Gentleman Cyclist

Posted on 7 June 2007

Tuesday 29th May

The dreadful Bank Holiday weather had been swept away in the night and the normal working day dawned cold but bright. The tandem was soon loaded and we were away. Graham also caught the 10.48 from Prittlewell, heading back to Uni for his Finals, and laden with bottles of red wine. He left us at Shenfield.

We arrived in Liverpool Street to time and re-assembled the bike. Although the sun was shining as we left, the rain soon began. We decided not to stop to put our coats on. At one point we got stuck at a kerb and in our efforts to free the bike we had a right-sided slow-motion clipless moment. Fortunately there was no traffic coming at the time. Soon we passed Kings’s Cross and almost missed Euston, so well concealed is it these days by plane trees in full leaf.

Mr. Branson’s employees were most obliging. The tandem was soon stowed safely in the Train Manager’s Compartment (aka Guard’s Van), we were ensconced in our seats and tucking into cheese & pickle sandwiches, licquorish allsorts and coffee. I recalled seeing, years ago, a lion cut out of the chalk in a hillside somewhere near Cheddington station and within seconds there it was as we whizzed towards Birmingham at well over 100 mph.

There were “minor technical problems” at Shrewsbury which caused some 30 minutes’ delay and a further wait at Newtown because there was another train coming the other way. We eventually arrived in Caersws at 4.50, 37 minutes late.

By now, all the clouds had cleared and there was a fairly brisk headwind. We set off along the B road and on this occasion it was probably a mistake to avoid the designated cycle route, which seemed to be a little further but also flatter, as it followed the Severn more closely.

We descended into Llanidloes through a cold tunnel of beech trees and after a brief look around the deserted town centre we climbed again. This was as hard work as parts of Cornwall and Devon had been and we had two or three “1 in 7 or greater” chevrons to negotiate.
 
There was a lovely white farmhouse for sale at Tylwch,
 

which was as good a place as any for me to don my longs. We managed to keep cycling up some of the tougher hills and I think we are considerably fitter than we were at the start of LEJOG.

We came across a sign saying “Rhayader 6” rather sooner than I expected, which was encouraging, and eventually we reached the long, screaming descent into the town. Our highest speed of the day was 41.2 mph and we arrived at the Liverpool Guest House at about 8.15. After unloading the bike and changing our clothes, we had an audience with the Rev. James and then it was time for a Madras.

30th May.

After a wet night, it was a damp morning. We selected a walk to the north of the town, along a narrow lane then a track over the mountains and into the Marteg valley. Eventually we came across Gilfach, a grade II listed Welsh longhouse, in which livestock were kept at one end while people lived at the other. There is a nature reserve round about and we saw a pair of stonechats and a pair of bullfinches. There were, as ever, plenty of red kites and we were treated to aerobatic displays as ravens and kites mobbed one another.

We came across a field of cattle where a large and impressive bull 

took some interest in us, but fortunately there was a fence separating us from him and his progeny. We reached the Sun Inn at St. Harmon at lunchtime, but sadly there was no lunch to be had there as the place was shut. We stomped hungrily down the B road for 3.5 miles until we reached Rhayader again and had a very agreeable baguette washed down with a pint or two of Hancock’s bitter. We then dropped the walking gear off at the guest house before tackling Clive Powell. Mike & Jeff ordered some hire bikes for the morning. There was a really nice Goretex jacket in Jan’s size which had been reduced from £125 to £70, so we bought that.

The weather had improved greatly by this time so we walked along the Wye Valley path and found a very comfortable picnic table. We just sat,

enjoying the warmth and tranquillity as swallows, house martins and sand martins all flew up and down. We saw a dipper and a grey wagtail and of course there were lots of kites flying around as at 3 pm they had been fed at Gigrin.

I had a telephone conversation with each of the children. Denis had made a liver cake for Morphy and he found a couple of pub phone numbers for us. Heather thinks she has found someone competent working for the Student Loans company and is therefore a little more hopeful of sorting out her finances for next year. Ellen had been entertaining Mike Schurer and was suffering from the consequences of that, as well as her cold, and Graham had just finished his penultimate exam. This time tomorrow he will be a B.A., marking apart.

After an hour or so’s relaxation back at Liverpool house, we were ready to begin the evening’s operations. We had noticed a pub, the Corn Mill, which had 4 real ales on although they had no food. They also had a seemingly resident Irishman who expounded volubly his theories relating to Life, the Universe and Everything. He tried to sing the Lark in the Morning, but got the tune wrong and didn’t know the words. He did however, have two redeemng features: the top joint of the middle finger of his right hand was missing and he thought I looked like a professor. We had ample reason to adjourn to the Lamb & Flag for a meal.

31st May.

We loaded the tandem and hied us to Clive Powell’s Bke Shop where Mike & Jeff hired two Giant hybrid machines. On heading for the Elan Valley trail, it soon became apparent that once again Janet & I would be the slowest. Today my back decided to misbehave and the old pain returned. It didn’t seem to affect me while we were going along, but gave me the occasional sharp stab when we were stopped.

We saw quite a few interesting small birds: wheatears, a couple of redstarts, and Jeff thought we saw winchats. I don’t know what they look like so that didn’t help me much.

We had an elevenses / lunch stop at the point where the Elan Valley road meets the Mountain Road and on the descent Janet & I reached 38.1 mph where in the same spot last September we cranked the old tandem up to 40.8 mph. On reaching Blaen-y-cwm, we turned right onto the rough track and disturbed a whole family of wheatears, the parents becoming particularly alarmed when one of the youngsters strayed far too close to us for far too long.

We gained the impression that there were more wind turbines on the top than there were last September and we also noted that we were capable of cycling up hills which had defeated us the last time we were here. We kept riding even on the steep downhill which saw Francis leave the road in the September ride and we arrived at the Blue Bell Inn in time for a drink but too late for food. We had Butty Bach and I did like the name of the brewery: the Purple Moose Brewery, which assuming that the Welsh translation is grammatical becomes Bragdy Mws Piws.

There had been several light showers during the morning but as we headed south along the Wye Valley road, the sun shone and we stopped for more lunch. While we were eating, a stoat whizzed across the meadow in front of us and ran down the hill towards the river.

We were interrupted by a downpour, by far the heaviest of the day, and eventually got fed up wth the totally inadequate shelter provided by a small ash tree and continued riding. This was probably the heaviest rain we have ever ridden through and the braking was definitely affected. We were part way through a fairly rapid descent when the phone rang. When we eventually returned the call it was Jen Jameson. We talked about our ETA on Saturday and that was about it.

We arrived back in Rhayader shortly before 5 p.m. and after Jeff & Mike had returned their steeds to Clive Powell, we went to the digs for showers etc. Our landlady made it plain that she wasn’t going to do any washing for us (I had thought that B & Bs displaying the CTC logo and “Cyclists Welcome” sign were prepared to take on a bit of laundry, even if they charged extra for it) so I did today’s shorts & tops myself and hung them up in the shower to drip-dry.

Our meal was at the Lamb & Flag again and it was adequate rather than memorable. We were all so knackered by the day’s proceedings that we retired around 10 p.m.

1st June

It was cloudless when I opened the curtains at 8 a.m. Before setting off on the walk that Jeff had planned, we visited the sandwich bar in the town and bought some baguettes for lunch. We then drove to a car park near to the southern end of the Caban Coch reservoir. We were to tackle two hills – Gorllwyn at 613 metres and the Y Gamriw at 604, one above and the other below 2000 feet.

We climbed behind a farm and followed a track. This gradually petered out but we continued due south

until we reached a summit of just over 500 metres. We stopped here and had the first instalment of lunch – we all felt that we could heartily recommend the sandwich bar in Rhayader – and then headed across some very boggy ground towards Gorllwyn. 

There was quite a lot to see. There were the usual kites and buzzards, and at one point a buzzard swooped low towards a pair of ravens. There then ensued a few seconds’ aerial combat which I felt sure that the buzzard had deliberately provoked. We also saw plenty of skylarks, the first of which caused some debate amongst us as it continually flitted from tree to tree in a most unskylark-like fashion. However, we reached a consensus that a skylark it was. At one point I saw something wriggling in the grass and a closer inspection revaled that it was a common lizard.

As we climbed we noticed that there was a lot of new growth as a result of a fairly recent and very extensive hillside fire, which presumably occurred in the April drought.
 
However, the recovery was well under way and it may well have made the going easier as the grass was much less tussocky in the affected areas.

The view from the top was spectacular. Although a little hazy, we could see the whole spread of the Brecon Beacons from Pen y fan to the Black Mountains with the Mynydd Eppynt in the foreground. Just wonderful!

For a good deal of our route we followed a line of concrete posts which apparently marked the watershed between the Elan to the north and the Irfon to the south, both of them tributaries of the Wye. There was plenty of boggy stuff and at one point the landscape was reminiscent of Bleaklow or the Moon. Eventually we reached some impressive cairns. The trig point at Y Gamriw was, oddly, at 599 metres whereas the cairns at the top of the hill were at 604. There were other large stone piles which apparently dated from the Bronze Age. One wonders why they put so much effort in to build something in so remote a place.

On our return we headed west and then north across some pretty rough tussock grass and more boggy stuff. As we were approaching the farm close to where we had parked the car, we heard a cuckoo. I cuckooed back and we saw it from a distance. It did actually come close enough for me to hear it “clear its throat”, but we didn’t get a close-up view of it. We arrived back at the car at about 6 p.m. having walked nearly 10 miles. During this time we hadn’t seen another human being unless you count the complete bastards who practise flying their jet fighters over remote countryside in Wales so that later they can drop bombs on unfortunate peasants in the remoter parts of the world. I think you would be hard pressed to cite a single example in which jet fighters have ever been used in the defence of this country.

We booked a table at The Triangle, an attractive little pub tucked round the corner and overlooking the Wye at Cwmdauddwr. The food was excellent – quite the best meal we have had all week. The beer, the wine and the whisky were also of he highest order…

2nd June

We breakfasted and said our farewells to Mike & Jeff, setting off from Rhayader shortly after 10 a.m. The weather was fine as we turned off the main road towards Abbeycwmhir.

We knew that we were in for some climbing but it did not begin immediately. The high point of the ride was 417 metres, only slightly lower than the highest pont of LEJOG when we crossed the Forest of Bowland on April 15th, but the Lancashire hills are treeless and bleak by comparison. We succeeded in cycling up one of the 1 in 7 stretches, but still had to get off and push for others.

We came across a beautiful house for sale in Abbeycwmhir, but didn’t buy it…

Our arrival at the Bungalow shortly before 1 pm was well timed and Bill & Jen plied us with a good lunch. We played with their very amusing hounds and spent a happy afternoon watching birds. Their feeder was visited by robin, chaffinch, greenfinch, tits, a bullfinch, sparrows and a  family of nuthatches.

They also have a redstart’s nest in their second-hand dovecote. As dusk was falling I felt sure I had seen a treecreeper on one of the conifers.

We had more food and tried several incarnations of alcohol. To quote Porters Grange kids down the years: “I liked it – it was good!”
 
3rd June

Janet’s injuries sustained during the Y Gamriw walk proved to be more of a handicap than we first thought. The blister on her right heel had become an area of raw flesh bigger than a 50p piece and this was even more of a problem than her swollen knee.

We spent an educational morning rounding up sheep and then watching the performing of vasectomies on the male lambs, the inoculation with a live vaccine against sheep scab for all the youngsters, the clipping of the hooves of all the sheep, young and old, and the removal of the dags from around the arses of the old ewes. Derek and Maggie came over from their smallholding a mile or two away in order to assist with these interesting tasks.

The operation on the male lambs was not what I expected. I thought that they were to be castrated, but no. Apparently this is still the preferred method amongst the older, more traditional farmers who then offer for sale the sweetbreads for human consumption. The process we witnessed was the “crimping” of the scrotal sac in what looked like an overgrown set of pincers. This apparently damages the spermatic cord to the extent that the males are unable to reproduce.

I was struck by the manner in which the sheep, both old and young, do not struggle once they have been caught and are forced into a sitting position with their legs sticking out in front of them. The males did not bleat whilst their goolies were being crushed, but I cannot honestly say that they looked as though they were enjoying the experience.

In the afternoon Bill & I went for a walk on some of the higher hills above Llanbadarn Fynydd. I am pretty sure we had actually done this walk a year or two ago on a previous visit, but it was well worth a repeat.

4th June

Although the night was starry and the day dawned bright, it was fairly dull by the time we emereged for breakfast at about 7.45. There was some superb blackberry jam for the toast. By 8.45 we were loaded and on our way.

Although the northward climb lasted for 4.57 miles it was never very strenuous, just a bit irksome towards the end. We were rewarded with a long, gentle downhill pretty well all the way to Newtown. The town appeared in the distance rather earlier than I expected, but then the road curved and twisted for a further couple of miles before we arrived at the traffic lights. I like the A483: there was little traffic even though we were travelling at “rush hour” and pretty well every vehicle gave us a wide berth. Only one plonker decided to hoot as he approached from behind but on the whole it was a much more positive experience than riding on Sutton Road.

We had time to visit the Co-op for some provisions before heading towards the station, but once we were on the platform we were engaged in conversation by a youthful Village Idiot whose sole topic was football. I did my best to edge my way out, but this left Janet in the lurch. She is far kinder and more tolerant than I am and even managed to keep a straight face when confronted with such piercing observations as “London’s a big place – much bigger than Newtown”. This experience made the wait for the train, which in reality was something less than half an hour, seem like an eternity.

The cycle accommodation in Welsh trains is exceptionally badly designed. You have to squeeze your steed through a gap which is actually narrower than the handlebars and into a cubby-hole with another bike where the two frames can soothingly grate the paint off one another with the rocking motion of the train. In both directions, there were too many bikes chasing too few spaces. Why do we have to make cycle reservations when there is nowhere suitable to put bikes?

The remainder of the journey is best glossed over. We were late into Birmingham so missed our connection by a minute or so; the next train, half an hour later, was diverted so arrived in Euston further half-hour late; then some poor unfortunate had ended it all near Seven Kings so that caused a further delay at Liverpool Street; and the Epitome of Essex Man chose to get on the train at Stratford, where the platform was on the side where we had stored the bike.  than walk a few yards to another door, he insisted on coming through “our” door. When I pointed out that it would have been rather easier to use the other door a few paces away, his response was “I don’t care how many fucking doors there are. Move your fucking bike!”

Welcome back to Essex.

Posted on 25 May 2007

Our father Kenneth, known to some of the family as Joe and to his colleagues as Johnny, was quite a complex character. Born in 1914, one of his earliest memories was to hear the pit-head sirens sounding in celebration at the end of the Great War; another was the death of his 16-year-old cousin in the great influenza outbreak. He was a pupil at the Lewis School, Pengam, once described by Lloyd George as “The Winchester of Wales” and it was a source of pride to him in later life that some of his more famous countrymen – England Cricket Captain Tony Lewis, Wales & British Lions Rugby Captain John Dawes and never-to-be-Captain Neil Kinnock – followed him through those hallowed portals.

He was a brother to four sisters and although there are few anecdotes I can relate about these times, I believe there was an occasion in which he pushed someone’s nose into a boiled egg.

He was very hard-working but the 1930s was not the best decade to try to find a job in South Wales. He tried his hand at chickens, gaining a certificate in Poultry Husbandry from the Usk Agricultural College and later he was a door-to-door salesman, peddling brushes around on his bike. However, father eventually became an economic migrant, leaving the Valleys and settling in Kent. He found employment briefly at the Woolwich Arsenal, but more importantly he found our mother at the St. Mary Cray tennis club, and in 1940 they married. These were, of course, turbulent times, and within a month he had received his call-up papers. Being able to read a micrometer, he was placed in the air force as a mechanic and after a period of training was posted overseas.

Compared to many, father probably had a relatively easy war in the sense that he was never in direct contact with conflict, following up behind the troops as Monty did his stuff in the Sahara. Perhaps the greatest danger he was in was in London in the Blitz when, bombs raining down, a soldier he was with shot the lock off an underground station so that they could find shelter. However, he must have missed Beckie enormously, and there was one occasion on which he risked arrest by taking illicit leave to be with her, hiding from the Military Police in the lavatories at King’s Cross Station until the coast was clear. On his return from active service more than 3 years later, he entered a household as a stranger to one of its members, his disabled oldest son Geoffrey. Although he rarely talked about this, or the war years, they must have had a profound effect on him. I think that Geoffrey’s death in 1960 was a tragedy from which neither he nor mother ever fully recovered.

The 9 post-war years saw five more children come along. Father became a teacher and it was at the Langdon Hills Primary School that he spent almost all his career. He made some good friends and the family is very grateful to those of you who have managed to make the journey today. Of course, the teaching profession has never been one in which fortunes are made, and he cultivated the garden assiduously in order fill our hungry mouths. For a good part of the year he provided all the vegetables we ate and also put his poultry skills to good use, for all of my childhood and beyond keeping a dozen hens at the bottom of the garden.

On his retirement in 1976 he confided in me with a slurred voice: “Boyo, I’ve got an ambition. I want to draw a pension for longer than I drew a salary!” and he set about achieving that ambition with gusto. He expanded his chicken emporium so that he now had 200 hens rather than the dozen or so, and he sold eggs and some surplus fruit and veg at the door. He also made bread and something which passed as home-made wine… It was also around this time that he became a founder member of the Ramsden Heath Horticultural Society and every year we would help him prepare the fruit and vegetables for display in a fairly haphazard fashion. Even so, on a few occasions he won the Cup for the best overall performance in the show and at the time there were probably only two or three gardeners in the village who could stay with him.

He was an enthusiastic DIY practitioner, and there were few jobs that he would not tackle. In the early days of occupation of Lawn House, he took on some massive projects: re-pointing the entire side wall, building the garage, laying crazy paving. Later on he tried his hand at being a lumberjack and took some incredible risks. Those of us who witnesses the incident will never forget a very large piece of poplar tree he had just severed hurtling past him and ripping the chain-saw from his grasp as it plummeted some 30 feet to the ground below, leaving him looking like some odd weathercock, balanced precariously at the top of the ladder. There was another incident when they were both in their 80s that he persuaded mother to venture with him onto the lean-to to try and find out where the rain was getting in. She lost her balance and started to slide down the roof but he somehow stopped her and helped her back through an upstairs window. It is quite remarkable that a man with such a disregard for his own safety should have survived to the age of 92.

He was an armchair sports enthusiast, a passion I shared with him, and certain events became family institutions. The annual five-nations rugby tournament was a favourite, and it was a great time to be supporting Wales. He was also keen on cricket and the television would always be on for the test matches. On quite a few occasions we went to county games, often Essex v Glamorgan, and we saw some tremendous cricket. He was very happy in 1969 when, on a visit to Chris and Andrea in Cardiff, he and I watched his beloved Glamorgan at Sophia Gardens. It was the first day of the match that sealed the County Championship when Majid Khan hit a wonderful century and before the close Ossie Wheatley ripped the heart out of the Worcestershire batting. He remembered such details for a long time and would tell others about them years later.

But most importantly, he was a doting grandfather. He loved his grandchildren hugely, and would often indulge them, somewhat to their parents’ consternation, but I don’t think that any of them ever came to any harm as a result. As they grew and developed, he took enormous pride in their achievements, but had the infuriating and probably mischievous habit of heaping praise on them in their absence.

It was, of course, a massive blow to him when Beckie died, after 64 years’ marriage, and one that most of us thought that he would not survive, but he recovered better than any of us expected and I think that for the last couple of years of his life he was as happy in Broadoaks as he could have been anywhere. He did not make friends easily – after his retirement it seemed to me that he had little contact with anyone but the family – but whenever we visited him he spoke warmly of the other residents, especially Eric and Grace. Neither did he ever lose his interest in sport and current affairs: quite often he would tell me about some news item that had escaped my notice, or a sports result that I didn’t know. His quick wit and rather black sense of humour also stayed with him, and even into his 90s he was capable of a witty aside which demonstrated great keenness of mind.

The end came in Southend Hospital on 5th May. He was too ill to be told of his sister Kathleen’s death only a few days before his own, so if there is an afterlife, then I think he was in for a big surprise. Indeed, I can imagine him greeting her: “What the bloody hell are you doing here?”

Posted on 24 May 2007

Posted on 21 May 2007

There has been a great deal written about our tandem, by me and others, which is now almost at the end of its 100-day money-back guarantee period.

In spite of the hub problem in Scotland, I am very pleased with it. It’s not built for speed, which suits us, but a very solid kind of ride: no “twitchiness” and feels very reliable on downhills and corners. Having said that, we have had it over 46mph on a downhill but gravity was the cause, not our fast pedalling.

I was already familiar with Rohloff hubs as I have one on my solo machine. Occasionally I feel as though we ought to have one gear higher than we have – it’s not that uncommon for us to be bowling along on the flat in top gear doing about 25 mph – but that would sacrifice the bottom gear, which we need, even in Essex.

The S & S couplings are fantastic. It’s easy to dismantle the bike in about 2 minutes for putting on trains, but usually takes a little longer to re-assemble as the frame tubes have to be lined up. I haven’t tried doing this on my own, but I would think that it would be very hard with just two hands.

We thought we would miss the drum brake – we had one on our Claud – but the rim brakes on the tungsten rims are superb. Terrific stopping power, and the ear-splitting squealing that they emitted when new has now gone.

We equipped ours with Carradice panniers – front, rear, bar bag & kit-bag – and it easily carried everything we needed for our Scottish trip. Whether we would have had the hub flange break if we had been less heavily-laden I don’t know, but the alternative would have been a Y-frame trailer, assuming that you can fit one to a Rohloff hub. I haven’t researched that, but the handling even with the amount of luggage we had was excellent, and I would be reluctant to sacrifice that.

I am prepared to accept that the problem we had is very rare, but I still think it shouldn’t happen. I think that there is little doubt that our combined weight, the luggage and some of the terrain we crossed is getting close to the edge of what is reasonable, but having said that a hub should not break before a spoke does. If Rohloff’s estimate is correct that this only affects 1 in 1000 hubs, then if it happens again to us it will be 1 in a million.

I definitely think that the Panaracer Pasela tyres were not up to the job. Andy Blance, Thorn’s “main man” when it comes to frames and technical matters, sounded more surprised with our tyre problems than he did with the hub problem. PPs may be OK for a lightly-built crew, but Schwalbe Marathon Pluses are the heavy-duty choice in my book.

Posted on 12 May 2007

The day began for me with Parcel Force arriving with my tandem wheel while I was taking a crap contemplating my navel, so I failed to hear the doorbell. Janet emerged from our marital bed in order to open the door in her negligée but by this time the parcel force man had slung the parcel over the fence into the back garden. I retrieved it, opened it and was just admiring its beauty when another one of nature’s wonders in the form of Fatbloke appeared at the front door. After admiring his beauty for a nanosecond or so, we set off for the station only for me to realise that I was wearing the wrong glasses so I swifty returned home to find the right pair. We still had plenty of time for the 8.28 train.

After an uneventful journey we arrived in Stowmarket to see some cyclists in the car park. Some of these I had seen before so I was pretty sure we were with the right group. We hung around a bit in the rain and also the not-so-rain while Nutkin drove in from her drey (wherever that may be) and soon we were off. Very soon I was left well behind again as we had some gentle climbing to do in the face of a not very gentle headwind. After 6 miles or so I took a right turn, which I knew to be correct having studied the map and route sheet in some detail before we set off, thereby finding myself at the front as everyone else had gone straight on before realising their mistake. This gave me time to don my waterproof and have another look at the map.

We sheltered under a lime tree in Thorpe Morieux, where Regulator played with the stocks, the heavens opened briefly and then closed again, and the consensus was that we should do less cycling and more indulging, so the route was amended so that we reached the lunch stop after about 17 miles’ cycling rather than the originally-intended 34. I did not notice any dissenting voices to this state of affairs. We arrived in Lavenham where suddenly our number was swelled as TimC and Veronica appeared as if from nowhere. It was not long before we arrived at the Six Bells in Preston St. Mary.

There was a fine selection of real ales on offer, so I went for The Augustinian, a Nethergate brew which hitherto had escaped my attention, while we examined the food menu. There were some quite exotic dishes available so, feeling a bit lionish, I decided to plump for Wilderbeeste, although it wasn’t spelled like that in the pub. It arrived on a large block of stone which had been pre-heated, and in effect it cooked before my very eyes so I was spared the sheer drudgery of stealthily stalking the said creature with the rest of my pride before bringing it down with a spectacular rugby tackle and asphyxiating it with my jaws. I enjoyed it in spite of the inevitable air miles which must presumably have gone into its preparation, unless the Suffolk savannah has large herds of the aforementioned antelope roaming free.

Once replete we meandered around for a few more miles until we reached Stowmarket station once again, where a decision had to be made. FB and I were booked on the 7.29 train so it was entirely necessary for us to find somewhere to drink beer to fill up the time. The so-called “Superpub” around the corner from the station turned out to be probably the worst pub any of us had ever been in, with no beer, a large and mesmerising television churning out the latest garbage from the hit parade and no other customers apart from a band of ACFers who were all too polite to tell the barman where to shove his fizzy rubbish. After a while the other ACFers who did not have to catch a specific train all disappeared which was the cue for FB and me to find a pub which did sell beer. We came across the Oak so we had a couple in there and it was time for us to catch our train back to Prittlewell.

Posted on 8 May 2007

I decided, purist that I am, that I would not take the car to this 200k. I worked out that I could catch a train at 6.18 a.m. in Southend and that the connection from Shenfield would give me 45 minutes to cycle the 8 or so miles from Chelmsford to High Easter, so I could just get in before everyone set off. Except the train was late and the peloton was about half a mile down the road as I met them coming the other way.

I was pretty much resigned to another day talking to myself when, after 10k or so, another cyclist pulled alongside and we rode around together. I expected him at any moment to say “So long then!” and disappear over the horizon, but he didn’t. He waited at the tops of hills (there weren’t many) and at important junctions. This was a fantastic help because, having used up my good weather quota for the year when we did LEJOG, it peed down all morning and a good deal of the afternoon as well. Under such conditions my glasses are useless.

In the same way as the Inuit have about 3 dozen different words for “snow” so there are at least 35 different types of wet. I had them all. There’s seeping up from the saddle, oozing up the sleeves, dripping off the eyebrows into the eyes. The night before, I even woke myself up when a drip of sweat plummeted down my ear-hole and landed on my ear-drum. But the worst of these is the glasses. You cannot read a map or a route sheet when your glasses are wet or steamed up, so my companion did all the hard work for me. We missed our way somewhere near Great Bardfield, so out came the maps and we sorted it out again, and while we were off piste, we saw a cuckoo calling from the branches of a dead oak tree. My pal got a puncture (he was using really skinny tyres) and told me to go on ahead while he mended it. All the lube was washed off his chain, so I could hear him coming up behind me every time I had gone on.

We got to all the controls in time, and on each occasion we left slightly earlier in relation to the maximum time allowed. I exchanged a few words with Redsnapper at the Castle Hedingham youth hostel, and then we were on our way again. At the final control, the Three Horseshoes in East Hanningfield (the second best pub in the village, sadly), I had my pint of orange juice and lemonade and a bag of nuts, leaving my man to finish his sandwiches and catch me up. He did, but he had another puncture.

After we answered the question about Stapleford Tawney church services, it was hell-for-leather for High Easter. Except I had neither hell nor leather. My legs had turned to jelly and the slightest gradient felt like the north face of the Eiger. We still had about 20 miles to do, so I ate another cereal bar and scoffed a handful of jelly babies and on we slogged. It took a very long time for my legs to respond, but just as I thought there was not enough time to finish, suddenly I was bowling along the flat at 27kph and we only had about 8k more to do with half an hour left.

The he punctured again. I got my head torch out and could read the route sheet: right turn to Bird’s Green, then follow the signs to Berners Roding, then Good Easter, then High Easter and I was back. I carried on for quite some time, but the puncture-plagued one was with me again eventually. We remarked that we hadn’t come across a helpful sign for a long time, but we definitely hadn’t missed any so we must be on the right road… mustn’t we? The we found a road sign, and we were something like 8 miles away from our destination with only 15 minutes left to go.

****

When I was about 16 I began to fish for pike. This was a Good Idea, because I could get the free tickets for Abberton, one of the best pike fisheries in Britain at the time (1970) as my brother worked for the Essex Water Company.  One day, I hooked, played and had close to the bank the biggest pike I had ever seen. It was so big that we had no way of landing it – our net was far too small. My brother dashed across the road to ask a well-known angling writer if we could borrow his landing net for this massive creature. He sauntered over, put the net in the water for me to pull the fish over it, and as I did so, the hook came out. Not surprising really, as my fishing tackle consisted of a 50p reel, a £2 rod and hooks of commensurate quality and it had straightened under the pressure of me playing the fish. I watched with tears in my eyes as The Biggest Pike in the World pointed its bows away from me, and with a dismissive wave of its tail, was gone. To this day, this remains one of the greatest disappointments of my life.

DNFing in this Audax was in the same league. With a massive effort of will I had dragged my complaining body around the course, aided by one who would have finished hours ago had it not been for me, a millstone round his neck. The legs could do it, just. The wrists were complaining, but they kept going. At the end of the day, my big handicap, and one which I cannot overcome, is that I cannot see a route sheet or a map if it’s raining or dark. Ergo, I depend upon someone else for vital information and because of me, that someone else DNFed as well. His name was Darren and he was a primary school teacher from Dagenham, having given up a highly paid law job a couple of years ago because he couldn’t stand it any more. Darren, if you read this, thanks mate. I couldn’t have got close to finishing without you.

I arrived home to a beautiful nourishing bean stew and told the rest of the family that if I ever talk about doing another 200k they have full permission to lock my bike and hide the key until I come to my senses. Then I solemnly logged 145 miles on bikejournal.

145: more than gross. How appropriate.

Day 21 – 25th April 2007

I was awoken in the small hours by the unfamiliar sound of raindrops being blown with some force against our bedroom window. I looked out into almost total darkness – there were three or four orange smears somewhere in the gloom – neon lights through horizontal rain. I tried to sleep, but did not do so for at least an hour.

The next time I looked out, a small amount of daylight oozed through the clouds, which was enough for me to see the pampas grass outside clinging onto its mother earth with every fibre of its being. Our final ride of this holiday, from East Mey to Thurso, via Dunnet Head, promised to be amongst the toughest miles of all.

Breakfast was ample and well-cooked, and was enlivened considerably when our host announced cheerfully that Alan Ball had died of a heart attack: Alan Ball, of Everton and England, who once told a newspaper reporter that he didn’t squeeze his spots because he wanted to be repulsive to keep the girls away. They would only interfere with his football.

By the time we set off, around 8.30, the rain had stopped and the sun was threatening to emerge. The fact that the wind was southerly, rather than westerly, was also a considerably bonus. It would be a cross-wind rather than a head-wind for most of the ride.

Our progress was initially very good, as we had a long downhill from East Mey. After about 4 miles we turned towards Dunnet Head, a final northern push towards the limit of this island. This section was wind-assisted and still we bowled along, but we could see that the sleeping monster we had photographed so happily in the tranquillity of last night’s sunset was a totally different proposition in the cold light of a gale-force day.

I was surprised to see some quite large lakes beside the road as we approached the lighthouse, and even more so to see that the fishing rights belonged to the Dunnet Head Angling Society. Does someone really come up here to put half-tame stock trout in these wilderness lochans so that someone else can pay for the privilege of pulling them out again?

Eventually we reached the lighthouse and in many ways, the journey’s end. To me, Land’s End to John O’Groats was incidental, a ride for the tabloids. Lizard Point to Dunnet Head is the true “end-to-end” – a ride for the purist.

It is a marvellous place, nothing but sea between us and the North Pole. The sun was trying to break through as we reached the top and we could just make out the Old Man of Hoy. We all recalled a gripping day’s television when the BBC broadcast live from Hoy as Joe Brown and his team became the first to conquer it. Now that was reality TV – one of the finest moments of British Broadcasting history.

After a few photographs, we began the last ride of all, along the A836 to Thurso station. A few times we had to stop, as we had done throughout the ride, for Jan to get comfortable.

I wonder if her saddle needs adjusting?

Day 20 – 24th April 2007

This morning dawned bright and clear. We had another very good breakfast overlooking the Moray Firth in which, according to the landlady, the world’s tallest wind generator was situated. It isn’t working yet and there is a similar one being built nearby.

We set off around 9.30 and made for Lybster, where we bought provisions. A mile or so later we took a left turn which took us due north through some very remote and wild countryside. We climbed gently but for quite a few miles and when we reached the top of this lens-shaped hill the views were spectacular. This was Flow Country, and there probably wasn’t another human within two miles of us. Once we stopped the bike, the only sounds were the wind and bird song. This was one of the finest parts of the entire ride.

We descended to Watten which, to judge by the people we met, has more than its fair share of very attractive young women pushing push chairs. We crossed the railway and a few minutes later a train came – probably one of very few all day. Loch Watten, although small when compared to some we had seen, is still a large lake about three miles long.

After lunch, we climbed again, although this time through less remote countryside, and eventually we saw Stroma Island and Orkney beyond. We were now very much in the home straight, the last two or three of a 1000 miles journey which ended in a not-very-inspiring pub and which served no beer worthy of the name. However, we celebrated with a wee dram of Glenmorangie, since we had cycled past the distillery yesterday.

We decided to see Dunnet Head tonight, rather than leave it to the morning, and we made the mistake of missing out Duncansby Head. This was demonstrated when we arrived at Creaig-na-Mara to find that the latest we would be served dinner was 7.30 (our host, who assured us modestly that he was by far the best in the area, wanted to watch a football match) , so we wouldn’t have time to get to Dunnet Head either.

We have now opted for a 7.30 breakfast, to leave at 8.30 via Dunnet Head and still get to Thurso in plenty of time for the 13.06 train to Inverness. We did have a very good meal at Creaig-na-Mara, where we are the only guests for tonight. We are overlooking Dunnet Head, where we have been treated to a very fine sunset.

Day 19 – 23rd April 2007

“Bridgwater. we have a problem!”

So serious was deemed our problem that I was referred immediately to Robin Thorn himself. He said that on some very rare occasions, Rohloff hubs can shed bits of flange. He talked about short-term solutions and long-term solutions. I pointed out that I had superglued the hub back together, had managed to get a small amount of tension in the spoke, and in any case we had been riding on it for at least 100 miles since I noticed the buckle in the wheel, which I had managed to reduce considerably.

Robin had another solution: take the bike to a good, small bike shop where they know what they are doing and get Bicycle Repair man to drill another hole and fit an oversize spoke in place of the offending one. Robin himself would track down the said BRM, I would visit him en route, the repair would be done and everybody would live happily ever after.

Robin found the said BRM and after some faffing gave me his phone number. His name was Mike, he worked in The Bike Bothy in Brora and he was primed with what he had to do.

I phoned Mike. I was in Tain at the time (as everyone knows, Tain is the home of Glenmorangie whisky) and Brora is something like 20 miles along the Sutherland coast. Mike was quite reluctant to tackle the job. He felt, as I did, that the fact that the bike had done quite a few miles since the break occurred that my superglue was holding the spoke in place, even if it wasn’t doing all the work it was supposed to. The principle of “leave well alone” was quite a good one.

In my view, this whole issue puts a big question mark over Rohloff hubs. What does Robin Thorn mean when he talks about “very rare occasions”? How often does a hub break before a spoke? I have never come across this situation before. OK, our tandem has taken a good deal of punishment over the past 3 weeks in which we have done a fair amount of off-road. I think it was the Great Glen Way which caused the damage, no doubt aided and abetted by the enormous bulk of the riders. Pilot and stoker weigh more than 27 stones. Each rear pannier wiehs about 1.5 stones. That, on a rough surface, puts everything to the test and we clearly found Panaracer Pasela tyres to be inadequate for the work we wanted them to do, whereas the Schwalbe Marathon Plus seem equal to the task.

The bottom line is that Rohloff hubs, retailing at about £700 a throw, should not have a fundamental flaw in them. If something is to break, it should be something the rider can easily replace (eg a spoke) not something that could put the entire tour in jeopardy. I don’t think I could now take a Rohloff-equipped bike to Patagonia with any confidence.

But enough of Rohloffs and Superglue. Today’s ride began in Alness, and very soon the A9 was the be-all-and-end-all of our existence. It wasn’t as busy as many A roads in SE England, but the traffic came in waves and was fast. As often as we could, we rode to the left of the while line on the left of the carriageway, and mostly we had plenty of room there.

We had 11ses in Tain, and a very fine cake shop it was. We made for Golspie and at lunch time sat in the drizzle eating sardines straight out of the tin. We looked for a loo in Brora but decided not to trouble Mike the Bike in his Bothy, and held a Council of War in Helmsdale. We phoned the B & B, telling them that we still had about 16 miles to do (by this time it was 5.30) and that we would find food before we arrived.

I had suspected, the way the map showed the road as zig-zags, that it climbed in Helmsdale, but we were not prepared for the climb we had. It was monstrous. I was worried that the slow pace enforced upon us would mean that we would miss our meal. Up we went, further and further, with marvellously spectacular views out to sea and along ravines. We reached a summit of sorts, allowing some descent, but then climbed again. Then we reached Berriedale.

I had been warned by the guy selling ferry tickets at Ardrossan, himself a Helmsdale man, that the hill into Berriedale was spectacular. So it was, but I didn’t want to give the tandem its head with the rear wheel problem and in any case, I would have been held up by a coach, whose brakes were doing such hard work on the descent that the tyres smelt as though they were on fire. Even so, we reached over 40mph.

The hill north of Berriedale is not such a git as the Helmsdale climb, being much shorter, but it takes you right to the top of Caithness and from that point it is a glorious fast run all the way into Dunbeath.

We stopped at the Inver Hotel, where food was still being served, but just to us, or so it seemed. There was one other couple for a brief while, but thereafter we had the place to ourselves. The view across the bay was most dramatic.

Toremore, our B & B, was only about half a mile up the hill from the restaurant, so we were soon bathed, in bed, and ready for the final day of this epic adventure.

Day 18 – 22nd April 2007

Our host, Mike, had washed and dried a load of washing for us, for which we were very grateful. We found that Mike was a very accomplished hill walker, having conquered all 284 Munros*, so I’m sure he has had a lot of practice at drying wet clothes.

We set off rather later than we intended, after 10am, but we made very good progress along Loch Ness, dropping in to Urquhart Castle for a coffee. Normally this would have been out of the question because the entry fee to the castle was £6.30 per adult and you had to buy a ticket to gain access to the café. However, for the weekend fo 21st-22nd April, many of Scotland’s historical attractions were opening their doors free. So we had a coffee and a cake without bothering ourselves with the castle.

Shortly came the major climb of the day, heading north from Drumnadrochit up to Convinth Glen. This was long and steep, and Janet and I pushed the bike for about 3/4 of a mile. Eventually we caught up with Chris, who was waiting by a small loch with his lunch. Although pushing the tandem up a long 1 in 6 had been hard work, when we were at the top the wind was cold. We were keen to make a move and the descent towards Beaulieu was great fun, as once again Janet and I broke our speed record: 46.2mph. This hill was not especially steep, just very, very long, but if you cannot build up a bit of pace when descending from the Highlands, when can you?

I recall a saying quoted to me when I visited Elgin VAT office with Customs & Excise years ago: “Speak well of the highlands, but live in the Laich”, the Laich being the stretch of coastline between Nairn and Elgin which has a particularly mild climate. I don’t think that Beaulieu, the Muir of Ord or Conan Bridge can be correctly be called the Laich, but we all noticed how much warmer we felt at the lower level.

We had a brief explore of Dingwall Town Centre but there’s not much going on at 5pm on a Sunday. We climbed to the minor road to avoid the busier, lower route and I decided it was time to do something about the wheel buckle which has been annoying us for a couple of days. I found the spoke key, tried to adjust a spoke or two in the offending part of the wheel and found a completely loose spoke, still attached at the nipple end. But the spoke wasn’t broken – the hub was! A piece of metal about an inch long had broken off my precious Rohloff hub!

This is definitely a tour-threatening situation. If another spoke on the rear wheel or, more to the point, another chunk of hub were to break off, I would be most reluctant to ride.

When we reached our accommodation, the Commercial Hotel, a fairly unpleasant place with no real ale and a very restricted food menu, I set to work trying to superglue the offending piece of hub back into place, but with little success.

We visited the local Indian for our evening meal, and the place might well have been called Balti Towers as the service was very slow and the apologies profuse, the woman blaming her husband for the tardiness of the meal. Eventually the food arrived and it was very good, although at the end we were treated on a discourse on how to provide low-fat Indian food to Scotsmen.

We returned to our hotel and I made another attempt to glue the piece of hub back into its place. There will be phone calls to Bridgewater in the morning and I can see the headlines in Der Zeitung: “Rohloffhub in LandsendtoJohnoGroatenfahren kaput ist!”

*It would appear that the number of Munros is a moveable feast, as it were. At the time of re-writing this some 17 years after the event, it seems that the Scottish Mountaineering Club now recognise 282 Munros. I wondered if two of them have worn out.