I've fallen out of love with cycling this year. Too many days spent battling against the elements, either with soggy blocks of ice for feet, or a head that's nearly been melted by the sun.
There's only so many times you can cower in a shed, frozen to the bone, waiting for one of your co-riders to be rescued, before you start to wonder what it's all about.
So, that last thing I fancied doing yesterday was a 100 mile bike ride. But I went anyway. The date was in the diary, Stephen had arranged it, and when Stephen sets a goal, we don't argue, we just do it.
When I got up at 6, imagine my astonishment, when all I could see out the window was blue sky. We must have got the wrong day, I thought, go back to bed. But no, this was the right date. Alrighty then, let's do this thing.
I was even on time to Stephen's house, so the ride could start as planned at 7.30 am (well almost, we spent a bit of time chatting first). There I was joined by Stephen (obviously, it's his house), Mark and Ian. We were wearing matching tops, and we were go for launch.
No coffee or bacon sandwiches or sitting around looking out the window at the hail this time. No, instead perfect riding conditions. This cannot be happening. Let's get this nightmare started.
3 miles in at Hilton we were temporarily held up by some cars gathered round a deer that had been run over. I felt bad for the deer, but I was glad my day was going better than his.
By the time we got to Northallerton at the 20 mile point, we were so far ahead of our schedule, we were in danger of being much too early for our scheduled lunch stop at Leckby House. As Mark had been grumbling about not getting his morning coffee, we nipped into Costa at Tesco, where I ordered a giant coffee and some tiny gluten free bakewell tarts. These were a bit of a panic buy, as they didn't have any chocolate, but I thought I really should have some overpriced food to go with the overpriced coffee. I spent some time wondering why anyone ever pays these prices, but this didn't stop me from having a nice chat with the guys. This was going well.
Refreshed by our stop and with the benefit of a shortcut behind the prison we were soon on Crosby road and heading our towards Knayton. Then, about 5 miles from Northallerton, and still feeling pretty smug about the time, one of Mark's rear spokes decided to pop out and his wheel stopped being a wheel and started looking like a big Pringle.
You probably wouldn't believe that it took 4 grown men a whole hour from this point to get going again, but that was what happened. We couldn't get the spoke out, although eventually a passing motorist helped us out with some wire cutters and we did, but we also spent a lot of time discussing various scenarios.
Ian wasn't planning to do the whole ride anyway, so in the end, it was decided that he would sacrifice himself, and let Mark take his bike, but only after a bit of saddle swapsies had gone on. This left Ian gamely wandering off to Knayton with Mark's bike for company, to be picked up by his wife. And the three of us were off again. But now, the hour we'd wasted in Tesco, we could have done with getting it back again.
So we took at short cut and got to Leckby House at the 43 mile point around 1 pm. But instead of arriving there at the halfway point, we now had more miles to make up in the second half.
The thing about Leckby House is this. It's not the kind of place you can arrive at, run in one door, eat a sausage sandwich and run out the other door. McDonalds it is not. Imagine instead that you have arrived at a really posh dinner party, with home cooked Shepherd's Pie (made with fresh Wensleydatle Lamb), a top selection of wines and ice creams. No, it sucks you in and before you know it, you're on your fourth plateful of Shepherd's Pie, and you feel so comfortable you just want to curl up in the garden with Teal and Widgeon the dogs and go to sleep for a few hours, and not even dream about getting on a bike again that day.
Which may explain why at twenty to 3 we were still sat around the dining table. We were still 57 miles short of our target miles for the day, and I was just wondering if we were going to be getting a coffee course. We'd been going for nearly 7 hours and it was going to be dark in another 5, and we were nowhere.
But, as Stephen pointed out, this was the C2C2C Reunion Century Ride, not the C2C2C Reunion Oh Dear I've filled up on Shepherd's Pie and Now I Want to go to sleep in the garden with the Dogs Ride. So a little reluctantly, off we went. I didn't expect us to be back before dark.
Surprisingly though we made pretty good progress. For once on leaving Leckby, we had a tailwind and what's more, it was actually properly sunny. There were no tornados hovering overhead and I could still feel my feet.
We stopped to point at the hole in the road in Sharow which Mark had fallen down last time. And it was big. At the time we couldn't understand how he'd fallen off, but in the dry you could see it was almost big enough to lose a whole wheel in.
We seemed to get to the crossing of the A1 at Londonderry in no time, and Mark seemed to be settling into his new bike, and things were going pretty well. Even though we didn't really need anything to eat, we thought it might be a good idea to call at the corner shop at Kirkby Fleetham to top up on energy drinks and maybe buy some emergency quiche, but when we got there at 4.30 the sign on the door said they closed at 1. At least we hadn't only just missed them.
Then the door opened, and an elderly lady popped her head out, and asked us if we needed anything. She then opened the shop specially for us, and sold us some Lucozade and I had a big slab of quiche. It looked too good to store, so I ate it there and then. Yummy.
I drank my Lucozade there and then but Stephen decided to load his into his water bottle. A couple of miles down the road there was a loud bang and we all stopped to see what had happened. It turned out Stephen's Lucozade had blown the top off his water bottle. Mark, distracted by the noise, forgot to clip out and whilst emitting a strangled cry, started to fall very slowly over. Falling over whilst clipped to a bike is never a fun experience, there's always far too much time to think before you hit the ground, but one of the things Mark thought about on the way down was 'Oh no, this isn't my bike!'. As a result he gamely threw his body underneath the bike so the bike never actually seemed to hit the ground. Only Mark.
He spent a bit of time just lying in the road, but there was nothing coming so it was fine, for a while at least. It's not the most dignified position to be in for a man who has just passed his 50th birthday, bit Mark carried it off as well as anyone could.
And while I was looking at him lying there in the road, I thought about all the training we've done this year, all the miserable bike rides we've done, and on them all no-one has suffered more than Mark. He's been abandoned in a shed looking like a Smurf, he's had crashes, he's had mechanicals, he got straight off a plane from America with jet lag and directly into Day 1 of our Coast to Coast. And now here he is, lying down in the road, with somebody else's bike on top of him.
But Mark being Mark, he did what he's been doing all year. He picked himself up and got back on the bike and carried on. And so did I. And so did Stephen.
And we got home sometime around half past 7. And it was nearly dark. And we'd been out for over 12 hours.
We'd had a few mishaps along the way, but at twenty to 8 last night I put my bike back in the garage, and I felt pretty good. The 100 mile bike that I hadn't wanted to go on, I'd finished it. And although a few things had gone wrong, there had been lots of really good stuff too. And for once the weather was perfect.
As I was lying in bed last night, trying to get to sleep, I went back over the route in my head, and I thought about all the places we'd been, and I thought about the fact that we'd been to them all in one day, on a bike.
And after a year of riding my bike in weather so miserable you wouldn't send your dog out in it, I remembered why I like riding a bike.
It's because there's no better way to travel.
There's only so many times you can cower in a shed, frozen to the bone, waiting for one of your co-riders to be rescued, before you start to wonder what it's all about.
So, that last thing I fancied doing yesterday was a 100 mile bike ride. But I went anyway. The date was in the diary, Stephen had arranged it, and when Stephen sets a goal, we don't argue, we just do it.
When I got up at 6, imagine my astonishment, when all I could see out the window was blue sky. We must have got the wrong day, I thought, go back to bed. But no, this was the right date. Alrighty then, let's do this thing.
I was even on time to Stephen's house, so the ride could start as planned at 7.30 am (well almost, we spent a bit of time chatting first). There I was joined by Stephen (obviously, it's his house), Mark and Ian. We were wearing matching tops, and we were go for launch.
No coffee or bacon sandwiches or sitting around looking out the window at the hail this time. No, instead perfect riding conditions. This cannot be happening. Let's get this nightmare started.
3 miles in at Hilton we were temporarily held up by some cars gathered round a deer that had been run over. I felt bad for the deer, but I was glad my day was going better than his.
By the time we got to Northallerton at the 20 mile point, we were so far ahead of our schedule, we were in danger of being much too early for our scheduled lunch stop at Leckby House. As Mark had been grumbling about not getting his morning coffee, we nipped into Costa at Tesco, where I ordered a giant coffee and some tiny gluten free bakewell tarts. These were a bit of a panic buy, as they didn't have any chocolate, but I thought I really should have some overpriced food to go with the overpriced coffee. I spent some time wondering why anyone ever pays these prices, but this didn't stop me from having a nice chat with the guys. This was going well.
Refreshed by our stop and with the benefit of a shortcut behind the prison we were soon on Crosby road and heading our towards Knayton. Then, about 5 miles from Northallerton, and still feeling pretty smug about the time, one of Mark's rear spokes decided to pop out and his wheel stopped being a wheel and started looking like a big Pringle.
You probably wouldn't believe that it took 4 grown men a whole hour from this point to get going again, but that was what happened. We couldn't get the spoke out, although eventually a passing motorist helped us out with some wire cutters and we did, but we also spent a lot of time discussing various scenarios.
Ian wasn't planning to do the whole ride anyway, so in the end, it was decided that he would sacrifice himself, and let Mark take his bike, but only after a bit of saddle swapsies had gone on. This left Ian gamely wandering off to Knayton with Mark's bike for company, to be picked up by his wife. And the three of us were off again. But now, the hour we'd wasted in Tesco, we could have done with getting it back again.
So we took at short cut and got to Leckby House at the 43 mile point around 1 pm. But instead of arriving there at the halfway point, we now had more miles to make up in the second half.
The thing about Leckby House is this. It's not the kind of place you can arrive at, run in one door, eat a sausage sandwich and run out the other door. McDonalds it is not. Imagine instead that you have arrived at a really posh dinner party, with home cooked Shepherd's Pie (made with fresh Wensleydatle Lamb), a top selection of wines and ice creams. No, it sucks you in and before you know it, you're on your fourth plateful of Shepherd's Pie, and you feel so comfortable you just want to curl up in the garden with Teal and Widgeon the dogs and go to sleep for a few hours, and not even dream about getting on a bike again that day.
Which may explain why at twenty to 3 we were still sat around the dining table. We were still 57 miles short of our target miles for the day, and I was just wondering if we were going to be getting a coffee course. We'd been going for nearly 7 hours and it was going to be dark in another 5, and we were nowhere.
But, as Stephen pointed out, this was the C2C2C Reunion Century Ride, not the C2C2C Reunion Oh Dear I've filled up on Shepherd's Pie and Now I Want to go to sleep in the garden with the Dogs Ride. So a little reluctantly, off we went. I didn't expect us to be back before dark.
Surprisingly though we made pretty good progress. For once on leaving Leckby, we had a tailwind and what's more, it was actually properly sunny. There were no tornados hovering overhead and I could still feel my feet.
We stopped to point at the hole in the road in Sharow which Mark had fallen down last time. And it was big. At the time we couldn't understand how he'd fallen off, but in the dry you could see it was almost big enough to lose a whole wheel in.
We seemed to get to the crossing of the A1 at Londonderry in no time, and Mark seemed to be settling into his new bike, and things were going pretty well. Even though we didn't really need anything to eat, we thought it might be a good idea to call at the corner shop at Kirkby Fleetham to top up on energy drinks and maybe buy some emergency quiche, but when we got there at 4.30 the sign on the door said they closed at 1. At least we hadn't only just missed them.
Then the door opened, and an elderly lady popped her head out, and asked us if we needed anything. She then opened the shop specially for us, and sold us some Lucozade and I had a big slab of quiche. It looked too good to store, so I ate it there and then. Yummy.
I drank my Lucozade there and then but Stephen decided to load his into his water bottle. A couple of miles down the road there was a loud bang and we all stopped to see what had happened. It turned out Stephen's Lucozade had blown the top off his water bottle. Mark, distracted by the noise, forgot to clip out and whilst emitting a strangled cry, started to fall very slowly over. Falling over whilst clipped to a bike is never a fun experience, there's always far too much time to think before you hit the ground, but one of the things Mark thought about on the way down was 'Oh no, this isn't my bike!'. As a result he gamely threw his body underneath the bike so the bike never actually seemed to hit the ground. Only Mark.
He spent a bit of time just lying in the road, but there was nothing coming so it was fine, for a while at least. It's not the most dignified position to be in for a man who has just passed his 50th birthday, bit Mark carried it off as well as anyone could.
And while I was looking at him lying there in the road, I thought about all the training we've done this year, all the miserable bike rides we've done, and on them all no-one has suffered more than Mark. He's been abandoned in a shed looking like a Smurf, he's had crashes, he's had mechanicals, he got straight off a plane from America with jet lag and directly into Day 1 of our Coast to Coast. And now here he is, lying down in the road, with somebody else's bike on top of him.
But Mark being Mark, he did what he's been doing all year. He picked himself up and got back on the bike and carried on. And so did I. And so did Stephen.
And we got home sometime around half past 7. And it was nearly dark. And we'd been out for over 12 hours.
We'd had a few mishaps along the way, but at twenty to 8 last night I put my bike back in the garage, and I felt pretty good. The 100 mile bike that I hadn't wanted to go on, I'd finished it. And although a few things had gone wrong, there had been lots of really good stuff too. And for once the weather was perfect.
As I was lying in bed last night, trying to get to sleep, I went back over the route in my head, and I thought about all the places we'd been, and I thought about the fact that we'd been to them all in one day, on a bike.
And after a year of riding my bike in weather so miserable you wouldn't send your dog out in it, I remembered why I like riding a bike.
It's because there's no better way to travel.
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