My Thirty Eighth Week as a Budding Author

Writing this blog is a funny old game. To you it may seem simple; survive the week, sit back and reflect upon it and then hammer away into a word processor followed by the push of the “Publish” button. I see it differently though. To me it is a commitment with a weekly deadline, designed to discipline me into writing something vaguely amusing that bears some resemblance to the facts as they happened. This is not as easy as it sounds. Even budding authors have repetition and often I get to Friday thinking, “What on earth am I going to write about given that all I’ve done is cycle a bit and record the salient details into a computer?”.

So, I scratch around the week looking for tangential elements that I hope will appeal. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There’s a fair few of these blog posts that I’d dearly love to rewrite and republish, but they’re done now and it’s time to move on to the next. This week is proving to be another one of the tricky ones. It followed a formula that’s been running for months:-

• pack the van and forget stuff
• ride hard bikes routes and really suffer
• meet lunatics on campsites (Andy Shelley excepted)
• break bits of bicycle
• have “issues” with motorists

Now I think I know most of the people that read this blog by sight. Furthermore a nice little google tool called analytics tells me that I am a long way from being a famous and well respected blogger. Some recent market research that I carried out indicates that you are probably currently lying in bed reading this on a tablet wondering just what the bloody idiot has been up to next (couples, first one to read this..grab a few partner pubes, no returns). Well, the answer is that the “bloody idiot” has been thinking, in fact he’s been thinking quite a lot and I’d like to share some of the results with you and have a little chat.

I’ve been cogitating around “the book”, my big project to enrich the lives of road cyclists with the joys of the highways in Great Britain. There’s a danger it could be a little bit…...boring. I know this because I’ve spent time reading a lot of the books that have gone before. Actually, that’s a lie. I’ve flicked through a load of these books but never sat down and read them. All they do is describe leafy lanes and witter on about escaping from traffic on quiet country lanes. After page 40 I’m willing the author to say something INTERESTING even if it’s completely unrelated to the route they want me to ride.

There’s another problem, I find it very hard to write and detach myself from the words on the page. In English, this means I’ll never be a journalist, a proper historian or a copywriter. I’m only really productive when writing from the viewpoint of Dave. This is a problem when you are an arrogant, opinionated little twerp with a warped sense of humour and slight inferiority complex. As I must confess I am. There’s been a fair few moments of head in hands recently as I’ve tried my hardest to bend to a discipline that I’m just not programmed to action. I’ve been tempted to give up and write the last nine months off as “a learning experience”. And then I found this:-

It’s from the front page of the Barrow Central Wheelers cycling club website. I have to confess I’ve never heard of them. I’ll probably be reminded that I know one of their members but my amnesia in the matter will be genuine.

“You've probably read "In Search Of Robert Millar", "Flying Scotsman" and loads of other cycling books.  Well, there's a new one due out next year, and reading this chaps blog on its progress, it should be a cracker.”

Sorry, but I have to repeat that quote. The person that I don’t know who wrote it has inspired me forwards more than they can ever think. Because they’ve made me realise that any book I try to force out is going to be crap. It’s got to be written by me and in my voice or not be written at all. My sister will have her hand in the air and be shouting, “Dave I told you this in February.” Yes Sally, you did. Sometimes I can be a little bit slow on the uptake, take it from me seven months is good going.

Now, there’s no guarantee that writing in my style will eradicate the potential for crap. But hopefully I can sell a copy to the Barrow Central Wheelers with “no refunds” written on the back on bold.

This single (yet bleedingly obvious) revelation has been a huge weight off my shoulders. It has impact, in that I will be drawing a thick black line through nearly forty thousand words and writing “could do better” in the margin. But it frees me to be a little more personal and creative in the description of routes.

For example:-

“The next few miles consists of delightful smooth tarmaced lanes that lead up to a stiff climb to a church”

Can now be replaced with:-

“For f**ks sake eat all your energy bars now before you blow out of your arse on the climb and expire at the top. No worries if you do as there’s a graveyard to hand, it might be worth warning the vicar in advance”.

More so, I can weave my experiences into the routes and try to bring them alive, a sort of “idiot not abroad” type of experience.

The final huge advantage stems from the issue of photography. There are over forty routes in this book in forty different locations and I had naively assumed that I’d be able to locate and cajole forty different riders to help illustrate the rides. Nine months into the project it is clear that this was ridiculously optimistic given that there are probably less than forty people in the UK actually prepared to suffer my company for more than an hour.

I’ve got shit loads of photos of me looking shagged out and fed up with it all at the top of remote hills. These would be incongruous against text that was not describing my own personal journey around the routes. The photos must fit with the words and visa-versa, using my new writing strategy they will.

So there ends this week’s statement from the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious. This book and the others I am working on will be selfishly focused around my journey and my experiences. Because if they ain’t, I can’t write them.

I’ll end the navel gazing now and apologise for this week’s morose-ity (sic), think of yourself as partaking within a little piece of online therapy that has helped me a lot. Any comments gratefully received, blogging is very lonely without feedback. Please rest assured that I have been riding the bike though, in fact I’ve been riding it a lot.

Cycling activity has been a virtual “war of the roses: having taken place in Lancashire and then Yorkshire. Yorkshire won the battle hands down with 4,000 feet more climbing than Lancashire and a ferocious westerly wind. Riding over Ovenden Moor was probably the scariest experience of the year as I had gale force winds one side of the road and spinning wind farms the other. A complete lack of recent pies meant that I was in clear danger of being plucked from the tarmac and neatly shredded in the turbines. I can now see why the fat lads maintain the lager/doughnut/kebab strategy, on top of Yorkshire hills it makes a lot of sense.

Dave

23rd September 2011

 WEEK 39>>>>>>>>

My Thirty Seventh Week as a Budding Author

As an avid newspaper reader I’m regularly faced with a list of things that will shorten my life if they pass my lips. Cycling magazines are just as bad, they make every attempt to steer me away from the things I love if I’m to maintain my performance on the bike. Recently my doctor colluded as well and posted me with a list of foods that I am now only allowed to smell, or face the consequences of death by cholesterol. It’s all very well their ganging up on nice food but you’d expect them to warn you of other health risks as well, for example punk rock.

How often have you sat in the armchair flipped open Cycling weekly and turned to the feature labelled “Why Cyclists Shouldn’t Attend Punk Rock Gigs When Training”? The answer is “never”, because they have no real world experience and only ever preach the obvious. Well, as a public service to all of my spinny legged brethren (and sistthren) I’m here to inform you that punk rock gigs are definitely places where cyclists don’t want to be for reasons entirely unrelated to pogoing.

This week I attended a punk rock gig. GBH to be more specific. The last time I’d watched them play live the United Kingdom has its first ever national Glow-worm day (give in?1985). Trotting down to the Furnace I was filled with the anticipation of meeting a few old friends, sharing a few old stories and drinking a few old pints of watery ale. All of this happened and the band didn’t disappoint, apart from Jock Blyth whose legendary mohican was now replaced with a bald patch.

Anyway, I returned home unscathed, or so I thought. A few days later I’d developed a cold. “How on earth can this be blamed on a punk rock gig?” I hear you ask. Well, there is no other explanation, it has to be down to the spitting. In fact, I wish that in 1976 somebody had invented a camera that tracked airborne spittle. This camera could have been placed in punk rock concert venues and the spittle spectrum produced would prove to be very interesting indeed.

Like the earth’s magnetic field, the spittle spectrum would flip over a period of time. In the 70’s and 80’s the spectrum would show the majority of the phlegm leaving the audience and following a trajectory directly onto the band. In the 90’s and noughties the spectrum would thin, with only the odd stray globule appearing. But in our current decade an interesting phenomenon would be observed, the spectrum would turn through ninety degrees and be clearly visible in the vicinity of the bar.

Scientists would have scratched their heads for years over this, but to me the explanation is clear. Punk rock really is dead and the only attendees at such gigs are old. Being old, we’re all a little deaf and a tad more dribbly than we ever used to be. We’re not used to all of this loud music anymore and we don’t have the energy to pogo. So we all hang around at the bar and shout at each other from a range of two inches, because the music’s too loud and we can’t hear each other speak. This is what generates the spittle, shouted conversation and wider gaps in the teeth. I must have been covered in the stuff as old friends bawled into my face about their pensions. To be fair, I shouted back about cycling. They would leave and another old friend would take their place.

There’s the old myth about Marc Almond ....... but I would like to have had my left ear analysed as it definitely contained fifteen different types of male phlegm. At least one of the samples would show traces of nasopharyngitis.

Fantastic, a cold. Just what I needed with two big rides to complete this week and an insane cyclocross race the week after. It made itself known on Tuesday, a hectic day of route planning, preparation and much loose-end-tying. What’s worse is that it is one of those weird colds that appears to be polite. Instead of barging into my head and lungs, ripping them to shreds and throwing half of them out of my nose, it has politely crept up and made me feel “headish”. Something is in there, but I’m not sure what.

There’s been the odd sneeze, a bit of sensation in the lungs, but this cold backs off as soon as I start to really moan. I’m wondering if the last virus left some lung wall graffiti along the lines of:-

“Dear next cold in residence. Don’t go too mental on this one mate, he resorts to whiskey much quicker than other hosts and doesn’t believe in that Night Nurse nonsense. If you have at him early he’ll hit the Scotch malt and you’ll lose to the hangover. I’d play it cool for a while, a few stabs here and there should keep him on the orange juice which we know doesn’t work”

You can guess what happened next, instead of sitting it out like a sensible bloke, I went cycling.

Surrey was venue number one, the route conveniently went past my ex-business partner’s house so I blagged a parking space. My battered car next to his Bentley, there’s a message there, he’s still working for the business and I’m not. Hurricane Irene was nowhere to be seen as I tootled off into London and minced round Richmond Park like all good roadies do. A few more miles and I was out of London heading into the Surrey hills.

At this point the cold was nowhere to be seen. Things were looking good as long as I kept my heart rate down and breathing nice and regular. London motorists were well behaved as well. I had plenty of room, passing speeds were low and even had a “After you, no you, no you, oh go on then, thank you!” exchange with a lorry driver at a busy junction. The bad experiences of the previous week began to fade until British Telecom let the motorists down.

It had to be BT didn’t it? Everyone who has ever dealt with them in some way has been let down. Broadband failures, phone line disconnections, email non-delivery. Even their adverts subtly conveyed their art of letting you down. Maureen Lipman’s screen son gained only an “ology”, thus becoming a living metaphor for BT.

It was a BT van that forced me off the roundabout. I was going straight over, he decided I wasn’t and executed a deft swing of the van that cut off my intended path. BT’s strapline used to be “It’s good to talk”. Not in our case. He shouted about hand signals so in response I made some for him. I don’t think they are in the highway code and they tried to make them illegal in Scotland.

No damage done I tapped along to Box Hill making a mental note to “take it real easy in case the cold decides to have a go”. Box Hill is quite well known in the cycling world, it will be even more well known next year when the Olympic cycling road race goes up it ten times. I was planning on once and a steady once at that, which would have happened if I wasn’t made of male.

Two corners into the climb I spotted some lycra ahead. He was about a hundred yards up the road and an exploratory push on the pedals showed he could be caught. I was calmly sneaking up on him at a manageable pace until he glanced over his shoulder and realised he’d become prey. His excess of Y chromosomes ensured that he pedalled harder as well, and so the chase began.

Ignoring the cold, the remaining fifty five miles and any sense of decency I upped cadence and went on the attack. He tried as well, but weight and months of training fell in my favour. The gap began to close. I caught him before the final bend where he saw sense and began to slow. Stupidly I passed him at a reasonably high speed. I saved a few breaths in order to emit a nonchalant “Hi” then continued in my predicament. Passing him at this speed meant I had to carry on. It’s desperately poor form to chase and then give up. If you catch at full gas the rule book says you pass and continue at full gas without looking back.

So that’s what I did. The rest of the climb was completed at competition pace, a fantastic remedy for a brewing cold. Suffice to say that the rest of the ride wasn’t. The remaining route was sneaked round at a CTC cadence. Five miles from the end I was musing on the lack of closed roads. The last set of rides had been cursed by them, but today appeared to be remarkably closed road free. One mile later predictability came to the fore.

The rest of the week was lost in a flurry of map fettling and another cold and weather forecast defying ride. All signs pointed towards a very wet Friday, but I’ve got a rigid schedule so threw caution to the wind with a very early start in Rutland. The journey there was uneventful apart from my encounter with the world’s most dexterous woman.

I was doing 70mph on the A43 (in a car) when a black Audi passed piloted (I think) by a young lady. She was steering by friction alone using the little finger of her left hand, the other fingers were holding a compact mirror. Her right hand was fully occupied by the lipstick. This wasn’t the smoothest bit of road either, but from what I could see the lipstick was being applied in a uniform manner. Insanity.

It was nice to end the week on a high note as the forecast rain morphed into sunshine and light winds. I had lovely 65 miles apart from the wasp who flew into my helmet and stung me. Let’s qualify that this was my cycling helmet and you’ll be relieved to know that I followed the correct procedure:-

1. shout “bollocks” loudly (bollocks is OK by the way, I heard it on Radio 4 this morning in a John Humphries interview with a historian)
2. undo helmet strap, throw helmet into verge
3. unclip, dismount and run around with hands in the air shouting “He stung me, he stung me!
4. stamp repeatedly on wasp
5. watch wasp fly away (stamping on wasps with road cleats on is entirely ineffective)
6. retrieve helmet from ditch
7. remount, cycle onwards
8. return to ditch for sunglasses

Next week I’m off up north for an extended tour including the most scary set of rides of the year. Google “Rosedale Chimney” and you’ll understand what I mean.

Dave

16th September 2011

WEEK 38>>>>>>>>>>

My Thirty Sixth Week as a Budding Author

To be honest I’ve been wondering when it would happen rather than “if”. This year I’ve ridden my bike along more than 5,500 miles of British roads without it happening. Until this week, when it happened. I can’t prove it, but I reckon it happens to hundreds of cyclists every week. It’s almost as if we take it in turn. Some of us get off lightly, others don’t get off at all. This week it was my turn as I was knocked off my bike by a motorist. Actually, let’s be a little more specific, it wasn’t just a motorist, it was the driver of a flatbed lorry. Well, at the time of the accident he could only loosely be described as the driver because he was multi-tasking as a mobile phone operative.

So, knocked off your bike by a mobile phone wielding lorry driver, could it get worse? Yes. How about, knocked off your bike whilst riding in a cycle lane by a rotund mobile phone wielding lorry driver?

This week demanded that I complete two big rides in order to keep the book on schedule. One of which included the Purbeck hills of Dorset and when looking at the map I noticed an enticing route around Poole Harbour. A brief weather window opened and I dashed down to Wimborne Minster and pedalled furiously through Poole heading for the Sandbanks Ferry. The last section of road towards Sandbanks has a well marked cycle lane and I tapped along this without a care in the world having enjoyed a slalom course of pedestrians along the harbour cycle path.

Meanwhile, behind me the flatbed lorry driver (let’s call him “Hank”) had finished a complete box of Yorkies and decided to call his supplier and order a restock. He reached for his phone and pressed the speed dial key for Nestle when his conscience spoke and reminded him that driving with a mobile phone is both silly and illegal. “No problem”, his fourteen functioning neurones replied, “I’ll just pull over and make the call from the pavement”. And so he did, with little regard for his nearside mirror or me, who was cycling alongside him.

Suddenly all that existed in my world was lorry. Available tarmac ahead dried up and I was left with a choice of kerb or steel girders. A nudge from one of the girders aided selection and I dived left whilst shouting “Noooooooooooooooo!”. This time I was lucky, the bike and I skidded across the pavement out of the path of the lorry’s rear wheels. I’d been meaning to tighten my cleats the week previously but other tasks had got in the way. This slackness came to my aid, as my left foot unclipped when the bike hit the kerb and I landed with the aid of one foot. There was no real damage to me or the bike.

Now you’re expecting to hear how I calmly took down the driver’s details, photographed his numberplate, sought witnesses and swiftly brought him to justice. But let me tell you that when you’ve been in an accident all lucid thought leaves the mind to be replaced with shock mixed with joie de vivre. First instinct was to check the bike, it appeared to be as intact as a bike owned by Dave could possibly be. Next, I turned my attention to me. A few scuffs on the clothes, but no rips, tears or any signs of red. Finally, swearing.

I made my way to the passenger side window and observed the driver still on the phone. Clearly, he was blissfully unaware of my presence or predicament. Obviously the best course of action to correct this was to swear and thus I unleashed my full arsenal at him. The “C” word, “F” word, “B” word, “A” word and even a tenuous “Q” as if aiming for a scrabble high score. The rapid fire profanity bounced around his cab ricocheting from his belly to chin and eventually crossing his timpanic membrane and into the brain. He looked pretty non-plussed to be honest and reacted with a shrug. It helped me though, so I left him to his Yorkie order and pedalled off up to a set of temporary lights.

At the lights a car pulled alongside, window wound down.

“We saw that mate, you should report him, we’ll act as witnesses, he nearly killed you, the idiot was on his phone”

I should have taken their names, I should have called the police, I should have pursued all action possible to prevent him repeating his mistake and killing in the future. But those are the actions of a lucid man and I was still running on chemicals designed to help fight/flee. I brushed off their offer and rode on towards the ferry. Many miles too late the right course of action became clear, but by this time I was in the hills and he was in a cafe somewhere laughing about the wanker-cyclist who’d sworn at him out of the blue.

Fortunately the remainder of the ride was a belter. Lots of stabby little Dorest hills having a go at my legs and lots of scenic little Dorest lanes tugging at my eyes. The curse of the closed roads returned with a vengeance near Lulworth. The roads up here cross Army ranges and are often closed so they can practise at war. As far as I am aware there’s no reliable place to check in advance. I’d prepared myself for re-routing and at Steeple Hill I heard the sounds of gunfire indicating that my ride would be somewhat elongated.

As I rode closer the noise became more terrifying, machine gun fire mixed with tank shells. It reminded me of my favourite war poem by Private S. Baldrick

The German Guns

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,

Boom, Boom, Boom,

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,

Boom, Boom, Boom

The remainder of the ride almost passed without event. Until the final few miles riding back to the car. I came to a narrow climb decorated with six inches of cow shit to the left hand side and with room for either a car or a cyclists, but not both. I gingerly skirted the poo and cycled up, as I was halfway up a motorist appeared at the top.

“It’s OK”, “I thought to myself, “He’ll see me, the gap and the poo and he’ll wait”

He’d clearly been in discussion with the lorry driver and chose the opposite course of action in order to enhance his swear word vocabulary. I was forced to stop, unclip and stand in the poo. As he inched past I gave an ironic salute and called him a “T” word. His wife in the passenger seat wound down her window and shouted back, “No!, you’re the tw*t”. She’s right, I am a tw*t, I should be writing about great journeys in the car. No aching legs, no rain, no wind, no sore arse, no shitty shoes, no strength sapping diversions and most importantly, airbags.

Big Ride number two was planned for the Chilterns. My friend Andy had collaborated on the route which meant there’d be climbs as he likes that sort of thing. Circumstances prevented us riding it together and on Friday I set out on my own to tackle the beast. Low cloud ruined all ambient light giving me the luxury of a ride without the stress of cycling self portraits.

I’d even found a government website that advised upon closed roads and checked every inch of the route to ensure it was open. Which it was, apart from the mile long climb out of Little Missenden which was firmly shut. I asked advice from an ageing couple at the bottom, enquiring whether the road would be ok to ride. She clocked my GPS.

“You should have an OS map”, she spiked, “and then you’d know. You don’t need these new fangled devices they only cause problems. A map would tell you what you need to know”

God I hate map zealots. I had an OS map in my back pocket. I also had an OS map on the GPS screen. Neither was capable of telling me whether the lane ahead was rideable upon a bike. I considered enquiring as to whether she had a phone? If so, I’d have go into a lengthy diatribe concerning the use of semaphore as an entirely suitable substitution instead of this new fangled technology lark. I thanked her for the non-advice and rode up the lane. It was a disaster. In fact I think the army had been up here previously to practise their shelling.

I had to smile at the number plate left behind by the optimistic motorist probably led down here by his sat-nav. Should have used an OS map.

The rest of the route was great, apart from the cars. Word clearly has got out about me and in the Chilterns it’s even more scary as they all drive so fast. Everyone appears to own either a Landrover or an Audi. They clearly know the roads and how to drive them “on the limit”. Cyclists are treated like chicanes, approach at speed, minimise braking and pass with minimal disruption to the racing line. I actually got used to it after a while and stopped swearing with gesticulations.

Three feet, that’s all I want, three feet of space as you come past my bike. It’s not much to ask is it really? It might take an extra thirty seconds from your journey if you slowed and complied. In return I’ll give you a nice cheery little wave and you can laugh at my clothes and the rain.

It wasn’t all gloom though, In High Wycombe I stopped by a pub for an energy bar and a quick check of the map. A young couple were sat in the garden, smoking fags, supping lager and wine. It was quite cold at this point and the skies looked dark.

“I wish I was you” I quipped glancing jealously at the pint.

They smiled and the bloke raised his glass:-

“Maybe, but you’re out there and we’re sat on our arses. At the end of today you’ll be in a better state than us”

He might be right, but typing this the fatigue is squeezing at my legs and I look at the schedule for the coming month. Hopefully the battle with motorists will desist and the winds will blow themselves out. I still have another 2,000 miles of riding to go and the nights are drawing in. Now where did I hide that EPO?

Dave

10th September 2011

WEEK 37 >>>>>>>>

My Thirty Fifth Week as a Budding Author

“The duck sucked the muck”

To the vast majority of the British population that phrase would be meaningless nonsense. An ornithologist might conjecture that this is possible were a duck looking for a tasty morsel in a particularly repellant pond. But the Barter siblings would all point directly at their father whilst smirking at his calendar. The reason being that Dad used to catalogue every night that we spent sleeping in a tent in neat print on our kitchen calendar. Being a man of the RAF this had to be done using a three letter acronym. Dad thought long and hard about this and came up with DUC, SUC and MUC.

If you can crack the code before I tell you, you’ll realise just how long ago this was. I’ll give you a clue, “D” stands for Dave, “S” for Sally and “M” for Mark. Now you have to get the “UC”. Give up? It stands for “Under Canvas”. As a result our calendar was covered in DUCs, SUCs and MUCs and on occasion a full house of DUC/SUC/MUC. Being children, we would snigger away at this and chant “The duck sucked the muck” to ourselves. 

My Dad set an impressive benchmark for nights under canvas (CUC in his case). He told me that he’d managed a full year and his Dad had given him a pipe (or something like that) as a reward. Cogs whirred in my mind and I enquired as to whether we had a similar reward scheme. It turned out we did and in my youth I notched up an impressive 730+ DUCs gaining a rucksack as a result. Most of the DUCs were in our back garden which probably still has the two yellow patches in the grass (one was the tent, the other was pure laziness).

This week I increased my DUC count by one during a planned trip to the West Country. Cornwall and Exmoor were on the agenda and most of the roads there were designed for wheelbarrows rather than motorhomes. So, I shoved the tent in the car along with a dusty sleeping back, a gas stove, roll mat and my coffee pot. Then I drove into the depths of Cornwall and rode my bike around it for nearly seventy miles.

I’d forgotten how hard Cornwall is for cyclists. There is not an inch of flat and all inclines go properly up without any fannying around. I reckon I only used three of the ten gears available to me at the back of the bike and the big ring at the front went into a major sulk after being left out for fifty miles. Cornwall also has proper closed roads. None of those mincey little signs with a bit of resurfacing going on. Oh no, Cornwall closes its roads with hulking great boulders and clay.

I arrived back at the car properly knackered (after a steep climb to get to it of course) and drove off in search of a campsite. A few miles up the road I stumbled upon a holiday park and a tent sign. I should have known better, but fatigue drove me forwards to the reception and a living Miss Marple who manned it.

“I’d like to book a pitch for the night please” - I politely enquired

“£14.99” - she replied over her reading glasses

“It’s just a small tent”

“£14.99”

“I don’t need electricity or water on the pitch”

“£14.99”

She drove a hard bargain, I tried every angle to get the price down but she had clearly been programmed to respond with “£14.99” to every plea. I considered asking if she had a daughter just to see what the response would have been, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

£14.99 poorer I drove to my pitch, or “the side of another steep hill” as she should have described it. I rushed back to reception, but she’d locked up for the day. Her and my £14.99 were off to Asda. I was stuck on the slope.

I made the best I could of the experience, by pitching the tent and driving to Mevagissey where I spent the evening queuing for fish and chips followed by hiding from seagulls and fat tourists. The night in the tent was awful. I awoke curled up at the bottom of it with dead arms and legs. All cycling pain was forgotten replaced with tent induced bruises, hernias and blood filled feet. I ate a sulky breakfast and left, somehow dropping my dictafone in the process. This will cause much puzzlement to whoever finds it when they wonder what on earth the breathless bloke was up to.

“<puff><puff> four point five miles <wheeze>country lane<puff>poorly surfaced, steep<rustle><rustle><sound of not switched off dictafone in pocket>”

I realised I’d lost it nearly forty miles from the campsite and phoned Miss Marple back to see if she’d found it. But she wasn’t taking my calls so I diverted into Launceston to buy a new one for the planned Exmoor ride. What a mission of optimism this proved to be, attempting to purchase a solid state voice recorder in deepest Cornwall.

“Hello, do you sell digital voice recorders?”

“Oi don’t think we do my lover, but I sell e’ a pasty?”

After a fruitless hour in the town centre I left with a pasty and directions to Argos who clearly knew I was coming as they were having a dictafone sale. 

At Exmoor I booked a room in a pub. This came with a bath, telly, flat floor and all of my favourite drinks in a bar below. Tempting as it was to cut loose, I only had the one due to Thursday’s ride looking even harder than the Cornish epic. I was up bright and early for a cooked breakfast then jumped on the bike and headed off into Exmoor which was covered in sun.

It wasn’t only the sun that made an appearance, the hills did as well. Exmoor had clearly heard about Cornwall and got all competitive. The hills were as steep as the Cornish ones, but elongated a tad. Dunkery Beacon was the first objective, it climbs 1,200 feet in 2.4 miles with a mile long section of 17% gradient. I used to like climbing until Dunkery Beacon. Now I’m going to retrain as a time trialist and stick to flat roads that are ten miles long. Dunkery Beacon flogged my legs all the way up and is still flogging them as I type this now. Believe me, I had to give myself a right good talking to before I was able to ride back down and take photos.

Descending down the other side I met a cyclist putting on his gear. “Did you make it?” he enquired. That for me sums up the Beacon, it’s not a case of how long it will take you to climb, it’s whether you will manage to climb it at all. 

The rest of the ride was equally hard, long steep climbs mixed with absolutely no flat bits at all. Even the cows decided to have a go, as evidenced by the picture below. All I was trying to do was take a nice little picture, but the hairy bugger was having none of it. “Not on my manor” he mooed at me in cow language. I attempted to pedal away at speed, but speed morphed into amble due to the hill. I was saved by a particularly succulent piece of heather that distracted him from his intention to munch upon my legs.

I finished the ride exhausted and drove back home to Swindon. Another long week on the road, two more routes bagged and photographed. A return trip is required as I spotted a perfect piece of road to illustrate the Exmoor ride. Unfortunately I spotted it whilst travelling downhill at 30+ mph and it will need a third party to nail the shot properly from above. The plan for next week is to head southeast, let’s hope the weather has an entirely different objective.

Dave

2nd September 2011

WEEK THIRTY SIX >>>>>