern section of Loch Lomond, meaning that the land to its south becomes increasingly amenable to development. Our destination, Balloch, is the first settlement and is effectively a suburb of Dumbarton, which in turn is effectively a suburb of Glasgow.
The last few miles before the turning off to Balloch seemed interminable. The volume of speeding traffic increased and the cycling options narrowed. For a while there was a reasonably good track running alongside the road, but this deteriorated and then vanished, leaving only the painted white line at the edge of the road as a metre wide psychological refuge. Eventually the metre shrunk to a millimetre and with nothing left to separate us from the madness, we became part of the Wacky Races.
Balloch disappointed me. I’d hoped that a village on the shores of Loch Lomond would have a picturesque, rural feel but in fact it’s a fairly nondescript small town which merges into the larger Alexandria, and signs of urban decay such as run down, graffiti plastered shopping precincts extend almost right up to the bonnie banks themselves. This was a profound culture shock compared to the environment we had become accustomed to over the past few days. Moreover, I discovered to my horror that our B&B was nowhere near a pub, thereby condemning me to an alcohol-free night.
Our host, John Smith, was a large, ebullient chap with a military background which manifested itself immediately when he began by describing his statutory duty of care towards us as paying guests, and reciting all the rules, regulations and health and safety arrangements pertaining to his establishment. Nothing was too much trouble for John, who had been a keen cyclist himself in his younger days and was eager to help us in any way he could. He contributed to our fund and spent time searching the Internet and printing off suggestions for tackling Glasgow the following day. He and his wife prepared an evening meal for us for a very reasonable price.
Our beds came complete with teddy bears. Paul’s and John’s were three of a set - Paul had Mummy and Daddy Bear on his double bed while John had Little Baby Bear. I had a manky old blue one with his eyes hanging off. I liked my poor bedraggled little teddy, so I told him a psychedelic bedtime story and cuddled him as I drifted off to sleep.
Thursday 25 June 2009 - Balloch to Lockerbie
Balloch - Dumbarton - Glasgow - Abington - Beattock - Lockerbie
Our genial host offered every conceivable component of a full Scottish breakfast, including haggis, and virtually ordered us to try them all. My only criticism could be that the porridge was made with rolled oats and not oatmeal in the proper Scottish way.
Following John Smith’s suggestions, we joined a cycle path at a bridge not far from the B&B. We had a pleasant ride through Dumbarton and northern Glasgow, for a while in the company of an Australian couple who were touring Scotland. All went well until John suddenly stopped alongside the Forth and Clyde canal. When I caught up with him, he was staring forlornly at his deflated tyre.
Paul and John began repairing the puncture while I waited round the corner at Dalmuir drop lock, which as a passer-by informed me is the only one of its type in the world. The canal drops into a pit as it passes beneath the A814, so I assume the water is pumped back up into the canal as the level falls to allow traffic to pass under the road.
The puncture seemed to take an age to repair, and when Paul and John got going again I found out why - a second one had followed a few yards after the first. Amazingly, these were the only punctures incurred during the entire ride. Crossing the road, we continued along the cycle path where we soon began to encounter difficulties common to all urban cycle paths - they’re fine if you know where they lead, but if you’re strange to the area you have to rely on signposts which as often as not are missing or have been turned the wrong way round. We soon found ourselves in one of the numerous labyrinthine “schemes” where we asked directions from a couple of local Rab C. Nesbitt types. One of them, despite his advanced stage of inebriation, was very helpful and advised us to keep as close to the Clyde as possible. This proved to be sound advice and before long we were heading towards the impressive architecture of central Glasgow and into the city centre.
Crossing the Clyde by one of the several bridges, we stopped at a sandwich shop but were defeated by the lunchtime queues. We decided to continue, although we weren’t really sure where we were going, and eventually found ourselves in Pollock Park which we exited into another sprawling estate. This, we soon realised to our horror, was in the south-west of Glasgow. We needed to be in the south-east. All three of us were hot, lost and bad-tempered. I hadn’t helped in the latter respect by my sarcastic reply when Paul asked me if I thought we were going the right way. “No”, I had replied. “We should have gone via Arran.” This was a reference to my expressed preference for avoiding Glasgow at the route-deciding stage, which had been overruled. I felt obliged to apologise for my scathing comment, although I still tittered inwardly, and we decided to head back on ourselves and search for the correct route.
Eventually we escaped the concrete jungle and began to see green open space again. We followed the line of the old Carlisle road, now the B7078, through the outskirts of the metropolis and into the inaptly named Lowlands.
The remainder of the day’s route was bleak but traffic-free, the adjacent M74 now serving as the main north-south artery, and we made steady progress through Lesmahagow and Abington and up to Beattock, with panoramic views of the remote Southern Uplands, finally sweeping down to Lockerbie where after some searching we located our accommodation, the Queens Hotel.
It had been a particularly trying day and we were relieved to be able to relax and unwind in the evening with a drink and meal in the hotel lounge. My chicken korma, though a little on the mild side, hit a spot I'd been missing since leaving Derby as in contrast to my usual diet I'd eaten no Indian food thus far, and was beginning to yearn for the spicy masalas I use almost daily in my own cooking.
Our genial host offered every conceivable component of a full Scottish breakfast, including haggis, and virtually ordered us to try them all. My only criticism could be that the porridge was made with rolled oats and not oatmeal in the proper Scottish way.
Following John Smith’s suggestions, we joined a cycle path at a bridge not far from the B&B. We had a pleasant ride through Dumbarton and northern Glasgow, for a while in the company of an Australian couple who were touring Scotland. All went well until John suddenly stopped alongside the Forth and Clyde canal. When I caught up with him, he was staring forlornly at his deflated tyre.
Paul and John began repairing the puncture while I waited round the corner at Dalmuir drop lock, which as a passer-by informed me is the only one of its type in the world. The canal drops into a pit as it passes beneath the A814, so I assume the water is pumped back up into the canal as the level falls to allow traffic to pass under the road.
The puncture seemed to take an age to repair, and when Paul and John got going again I found out why - a second one had followed a few yards after the first. Amazingly, these were the only punctures incurred during the entire ride. Crossing the road, we continued along the cycle path where we soon began to encounter difficulties common to all urban cycle paths - they’re fine if you know where they lead, but if you’re strange to the area you have to rely on signposts which as often as not are missing or have been turned the wrong way round. We soon found ourselves in one of the numerous labyrinthine “schemes” where we asked directions from a couple of local Rab C. Nesbitt types. One of them, despite his advanced stage of inebriation, was very helpful and advised us to keep as close to the Clyde as possible. This proved to be sound advice and before long we were heading towards the impressive architecture of central Glasgow and into the city centre.
Crossing the Clyde by one of the several bridges, we stopped at a sandwich shop but were defeated by the lunchtime queues. We decided to continue, although we weren’t really sure where we were going, and eventually found ourselves in Pollock Park which we exited into another sprawling estate. This, we soon realised to our horror, was in the south-west of Glasgow. We needed to be in the south-east. All three of us were hot, lost and bad-tempered. I hadn’t helped in the latter respect by my sarcastic reply when Paul asked me if I thought we were going the right way. “No”, I had replied. “We should have gone via Arran.” This was a reference to my expressed preference for avoiding Glasgow at the route-deciding stage, which had been overruled. I felt obliged to apologise for my scathing comment, although I still tittered inwardly, and we decided to head back on ourselves and search for the correct route.
Eventually we escaped the concrete jungle and began to see green open space again. We followed the line of the old Carlisle road, now the B7078, through the outskirts of the metropolis and into the inaptly named Lowlands.
The remainder of the day’s route was bleak but traffic-free, the adjacent M74 now serving as the main north-south artery, and we made steady progress through Lesmahagow and Abington and up to Beattock, with panoramic views of the remote Southern Uplands, finally sweeping down to Lockerbie where after some searching we located our accommodation, the Queens Hotel.
It had been a particularly trying day and we were relieved to be able to relax and unwind in the evening with a drink and meal in the hotel lounge. My chicken korma, though a little on the mild side, hit a spot I'd been missing since leaving Derby as in contrast to my usual diet I'd eaten no Indian food thus far, and was beginning to yearn for the spicy masalas I use almost daily in my own cooking.
Friday 26 June 2009 - Lockerbie to Kendal
Lockerbie - Carlisle - Penrith - Shap - Kendal
After breakfast in the spacious dining room, while loading our bikes we chatted to a group of fellow guests who were cycling LEJOG. Most if not all of them were older than me and Paul, and they were clearly experienced cyclists with a variety of bikes, some of even earlier vintage than our Raleighs. They were Geordies and bemoaned the fact that their native toon was too far off route to make an overnight stop at home feasible. They weren’t looking forward to their day’s route which lay between Glasgow and Edinburgh on busy roads.
When we checked out of the hotel, the headlines of a tabloid on the desk grabbed our attention: “JACKO DEAD”. I will probably never own a Michael Jackson album, but he was undoubtedly a truly great entertainer and I salute him for his originality.
For once we had an easy start to the day. Our route between Lockerbie and Carlisle crossed one of the few consistently flat tracts of land we encountered during the ride, straddling as it did the inlet of the Solway Firth. Our first stop was at Ecclefechan where I bought Vaseline to soothe my cracked, bleeding lips, ravaged by the wind and sun. A few miles further on we reached Gretna and its mandatory photostops of the old blacksmith’s shop and the border with England.
At the bridge marking the border, we met a young JOGLEist who had come via Arran. Once he had described the unavoidable horrors of all possible ways to get from the ferry point of Ardrossan to our current position, I realised that Arran, my preferred route, wouldn’t have been an easy option. He obliged us by taking our photos by the border sign and rode with us for a while along a blissful minor road off the B7076 which ran by the side of the M6 all the way to the northern end of Carlisle where it met the A7.
We rode along the busy A7 for a few hundred metres past extensive industrial estates before stopping at a pub and sitting in the shade with ice cold Cokes. We found our way through Carlisle easily enough, the A7 becoming the A6 in the centre of the town, and began to encounter hillier terrain as we headed through the outskirts, continuing to the Golden Fleece Roundabout over the M6 where we stopped.
I had been carrying front as well as rear panniers since we set out from Derby, but had soon realised that I could have accommodated all my luggage in the two rear ones and that the front panniers were therefore superfluous. I put up with the needlessly increased wind resistance until this point, where I finally decided to repack my bags and bungee strap the empty front ones to the rear rack.
As we left the roundabout, a sign warned of the dangers of the ensuing stretch of the A6 and quoted its toll of victims over the past year. The road, of Roman origin, is straight and crosses undulating ground, resulting in many blind summits and hidden dips, with predictable results for reckless motorists and those unfortunate enough to be in their way. It’s actually fairly safe for cyclists, as it’s not too busy and you’re visible from afar on the long straights.
The road sweeps up and down along a ridge with wide views of the surrounding hills and moors. At one point I was overtaken on one of the uphill grinds by a couple of guys who I soon caught up with when I found them talking to Paul and John at a lay-by at the top of the rise. They were fellow JOGLEers. They went on their way and we proceeded through Low Hesket, High Hesket, Thiefside and Plumpton, before dropping down into Penrith whose narrow, busy streets we circled a couple of times before locating a suitable café for coffee, sandwiches and cake. As we sat outside the café, I thought of the vast extent of the Brythonic language in days of yore and the Cumbric origin of the name Penrith, cognate as it is with Pen Rhudd in literary Welsh, meaning Red Hill which is consistent with the local sandstone topography.
The exit from Penrith is guarded by the formidable Kemplay Bank Roundabout, an enormous structure out of all proportion to the rather diminutive town. It was a terrifying, whirling mass of metal, but Paul and John, seemingly indifferent to traffic, plunged straight in without batting an eyelid between them and were out the other end a few seconds later. I however, fearful of entering the maelstrom, kept bearing left and picking my way gingerly across the exit and entrance roads, a lengthy process given the absence of gaps in the traffic.
The A6 then climbs steeply to Clifton before gaining height more gradually in a series of gentle steps. The road crosses the M6 several times, with superb views east to the Pennines and west to the Lake District, passing through Hackthorpe and Sapbeck Gate before reaching Shap. The section north of the village has one of Britain’s few remaining “suicide lanes”, a centre carriageway over which traffic travelling in neither direction has priority. Most of these have now been phased out to reduce the number of inevitable head-on collisions, but now that the A6 is no longer the main north-south route, it is presumably considered to be quiet enough for the risk of such accidents to be negligible.
The ascent to Shap summit at 1344 feet above sea level was easier than I had expected. In my father’s vivid accounts of his experiences as a trucker in the 1950s, he would often describe the lines of lorries parked up in Shap village during periods of bad winter weather when the A6 was impassable. The local economy was badly damaged by the building of the M6, after which nobody got stuck in Shap any more and the B&Bs all folded.
Fortunately it wasn’t winter, it was late June and we were having something of a heat wave. I stopped to rest and take a few photos at the summit before happily commencing the longed-for descent with a steep, exhilarating drop from this eastern spur of the Lakeland fells to a lay-by where I met Paul and John. From there we continued to coast downhill virtually all the way to Kendal, completing a very enjoyable day’s cycling. Our B&B was at the south end of town on our exit road.
We rounded off the day with an excellent Chinese meal and a couple of lagers at a restaurant close to the B&B. We were there until well past their closing time of 10pm, but the staff were very welcoming and made no attempt to hurry us.
After breakfast in the spacious dining room, while loading our bikes we chatted to a group of fellow guests who were cycling LEJOG. Most if not all of them were older than me and Paul, and they were clearly experienced cyclists with a variety of bikes, some of even earlier vintage than our Raleighs. They were Geordies and bemoaned the fact that their native toon was too far off route to make an overnight stop at home feasible. They weren’t looking forward to their day’s route which lay between Glasgow and Edinburgh on busy roads.
When we checked out of the hotel, the headlines of a tabloid on the desk grabbed our attention: “JACKO DEAD”. I will probably never own a Michael Jackson album, but he was undoubtedly a truly great entertainer and I salute him for his originality.
For once we had an easy start to the day. Our route between Lockerbie and Carlisle crossed one of the few consistently flat tracts of land we encountered during the ride, straddling as it did the inlet of the Solway Firth. Our first stop was at Ecclefechan where I bought Vaseline to soothe my cracked, bleeding lips, ravaged by the wind and sun. A few miles further on we reached Gretna and its mandatory photostops of the old blacksmith’s shop and the border with England.
At the bridge marking the border, we met a young JOGLEist who had come via Arran. Once he had described the unavoidable horrors of all possible ways to get from the ferry point of Ardrossan to our current position, I realised that Arran, my preferred route, wouldn’t have been an easy option. He obliged us by taking our photos by the border sign and rode with us for a while along a blissful minor road off the B7076 which ran by the side of the M6 all the way to the northern end of Carlisle where it met the A7.
We rode along the busy A7 for a few hundred metres past extensive industrial estates before stopping at a pub and sitting in the shade with ice cold Cokes. We found our way through Carlisle easily enough, the A7 becoming the A6 in the centre of the town, and began to encounter hillier terrain as we headed through the outskirts, continuing to the Golden Fleece Roundabout over the M6 where we stopped.
I had been carrying front as well as rear panniers since we set out from Derby, but had soon realised that I could have accommodated all my luggage in the two rear ones and that the front panniers were therefore superfluous. I put up with the needlessly increased wind resistance until this point, where I finally decided to repack my bags and bungee strap the empty front ones to the rear rack.
As we left the roundabout, a sign warned of the dangers of the ensuing stretch of the A6 and quoted its toll of victims over the past year. The road, of Roman origin, is straight and crosses undulating ground, resulting in many blind summits and hidden dips, with predictable results for reckless motorists and those unfortunate enough to be in their way. It’s actually fairly safe for cyclists, as it’s not too busy and you’re visible from afar on the long straights.
The road sweeps up and down along a ridge with wide views of the surrounding hills and moors. At one point I was overtaken on one of the uphill grinds by a couple of guys who I soon caught up with when I found them talking to Paul and John at a lay-by at the top of the rise. They were fellow JOGLEers. They went on their way and we proceeded through Low Hesket, High Hesket, Thiefside and Plumpton, before dropping down into Penrith whose narrow, busy streets we circled a couple of times before locating a suitable café for coffee, sandwiches and cake. As we sat outside the café, I thought of the vast extent of the Brythonic language in days of yore and the Cumbric origin of the name Penrith, cognate as it is with Pen Rhudd in literary Welsh, meaning Red Hill which is consistent with the local sandstone topography.
The exit from Penrith is guarded by the formidable Kemplay Bank Roundabout, an enormous structure out of all proportion to the rather diminutive town. It was a terrifying, whirling mass of metal, but Paul and John, seemingly indifferent to traffic, plunged straight in without batting an eyelid between them and were out the other end a few seconds later. I however, fearful of entering the maelstrom, kept bearing left and picking my way gingerly across the exit and entrance roads, a lengthy process given the absence of gaps in the traffic.
The A6 then climbs steeply to Clifton before gaining height more gradually in a series of gentle steps. The road crosses the M6 several times, with superb views east to the Pennines and west to the Lake District, passing through Hackthorpe and Sapbeck Gate before reaching Shap. The section north of the village has one of Britain’s few remaining “suicide lanes”, a centre carriageway over which traffic travelling in neither direction has priority. Most of these have now been phased out to reduce the number of inevitable head-on collisions, but now that the A6 is no longer the main north-south route, it is presumably considered to be quiet enough for the risk of such accidents to be negligible.
The ascent to Shap summit at 1344 feet above sea level was easier than I had expected. In my father’s vivid accounts of his experiences as a trucker in the 1950s, he would often describe the lines of lorries parked up in Shap village during periods of bad winter weather when the A6 was impassable. The local economy was badly damaged by the building of the M6, after which nobody got stuck in Shap any more and the B&Bs all folded.
Fortunately it wasn’t winter, it was late June and we were having something of a heat wave. I stopped to rest and take a few photos at the summit before happily commencing the longed-for descent with a steep, exhilarating drop from this eastern spur of the Lakeland fells to a lay-by where I met Paul and John. From there we continued to coast downhill virtually all the way to Kendal, completing a very enjoyable day’s cycling. Our B&B was at the south end of town on our exit road.
We rounded off the day with an excellent Chinese meal and a couple of lagers at a restaurant close to the B&B. We were there until well past their closing time of 10pm, but the staff were very welcoming and made no attempt to hurry us.
Saturday 27 June 2009 - Kendal to Littleborough
Kendal - Kirkby Lonsdale - Settle - Gisburn - Burnley - Todmorden - Littleborough
As I attempted to plough my way through another full English breakfast, I reflected on its ubiquity and the generally limited choice in B&B establishments throughout Britain. Bacon, eggs, sausage etc is fine once in a while, but day after day its appeal begins to wane. Why can’t we have what we actually want, rather than what the tourist industry has decided we want? One of my favourite breakfasts is a Manx kipper placed under a hot grill until the backbone begins to buckle and burn, brushed with butter and lemon juice, generously sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper and served with buttered wholemeal bread. I have never seen this simple dish on any breakfast menu. Yes, I realise kippers stink the house out for days, but that’s not my problem, is it? Don’t tell me you can’t afford an extractor fan with all that money you’re raking in. Just shut up and grill me my kipper.
One of the most popular breakfasts worldwide is coffee and cigarettes, but again, a packet of fags is never seen nestling between the boxes of Cornflakes and Weetabix. What about catering for the guest of less temperate tastes - a bottle of Buckie or a few cans of Skol Super, maybe? Those of us who frequented free festivals in the 70s might well appreciate a nostalgic breakfast consisting of a chillum stoked with Nepalese Temple Stick, passed to the right by the landlady with a cry of “Boom Shankar”.
Perhaps fortunately, the options at Kendal included neither high-grade hashish nor electric soup, and so it was with clear heads that we tackled the long climb out of town on the A6, soon merging with the busy A591. This road, which becomes the A590 after about two miles, is a fairly unpleasant dual carriageway but for a long stretch we were helped by the fact that the outside lane was coned off specially for us. We were overjoyed at having our own private lane and rode merrily along, to the fury of passing motorists, for miles until we came upon a couple of men digging a little hole and the cones petered out.
Shortly after the junction with the M6, the road joins the A65, reduces to two lanes, and becomes narrow, hilly and twisting as it approaches the Yorkshire Dales. Half way up the first steep rise at Cow Brow, on a left hand bend, I was forced off the road by an incompetent caravanner who just managed to squeeze his car past me but didn’t take the caravan’s extra width into account. I half jumped off my bike and flattened myself against the hedge as his assemblage trundled past with inches to spare. I felt a little shaken, but once back in the saddle my nerves calmed as I began to take in the beauty of my surroundings. The traffic remained a nuisance with many large vehicles revving up behind me, with no room to pass, obliging me to stop repeatedly to let them past. Eventually I found Paul and John waiting at the turn-off to Kirkby Lonsdale, and we called at the village for coffee and cake. A large convoy of very expensive looking motorbikes passed through the village as we sat outside the café.
As we made progress along the now straighter and wider A65, past Cowan Bridge and Ingleton, the prospects became wilder as the stark grandeur of the Dales asserted itself and the Three Peaks loomed hazily to the north. At one point, at a junction with a minor road, a sign by the drystone wall caught my eye: “A65 Skipton 20“.
Skipton, the resting place of my paternal grandmother, is a place my father often spoke of. Growing up in Keighley, he spent much of his youth exploring the moors bordering his home town, and it was he more than anyone who instilled in me my own love of the wilds. He would often wander over to Skipton, and the sight of its name had a cathartic effect on me. Despite the terrible wrench of his passing over a year previously, I shed few tears at the time. Now however, as I pedalled beneath the glowering mass of Ingleborough, I broke down and began to cry. I was unable to continue, and wept bitterly as I leaned against a gatepost near the Little Chef at Newby. A few minutes later, having composed myself, I set off again and was happy. I was happy because the sun was shining, because I was enjoying the ride and because of the beauty of my surroundings. But most of all I was happy because I had at last cried for Dad.
Paul and John were waiting near the junction with the B6480 to Settle, and we followed it to climb the steep Buck Haw Brow, pushing our bikes part of the way, before dropping down into the hospitably-named town for lunch in the courtyard of the Golden Lion. A friendly couple made a generous donation to our cause when they learned about our ride.
We exited the town back on to the A65 alongside the River Ribble, with the Dales to the left and the vast expanse of Bowland to the right, to Long Preston. Here we took the A682, still by the river but with many ups and downs, through Nappa and Newsholme before dropping down to Gisburn and the staggered junction with the A59. After the junction, we left the Ribble Valley behind for an exhausting climb up on to the moorland through Little Middop and Greystone. It was a relief to pass the crest of the road and coast all the way down through Blacko, with the great bulk of Pendle Hill dominating the scene ahead, to Barrowford where we stopped for a coffee.
We were now in the outskirts of Burnley and the gritty reality of urban life became evident as we approached the town. John, upon being cut up at a junction, remonstrated with the offending motorist only to be told “I’ll have you, son of a BEETCH!” I was glad to turn off into the suburbs and escape via the A671 up a grinding hill out of town.
We then turned left on to the A646 and followed the steep sided Pennine valley, through Holme Chapel and Lydgate, to Todmorden with its impressive relics of a bygone industrial age, where we took the A6033 south. As I passed a pub in the centre of the town, three coarse-looking women sitting outside screeched and jeered at me as I rode past. Had I suffered a puncture at that point, I would have persevered with a flat tyre for at least another mile rather than risk a close encounter with the Todmorden harridans.
It had been a long, hilly day and I found the next six miles, across the moor through Walsden and Summit, very tiring until the road finally descended to Littleborough. We still had a mile or two on the B6225 to go as we were staying near Hollingworth Lake at the southern end of the town, and on the way a group of teenage lads greeted us with assorted animal noises as they passed us riding along the pavement in the opposite direction.
Having found our B&B near the far end of the road bordering the lake, we relaxed for a while before walking back along a path by the shore of the lake to the busy Wine Press pub for a pleasant meal. Hollingworth Lake is in a semi-rural setting bordering the moors, and the road along its shore has something of the air of a seaside promenade. As we walked back to our lodgings, in places tiptoeing through the dog turds on the pavement, John’s foot was ominously painful, presaging his difficulties to come.
As I attempted to plough my way through another full English breakfast, I reflected on its ubiquity and the generally limited choice in B&B establishments throughout Britain. Bacon, eggs, sausage etc is fine once in a while, but day after day its appeal begins to wane. Why can’t we have what we actually want, rather than what the tourist industry has decided we want? One of my favourite breakfasts is a Manx kipper placed under a hot grill until the backbone begins to buckle and burn, brushed with butter and lemon juice, generously sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper and served with buttered wholemeal bread. I have never seen this simple dish on any breakfast menu. Yes, I realise kippers stink the house out for days, but that’s not my problem, is it? Don’t tell me you can’t afford an extractor fan with all that money you’re raking in. Just shut up and grill me my kipper.
One of the most popular breakfasts worldwide is coffee and cigarettes, but again, a packet of fags is never seen nestling between the boxes of Cornflakes and Weetabix. What about catering for the guest of less temperate tastes - a bottle of Buckie or a few cans of Skol Super, maybe? Those of us who frequented free festivals in the 70s might well appreciate a nostalgic breakfast consisting of a chillum stoked with Nepalese Temple Stick, passed to the right by the landlady with a cry of “Boom Shankar”.
Perhaps fortunately, the options at Kendal included neither high-grade hashish nor electric soup, and so it was with clear heads that we tackled the long climb out of town on the A6, soon merging with the busy A591. This road, which becomes the A590 after about two miles, is a fairly unpleasant dual carriageway but for a long stretch we were helped by the fact that the outside lane was coned off specially for us. We were overjoyed at having our own private lane and rode merrily along, to the fury of passing motorists, for miles until we came upon a couple of men digging a little hole and the cones petered out.
Shortly after the junction with the M6, the road joins the A65, reduces to two lanes, and becomes narrow, hilly and twisting as it approaches the Yorkshire Dales. Half way up the first steep rise at Cow Brow, on a left hand bend, I was forced off the road by an incompetent caravanner who just managed to squeeze his car past me but didn’t take the caravan’s extra width into account. I half jumped off my bike and flattened myself against the hedge as his assemblage trundled past with inches to spare. I felt a little shaken, but once back in the saddle my nerves calmed as I began to take in the beauty of my surroundings. The traffic remained a nuisance with many large vehicles revving up behind me, with no room to pass, obliging me to stop repeatedly to let them past. Eventually I found Paul and John waiting at the turn-off to Kirkby Lonsdale, and we called at the village for coffee and cake. A large convoy of very expensive looking motorbikes passed through the village as we sat outside the café.
As we made progress along the now straighter and wider A65, past Cowan Bridge and Ingleton, the prospects became wilder as the stark grandeur of the Dales asserted itself and the Three Peaks loomed hazily to the north. At one point, at a junction with a minor road, a sign by the drystone wall caught my eye: “A65 Skipton 20“.
Skipton, the resting place of my paternal grandmother, is a place my father often spoke of. Growing up in Keighley, he spent much of his youth exploring the moors bordering his home town, and it was he more than anyone who instilled in me my own love of the wilds. He would often wander over to Skipton, and the sight of its name had a cathartic effect on me. Despite the terrible wrench of his passing over a year previously, I shed few tears at the time. Now however, as I pedalled beneath the glowering mass of Ingleborough, I broke down and began to cry. I was unable to continue, and wept bitterly as I leaned against a gatepost near the Little Chef at Newby. A few minutes later, having composed myself, I set off again and was happy. I was happy because the sun was shining, because I was enjoying the ride and because of the beauty of my surroundings. But most of all I was happy because I had at last cried for Dad.
Paul and John were waiting near the junction with the B6480 to Settle, and we followed it to climb the steep Buck Haw Brow, pushing our bikes part of the way, before dropping down into the hospitably-named town for lunch in the courtyard of the Golden Lion. A friendly couple made a generous donation to our cause when they learned about our ride.
We exited the town back on to the A65 alongside the River Ribble, with the Dales to the left and the vast expanse of Bowland to the right, to Long Preston. Here we took the A682, still by the river but with many ups and downs, through Nappa and Newsholme before dropping down to Gisburn and the staggered junction with the A59. After the junction, we left the Ribble Valley behind for an exhausting climb up on to the moorland through Little Middop and Greystone. It was a relief to pass the crest of the road and coast all the way down through Blacko, with the great bulk of Pendle Hill dominating the scene ahead, to Barrowford where we stopped for a coffee.
We were now in the outskirts of Burnley and the gritty reality of urban life became evident as we approached the town. John, upon being cut up at a junction, remonstrated with the offending motorist only to be told “I’ll have you, son of a BEETCH!” I was glad to turn off into the suburbs and escape via the A671 up a grinding hill out of town.
We then turned left on to the A646 and followed the steep sided Pennine valley, through Holme Chapel and Lydgate, to Todmorden with its impressive relics of a bygone industrial age, where we took the A6033 south. As I passed a pub in the centre of the town, three coarse-looking women sitting outside screeched and jeered at me as I rode past. Had I suffered a puncture at that point, I would have persevered with a flat tyre for at least another mile rather than risk a close encounter with the Todmorden harridans.
It had been a long, hilly day and I found the next six miles, across the moor through Walsden and Summit, very tiring until the road finally descended to Littleborough. We still had a mile or two on the B6225 to go as we were staying near Hollingworth Lake at the southern end of the town, and on the way a group of teenage lads greeted us with assorted animal noises as they passed us riding along the pavement in the opposite direction.
Having found our B&B near the far end of the road bordering the lake, we relaxed for a while before walking back along a path by the shore of the lake to the busy Wine Press pub for a pleasant meal. Hollingworth Lake is in a semi-rural setting bordering the moors, and the road along its shore has something of the air of a seaside promenade. As we walked back to our lodgings, in places tiptoeing through the dog turds on the pavement, John’s foot was ominously painful, presaging his difficulties to come.
Sunday 28 June 2009 - Littleborough to Derby
Littleborough - Delph - Stalybridge - Glossop - Buxton - Ashbourne - Derby
After the usual morning routine, we bid our hostess farewell and commenced our journey by immediately committing a gross navigational error, heading north to the A58 instead of south on the quiet B6225 which would have taken us directly to Milnrow. This mistake cost us a diversion of several miles, skirting Rochdale via the A664 and A640 to reach the same point. At a set of lights I stopped, correctly, in the marked green area for cyclists in front of the traffic. When the lights changed, the driver of the car behind me vented his road rage at having to wait an extra second before he could turn left, saluting me with the cry “KNOBHEAD!” We encountered no further verbal abuse after this for the remainder of the trip, all instances having been in this area to the north east of Manchester. Thanks, Mancs.
At Newhey, we continued south on the A663 to Shaw where we were presented with a choice of routes, of which the left turn on to the B6197 appeared by far the simplest as it avoided the urban sprawl of Oldham. A friendly cyclist confirmed this, but warned us that the road was initially seriously steep. Looking down the road, it appeared to be a dead end blocked by an insurmountable wall of steep moorland. Our friend confirmed that the road did indeed go right over the top.
The day was already hot and I poured with sweat as I pushed my bike up the steepest section. From the top of the moor we enjoyed a superb outlook, the view west of the foothills of the Pennines disfigured by the great grey scab of Manchester. We met several local cyclists on unladen bikes, taking advantage of the moorland switchback for a Sunday morning spin. We crossed the A672 and then plummeted down into Delph as our brake blocks dispersed into the morning air.
We followed the A6052 through Delph, seemingly unchanged since the 19th century, and past Dobcross where we picked up the A670 to Greenfield. Here, acting on another recommendation of a local cyclist we met along the way, we turned on to the B6175 which took us all the way to Stalybridge, through Carrbrook and Millbrook, with the Pennines towering above us to the east.
The B6175 had been mostly downhill, with one or two sharp rises, but as soon as we turned on to the A6018 at Stalybridge we had to tackle a relentless ascent out of town. I dislike urban cycling even on the flat, but combined with a testing gradient it becomes decidedly unpleasant. I always suspect passers-by are amused by my agonised grimaces as I toil uphill, and the heavy traffic, forcing me into the gutter through the broken glass and grids with longitudinal slots, compounds my distress.
At Mottram we joined the horrendously busy A57, where we escaped the nose to tail traffic by crossing the road and cycling along the pavement before turning right for Glossop. Now back in our home county, the A624 exit road from the town was the most soul-destroying section of the entire trip. The climb up on to Chunal Hill in the heat offered no respite and proved to be John’s nemesis. He’d been fighting increasing pain in his foot and had now reached the point of no return. He tried to walk with his bike but his foot was twisted almost at a right angle and gave serious cause for concern. His ride was over.
This was obviously our lowest point and we were all devastated. John phoned his girlfriend Nikki to arrange a lift home. Paul was very glum and wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to continue. He stayed with John by the roadside grass verge while I plodded on uphill, thinking I would probably have to continue alone.
At long last I reached the lay-by at the summit of the road and bought a cup of tea from the greasy spoon van. There was no shade, so I sat in the blazing sun, dehydrating faster than I could drink. I finished my tea and bought another along with a large blueberry muffin. Before long, Paul appeared and ate most of my muffin. He’d decided to carry on, but still wasn’t sure about the second half of the trip. His primary concern was his son’s welfare, and he’d left John with the kindly staff of a nearby hotel who looked after him while he waited for Nikki.
We continued south on the A624, up and down across the western flanks of Kinder, through Little Hayfield and Hayfield and into Chapel-en-le-Frith where we joined the A6. This was quite unpleasant at first but it improved once we passed the new motorist-friendly section, and we stopped at Dove Holes to phone John who was now in Nikki’s car heading home on the A6. When we reached Buxton, we stopped to take advantage of the precious shade of some trees on a grass verge before dropping down into the town where we relaxed outside a pub with a coffee and a couple of bags of crisps - hardly the best method of rehydration.
It was approaching late afternoon and Paul expressed doubts as to whether we could reach Derby by nightfall, even suggesting looking for overnight accommodation in Buxton. I knew however that once we reached the start of the High Peak Trail, which wasn’t far away, we would reach Ashbourne very quickly by the Tissington Trail as it’s downhill all the way. We therefore needed the A515, and we followed the first sign for it.
What we hadn’t realised was that we had elected to take the A6, which does indeed reach the A515, but by a long circuitous route via the hilly and winding A5270. If we’d taken the next turning in Buxton, we’d have been straight on to the A515 and saved ourselves miles. Our mistake had been not noticing that the road number on the sign was in parentheses.
When we finally reached the junction of the A5270 with the A515 at Brierlow Bar, we erred again in not realising that this was in fact the start of the trail. Instead we continued along the undulating main road for miles and we were running out of water and at our wits’ end by the time we eventually got to Parsley Hay where we knew we could access the trail.
We replenished our water bottles at the visitor centre, but by now it was past 6.30 and the centre was closed, so we used water from the washbasin in the toilets, ignoring the “NOT DRINKING WATER” sign. Paul stopped to chat to a guy who we’d met at the Ashbourne end of the trail some weeks earlier and who had bored us by airing his extensive knowledge of everything cycle-related, particularly the history of Raleigh touring bikes like ours. He appeared to be an employee of the centre.
We set off down the High Peak Trail, soon turning on to the Tissington Trail, and reached Ashbourne in less than an hour. The trail was deserted by this time and I must have registered by far my highest average speed of the trip. The evening cooled to a comfortable temperature, our moods ascended the jollity scale and we were soon laughing and joking again. The only impediment to our progress occurred when we came up behind two Women on Horseback.
I have no doubt that 99.9% of Women on Horseback are extremely nice people who I would feel privileged to count amongst my friends. Unfortunately, all the ones I have ever met have belonged to the other 0.1% who seem to have attitudes totally incompatible with my own. No matter what I do or say, they’re always cross with me for one reason or another - rather like men wearing flat caps, especially if they happen to be playing golf.
I was, for the only time during the trip, leading on the Tissington Trail because I set off first and for much of the way the path was too narrow for Paul to overtake me. As I came up behind the horses, I noticed that they seemed to be nervously darting their heads about. I didn’t want to startle them, so I refrained from announcing our presence vocally and decided instead to cycle alongside them gradually, as unobtrusively as possible, and pass them slowly so as not to frighten them.
When the Women on Horseback saw us, they jerked on the reins, causing their poor steeds to freak out. They then proceeded to blame us. “Thanks for letting us know you were there, guys. You could try talking to us”, one of them snarled sarcastically.
At Ashbourne, we took the A52 rather than the steep old Derby road out of town. Although almost empty at this hour, I disliked it intensely, as I do all such stretches of modern dual carriageway which look pretty much the same throughout Britain. This section of road reminded me strangely of the A82 between Tarbet and Balloch.
We were soon back on the old A52 which seemed easy compared to what we had become used to, despite the climb out of Shirley Hollow. Near Brailsford, I caught up with Paul who was standing by someone’s driveway drinking a glass of squash. His new-found friend extended the same hospitality to me, and thus refreshed we set off on the final stage of our day’s journey. We turned off on to the B5020 at Kirk Langley and followed it to Station Road and Mickleover. Paul and I went our separate ways at the top of Chain Lane and I was home by 9.15pm. I chatted for a while to my neighbours and then walked round the corner to Surjit’s to buy a few cans of Stella. Bliss.
After the usual morning routine, we bid our hostess farewell and commenced our journey by immediately committing a gross navigational error, heading north to the A58 instead of south on the quiet B6225 which would have taken us directly to Milnrow. This mistake cost us a diversion of several miles, skirting Rochdale via the A664 and A640 to reach the same point. At a set of lights I stopped, correctly, in the marked green area for cyclists in front of the traffic. When the lights changed, the driver of the car behind me vented his road rage at having to wait an extra second before he could turn left, saluting me with the cry “KNOBHEAD!” We encountered no further verbal abuse after this for the remainder of the trip, all instances having been in this area to the north east of Manchester. Thanks, Mancs.
At Newhey, we continued south on the A663 to Shaw where we were presented with a choice of routes, of which the left turn on to the B6197 appeared by far the simplest as it avoided the urban sprawl of Oldham. A friendly cyclist confirmed this, but warned us that the road was initially seriously steep. Looking down the road, it appeared to be a dead end blocked by an insurmountable wall of steep moorland. Our friend confirmed that the road did indeed go right over the top.
The day was already hot and I poured with sweat as I pushed my bike up the steepest section. From the top of the moor we enjoyed a superb outlook, the view west of the foothills of the Pennines disfigured by the great grey scab of Manchester. We met several local cyclists on unladen bikes, taking advantage of the moorland switchback for a Sunday morning spin. We crossed the A672 and then plummeted down into Delph as our brake blocks dispersed into the morning air.
We followed the A6052 through Delph, seemingly unchanged since the 19th century, and past Dobcross where we picked up the A670 to Greenfield. Here, acting on another recommendation of a local cyclist we met along the way, we turned on to the B6175 which took us all the way to Stalybridge, through Carrbrook and Millbrook, with the Pennines towering above us to the east.
The B6175 had been mostly downhill, with one or two sharp rises, but as soon as we turned on to the A6018 at Stalybridge we had to tackle a relentless ascent out of town. I dislike urban cycling even on the flat, but combined with a testing gradient it becomes decidedly unpleasant. I always suspect passers-by are amused by my agonised grimaces as I toil uphill, and the heavy traffic, forcing me into the gutter through the broken glass and grids with longitudinal slots, compounds my distress.
At Mottram we joined the horrendously busy A57, where we escaped the nose to tail traffic by crossing the road and cycling along the pavement before turning right for Glossop. Now back in our home county, the A624 exit road from the town was the most soul-destroying section of the entire trip. The climb up on to Chunal Hill in the heat offered no respite and proved to be John’s nemesis. He’d been fighting increasing pain in his foot and had now reached the point of no return. He tried to walk with his bike but his foot was twisted almost at a right angle and gave serious cause for concern. His ride was over.
This was obviously our lowest point and we were all devastated. John phoned his girlfriend Nikki to arrange a lift home. Paul was very glum and wasn’t sure whether or not he wanted to continue. He stayed with John by the roadside grass verge while I plodded on uphill, thinking I would probably have to continue alone.
At long last I reached the lay-by at the summit of the road and bought a cup of tea from the greasy spoon van. There was no shade, so I sat in the blazing sun, dehydrating faster than I could drink. I finished my tea and bought another along with a large blueberry muffin. Before long, Paul appeared and ate most of my muffin. He’d decided to carry on, but still wasn’t sure about the second half of the trip. His primary concern was his son’s welfare, and he’d left John with the kindly staff of a nearby hotel who looked after him while he waited for Nikki.
We continued south on the A624, up and down across the western flanks of Kinder, through Little Hayfield and Hayfield and into Chapel-en-le-Frith where we joined the A6. This was quite unpleasant at first but it improved once we passed the new motorist-friendly section, and we stopped at Dove Holes to phone John who was now in Nikki’s car heading home on the A6. When we reached Buxton, we stopped to take advantage of the precious shade of some trees on a grass verge before dropping down into the town where we relaxed outside a pub with a coffee and a couple of bags of crisps - hardly the best method of rehydration.
It was approaching late afternoon and Paul expressed doubts as to whether we could reach Derby by nightfall, even suggesting looking for overnight accommodation in Buxton. I knew however that once we reached the start of the High Peak Trail, which wasn’t far away, we would reach Ashbourne very quickly by the Tissington Trail as it’s downhill all the way. We therefore needed the A515, and we followed the first sign for it.
What we hadn’t realised was that we had elected to take the A6, which does indeed reach the A515, but by a long circuitous route via the hilly and winding A5270. If we’d taken the next turning in Buxton, we’d have been straight on to the A515 and saved ourselves miles. Our mistake had been not noticing that the road number on the sign was in parentheses.
When we finally reached the junction of the A5270 with the A515 at Brierlow Bar, we erred again in not realising that this was in fact the start of the trail. Instead we continued along the undulating main road for miles and we were running out of water and at our wits’ end by the time we eventually got to Parsley Hay where we knew we could access the trail.
We replenished our water bottles at the visitor centre, but by now it was past 6.30 and the centre was closed, so we used water from the washbasin in the toilets, ignoring the “NOT DRINKING WATER” sign. Paul stopped to chat to a guy who we’d met at the Ashbourne end of the trail some weeks earlier and who had bored us by airing his extensive knowledge of everything cycle-related, particularly the history of Raleigh touring bikes like ours. He appeared to be an employee of the centre.
We set off down the High Peak Trail, soon turning on to the Tissington Trail, and reached Ashbourne in less than an hour. The trail was deserted by this time and I must have registered by far my highest average speed of the trip. The evening cooled to a comfortable temperature, our moods ascended the jollity scale and we were soon laughing and joking again. The only impediment to our progress occurred when we came up behind two Women on Horseback.
I have no doubt that 99.9% of Women on Horseback are extremely nice people who I would feel privileged to count amongst my friends. Unfortunately, all the ones I have ever met have belonged to the other 0.1% who seem to have attitudes totally incompatible with my own. No matter what I do or say, they’re always cross with me for one reason or another - rather like men wearing flat caps, especially if they happen to be playing golf.
I was, for the only time during the trip, leading on the Tissington Trail because I set off first and for much of the way the path was too narrow for Paul to overtake me. As I came up behind the horses, I noticed that they seemed to be nervously darting their heads about. I didn’t want to startle them, so I refrained from announcing our presence vocally and decided instead to cycle alongside them gradually, as unobtrusively as possible, and pass them slowly so as not to frighten them.
When the Women on Horseback saw us, they jerked on the reins, causing their poor steeds to freak out. They then proceeded to blame us. “Thanks for letting us know you were there, guys. You could try talking to us”, one of them snarled sarcastically.
At Ashbourne, we took the A52 rather than the steep old Derby road out of town. Although almost empty at this hour, I disliked it intensely, as I do all such stretches of modern dual carriageway which look pretty much the same throughout Britain. This section of road reminded me strangely of the A82 between Tarbet and Balloch.
We were soon back on the old A52 which seemed easy compared to what we had become used to, despite the climb out of Shirley Hollow. Near Brailsford, I caught up with Paul who was standing by someone’s driveway drinking a glass of squash. His new-found friend extended the same hospitality to me, and thus refreshed we set off on the final stage of our day’s journey. We turned off on to the B5020 at Kirk Langley and followed it to Station Road and Mickleover. Paul and I went our separate ways at the top of Chain Lane and I was home by 9.15pm. I chatted for a while to my neighbours and then walked round the corner to Surjit’s to buy a few cans of Stella. Bliss.
Monday 29 June 2009 - Rest Day
Uncertainty reigned during the morning. I hoped that John would recover sufficiently to enable him to continue after a couple of days rest, although this seemed very unlikely. Knowing Paul, I felt sure he would want to carry on, but if he did decide to abort the ride, I would have to either go it alone or call it a day myself.
As arranged, Paul called me late in the morning. He had taken John to see a doctor who diagnosed tendonitis and advised a couple of weeks rest. Thankfully his condition was not serious, but he was well and truly out of the ride. However he was keen for Paul and me to continue.
We agreed to take another rest day and start again on Wednesday. This meant that all our accommodation would need to be booked again, but also gave us the opportunity to revise our route. Our original destination for the next leg was Cheltenham, but I had misgivings about this as it would mean a total distance of over ninety miles, much of it through Birmingham. We decided instead to cross over to Shropshire and keep close to the Welsh border, using the Severn Bridge to enter the West Country. We worked out a detailed route and I agreed to book the accommodation.
“Oh, bugger it”, I thought. “We’ve got another day, I’ll book the B&Bs tomorrow. I can’t be arsed to do it now”.
A few hours later, Paul phoned again to ask if I’d made the bookings. “Er - no, not yet”, I replied. “I…”
Paul seemed less than impressed by my incorrigibly laid-back attitude. “We’re not going to do it, are we?”, he interjected.
“Yes we are - I’ll do it now”, I grovelled.
In the interests of fraternal harmony, I set to work and after forty minutes of Googling and phoning, the bookings were all made.
As arranged, Paul called me late in the morning. He had taken John to see a doctor who diagnosed tendonitis and advised a couple of weeks rest. Thankfully his condition was not serious, but he was well and truly out of the ride. However he was keen for Paul and me to continue.
We agreed to take another rest day and start again on Wednesday. This meant that all our accommodation would need to be booked again, but also gave us the opportunity to revise our route. Our original destination for the next leg was Cheltenham, but I had misgivings about this as it would mean a total distance of over ninety miles, much of it through Birmingham. We decided instead to cross over to Shropshire and keep close to the Welsh border, using the Severn Bridge to enter the West Country. We worked out a detailed route and I agreed to book the accommodation.
“Oh, bugger it”, I thought. “We’ve got another day, I’ll book the B&Bs tomorrow. I can’t be arsed to do it now”.
A few hours later, Paul phoned again to ask if I’d made the bookings. “Er - no, not yet”, I replied. “I…”
Paul seemed less than impressed by my incorrigibly laid-back attitude. “We’re not going to do it, are we?”, he interjected.
“Yes we are - I’ll do it now”, I grovelled.
In the interests of fraternal harmony, I set to work and after forty minutes of Googling and phoning, the bookings were all made.
Tuesday 30 June - Another Rest Day
I had only one task to complete before we set off the following day. I had been carrying far too much gear and had determined to strip my load down to essentials. I decided to dispense with the fleece and jumpers I had taken in case of cold weather which didn’t happen. The forecast indicated a continuing heat wave, so they could go, as could the binoculars, camera tripod and chess set, all of which had remained unused. I would replace the heavy jeans with light walking trousers, but would take a pair of sandals to provide evening relief from the foetid trainers I’d been wearing for cycling. I would be able to pack this reduced load into the two small pannier bags and leave the big ones at home.
“Oh, bugger it”, I thought. “I’ve got all day, I’ll pack the bags later. I can’t be arsed to do it now”.
As I went upstairs to bed at about 12.30am, having spent the entire day doing nothing in particular, I noticed the pannier bags, empty but for one sandal in each. Fifteen minutes later they were packed and on my bike.
“Oh, bugger it”, I thought. “I’ve got all day, I’ll pack the bags later. I can’t be arsed to do it now”.
As I went upstairs to bed at about 12.30am, having spent the entire day doing nothing in particular, I noticed the pannier bags, empty but for one sandal in each. Fifteen minutes later they were packed and on my bike.
Wednesday 01 July 2009 - Derby to Craven Arms
Derby - Uttoxeter - Stafford - Newport - Telford - Much Wenlock - Craven Arms
Skipping breakfast, I left my house at 7am and was at Paul’s before 7.30. Before we hit the road, we had a quick coffee and John gave me his plastic bottle of energy drink powder, which did what the label said and had often revived our flagging energy during the first half of the trip. For some reason we never used it once during the second half, and it remained strapped to my bike.
We were away by 8am, leaving via Stenson and Frizams Lane to reach the A5132 through Willington to Hilton. From there we followed the old Derby road, which becomes the A511 at Hatton, until we were forced on to the A50 at Foston after which we endured eight miles of sheer hell before turning off to Uttoxeter with immense relief. Bypassing the town centre via Old Knotty Way, we left Uttoxeter by the A518 Stafford Road and stopped at a lay-by.
There were several large vehicles parked in the lay-by, as there always are during the morning. We had come to dine at Sylroy, the finest greasy spoon I know and the reason I hadn’t bothered with breakfast. This idiosyncratic green-painted wooden structure on a wide grass verge has remained unchanged for decades and always delivers a splendid breakfast and a warm welcome.
With our hunger assuaged, we continued along the A518, the first hilly road since North Derbyshire, stopping along the way to take photographs of the ruined Chartley Castle. This was the last one of her places of imprisonment from which Mary Queen of Scots departed in one piece, as her next stop was Fotheringhay Castle where she parted company with her head.
We set off from the castle, Paul disappeared into the distance and before long I reached the A51 junction. I have known since the age of about eight that the A518 now continues ahead to Stafford by means of a staggered junction, turning left then right at traffic lights. Instead I made my most ridiculous mistake of the whole trip, turning left but then continuing straight ahead.
I must have gone at least two miles towards Lichfield before realising my error when I passed a road sign which didn’t mention Stafford. I turned around and headed back to the junction. I thought Paul would probably be waiting for me in Stafford by now, so I set off along the A518, pushing my bike up part of the steep Weston Bank in the now sweltering heat. When I reached Stafford, I couldn’t see Paul anywhere and realised that we must have missed each other somehow. When we made contact by phone, it transpired that he had gone back to look for me, and had been quite worried because he’d seen a couple of ambulances with lights flashing and sirens blaring. By the time he caught up with me, the whole escapade had cost us at least an hour.
Stafford proved easy to negotiate, as we were following the A518 all the way through. We were already running out of water, so we’d agreed to stop at the first suitable pub after the town. This turned out to be the Bell at Haughton, where we had a pint of cold orange squash and the barman replenished our water bottles, including generous quantities of ice which sadly melted instantly in the early afternoon sun.
Back on the road, we passed through Gnosall before reaching Newport where we took the A41 south for a while before turning right on to the B4379 which we followed to Shifnal. From here we reached Telford via the A464 and negotiated the ring road, most of which seemed to be uphill, eventually emerging from the town on the A4169.
We were now on the edge of the Shropshire Hills district, and the delightful scenery compensated for the tiring gradients. Rural England is of course noted for its funny village names, and we stopped to photograph a signpost to Homer and Wigwig. Simpsons imagery flooded my mind as I thought of Homer and his two bewigged, chainsmoking sisters-in-law.
We stopped at a pub in Much Wenlock, but no food was available during the afternoon so we made do with crisps and salted nuts, which exacerbated our thirst in the raging heat. Leaving the village by the B4371, we climbed up on to Wenlock Edge, enjoying miles of fine views before crossing over to the B4378 via a minor road to Brockton. This soon merged with the B4368 which passed through Hungerford, Diddlebury and Pedlars Rest before eventually dropping down to Craven Arms at the junction with the A49.
We were staying at Castle Farm in Cheney Longville, reached by a rough road turning left off the A49 a few hundred metres north of the town. The farm is steeped in history, having at one time been Cheney Longville Castle, a fortified 14th century manor house which was badly cannoned during the Civil War and has been much repaired and restored at various times since. It is a fascinating building with many original features, several of which were in our room. When I went outside to use my phone, which was necessary due to the extremely thick walls, I noticed the clearly visible remains of parts of the moat.
This working farm is the type of old fashioned B&B where you share the house with the family. There are no keys and you don’t have your personal bathroom. Sam, a friendly old Westie, came and lay down in our room as we unpacked. He lived in perfect harmony with the house cat, but chased the farm cat away if he ventured too near to the house.
By now we were ravenous and Sally, our hostess, cooked us an excellent evening meal of bangers and mash made with long rustic home made sausages. We were joined by a pair of fellow guests, a father and son from Tain, who had arrived shortly after us and who were cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
The farm’s situation in the Shropshire hills made me realise that I’d never really appreciated the beauty of this part of the country, despite having driven through it many times. The only drawback to Castle Farm was that there was no pub within short walking distance. I’d had a long hard ride on a long hot day, and would have despatched a few pints with alacrity.
Skipping breakfast, I left my house at 7am and was at Paul’s before 7.30. Before we hit the road, we had a quick coffee and John gave me his plastic bottle of energy drink powder, which did what the label said and had often revived our flagging energy during the first half of the trip. For some reason we never used it once during the second half, and it remained strapped to my bike.
We were away by 8am, leaving via Stenson and Frizams Lane to reach the A5132 through Willington to Hilton. From there we followed the old Derby road, which becomes the A511 at Hatton, until we were forced on to the A50 at Foston after which we endured eight miles of sheer hell before turning off to Uttoxeter with immense relief. Bypassing the town centre via Old Knotty Way, we left Uttoxeter by the A518 Stafford Road and stopped at a lay-by.
There were several large vehicles parked in the lay-by, as there always are during the morning. We had come to dine at Sylroy, the finest greasy spoon I know and the reason I hadn’t bothered with breakfast. This idiosyncratic green-painted wooden structure on a wide grass verge has remained unchanged for decades and always delivers a splendid breakfast and a warm welcome.
With our hunger assuaged, we continued along the A518, the first hilly road since North Derbyshire, stopping along the way to take photographs of the ruined Chartley Castle. This was the last one of her places of imprisonment from which Mary Queen of Scots departed in one piece, as her next stop was Fotheringhay Castle where she parted company with her head.
We set off from the castle, Paul disappeared into the distance and before long I reached the A51 junction. I have known since the age of about eight that the A518 now continues ahead to Stafford by means of a staggered junction, turning left then right at traffic lights. Instead I made my most ridiculous mistake of the whole trip, turning left but then continuing straight ahead.
I must have gone at least two miles towards Lichfield before realising my error when I passed a road sign which didn’t mention Stafford. I turned around and headed back to the junction. I thought Paul would probably be waiting for me in Stafford by now, so I set off along the A518, pushing my bike up part of the steep Weston Bank in the now sweltering heat. When I reached Stafford, I couldn’t see Paul anywhere and realised that we must have missed each other somehow. When we made contact by phone, it transpired that he had gone back to look for me, and had been quite worried because he’d seen a couple of ambulances with lights flashing and sirens blaring. By the time he caught up with me, the whole escapade had cost us at least an hour.
Stafford proved easy to negotiate, as we were following the A518 all the way through. We were already running out of water, so we’d agreed to stop at the first suitable pub after the town. This turned out to be the Bell at Haughton, where we had a pint of cold orange squash and the barman replenished our water bottles, including generous quantities of ice which sadly melted instantly in the early afternoon sun.
Back on the road, we passed through Gnosall before reaching Newport where we took the A41 south for a while before turning right on to the B4379 which we followed to Shifnal. From here we reached Telford via the A464 and negotiated the ring road, most of which seemed to be uphill, eventually emerging from the town on the A4169.
We were now on the edge of the Shropshire Hills district, and the delightful scenery compensated for the tiring gradients. Rural England is of course noted for its funny village names, and we stopped to photograph a signpost to Homer and Wigwig. Simpsons imagery flooded my mind as I thought of Homer and his two bewigged, chainsmoking sisters-in-law.
We stopped at a pub in Much Wenlock, but no food was available during the afternoon so we made do with crisps and salted nuts, which exacerbated our thirst in the raging heat. Leaving the village by the B4371, we climbed up on to Wenlock Edge, enjoying miles of fine views before crossing over to the B4378 via a minor road to Brockton. This soon merged with the B4368 which passed through Hungerford, Diddlebury and Pedlars Rest before eventually dropping down to Craven Arms at the junction with the A49.
We were staying at Castle Farm in Cheney Longville, reached by a rough road turning left off the A49 a few hundred metres north of the town. The farm is steeped in history, having at one time been Cheney Longville Castle, a fortified 14th century manor house which was badly cannoned during the Civil War and has been much repaired and restored at various times since. It is a fascinating building with many original features, several of which were in our room. When I went outside to use my phone, which was necessary due to the extremely thick walls, I noticed the clearly visible remains of parts of the moat.
This working farm is the type of old fashioned B&B where you share the house with the family. There are no keys and you don’t have your personal bathroom. Sam, a friendly old Westie, came and lay down in our room as we unpacked. He lived in perfect harmony with the house cat, but chased the farm cat away if he ventured too near to the house.
By now we were ravenous and Sally, our hostess, cooked us an excellent evening meal of bangers and mash made with long rustic home made sausages. We were joined by a pair of fellow guests, a father and son from Tain, who had arrived shortly after us and who were cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats.
The farm’s situation in the Shropshire hills made me realise that I’d never really appreciated the beauty of this part of the country, despite having driven through it many times. The only drawback to Castle Farm was that there was no pub within short walking distance. I’d had a long hard ride on a long hot day, and would have despatched a few pints with alacrity.
Thursday 02 July 2009 - Craven Arms to Chepstow
Craven Arms - Ludlow - Leominster - Hereford - Monmouth - Chepstow
Breakfast lived up to expectations and included Sally’s home made strawberry jam and marmalade. As we left the ancient courtyard, Sally scolded her truculent children while her husband Edward drove off in his tractor to do whatever it is that farmers do.
We trundled down the track to the A49 where we turned right and headed back through Craven Arms towards Ludlow. Hereabouts I was disconcerted to see a sign directing heavy vehicles to this very road, and I was duly tortured by HGVs for the next forty miles.
By the time we had passed Ludlow, the morning was already hot and I was pleased to find Paul waiting for me with a cup of tea at a café in a lay-by at the top of a long hill. As we approached Leominster, a woman leaned out of the nearside window of a passing car and pointed angrily at the cycle path running alongside the road. We’d actually only just seen the unsigned path, which had been hitherto hidden by bushes, and it was raised up on a high kerb which meant we would have had to stop in a stream of heavy traffic in order to get on to it.
Leominster was followed by another lengthy stretch of the A49, fairly flat apart from a rise over the shoulder of Dinmore Hill, until we reached Hereford. The A49 runs through the centre of the city, unlike Ludlow and Leominster which are bypassed, and we stopped for lunch at a pub on the northern outskirts, finishing our meal with a chocolate brownie sundae which was fairly disgusting due to the low quality of the ice cream. We continued through the city, stopping to photograph the impressive cathedral, and after a few miles we finally escaped from the A49 on to the A466 at King’s Thorn.
The A466 was much quieter and hillier than the A49. We stopped at St Weonards for an ice cream, then had a sharp descent and ascent through Llancloudy, whose hybrid Welsh/English name reflects its proximity to the border.
We crossed the border in the hills north of Monmouth and then freewheeled down into the town, crossing the A40 and the River Wye to enter the wooded Wye Valley. The A466 now follows a level course by the east side of the river and is shaded by trees for much of the way, making for very pleasant cycling. We stopped at Redbrook to buy a cold drink, as the water in our bottles had become unappetisingly warm.
At this point, the Welsh border comes across from the east and runs down the centre of the Wye all the way to the Severn. This meant that we were in Gloucestershire for a while until the road crossed over to the west bank of the river at a narrow bridge controlled by traffic lights.
It was a scenic setting and a good photo opportunity, so Paul stopped by the lights while I walked up to the centre of the bridge, and we both got out our cameras and began pointing and clicking. Paul walked up to join me, and as we stood talking a car driver sounded his horn as he drove past. We didn’t know why, and assumed that he must have been the type of motorist who gets annoyed by the perks enjoyed by cyclists which are not available to motorists, such as the option of “jumping” traffic lights by getting off and pushing.
We got ready to set off again, and Paul reached for his cycling glasses, for which he had paid around £40 and had worn throughout the trip. They weren’t where he expected them to be on the back of his bike. Then the penny dropped and he realised they must have fallen off while he was pushing his bike across the bridge. He found the ill-fated spectacles lying in the road, mangled almost beyond recognition and certainly beyond repair. The motorist had merely been trying to warn him.
Paul cursed his misfortune at first, but soon saw the funny side and photographed the ex-glasses on the edge of the Bridge over the River Wye, before consigning them to a watery grave on the border between England and Wales. Unexpectedly they sank without trace, including the lenses which had become separate components but were intact, validating the manufacturer’s claim that they were unbreakable.
On the other side of the river, the road surmounted a rise to the village of Llandogo, and as we climbed we felt the first spots of rain since the Dornoch Firth. The rain felt soft and luxurious, coming as it did towards the end of another long hot day. By the time we reached Tintern, with its ruined but spectacular Abbey, the rain had ceased and the sun shone once more.
After Tintern, the Wye follows a serpentine course to Chepstow, and the road leaves the river and climbs up into the hills. I hadn’t expected this sting in the tail, and the ascent seemed interminable until at last we reached St Arvans and coasted down past Chepstow Racecourse and into the town.
We found our B&B easily enough and checked in. Its name, First Hurdle, indicated that it was probably popular with racegoers, and the service, while friendly and professional, seemed slightly impersonal as it was a business establishment rather than a family home. We were greeted with a cool drink, but on the other hand full payment was demanded on arrival. Presumably it’s not unknown for people to have rather poor weekends at the races and then do runners without paying their bills.
Having showered and changed, we went out and enjoyed perfectly cooked sea bass and a couple of beers at a nearby pub. This was my first visit to this interesting town, and I went for a stroll later in the evening, getting lost in its labyrinth of narrow streets and taking photographs of the castle, the oldest stone fortification in Britain, started in 1067 as part of Bill the Conk’s strategic vision for his newly purloined realm.
Breakfast lived up to expectations and included Sally’s home made strawberry jam and marmalade. As we left the ancient courtyard, Sally scolded her truculent children while her husband Edward drove off in his tractor to do whatever it is that farmers do.
We trundled down the track to the A49 where we turned right and headed back through Craven Arms towards Ludlow. Hereabouts I was disconcerted to see a sign directing heavy vehicles to this very road, and I was duly tortured by HGVs for the next forty miles.
By the time we had passed Ludlow, the morning was already hot and I was pleased to find Paul waiting for me with a cup of tea at a café in a lay-by at the top of a long hill. As we approached Leominster, a woman leaned out of the nearside window of a passing car and pointed angrily at the cycle path running alongside the road. We’d actually only just seen the unsigned path, which had been hitherto hidden by bushes, and it was raised up on a high kerb which meant we would have had to stop in a stream of heavy traffic in order to get on to it.
Leominster was followed by another lengthy stretch of the A49, fairly flat apart from a rise over the shoulder of Dinmore Hill, until we reached Hereford. The A49 runs through the centre of the city, unlike Ludlow and Leominster which are bypassed, and we stopped for lunch at a pub on the northern outskirts, finishing our meal with a chocolate brownie sundae which was fairly disgusting due to the low quality of the ice cream. We continued through the city, stopping to photograph the impressive cathedral, and after a few miles we finally escaped from the A49 on to the A466 at King’s Thorn.
The A466 was much quieter and hillier than the A49. We stopped at St Weonards for an ice cream, then had a sharp descent and ascent through Llancloudy, whose hybrid Welsh/English name reflects its proximity to the border.
We crossed the border in the hills north of Monmouth and then freewheeled down into the town, crossing the A40 and the River Wye to enter the wooded Wye Valley. The A466 now follows a level course by the east side of the river and is shaded by trees for much of the way, making for very pleasant cycling. We stopped at Redbrook to buy a cold drink, as the water in our bottles had become unappetisingly warm.
At this point, the Welsh border comes across from the east and runs down the centre of the Wye all the way to the Severn. This meant that we were in Gloucestershire for a while until the road crossed over to the west bank of the river at a narrow bridge controlled by traffic lights.
It was a scenic setting and a good photo opportunity, so Paul stopped by the lights while I walked up to the centre of the bridge, and we both got out our cameras and began pointing and clicking. Paul walked up to join me, and as we stood talking a car driver sounded his horn as he drove past. We didn’t know why, and assumed that he must have been the type of motorist who gets annoyed by the perks enjoyed by cyclists which are not available to motorists, such as the option of “jumping” traffic lights by getting off and pushing.
We got ready to set off again, and Paul reached for his cycling glasses, for which he had paid around £40 and had worn throughout the trip. They weren’t where he expected them to be on the back of his bike. Then the penny dropped and he realised they must have fallen off while he was pushing his bike across the bridge. He found the ill-fated spectacles lying in the road, mangled almost beyond recognition and certainly beyond repair. The motorist had merely been trying to warn him.
Paul cursed his misfortune at first, but soon saw the funny side and photographed the ex-glasses on the edge of the Bridge over the River Wye, before consigning them to a watery grave on the border between England and Wales. Unexpectedly they sank without trace, including the lenses which had become separate components but were intact, validating the manufacturer’s claim that they were unbreakable.
On the other side of the river, the road surmounted a rise to the village of Llandogo, and as we climbed we felt the first spots of rain since the Dornoch Firth. The rain felt soft and luxurious, coming as it did towards the end of another long hot day. By the time we reached Tintern, with its ruined but spectacular Abbey, the rain had ceased and the sun shone once more.
After Tintern, the Wye follows a serpentine course to Chepstow, and the road leaves the river and climbs up into the hills. I hadn’t expected this sting in the tail, and the ascent seemed interminable until at last we reached St Arvans and coasted down past Chepstow Racecourse and into the town.
We found our B&B easily enough and checked in. Its name, First Hurdle, indicated that it was probably popular with racegoers, and the service, while friendly and professional, seemed slightly impersonal as it was a business establishment rather than a family home. We were greeted with a cool drink, but on the other hand full payment was demanded on arrival. Presumably it’s not unknown for people to have rather poor weekends at the races and then do runners without paying their bills.
Having showered and changed, we went out and enjoyed perfectly cooked sea bass and a couple of beers at a nearby pub. This was my first visit to this interesting town, and I went for a stroll later in the evening, getting lost in its labyrinth of narrow streets and taking photographs of the castle, the oldest stone fortification in Britain, started in 1067 as part of Bill the Conk’s strategic vision for his newly purloined realm.
Friday 03 July 2009 - Chepstow to Glastonbury
Chepstow - Bristol - Farrington Gurney - Wells - Glastonbury
Our exit road, the A48, carries constant heavy traffic to the M48, and this combined with the steep Hardwick Hill out of town was just too much to face first thing in the morning, so we pushed our bikes up this short section before turning on to the A466 link road to the Severn Bridge and stopping at a filling station. Paul wanted to replace his late lamented glasses, and we needed an A-Z before attempting to find our way through Bristol. The shop sold neither, so we continued ahead, soon picking up the cycle path which leads on to and over the bridge, crossing the Wye and therefore the border with England, before passing over the wide expanse of the Severn. Half way along we stopped to take photographs and noticed the motion of the bridge as soon as we got off our bikes.
At the English bank of the river, we came down from the bridge to a roundabout at the junction with the A403, where we met a motorcyclist who needed to replace a fuse but couldn’t because he didn’t have the correct Allen key to remove the cover. He was an employee of a dealership and the toolkit was incomplete. Paul lent him the necessary tool from his kit, and once he was sorted we set off west along the A403, turning off at Northwick on to the B4055, which led us over the M4 and through Pilning, Easter Compton and Catbrain. Disappointingly, the name of the latter village is unconnected with cats or brains, being derived from Middle English “cattes brazen”, a reference to the local soil type.
We then passed under the M5, after which we were on the A4018 in the outskirts of Bristol and the need for an A-Z became pressing. I darted across the four lanes of the busy dual carriageway to obtain one from a filling station, after which we could hardly get lost. Making frequent reference to our map, we successfully found our way to the city centre and stopped at a café for lunch.
The centre of Bristol had a pleasantly laid back atmosphere, and abounded with interesting architecture both ancient and modern. Unfortunately however, the only bike shop we came across didn’t sell cycling glasses, so Paul had to remove squashed flies from under his eyelids for a few more miles.
Our A-Z guided us towards the A37 which took us out of the city to the final suburb of Whitchurch. Bristol is very hilly, due to the rivers Avon and Frome slicing through its limestone geology, and the last few miles had consequently been hard work. We stopped at a pub for a cold drink, although the weather had cooled to a pleasantly warm level rather than being oppressively hot, so we weren’t as dehydrated as we had been over the past couple of days.
Not long after the last vestige of the city disappeared behind us, we hit the Mendips. The first hill was steeper than I expected, and my chain came off at a most inconvenient spot on a busy stretch of road with absolutely nothing to lean my bike against. We continued up and down through Pensford, where Paul finally obtained replacement glasses, and Farrington Gurney where we took the A39 to Chewton Mendip. Here, on rounding a bend out of the village, we were presented with a startlingly welcome panorama. We had reached the edge of the Mendips and the Somerset Levels lay spread out before us, the flat landscape punctuated by an unmistakeable conical hill surmounted by a tower. Glastonbury Tor was about seven miles away.
Our toil was now rewarded with a four mile coast down to Wells, dominated by its tremendous cathedral. We stopped for a coffee in the centre of the little city and sat relaxing in the late afternoon sun, content in the knowledge that we had only a few more flat miles to go. Those miles turned out to be quite difficult, as the A39 was rather narrow and had suddenly become very busy. A cheeky little boy shouted something indecipherable at both Paul and me as his dad waited for a clear spot to overtake us.
We reached Glastonbury before too long, and despite a bit of faffing about finding the place, we were soon ensconced in our B&B, where our room was on the ground floor for once. We wandered into town an hour or so later and immediately fell under the spell of Glastonbury. It really is different. I’ve never been anywhere else quite like it, although its peaceful aura reminds me strangely of Iona. Nearly all the shops are alternative to some degree and a considerable proportion of the local population seem to be hippies of various generations. We ate a fine lentil biryani at a vegetarian restaurant where all the staff gave the impression of being stoned, and then repaired to the ancient Queen’s Head where I sampled some real farmhouse cider, the like of which I hadn’t tasted for many a year. It was smooth and intensely refreshing, so I downed it with great relish and felt the alcohol hit as I stood at the bar ordering my second pint. The strength wasn’t specified, but I guessed it was considerably more than 5% and called it a day after two pints.
We made our way back to our lodgings and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep sleep.
Our exit road, the A48, carries constant heavy traffic to the M48, and this combined with the steep Hardwick Hill out of town was just too much to face first thing in the morning, so we pushed our bikes up this short section before turning on to the A466 link road to the Severn Bridge and stopping at a filling station. Paul wanted to replace his late lamented glasses, and we needed an A-Z before attempting to find our way through Bristol. The shop sold neither, so we continued ahead, soon picking up the cycle path which leads on to and over the bridge, crossing the Wye and therefore the border with England, before passing over the wide expanse of the Severn. Half way along we stopped to take photographs and noticed the motion of the bridge as soon as we got off our bikes.
At the English bank of the river, we came down from the bridge to a roundabout at the junction with the A403, where we met a motorcyclist who needed to replace a fuse but couldn’t because he didn’t have the correct Allen key to remove the cover. He was an employee of a dealership and the toolkit was incomplete. Paul lent him the necessary tool from his kit, and once he was sorted we set off west along the A403, turning off at Northwick on to the B4055, which led us over the M4 and through Pilning, Easter Compton and Catbrain. Disappointingly, the name of the latter village is unconnected with cats or brains, being derived from Middle English “cattes brazen”, a reference to the local soil type.
We then passed under the M5, after which we were on the A4018 in the outskirts of Bristol and the need for an A-Z became pressing. I darted across the four lanes of the busy dual carriageway to obtain one from a filling station, after which we could hardly get lost. Making frequent reference to our map, we successfully found our way to the city centre and stopped at a café for lunch.
The centre of Bristol had a pleasantly laid back atmosphere, and abounded with interesting architecture both ancient and modern. Unfortunately however, the only bike shop we came across didn’t sell cycling glasses, so Paul had to remove squashed flies from under his eyelids for a few more miles.
Our A-Z guided us towards the A37 which took us out of the city to the final suburb of Whitchurch. Bristol is very hilly, due to the rivers Avon and Frome slicing through its limestone geology, and the last few miles had consequently been hard work. We stopped at a pub for a cold drink, although the weather had cooled to a pleasantly warm level rather than being oppressively hot, so we weren’t as dehydrated as we had been over the past couple of days.
Not long after the last vestige of the city disappeared behind us, we hit the Mendips. The first hill was steeper than I expected, and my chain came off at a most inconvenient spot on a busy stretch of road with absolutely nothing to lean my bike against. We continued up and down through Pensford, where Paul finally obtained replacement glasses, and Farrington Gurney where we took the A39 to Chewton Mendip. Here, on rounding a bend out of the village, we were presented with a startlingly welcome panorama. We had reached the edge of the Mendips and the Somerset Levels lay spread out before us, the flat landscape punctuated by an unmistakeable conical hill surmounted by a tower. Glastonbury Tor was about seven miles away.
Our toil was now rewarded with a four mile coast down to Wells, dominated by its tremendous cathedral. We stopped for a coffee in the centre of the little city and sat relaxing in the late afternoon sun, content in the knowledge that we had only a few more flat miles to go. Those miles turned out to be quite difficult, as the A39 was rather narrow and had suddenly become very busy. A cheeky little boy shouted something indecipherable at both Paul and me as his dad waited for a clear spot to overtake us.
We reached Glastonbury before too long, and despite a bit of faffing about finding the place, we were soon ensconced in our B&B, where our room was on the ground floor for once. We wandered into town an hour or so later and immediately fell under the spell of Glastonbury. It really is different. I’ve never been anywhere else quite like it, although its peaceful aura reminds me strangely of Iona. Nearly all the shops are alternative to some degree and a considerable proportion of the local population seem to be hippies of various generations. We ate a fine lentil biryani at a vegetarian restaurant where all the staff gave the impression of being stoned, and then repaired to the ancient Queen’s Head where I sampled some real farmhouse cider, the like of which I hadn’t tasted for many a year. It was smooth and intensely refreshing, so I downed it with great relish and felt the alcohol hit as I stood at the bar ordering my second pint. The strength wasn’t specified, but I guessed it was considerably more than 5% and called it a day after two pints.
We made our way back to our lodgings and as soon as my head hit the pillow, I fell into a deep sleep.
Saturday 04 July 2009 - Glastonbury to Crediton
Glastonbury - Othery - Taunton - Wellington - Tiverton - Cadbury - Crediton
My luxurious slumber suddenly evaporated, to be replaced by the sound of cups rattling and a stream of fraternal profanity. The last time my kid brother woke me up by swearing at me had been around 1974 when, during an episode of alcohol-related somnambulant mis-micturition, I had mistaken the table between our beds for a urinal. I was reasonably confident that I hadn’t repeated that particular faux pas, as I was still snuggled up in bed.
“What’s the matter?” I enquired.
“I can’t sleep, I’m making a drink” replied Paul. He sounded stressed and exasperated. I knew his sciatica had been disturbing his sleep, so I asked “Is your leg hurting?”
“No. It’s your snoring.”
I was absolutely mortified. I know only too well the misery of hours of enforced sleep deprivation caused by unwanted noise, having endured many sleepless nights being tortured by my neighbours’ gangsta rap and incessantly barking dogs. And now I had inflicted that same suffering on my brother. This was the only night of the trip that my snoring presented a problem, so I can only conclude that my throat muscles had been more relaxed than usual, thanks to the alcohol content of the cider in the Queen’s Head.
There was only one decent thing to do. It was only 4am, so I got dressed and went out for a walk, allowing Paul the opportunity to snatch a couple of hours sleep. The destination of my early morning stroll was not difficult to decide upon, and I was soon ascending the steep path to Glastonbury Tor.
Dawn was beginning to glimmer in the eastern sky, and as I rose above the trees on to the bare hill, I realised that the Somerset Levels were blanketed in early morning mist. It wasn’t until I neared the summit that the ethereal outline of St Michael’s Tower began to form. I walked inside and looked up through the roofless structure at the blueing sky before wandering back out into the mist. Sunrise was approaching, and I watched spellbound as the mist grew thinner and sank below the summit, leaving a white sea surrounding the Tor.
The Avalon of Arthurian legend upon which I stood was indeed an island before the fenlands of the Levels were drained, and was known to the Britons as Ynys Afalon. Presumably it will regain its former status should sea levels rise sufficiently in the future. I gazed down its slopes and at its unexplained terraces as the mist slowly dissipated until it remained only as gossamer threads hanging over the woods below.
The dawn brightened and the low twittering in the trees gradually developed into a full birdsong symphony, with every possible avian emotion expressed simultaneously. I really couldn’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be. And then I realised I was not alone. Two hazy figures emerged from the remnants of the mist, climbing the path up the hill. As they drew closer, I saw that they were two hippies, probably in their late teens. They appeared to be friends rather than boyfriend and girlfriend, and I sat down and chatted with them for a while in the ancient tower. They were wonderfully companionable young people who radiated peace and hope, and I rewound 35 years in their presence.
On my way back down the path, I met a middle aged couple who, in contrast to the hippies, responded to my cheery greeting with frosty silence. I made my way back to the B&B, almost getting lost along the way, and let myself into our room as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb Paul if he’d managed to get to sleep in the absence of my uvular serenade. As soon as I walked through the door, he raised his head from his pillow and said “I can’t believe you buggered off like that”.
Breakfast was still over an hour away, and I had become quite cold wandering around in a t-shirt in the misty early morning, so I got back into bed and soon felt incredibly comfortable, wanting to lie there dozing for at least the next five hours. Time then cruelly accelerated, as is its wont in such situations, and it seemed that only a few minutes elapsed before I had to get up.
When we walked into the breakfast room, I was surprised to see about a dozen other guests, as the house was only of an average size. The room was packed with rather large tables, leaving limited room to squeeze through to the cereals and coffee which predictably were situated at the furthest possible distance from our table. The return journey was particularly tricky, as we were obliged to carry our coffees and loaded cereal bowls over the heads of some of our seated fellow guests.
Our table was flanked by two other tables, at both of which was seated a solitary Breakfasting Lady of about sixty. Whenever I looked to the left I was met by a ferocious glare, whereas to the right I received a sweet smile. The two Ladies were equally intimidating. The couple running the establishment had nobody to assist them in preparing and serving the meals, and the quality inevitably suffered. The bacon, eggs and sausage were all grossly overcooked, but we didn’t mind because we were in Glastonbury, where nothing is normal.
Before we set off, I left the Bristol A-Z in our room as it had been taking up too much room on my bike since fulfilling its vital function in getting us through the city. I hid it to prevent our hosts finding and helpfully returning it before we escaped.
The cycling part of the day began with about twenty easy miles across the Somerset Levels, past myriad drainage channels which were often festooned with water lilies. We left Glastonbury via the A39, turning left on to the A361 and passing through Othery, East Lyng and West Lyng before merging with the A38 after the bridge over the M5. We were soon in the outskirts of Taunton, and we stopped near the River Tone bridge where a passer-by informed Paul of a cycle path that started by the bridge and ran all the way to the town centre.
We followed the path and sure enough found ourselves in the middle of an extremely busy Taunton. We found a coffee shop for lunch, and then realised we’d completely lost our bearings and had no idea which direction to follow to get back on the A38 to Tiverton. A degree of confusion ensued, not helped by the fact that everyone we asked was a visitor and didn’t know the way to Tiverton either, but eventually we re-orientated ourselves and headed in the correct south-westerly direction out of town. A feature common to the centres of almost all towns and cities seems to be the absence of useful road signs.
After skirting Wellington, we found ourselves once more in hillier terrain as we approached the Devon border. We passed a settlement called Whiteball, then one called Red Ball, but a pub a little further along the road spoilt the snooker imagery by being named Poacher’s Pocket, rather than something like Centre Pocket or Top Right Hand Pocket. We then crossed the M5 twice, after which we had to suffer a disagreeable stretch of the A361 dual carriageway to Tiverton.
At Tiverton, we turned left on to the B3391 which bisects the town, crossing the River Exe and taking the A396 south, following the river, as far as Bickleigh where we turned right on to the A3072. Here we had to tackle the excruciating Bickleigh Hill, which soon saw us off our bikes and pushing. The final ten miles or so to Crediton was an unrelenting switchback with the highest point being Cadbury Hill, but our reward was to be surrounded by picture postcard Devon countryside, complete with blue sky over rolling patchwork quilt hills dotted with contented cows. We didn’t bother straying into the fields, but if we had, we may well have encountered Farmer Palmer with his shotgun, instructing us to “Get orf moy laaaand!”
Our B&B was a fine Georgian villa at the south end of Crediton on the A377 Exeter road, near the railway station. Our host Peter had done a fair bit of cycling himself, and made us very welcome with tea and biscuits on the patio. The front gate to the property was on a blind bend, and there was no pavement so access and egress were slightly hazardous, especially as motorists seemed to enjoy driving as close to the gate as possible.
Happily we survived with all our toes intact, and we walked into town in search of a meal. We found Crediton town centre to have a somewhat run down atmosphere, with many semi-derelict buildings on the periphery of the main street. Although it was Saturday evening and there were quite a few people around, nobody seemed to be particularly having fun. With the nightlife of Exeter only about eight miles away, Crediton holds little attraction for those seeking a good night out and its few pubs appeared mundane and uninviting, as did everywhere else including the café and the Chinese and Indian eateries. We eventually decided on the chip shop. When fish and chips are exceptional, as they were in Thurso, they constitute a fine meal. Unfortunately they’re nearly always crap, and those in Crediton were true to the norm, most of mine ending up in the well-fed bin on the pavement outside. The service had been extremely fast and efficient, which is usually a bad sign. After our meal, we went to one of the mundane, uninviting pubs and washed the taste of the crap fish and chips away with a pint of third-rate beer.
We returned to our very well-appointed lodgings and fell to discussing our final goal which was now within reach with only two and a half days to go. Paul opined that we still had a chance to fail should the forthcoming terrain consistently replicate the severity of the last ten miles, which he calculated we had crossed at an average of little over 4 mph, mainly due to my indolence. Even though I felt the odds against Devon and Cornwall being quite so vindictive were astronomical, I couldn’t be absolutely sure what lay ahead, and my optimism became tainted with semi-doubt.
My luxurious slumber suddenly evaporated, to be replaced by the sound of cups rattling and a stream of fraternal profanity. The last time my kid brother woke me up by swearing at me had been around 1974 when, during an episode of alcohol-related somnambulant mis-micturition, I had mistaken the table between our beds for a urinal. I was reasonably confident that I hadn’t repeated that particular faux pas, as I was still snuggled up in bed.
“What’s the matter?” I enquired.
“I can’t sleep, I’m making a drink” replied Paul. He sounded stressed and exasperated. I knew his sciatica had been disturbing his sleep, so I asked “Is your leg hurting?”
“No. It’s your snoring.”
I was absolutely mortified. I know only too well the misery of hours of enforced sleep deprivation caused by unwanted noise, having endured many sleepless nights being tortured by my neighbours’ gangsta rap and incessantly barking dogs. And now I had inflicted that same suffering on my brother. This was the only night of the trip that my snoring presented a problem, so I can only conclude that my throat muscles had been more relaxed than usual, thanks to the alcohol content of the cider in the Queen’s Head.
There was only one decent thing to do. It was only 4am, so I got dressed and went out for a walk, allowing Paul the opportunity to snatch a couple of hours sleep. The destination of my early morning stroll was not difficult to decide upon, and I was soon ascending the steep path to Glastonbury Tor.
Dawn was beginning to glimmer in the eastern sky, and as I rose above the trees on to the bare hill, I realised that the Somerset Levels were blanketed in early morning mist. It wasn’t until I neared the summit that the ethereal outline of St Michael’s Tower began to form. I walked inside and looked up through the roofless structure at the blueing sky before wandering back out into the mist. Sunrise was approaching, and I watched spellbound as the mist grew thinner and sank below the summit, leaving a white sea surrounding the Tor.
The Avalon of Arthurian legend upon which I stood was indeed an island before the fenlands of the Levels were drained, and was known to the Britons as Ynys Afalon. Presumably it will regain its former status should sea levels rise sufficiently in the future. I gazed down its slopes and at its unexplained terraces as the mist slowly dissipated until it remained only as gossamer threads hanging over the woods below.
The dawn brightened and the low twittering in the trees gradually developed into a full birdsong symphony, with every possible avian emotion expressed simultaneously. I really couldn’t imagine anywhere I’d rather be. And then I realised I was not alone. Two hazy figures emerged from the remnants of the mist, climbing the path up the hill. As they drew closer, I saw that they were two hippies, probably in their late teens. They appeared to be friends rather than boyfriend and girlfriend, and I sat down and chatted with them for a while in the ancient tower. They were wonderfully companionable young people who radiated peace and hope, and I rewound 35 years in their presence.
On my way back down the path, I met a middle aged couple who, in contrast to the hippies, responded to my cheery greeting with frosty silence. I made my way back to the B&B, almost getting lost along the way, and let myself into our room as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb Paul if he’d managed to get to sleep in the absence of my uvular serenade. As soon as I walked through the door, he raised his head from his pillow and said “I can’t believe you buggered off like that”.
Breakfast was still over an hour away, and I had become quite cold wandering around in a t-shirt in the misty early morning, so I got back into bed and soon felt incredibly comfortable, wanting to lie there dozing for at least the next five hours. Time then cruelly accelerated, as is its wont in such situations, and it seemed that only a few minutes elapsed before I had to get up.
When we walked into the breakfast room, I was surprised to see about a dozen other guests, as the house was only of an average size. The room was packed with rather large tables, leaving limited room to squeeze through to the cereals and coffee which predictably were situated at the furthest possible distance from our table. The return journey was particularly tricky, as we were obliged to carry our coffees and loaded cereal bowls over the heads of some of our seated fellow guests.
Our table was flanked by two other tables, at both of which was seated a solitary Breakfasting Lady of about sixty. Whenever I looked to the left I was met by a ferocious glare, whereas to the right I received a sweet smile. The two Ladies were equally intimidating. The couple running the establishment had nobody to assist them in preparing and serving the meals, and the quality inevitably suffered. The bacon, eggs and sausage were all grossly overcooked, but we didn’t mind because we were in Glastonbury, where nothing is normal.
Before we set off, I left the Bristol A-Z in our room as it had been taking up too much room on my bike since fulfilling its vital function in getting us through the city. I hid it to prevent our hosts finding and helpfully returning it before we escaped.
The cycling part of the day began with about twenty easy miles across the Somerset Levels, past myriad drainage channels which were often festooned with water lilies. We left Glastonbury via the A39, turning left on to the A361 and passing through Othery, East Lyng and West Lyng before merging with the A38 after the bridge over the M5. We were soon in the outskirts of Taunton, and we stopped near the River Tone bridge where a passer-by informed Paul of a cycle path that started by the bridge and ran all the way to the town centre.
We followed the path and sure enough found ourselves in the middle of an extremely busy Taunton. We found a coffee shop for lunch, and then realised we’d completely lost our bearings and had no idea which direction to follow to get back on the A38 to Tiverton. A degree of confusion ensued, not helped by the fact that everyone we asked was a visitor and didn’t know the way to Tiverton either, but eventually we re-orientated ourselves and headed in the correct south-westerly direction out of town. A feature common to the centres of almost all towns and cities seems to be the absence of useful road signs.
After skirting Wellington, we found ourselves once more in hillier terrain as we approached the Devon border. We passed a settlement called Whiteball, then one called Red Ball, but a pub a little further along the road spoilt the snooker imagery by being named Poacher’s Pocket, rather than something like Centre Pocket or Top Right Hand Pocket. We then crossed the M5 twice, after which we had to suffer a disagreeable stretch of the A361 dual carriageway to Tiverton.
At Tiverton, we turned left on to the B3391 which bisects the town, crossing the River Exe and taking the A396 south, following the river, as far as Bickleigh where we turned right on to the A3072. Here we had to tackle the excruciating Bickleigh Hill, which soon saw us off our bikes and pushing. The final ten miles or so to Crediton was an unrelenting switchback with the highest point being Cadbury Hill, but our reward was to be surrounded by picture postcard Devon countryside, complete with blue sky over rolling patchwork quilt hills dotted with contented cows. We didn’t bother straying into the fields, but if we had, we may well have encountered Farmer Palmer with his shotgun, instructing us to “Get orf moy laaaand!”
Our B&B was a fine Georgian villa at the south end of Crediton on the A377 Exeter road, near the railway station. Our host Peter had done a fair bit of cycling himself, and made us very welcome with tea and biscuits on the patio. The front gate to the property was on a blind bend, and there was no pavement so access and egress were slightly hazardous, especially as motorists seemed to enjoy driving as close to the gate as possible.
Happily we survived with all our toes intact, and we walked into town in search of a meal. We found Crediton town centre to have a somewhat run down atmosphere, with many semi-derelict buildings on the periphery of the main street. Although it was Saturday evening and there were quite a few people around, nobody seemed to be particularly having fun. With the nightlife of Exeter only about eight miles away, Crediton holds little attraction for those seeking a good night out and its few pubs appeared mundane and uninviting, as did everywhere else including the café and the Chinese and Indian eateries. We eventually decided on the chip shop. When fish and chips are exceptional, as they were in Thurso, they constitute a fine meal. Unfortunately they’re nearly always crap, and those in Crediton were true to the norm, most of mine ending up in the well-fed bin on the pavement outside. The service had been extremely fast and efficient, which is usually a bad sign. After our meal, we went to one of the mundane, uninviting pubs and washed the taste of the crap fish and chips away with a pint of third-rate beer.
We returned to our very well-appointed lodgings and fell to discussing our final goal which was now within reach with only two and a half days to go. Paul opined that we still had a chance to fail should the forthcoming terrain consistently replicate the severity of the last ten miles, which he calculated we had crossed at an average of little over 4 mph, mainly due to my indolence. Even though I felt the odds against Devon and Cornwall being quite so vindictive were astronomical, I couldn’t be absolutely sure what lay ahead, and my optimism became tainted with semi-doubt.
Sunday 05 July 2009 - Crediton to Launceston
Crediton - Bow - Okehampton - Lewdown - Lifton - Launceston
I had been looking forward with slavering anticipation to this morning’s breakfast as for once the menu offered a choice, and I had ordered smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, one of my favourites. I was therefore somewhat annoyed upon wakening to discover that in fact I felt rather sick and didn’t feel like eating anything at all. My breakfast, when it arrived, looked delicious but I may as well have been eating cold leftover doner kebab, and I couldn’t finish it. I attributed my indisposition to the questionable cuisine of the previous evening.
In view of my dyspeptic start to the day, I would have welcomed an easy ride out of town, but I knew it was not to be. Crediton is surrounded by hills and the only way out is up. As it turned out the gradient wasn’t too severe and although I stopped on numerous occasions to rest, I never had to get off and push. This pattern of long moderate hills alternating with easier terrain persisted for the rest of the trip.
A few miles out of Crediton on the A377, we met a local chap walking his dogs who gave us some invaluable tips for the section between Okehampton and Launceston. He pointed out that we wouldn’t, as we’d feared, be obliged to use the dreadful A30 as the old road through Lewdown was still available and the terrain was reasonably easy. This knowledge was so welcome that my indigestion vanished instantly.
At Copplestone we turned left on to the A3072, passing through Bow before turning left again on to the B3215 for the last few miles to Okehampton. All morning the great granite mass of Dartmoor had been looming closer, and as we approached the northern edge of the town we began to feel spots of light rain and the atmosphere became noticeably mistier. This heralded the only period of unsettled weather we encountered during our ride. Atlantic lows were fighting an unsuccessful battle against the established ridge of high pressure, and were only really making their presence felt around the high plateaux of Dartmoor and Bodmin moor. Nevertheless, the rain at Okehampton soon ceased and we didn’t really get wet.
It was still only about 10.45, so we pottered around town for a while before locating a fifties-themed café, complete with juke box, one-armed bandit and Elvis and Buddy Holly posters, where we had a coffee, chatted to a cat outside, and asked directions out of town, Okehampton being another confusing place with a paucity of meaningful road signs. We ignored helpful suggestions of taking various idyllic traffic-free cycle paths on the grounds that they’d probably add another 50 miles or so to our day’s itinerary, and kept to our previous advice to use the old A30, the now unclassified road through Lewdown.
In order to access this route we first had a 400m climb up the new A30 to reach the old road at Sourton Down. We left town on the B3260 and Paul pulled ahead as usual. I caught up with him waiting by the roadside at the A30 junction, while two Women on Horseback trotted towards me. Paul described his brief conversation with them:
Paul: “Good afternoon!”
Woman on Horseback: “You’re scary, you are.”
Our first taste of the A30 was over before it had time to become really nasty, and we were soon on the peaceful old road. We stopped to take photographs of two ponies with Dartmoor as a backdrop, then continued our West Devon journey through Bridestowe and Lewdown, taking several breaks along the way, on one of which occasions I found Paul chatting to a rather strange chap who appeared to spend much of his time waiting for buses which never stopped, possibly because he wasn’t at a bus stop. Later we came across a small country pub where we devoured a plate of delectable moules mariniere. Near Old Tinhay, we were caught by a short sharp shower and took refuge in a stone bus shelter, sharing it with a group of cyclists who were heading east. Soon after Lifton, we passed under the A30 after which we joined the A388 for the last few miles to Launceston, crossing the Tamar and the Cornish border about two miles before the town.
All that remained was a steep climb up the hill upon which Launceston and its castle are built. As we rode into the town centre, the rain started again and we dived into a pub to shelter, the friendly staff inviting us to wheel our bikes through the bar into the beer garden/smoking area. We learned that our B&B was only a little way up the road, so when the rain slackened off we hastened to check in and found that our room was on the top floor of a large house at one of the highest points in Launceston. The window faced east and we therefore enjoyed a superb panoramic view of a large part of Devon, including much of our day’s route.
During our evening stroll around the rather quaint old town, Paul disappeared into a church for so long that I was relieved to see he wasn’t wearing a dog collar when he emerged. He had been talking to the vicar, who happened to be from Derby originally. We called at a Turkish takeaway for dinner, which was a delight for me as I’d been pining for hot spicy food since day one, and I devoured my chilli-laden shish kebab greedily. We then dropped into a pub for a pint of mediocre beer and returned back to base in another heavy shower.
I had been looking forward with slavering anticipation to this morning’s breakfast as for once the menu offered a choice, and I had ordered smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, one of my favourites. I was therefore somewhat annoyed upon wakening to discover that in fact I felt rather sick and didn’t feel like eating anything at all. My breakfast, when it arrived, looked delicious but I may as well have been eating cold leftover doner kebab, and I couldn’t finish it. I attributed my indisposition to the questionable cuisine of the previous evening.
In view of my dyspeptic start to the day, I would have welcomed an easy ride out of town, but I knew it was not to be. Crediton is surrounded by hills and the only way out is up. As it turned out the gradient wasn’t too severe and although I stopped on numerous occasions to rest, I never had to get off and push. This pattern of long moderate hills alternating with easier terrain persisted for the rest of the trip.
A few miles out of Crediton on the A377, we met a local chap walking his dogs who gave us some invaluable tips for the section between Okehampton and Launceston. He pointed out that we wouldn’t, as we’d feared, be obliged to use the dreadful A30 as the old road through Lewdown was still available and the terrain was reasonably easy. This knowledge was so welcome that my indigestion vanished instantly.
At Copplestone we turned left on to the A3072, passing through Bow before turning left again on to the B3215 for the last few miles to Okehampton. All morning the great granite mass of Dartmoor had been looming closer, and as we approached the northern edge of the town we began to feel spots of light rain and the atmosphere became noticeably mistier. This heralded the only period of unsettled weather we encountered during our ride. Atlantic lows were fighting an unsuccessful battle against the established ridge of high pressure, and were only really making their presence felt around the high plateaux of Dartmoor and Bodmin moor. Nevertheless, the rain at Okehampton soon ceased and we didn’t really get wet.
It was still only about 10.45, so we pottered around town for a while before locating a fifties-themed café, complete with juke box, one-armed bandit and Elvis and Buddy Holly posters, where we had a coffee, chatted to a cat outside, and asked directions out of town, Okehampton being another confusing place with a paucity of meaningful road signs. We ignored helpful suggestions of taking various idyllic traffic-free cycle paths on the grounds that they’d probably add another 50 miles or so to our day’s itinerary, and kept to our previous advice to use the old A30, the now unclassified road through Lewdown.
In order to access this route we first had a 400m climb up the new A30 to reach the old road at Sourton Down. We left town on the B3260 and Paul pulled ahead as usual. I caught up with him waiting by the roadside at the A30 junction, while two Women on Horseback trotted towards me. Paul described his brief conversation with them:
Paul: “Good afternoon!”
Woman on Horseback: “You’re scary, you are.”
Our first taste of the A30 was over before it had time to become really nasty, and we were soon on the peaceful old road. We stopped to take photographs of two ponies with Dartmoor as a backdrop, then continued our West Devon journey through Bridestowe and Lewdown, taking several breaks along the way, on one of which occasions I found Paul chatting to a rather strange chap who appeared to spend much of his time waiting for buses which never stopped, possibly because he wasn’t at a bus stop. Later we came across a small country pub where we devoured a plate of delectable moules mariniere. Near Old Tinhay, we were caught by a short sharp shower and took refuge in a stone bus shelter, sharing it with a group of cyclists who were heading east. Soon after Lifton, we passed under the A30 after which we joined the A388 for the last few miles to Launceston, crossing the Tamar and the Cornish border about two miles before the town.
All that remained was a steep climb up the hill upon which Launceston and its castle are built. As we rode into the town centre, the rain started again and we dived into a pub to shelter, the friendly staff inviting us to wheel our bikes through the bar into the beer garden/smoking area. We learned that our B&B was only a little way up the road, so when the rain slackened off we hastened to check in and found that our room was on the top floor of a large house at one of the highest points in Launceston. The window faced east and we therefore enjoyed a superb panoramic view of a large part of Devon, including much of our day’s route.
During our evening stroll around the rather quaint old town, Paul disappeared into a church for so long that I was relieved to see he wasn’t wearing a dog collar when he emerged. He had been talking to the vicar, who happened to be from Derby originally. We called at a Turkish takeaway for dinner, which was a delight for me as I’d been pining for hot spicy food since day one, and I devoured my chilli-laden shish kebab greedily. We then dropped into a pub for a pint of mediocre beer and returned back to base in another heavy shower.
Monday 06 July 2009 - Launceston to Redruth
Launceston - Bodmin - Redruth
The showers had persisted throughout the night and this was the only morning of the trip that I set off wearing my bright orange rain jacket. I felt nothing but apprehension about our route for the day, which lay almost entirely along the A30 for over fifty miles.
The A30 may well be the worst road to cycle along in the whole of Britain. It is a screaming, stinking hell from which there is no escape since it is the only viable route west through inland Cornwall. No special provision whatsoever has been made for cyclists, for whom it is a thoroughly dangerous place to be with extremely large vehicles continually whistling past, often far too close for comfort. I knew that several fatal accidents had befallen end to end cyclists on this awful road and that the sword of Damocles would hang over us all day, with instant annihilation only a mistimed blink away. For much of its length the A30 consists of long, tiring uphill grinds, and it doesn’t even offer the compensation of fine scenery, as the interior of Cornwall is mainly composed of barren, boring upland with none of the grandeur associated with its coastal areas. My sole source of entertainment lay in looking out for Cornish place names on signposts, breaking them down into their Brythonic elements, translating them into Welsh and then into English.
As we climbed on to Bodmin Moor, the weather deteriorated and the rain became heavier. The visibility began to diminish and we were grateful to arrive at the turning for Jamaica Inn. We were already wet and cold by the time we arrived at the famous hostelry, where we had two cups of coffee amidst the Du Maurier memorabilia before steeling ourselves for the horrors to come and venturing back outside. I was pleased to hear that the parrot, who lived in a cage in the bar at the time of my last visit fourteen years previously, was still alive and well, now resident in an upstairs room. Hopefully he’s now content in a more peaceful environment. I felt sorry for him when I saw him back in 1995, as he’d pulled many of his feathers out, presumably due to the stress of being the centre of attraction in a busy pub.
After re-joining the A30, we continued our ascent to the crest of Bodmin Moor where our situation became much more serious. The rain was now torrential and we were soaked to our skins. The downpour and the spray from the heavy traffic obliterated everything from view and we realised we were invisible to the drivers. I was extremely relieved to reach the turning to Temple, where we knew we could take the old road for a few miles and thus avoid a stretch of the A30.
Paul was waiting for me at the junction, shivering because I’d taken so long to catch him up that he’d begun to develop hypothermia while standing in the rain. The old road wasn’t particularly appealing, as it was running with water and seemed to disappear into the heart of Bodmin Moor, but we both agreed it was far preferable to the deadly main road, so we followed it and stopped at a disused telephone kiosk where we sheltered for a few minutes and consulted the map, which was saturated and in a very fragile condition. We then resumed our moorland diversion until we found ourselves merging back on to the A30, where fortunately the weather and the visibility began to improve as we approached the western edge of the moor and dropped down towards the Bodmin junction.
As we turned off to Bodmin, the rain abated and chinks of blue sky began to appear. We squelched into a tea room and sat there dripping as we devoured Cornish cream teas and pasties. Once again, we had difficulty finding our way out of town, but before too long we located the A391 leading to Lanivet and back to the A30. With the rain now behind us, the cycling conditions had improved from horrific to horrible, but the final thirty miles to Redruth seemed endless. Our misery was compounded by the gusting wind from the south west which at times almost stopped us in our tracks. We were appallingly exposed and vulnerable, and at one point a lorry passed so close to Paul that his bike was sucked sideways towards its wheels. I found the slip roads particularly terrifying, and dealt with them by keeping left and then waiting for a gap in the traffic to regain the main road, thereby avoiding being caught between two lanes. The only relief came in the form of the occasional lay-by, where for a few precious seconds I could distance myself from the death zone.
The name of one of the villages we passed, Indian Queens, grabbed my attention in a way that only chess players would understand. Paul stared at me with a mixture of pity and blank incomprehension when I attempted to explain its similarity to the name of a major opening system, the Queen’s Indian Defence.
Between the junctions with the A39 and the A390, the A30 became single carriageway for about 10 miles, but this had the effect of causing a bottleneck, resulting in slow moving nose to tail traffic, at times stationary and so near to the kerb that we had difficulty getting past. It was however pleasant to regain the feeling of being in the countryside and to have wide verges and farm gates available for rest stops, rather than being on a conveyor belt hemmed in by embankments. A field near the junction with the B3285 was occupied by a group of travellers who were selling assorted carved wooden objects, including five feet high Psilocybe semilanceata. Much as I’d have loved a giant ‘shroom for my garden, I decided it would be a little too cumbersome to carry about on my bike.
The last five miles or so to Redruth were again dual carriageway, and the A3047 turning to the town had been placed at the furthest possible point in order to maximise our suffering. I felt an immense surge of relief as I left that infernal highway, which I will never cycle along again. It is difficult indeed to find words to adequately express my distaste for the A30. It is the very anus of obscenity.
Our B&B turned out to be some distance along the A3047, mid-way between the centres of Redruth and Camborne. Our host was a retired police officer who had served in Derby in the 60s and 70s, and was an experienced cyclist himself. He reassured us that we wouldn’t have to use the A30 again until we reached Hayle, by which stage it was an ordinary rural road.
Most of Paul’s spare clothes had got soaked in his panniers so I lent him a dry pair of socks, which he hasn’t returned, probably because he hasn’t changed them yet. We walked over the road to the local pub where we had steak pie, chips and carrots and three pints of cider, comfortable in the knowledge that we had only about 30 miles to go the next day.
The showers had persisted throughout the night and this was the only morning of the trip that I set off wearing my bright orange rain jacket. I felt nothing but apprehension about our route for the day, which lay almost entirely along the A30 for over fifty miles.
The A30 may well be the worst road to cycle along in the whole of Britain. It is a screaming, stinking hell from which there is no escape since it is the only viable route west through inland Cornwall. No special provision whatsoever has been made for cyclists, for whom it is a thoroughly dangerous place to be with extremely large vehicles continually whistling past, often far too close for comfort. I knew that several fatal accidents had befallen end to end cyclists on this awful road and that the sword of Damocles would hang over us all day, with instant annihilation only a mistimed blink away. For much of its length the A30 consists of long, tiring uphill grinds, and it doesn’t even offer the compensation of fine scenery, as the interior of Cornwall is mainly composed of barren, boring upland with none of the grandeur associated with its coastal areas. My sole source of entertainment lay in looking out for Cornish place names on signposts, breaking them down into their Brythonic elements, translating them into Welsh and then into English.
As we climbed on to Bodmin Moor, the weather deteriorated and the rain became heavier. The visibility began to diminish and we were grateful to arrive at the turning for Jamaica Inn. We were already wet and cold by the time we arrived at the famous hostelry, where we had two cups of coffee amidst the Du Maurier memorabilia before steeling ourselves for the horrors to come and venturing back outside. I was pleased to hear that the parrot, who lived in a cage in the bar at the time of my last visit fourteen years previously, was still alive and well, now resident in an upstairs room. Hopefully he’s now content in a more peaceful environment. I felt sorry for him when I saw him back in 1995, as he’d pulled many of his feathers out, presumably due to the stress of being the centre of attraction in a busy pub.
After re-joining the A30, we continued our ascent to the crest of Bodmin Moor where our situation became much more serious. The rain was now torrential and we were soaked to our skins. The downpour and the spray from the heavy traffic obliterated everything from view and we realised we were invisible to the drivers. I was extremely relieved to reach the turning to Temple, where we knew we could take the old road for a few miles and thus avoid a stretch of the A30.
Paul was waiting for me at the junction, shivering because I’d taken so long to catch him up that he’d begun to develop hypothermia while standing in the rain. The old road wasn’t particularly appealing, as it was running with water and seemed to disappear into the heart of Bodmin Moor, but we both agreed it was far preferable to the deadly main road, so we followed it and stopped at a disused telephone kiosk where we sheltered for a few minutes and consulted the map, which was saturated and in a very fragile condition. We then resumed our moorland diversion until we found ourselves merging back on to the A30, where fortunately the weather and the visibility began to improve as we approached the western edge of the moor and dropped down towards the Bodmin junction.
As we turned off to Bodmin, the rain abated and chinks of blue sky began to appear. We squelched into a tea room and sat there dripping as we devoured Cornish cream teas and pasties. Once again, we had difficulty finding our way out of town, but before too long we located the A391 leading to Lanivet and back to the A30. With the rain now behind us, the cycling conditions had improved from horrific to horrible, but the final thirty miles to Redruth seemed endless. Our misery was compounded by the gusting wind from the south west which at times almost stopped us in our tracks. We were appallingly exposed and vulnerable, and at one point a lorry passed so close to Paul that his bike was sucked sideways towards its wheels. I found the slip roads particularly terrifying, and dealt with them by keeping left and then waiting for a gap in the traffic to regain the main road, thereby avoiding being caught between two lanes. The only relief came in the form of the occasional lay-by, where for a few precious seconds I could distance myself from the death zone.
The name of one of the villages we passed, Indian Queens, grabbed my attention in a way that only chess players would understand. Paul stared at me with a mixture of pity and blank incomprehension when I attempted to explain its similarity to the name of a major opening system, the Queen’s Indian Defence.
Between the junctions with the A39 and the A390, the A30 became single carriageway for about 10 miles, but this had the effect of causing a bottleneck, resulting in slow moving nose to tail traffic, at times stationary and so near to the kerb that we had difficulty getting past. It was however pleasant to regain the feeling of being in the countryside and to have wide verges and farm gates available for rest stops, rather than being on a conveyor belt hemmed in by embankments. A field near the junction with the B3285 was occupied by a group of travellers who were selling assorted carved wooden objects, including five feet high Psilocybe semilanceata. Much as I’d have loved a giant ‘shroom for my garden, I decided it would be a little too cumbersome to carry about on my bike.
The last five miles or so to Redruth were again dual carriageway, and the A3047 turning to the town had been placed at the furthest possible point in order to maximise our suffering. I felt an immense surge of relief as I left that infernal highway, which I will never cycle along again. It is difficult indeed to find words to adequately express my distaste for the A30. It is the very anus of obscenity.
Our B&B turned out to be some distance along the A3047, mid-way between the centres of Redruth and Camborne. Our host was a retired police officer who had served in Derby in the 60s and 70s, and was an experienced cyclist himself. He reassured us that we wouldn’t have to use the A30 again until we reached Hayle, by which stage it was an ordinary rural road.
Most of Paul’s spare clothes had got soaked in his panniers so I lent him a dry pair of socks, which he hasn’t returned, probably because he hasn’t changed them yet. We walked over the road to the local pub where we had steak pie, chips and carrots and three pints of cider, comfortable in the knowledge that we had only about 30 miles to go the next day.
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