photo by Joe
Sunday 1
A lovely drive with Joe, down to Land’s end in Joe’s Tesla, watching the virtual traffic cones come and go on the car’s television size display screen, and enjoying the occasional lurch of the self driving software as the car decides to change Lane all of it's own accord. Feeling a bit nervous about the ride ahead, the heavily loaded bike, and if my legs and lungs are up to it. Obligatory photos at Lands End, which seemed to be mostly populated by coach loads of Sikhs, lovely thick accents, sprinklings of Punjabi maybe, lots of selfies, very odd for the depths of Cornwall - and then an expensive and minuscule hot chocolate from a kiosk. A ride along the A30 to Penzance, as the drizzle increased, sitting eating chips on Penzance seafront, chatting to a deep sea trawlerman, who was awaiting the arrival of a new (secondhand) 80 foot trawler from Whitby.
The drizzle turned to rain, and I missed my photo of the day, as a young woman strode by in short bright yellow pants, long bare legs, bight red plastic shoes, and a blue spotted umbrella - I couldn’t get the phone out of it’s waterproof pouch quickly enough, so that image will just have to live on in my head, and in words. The waterproof mount for the phone proves a bit of a pain, as it steams up - I went a mile up a very steep hill towards St Ives before realising there was an estuary between me and where I wanted to be… and I had to go all the way back down again - it also makes taking my phone out to take photos really awkward, so maybe this will not be a photo taking trip. I was itching to photograph the fishing boats in Penzance and Lelant, all the wonderful sun bleached reds, blues, greens and oranges against the black of tar and white of chalk. Another time - too wet to hang around. The sat nav is the more vital - it’s so easy to take a wrong turn, always steeply up a hill… Shopping for tea in Perrenporth, cheesy rolls, tins of sardines, and dried bacon strips - feels like an expedition! Up the hill, past many an abandoned winding tower and old mine workings, I ended the day’s ride sleeping behind a village hall in Fraddon - underneath a no trespassing sign, so hoping not to be caught, especially with my pants down, pooping in a hole dug in the grass cutting heap behind the garden shed in the dewy morning. Glad of my fleece - I was going to buy one - but instead found a perfectly good one on the side of the road on one of my practice runs up Priddy hill - road kill! Only needed a wash - and it’s a designer label! Serendipity!
Monday 2
Riding past the china clay works in Fraddon, and stopping for hot chocolate at a service station, mostly to warm up my fingers on the paper mug. I stopped to photograph some skeletons in a garden - human, dog, and cat, and admire a fine collection of manakins in the cottage’s front porch, and ended up having a long talk with the owner, through his living room window, and taking a photo of him and his dog too.
Through Bodmin, and onto the Camel trail, which warmed me up, and by the time I got to the cafe at the end (or start) of the trail, full sun, and another hot chocolate, and a chat with a guy my sort of age, riding to Cardiff from Padstow with one camp over - all carbon fibre and Lycra, the opposite of me - lightweight and streamlined as possible, with nothing sticking out sideways - a thin wedge of bag above and below his top bar, and a tent strapped to the saddle, sticking out like tail feathers, costume sleek as a superhero.
Then up the hill again to a vast abandoned airfield - a main staging point for American troops coming across for D-Day. I stopped and chatted to a beardy man who was playing with a remote control Landrover in the bumpy turf next to a runway. He had been knocked off his motorbike - not his fault, so the accident compensation had paid for his house, and a couple of remote control Landrover toys - but he was in constant pain - which was sad - not venturing too far from his car. Living his adventurous life in his imagination, via his scale model (with working headlights)
Onward to Okehampton, where I freewheeled down the last few miles on the old gravel line - fairly recently abandoned, as much of the track, signalling and signage is still there - over a spectacular high bridge over the valley, and ended up at Okehampton YHA - passing another large group of Asians , who were doing a four day, twenty miles a day challenge - just as they arrived at the YHA (which they had exclusively booked) to the whoops and cheers of their support crew. One yogi thin young man was walking wobbly and bow-legged, with painfully blistered feet I suspect - but he managed a short sprint to the finish. I had to backtrack a few miles back up the gravel line, to find a campsite - next to a sadly closed pub called the pump and peddle - so motorway service station fare after a risky sprint across the A30, but a welcome warm shower too, and a tumble dryer for wet gear.
Tuesday 3
Back down the gravel line, and on to hot chocolate in Crediton (this is becoming a theme...) passing Cheryl’s old haunt, Shrobroke, then on to Tiverton, where I stopped at an old bike shop to buy new lights - talking to a lovely 85 year old man who has run the shop for 40 years, having retired early from his job delivering aviation fuel in an old Feddon truck (framed in a black and white photo on the shop wall) over night, to aircraft around the country. On his fingers was tattooed true lov - he had lost a little finger when his ring caught on a little bit of metal as he was climbing down from his cab one night - he drove all the way home with the finger wrapped in a hanky in his pocket, and his hand wrapped in another. They sewed it back on, but it didn’t take.
Up a very steep hill through the grounds of an impressive estate - once the seat of the Heathcoat-Amery family, who owned most of the industry in Tiverton, ending up with a steep downhill to stay the night with Meagan, and a very welcome soup of nettles and spinach, dandelions, and other greens from her garden. Amazing wonderfully arty house, very large for a single person, though perfect for an artist - like an old vicarage, nestled in the hills, with land all around, a paddock, horses and sheep, and Meagan’s art and arty artefacts everywhere, and every wall hand decorated in chalky blues, ochres, greens and reds - like a bohemian Charleston, and equally full of objet d'art. Drying the tent in her studio, and sleeping in a bed - yay!
Wednesday 4
Steeply back up the hill - and many more - definitely feeling the hills this morning, stopping regularly on the steepest bits. (and generally, feeling more power in my legs in the afternoon rather than the morning - keeling over once as I failed to get my right leg out of its clip in time, and the camber of the slope took me over to the right rather than the left - into the nettles in the verge) to get to Taunton in time to meet up with Huw (and have a chocolate beforehand by French Weir, (where the Taunton Society for the Preservation of Peace agreed to prosecute those swimming naked) for a lovely cycle in the sun, along the bridgwater canal, Huw on a hired electric bike, to Glastonbury on the old Bridgwater - Glastonbury railway line, an ice cream at the Peat Moors centre, and hot chocolate on Glastonbury High Street too, before a well known cycle back home across the levels, through Fenny Castle and Wookey, and then a bath - yay!
Thursday 5
A morning at home, washing, drying the tent, and fixing the bike, getting a bike ready for Laurie, and fetching him from Wells, for a lovely cycle along the Strawberry line to Yatton, and back lanes under the raised bit of the M5 to Pill - with a hot chocolate at Yatton station. Then through the smelly rubbish strewn back end of industrial Avonmouth, under the M4, and up into Gloucestershire. Passing Berkeley Castle, which has been in the same family since they constructed it in the 12th century - they have a four poster which is said to be the oldest bit of furniture in England consistently used by one family - I wonder how many generations have been conceived, born, and died in that? It is also reputedly the place where King Edward the second was horribly murdered - maybe at the behest of his Queen Isabella, who later, possibly having an affair with Roger Mortimer, usurped him, imprisoned him, and possibly arranged his demise. After months of captivity in a carrion infested dungeon in Berkeley castle, where they tried to break his health, two men held him down with a mattress, or table, stuck a trumpet or horn up his bum, and a red hot poker up of that, swirled in his entrails, so no mark would show as he lay embalmed - though some say it was a humble porter they skewered, and the king had got away, and all this in the castle where the last known court jester jested. Isabella was later buried, at her request, with the cask that contained his heart, and Mortimer was hanged - all's well that ends well?
I wrote a poem:
Murder most foul
The oldest bed that’s known
To have belonged to just one family
Is an old four poster bed
From the Castle known as Berkeley
In the valley of the Severn
In the shire known as Gloucester
Where this bed has seen some service
In it’s long seven century story
And in this very castle
Lived this country’s last court jester
Known to entertain the courtiers
With his fool’s marotte and gesture
He must have been a merry bloke
With tinkly bells and banter
A silver tounged fast talker
And England’s last official joker
The queen, Queen Isabella
Had a lover Roger Mortimer
And maybe hanky panky
In that very bit of furniture
So she turned against her husband
And that led to merry murder
In that very castle Berkeley
In that merry shire of Gloucester
They incarcerated King Edward
Known as Edward of Caernarfon
He was involuntarily sequestered
In that castle’s musty dungeon
They left him there to fester
In pestilent seclusion
But he was a constitutional monarch
With a kingly constitution
So they came for him in dead of night
Or so the story goes
Pinned down by a table top
Or smothered in bedclothes
They stuck a trumpet up his (fundament) bum
And hot pokers up the horn
Twirled around his entrails till he ceased to make a moan
To leave his embalmed body with no outward sign of harm
Some say it was a substitute
Who took the assassins poker
Maybe the king made his escape
In the costume of a joker
And Sir Roger later arrested
For plotting evil deeds
Was hung from Tyburn gallows
And left hanging there for days
Finding a lovely campsite at Arlingham, on a u-bend in the river, north of Slimbridge, and eating a gourmet meal in the local pub - very delicious, but very expensive for a tiny portion in the middle of a huge arty plate - downturned edges like some sort of upside down hat, and little squiggles and sprinklings of this and that - I had to ask for a portion of chips to go with it, to get my carb intake.
Friday 6
A cup of tea in the morning with a campervanner from Bath, while the tent dried, then off up the Severn valley. A first hot chocolate, and a full English, at Bills, on the dock front in Gloucester, and buying a £54 folding camp seat at Go Outdoors for £14, if I signed up to be a loyal customer (selling my email address) buying 10 out of date double decker bars for 10p each, to keep me going - sugar sugar sugar! On up the Sharpness canal, for a baked potato and cheese stop from a canal narrowboat cafe in Worcester called ‘The Cafe that Rocks’ and later, as it started to rain, very welcome chips and sauce from ‘Fat Eddie’s Smokehouse’ cafe van somewhere near Kidderminster on the Stourbridge canal - followed by a very big hole in my supposedly puncture proof tubeless front tyre - putting an inner tube in in the rain, beside the canal, then stopping in the drizzle to take photos of a thin oriental woman with bum length black hair, who really didn’t want to be photographed, feeding vast quantities of seed, bread and ham to the pigeons and gulls - laying a long row of ham all along the rampart of the canal. All in the rain. Ending up sleeping rough that night in a very damp dank wood just short of RAF Cosford, near a place called Gallows Hill, with the rain bucketing down most of the night. I realised that I had left my small bike lock at the camp site, in a bush, and my little Oakdragon liquid soap bottle in the shower - bother - that feeling that something is not quite complete - but I decide not to for back for them...
Saturday 7
90 mile cycle today from my wet wood west of Wolverhampton - still loving every minute, though both yesterday and today mornings have felt uphill and into the wind, and a bit samey, then on both days wonderful afternoon cycles along canal tow paths and rivers, all along the route, passing vast fields of yellow rape, and reminders of our industrial past, not least in the fact that I am mostly on tow paths and old railway lines.
Amused by the beetles and flies that hitch a lift on my thighs for a while, then fly off again - sometimes having travelled quite some distance - a bit like a Richard Long piece, where he picks up a stone or stick and carries it for a length of time, then puts it down and picks up another.
Stopped this morning to dry everything out for a while, on a main road outside the Shropshire Fire Station. Lots of police passing, seemed to be some event on at the airfield - I got some curious looks, with all my stuff spread on the side of the road - double check that I am not a protester... Hot chocolate (again) from a service station just down the road, and later an ice cream sitting on a bench watching ducks in Nantwich, served from an ancient Bedford van called @proper bar - both proprietors eating ice creams too. Ending the day with Mike and Jill, ‘warm showers’ hosts, who really did their most to host - Mike had saved half his chicken curry and rice tea for me, then made me marmite and toast, then Jill made me a large plate of pasta, pesto, ham and cheese… all the while talking about their tandem adventures around the world - across America, Australia and New Zealand. All starting with Mike attempting a proper round the world cycle, as a young man. Now they mostly content themselves with long distance canoeing, of excursions on their tandem bike. Mike is an engineer, so offered to give my bike a full going over - he has a bike workshop - but I wanted to get off early, so he contented himself with stuffing several chocolate biscuits in my basket. Lovely folk!
My nose has been running like a hose all day, streaming, and at night, the last couple of nights, my head has completely filled up, so I’m breathing like a fish out if water. Must remember to stop at a chemist and buy a decongestant - it has been making sleeping more difficult - my ethics have got rather to pot, with meat, sugar, junk food, and now drugs... but I feel that needs must.
Sunday 8
The sky when I woke in the morning was blue - with that promise of a hot day - but by the time I mounted my bike, and munched a couple more slices of toast, without me noticing, the sky had totally clouded over, so the morning ride was quite chilly, through the post industrial mill towns of Warrington, Wigan and Preston - almost all on cycle track, much of it tarmac, but some pretty rooty, some loose gravel, some just mud, some very rough, mostly along tow paths, and old railway lines, through parks, huge dark stone viaducts, a famous aqueduct, the Manchester Ship canal, the Leeds to Liverpool canal, the disused Sankey canal (very early canal, maybe second only to the Bridgewater Canal - no not the one Huw and I came along - a coal canal up north, where the barges actually went into tunnels pretty much to the coal face) and the Lancaster to Kendal canal - Breakfast at Wigan, lunch in an old double decker, overlooking the canal, and ending the day with a slow puncture, and lots of hills to climb to reach Kendal - and then three steep flights of stairs to bed… 100 miles! from a great ‘warm showers’ stopover in Warrington, to a well earned fondue with Cathy and Pierre in Kendal - a chance to wash and dry all my stuff, and sleep in a bed - yay! Another fabulous day, lots of warm sun in the afternoon, the only pain a very large number of specially designed bike gates on the cycle path - specially designed to be just too small to fit my bike through without me taking off the cycle bags…
Monday 9
Big bowl of porridge, and several croissants, then morning in Kendal scouring the outdoor shops for a pair of lightweight trousers - there are times when I feel a little silly just in my woolly thermal leggings - and a replacement cheap lock from Mountain Warehouse - an identical lock, but now every further reduced... while ‘Brucie’ of Brucie’s Bike Shop fixed my bike, and charged very little, putting in a new tube, new brake pads, and adjusting the steering. Lunch with C and P, then a long slow climb up and over the fells, thankfully with a strong tail wind to help push, and a whizz down the other side, reaching 44.7mph - and hoping that Brucie had put my front wheel back on tightly. A 25 mile ride to a farm campsite in Newby, with a hot shower, and a common room with a kettle, where I promptly fell asleep while charging my phone. Cold rainy windy night, but a short ride, albeit a couple of thousand feet up and then a couple of thousand feet down again.
Tuesday 10
Breakfast in Penrith at a little tuk-tuk kiosk on the high street, having failed to find an open cafe to shelter from the cold, talking to an old man on a bench, about the weather of course, with me blessing the strong South Westerly that had pushed me up the hill, and him telling me about the wind called the Helm - a bitterly cold North Easterly that comes down off the fell, not bothering to go round you, just passing straight through - An unfeasibly tall man strolled by...
Carlisle seemed to have very little to recommend it - so I cycled by like the wind, and Greta was freezing, I cycled once around the town looking for a cafe to get out of the bitter wind, without luck, so settled for fish and chips, and ate them behind the chip shop amid the convenience store refrigeration units, sheltering from the viciously strong cold wind, and enjoying breaks in the fast moving clouds, when the sun briefly shone, sitting in nettles and sticky willy, with my back against the registrar's office. On the way into Gretna I passed a couple - tall and small, both in high vis vests - for a while I thought the latter might be dwarf, then perspective give me the odd impression that they were two road workers, with one walking some way ahead of the other, but as I got closer, my vision resolved back into one tall and one very small person, in their seventies I would think, with end to end written on their high vis vests. I didn’t stop to chat - in the teeth of that wind - but wished I had - I bet they have a story to tell. Maybe they were eloping?
Gretna Green is where the weddings took place - anomalies between English and Scottish law meant that in England youngsters had to seek permission from parents to marry, even into their twenties, while in Scotland, a 12 year old girl could marry a 14 year old boy without consent from elders. And Gretna Green is the very first village in Scotland - the ceremonies often conducted by the local blacksmiths, forging the Union, as Scottish law also allowed lay people to conduct ceremonies. What I didn’t know, is that Gretna, alongside, was a gigantic munitions factory built to supply the guns in Flanders, populated mostly by women, with a woman’s police force to keep order - a new town, built around a grid, with a cinema, barracks, row of shops. It’s a pretty dreadful sort of place. Cordite - the devil’s porridge, made by hand in big vats, by mixing cotton waste with nitric acid - the fumes rotted the teeth, and burned the skin - over 300 women died in explosions of the very volatile material, and from the exposure to it. The factory produced more explosive than all the other munitions factories in the UK put together. And up the road is another ex RAF airfield, WW2 fighter pilot training, using the Solway Firth as a surrogate channel - and a row of commonwealth gravestones - almost all boys in their early 20’s. I stopped off at a little museum, for a hot chocolate (of course) and a recharge, and wandered around - apparently backwards, as I paid on the way out. The manikins in gas masks and tin helmets - as I get older that conflict gets closer in some ways - having ended only 13 years before my birth - strange thought.
A long slow cycle into the wind along the eastern side of Solway Firth, then up to Lockerbie, for an idyllic lakeside council run campsite and a huge plate of macaroni cheese peas and more chips - properly carb loaded - but not losing my tummy yet... Maybe I am eating too much? The publican said he was fully booked - but then took pity, and made me a takeaway to take away.
Reading about the air crash - apparently a few of the passengers and a stewardess were still alive on the ground, and might have survived had rescue teams arrived with greater speed. There was also a paper on a pile on someone’s desk, with a warning about the attack, duly ignored.
Wednesday 11
I found a little bottle of soap in the shower, to replace the one I left Glouctershire, which is Kama, maybe. Setting off early, 15 miles in high wind and drizzle, long straight potholed busy roads to Moffat, and a pancake with maple syrup in ‘The Rumbling Tum’ cafe, and a hot chocolate of course, although it was a tad bijou - maybe the tummy rumbling happens after you have left… I was there for an hour, charging devices and avoiding a downpour, and was the only customer - looked after by three staff, all young, all consistently on their phones.
So far on my journey I have surprised two hares, avoided two hedgehogs (squashed) failed to photograph two gangly legged deer in a wood, spotted a buzzard up close, and a crow in a hedge and a stoat, or martin, or mink, running across the road in front of me, scattered a little family of pheasants - the mother running off up the road for ages, with me thinking ‘just fly back to your chicks silly’ eventuality she did, and constantly listening to the wonderful song of birds. Today there were two lambs with 50 written on their midriffs in large numerals. I love they way they leap and bound with the joy of new life.
A breeze in my face up the long slow slope from Moffat - actually more of a gale, nearly 20 miles of it, uphill, past the windmills - knowing exactly why they put all these windmills just here - then cycling (quite hard downhill, still with this vicious wind in my face) into the Clyde valley, crisscrossing the railway, following the motorway, on an off the old great north road, but mostly on - with logging trucks lumbering by like juggernoughts - a day of strong winds and dark clouds, intermittent rain, hail, sun, then undulating with a blessed tailwind down towards Edinburgh, and finally a simply fabulous ride from Livingston (I presume) to central Edinburgh on the Union canal, wind behind and sun all the way. Fell gently off in a wood just outside Livingston, attempting a hair pin bend at slow speed in loamy mud, taking another bit of skin off my knee in the process, and fell off again in the madness of the tow path in Edinburgh, with headphoned students, pushchairs and mobility scooters, families abreast, couple entwined, and many a manic cyclist weaving through the mob - I braked suddenly to avoid one if these, but luckily fell the right way - into the hedge rather than the canal.
Arriving in Portobello just in time for soup with Justin and Eva, and a walk along the beach, a Richard Long like Labyrinth, and lovely catching up, after another cycle of very nearly 100 miles.
Thursday 12
A day off -washing in the machine, and a bus into Edinburgh centre, to look around the three main art galleries - almost as physically hard a day as a day on the bike! Lots of Elizabeth Frink, and some pieces by Gwen John which were lovely to see.
Tea with J & E and packing up for a early start tomorrow
Friday 13
I always seem to have a tune playing in my head as I cycle along, an endless cyclical loop - sometimes very annoyingly short - and often set off by a link of some sort in the lyric - ear worms. A few days ago it was Melanie’s ‘I got a brand new pair of roller skates (the link being - don’t go too fast, but I go pretty far…) some days it’s random arpeggios, or made up tunes. Starting off from near Lockabie, in the drizzle, it was Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Early Morning Rain’ - though through a real effort of will I managed to change this into Bach’s Jesu joy of man’s desiring. It seems to me that the more effort I am having to put in - against wind or hill, the shorter the phrase in my head - till at the extreme it is almost just the in breath and out breath, two notes. Sometimes the tune goes on without me really even being consciously aware of it. The tune is most annoying at night, but again, with an effort of will, concentrating on the breath, I can tune it out for a while. The mind is a strange thing - when I am heading up a steep hill, feeling it in the legs and lungs, wondering how I’ll get to the top - often my mind wanders off, and I realise I have reached the top without thinking about it, or even being aware of feeling it - a good trick, when cycling up a long steep hill - just imagine it to be less steep, and somehow it is, or counting the revolutions of the peddles - the deadly hard cycle into the wind along long straight roads - counting down the tenths of miles, and choosing distant landmarks as achievable shorter goals - and reaching them quite quickly.
Set off early today, all along the Portobello sea front, then on into Leith, with everything getting more industrial and less salubrious the further west I got - up and down again on an old railway line, down in to Queensferry, and breakfast in a café.
Half way across the bridge was a cyclist looking very like me, same age, even more loaded bike - stopping, as I had just done, to photograph the iconic Forth railway bridge - only he included his bike in the composition. I left him behind, and cycled up the hill towards Dunfermline - the mostly Sustrans route that I have chosen takes me as much as possible on tracks and paths - it must be at least 80% off road - but it does mean many extra miles, and in this case, mighty big hills, up and back down - I passed the same cyclist, whom I was imagining far behind, ahead of me again - so he must have come on the main road (this was in Kinross, my second hot chocolate of the day. A cold day, of thick dark cloud, but happily the rain kept off - till late evening - and the very strong wind was fully behind me most of the day). I stopped again in Perth, to look around a little art gallery, dedicated to JD Fergusson and his partner Margaret Morris, housed in an old Victorian waterworks building, complete with rotunda.
I met a heavily bearded man walking toward me, seemingly heading for Lands End, I didn’t stop to chat, as he was looking pretty intent on getting wherever he was getting - but I would have liked to - he was pushing a huge pile of gear, stacked high on a sack trolley.
The last bit of the ride was very beautiful, following the river Tay, then through woods, steeply up and down, following the river Tummel, into Pitlochry. I had checked for a campsite on my last hot chocolate stop, a takeaway in Dunkeld, and typed in the postcode when I arrived in Pitlochry, only to discover that it was the other side of a big hill, on the river Tay - I had to backtrack through the up and down wood for 7 miles to the point where the Tummel meets the Tay, then 5 miles back up the right valley - and I’ll have to do it again tomorrow the other way, to get back on track - made for an over 90 mile day, still, well worth it for a hot shower, and hot food cooked on my little camp stove. A am carrying at least a week's supply of dehydrated 'cook in the bag' expedition food - which would normally be pretty gross I think, but is very very welcome at the latter end of 90 miles.
Saturday 14
Lovely (hilly) early cycle into Pitlochry for breakfast of croissant by the water wheel, then a very long slow slog up to Dalwhinnie, 30 miles and something near 500 feet, into a vicious head wind - very slow going, the cycle track crisscrossing the main road and the railway - all three trying to get elbow room in the tight gorge. Passing a couple doing the end to end on electric bikes - still struggling up the hill, into the wind - not daring to have the power on too high, lest they run out before their B&B and have to pedal heavy dead bikes that last few miles. They then passed me later, as I was sat on the grass drying the tent - flapping all over the place in the high wind. I was looking for a spot to dry the tent, and eat a snack, and as I slowed up to stop, I got one foot out of the clip, but the wind then blew me and the bike over the other way - so another patch of skin off my knee…
A big plate of chips in cheese sauce at a café at the top, magnificent views, and a quick look into the distillery visitor centre, then pretty much downhill all afternoon, following the river Spey, as well as the main road and the railway - but also quite a lot on paths through woods - especially beautiful the bit across heathered moorland and through pine Forrest just after Aviemore. More snacks in Aviemore, in warm evening sun. There seems to have been a bit of a pattern the last few days, of cold dark wintery mornings, and a bit more broken cloud letting through some sun in the afternoon - but still not really what I would be expecting mid May. Cold enough for gloves in the morning. At least the rain has mostly rained in the night. Not much to report from today really - mostly head down in the morning, and head up in the afternoon. Saw a dead Stag, and lots of live birds, one joining me in my tent. At one point, crossing a tributary to the Spey, I stopped to photograph a waterfall that is the spitting image of the background to Millais' portrait of John Ruskin - I had to look it up, to ascertain that it was painted nowhere near the place... An 80 mile day, despite the climb into the wind, and a wild camp in a wood about 30 miles short of Inverness. Being eaten by mosquitoes as I set up the tent, and whenever I venture out, but thankfully they have not (yet) managed to find their way in. I smothered myself in deepheat, face and all, hoping that they don’t like it.
Sunday 15
Another almost perfect day, full of delights, unexpected, strange, scenic, historic. Sleeping pretty soundly till 7.00, and waking up to blue skies and sun! Found a good spot for a poo - in the bowl created by a fallen pine - and judging from the debris of loo paper and newspaper, not the first I suspect. I collected up all the scattered tissue and covered up my offering, along with a soggy copy of a tabloid paper, and what turned out to be a porno magazine - I didn’t think they were a thing anymore in these days of the internet. Both went on the pile, fittingly, and I created a cain of stones on top. I discovered shortly after setting off that I had camped only a couple of miles from Slochd Summit, 1328 feet above sea level - so it was a glorious ride downhill almost all the way down to breakfast in Inverness, waving at the fully loaded Joglers struggling upward - not knowing what was ahead of them...
Stopped off at the Balnuaran of Clava, 4000 year old burial chambers and stones, lined up with the midwinter sunrise. Very beautiful in the warm sunshine - full of American tourists on tour - and fittingly, as one of Jane’s wishes, losing Jim this week, is to come and visit stone circles. I said a prayer for them both.
On down the hill, and I whizzed past a sign for a battlefield, not realising till I reached the bottom a couple of miles further down, that it was Culloden - I would have stopped, especially as yesterday morning I passed through Prestonpans - but I didn’t have the energy to cycle back up those two miles… Inverness was horrible - a biting wind going straight through me, despite the sun. I sat in a café and ate a stack of pancakes with maple syrup and bacon - only in Scotland - then stocked up on expedition food and isotonic drinks in a warehouse of an outdoor store on an industrial estate near the bridge - they had a café too, so I had soup - breakfast and dinner very close to one another, but food has become very important - get it while I can - with the excuse of charging up the phone, which only lasts half a day with the sat nav on. The bridge was closed to cyclists, with diversion signs that led nowhere - I met the two electric bike lejoggers again who reconned the only other crossing meant a 40 mile detour - so we risked the traffic and rode across on the carriageway, cars and trucks hurtling by - which was the trend for much of the rest of the day, as the ride from Inverness on was mostly on road - making me super appreciative of all the off roading up till now.
A very beautiful ride, uphill from Alness for over 20 miles, but glorious views at the top - if the rubbish is ignored. Why would anyone dump piles of old tyres and a few dozen plastic 5 gallon containers of old engine oil in such a beautiful place - not to mention all the Macdonald’s debris. When I was doing my training, slugging up the Old Bristol road from Wells, I counted my progress in discarded drink bottles and cans. I remember a walk in Andilucia, quite remote, where, all along the side of the road, every few paces, there was a discarded Red Bull tin. In England too, Red Bull has been by far the most numerous can, until reaching the boarders, where it changed to Iron Bru - then today, strangely, past Inverness, back to Red Bull. All sorts of other debris, including several bits of woman’s underwear?
I passed a sign that read welcome to Ross and Cromarty - so I have decided that Cromarty is a good name for my bike from now on.
And another sign for Ardross, just about when my trip meter registered 1000 miles.
My nose continues to run like a hose - very annoying - and then my head fills totally up at night, so I can’t breath easily. I stopped off near Keswick and bought Sudafed, which helps, and I thought it was drying up, but today was almost bad as ever - it’s been like this for over a month, since catching a cold - seemingly exacerbated by the wind in the face. Another Richard long thought - that there is a long line of my snot from Land's End to John O Groats. Cheryl recons that we can produce up to a litre a day, and I believe her. Perhaps, as I have two water bottles on the frame of the bike, I should have a tubes, like a drip, in from one, and draining to the other. Gross.
On down the hill to Bonar Bridge - a 75 mile day, and a beautiful almost wild campsite on the banks of a loch, with the full moon rising, reflecting in the water, the black silhouettes of the trees, distant lights on the far shore, and piping hot water in the municipal public loo!
Monday 16
I had imagined, cycling in May, that my shadow would be a pretty constant companion - but not today, the wind instead has accompanied me - in spades. The mountains confuse the wind, it doesn’t know which way to go - sometimes behind, often in front, making me pedal hard down hill, sometimes this way, sometimes that, trying hard to surprise me, or knock me off my bike with an unexpected gust. It’s blowing a hoolie tonight, as I sit in my tent, and last night’s hoolie kept me awake, whipping up the tent, then entering my half waking dreams too.
So I was up and off early - drying everything out, and airing my sleeping bag, as I ate a can of sardines and a packet of Kendal mint cake for breakfast. Up hill pretty steadily all morning - getting way up high, into what felt like tundra - low scrub, bleached white grass - no doubt deep in snow all winter, and not yet finding it’s summer growth, likewise the heather, black, not yet in flower.
Long straight roads across the top, dark low cloud all the way, and cold. Lots of windmill construction going on. 30 odd miles of single track road with passing places, and pretty constant passing of big construction and logging lorries. Dropping down eventually, with the tundra like landscape of loch and peat turning to the glorious bright yellow of gorse - 50 miles to Tounge, and the north coast, and on another 10 miles to Bettyhill, before finding a café, just as the rain started. Tomato soup and a butty, and hot chocolate of course, and getting warm, and charging the phone, sitting on a sofa.
Then an afternoon that must rate as the most difficult cycle I have done on this trip, or perhaps ever, along the north coast, up and down the headlands like a roller coaster, and all the time head first into what the met office called a light breeze, but I reckoned on being a force 10 gale, with rain stinging my face all the way. My sat nav reckoned on 2 hours 40 to cycle from Bettyhill to Thurso, but it took over four hours - often no more than 4 miles an hour, even downhill, pedalling in a low gear most of the way, both up and down, no possibility of freewheeling. In some ways the up was easier than the down, as the hill sheltered me a little from the wind, but then again, those hills were pretty steep.
I might have given up had this been day one. I imagined trying to avoid sunburn, not frostbite! Though on the whole the weather has been kind, not too hot, a little cold now and again, especially at night, but manageable, with many layers on, and only a couple of half days of rain - or rain at night. Even a few opportunities to sit and snack in sunshine, though mostly only by sheltering from the wind. Not what I imagined at all, it being May. But no respite today from wind, and constant rain from lunchtime on, so not the weather to stop, except for the occasional photos when high up in the spectacularly beautiful hills.
Hence another long day in the saddle - from an early start due to the wind waking me, with three stops - two at petrol stations, for hot chocolate, mostly just to warm my hands, and then the refuge of the café, sitting on a welcome sofa for a while, with a road sign behind me that read ‘Twatt’ only spotted it when I got up to leave - covering 95 miles to Thurso - only 20 or so miles more to John O Groats!
Tuesday 17
Up early to wash and dry clothes in the tumble dryer, another bleak day, Misty, windy, cold and damp, but not raining, and unlike yesterday, the wind not always totally in my face, so I got to John O Groats by 10.00, someone took the obligatory photo for me, and I sat in a café with a sea view, eating pancakes and maple syrup, and drinking chocolate, while my blue/white/purple fingers turned a little pinker.
Post covid, the John O Groats Orkney ferry, every 40 minutes, is only running twice a day, and the next sailing is 4.00 - There is not much to do in John O Groats, if you are not a tourist nic-nac addict, so I rode back to Gills Bay, with that wonderful wind behind me now - I flew along - to catch a 1.30 car ferry, and ate a chip butty on board. I also flew on the straight road straight from St Margaret’s Hope to a campsite overlooking Kirkwall Bay, with the thick mist turning to evening sun, very strong wind, bitterly cold, and the eerie wrecks of the ‘block ships’ sticking out of the water as I cycled across Churchill’s wartime causeway, built by Italian pow’s to protect the British fleet from boat attack- following the successful raid by U47, sinking the Royal Oak, which joined the many German ships lying at the bottom of Scapa Flow, scuttled by their surrendered crews at the end of WW1 (and now the world's most prolific source of pre nuclear steel). What a shock for the Italian prisoners to be transported from their Mediterranean home, captured in the North African dessert, and then end up on Orkney!
I wrote a poem inspired by some of my discoveries on this adventure:
Ours not to reason why
I survived and I thrived at Prestonpans
Then slept through the bloodbath Culloden
My pals and I were searching out food
Sore hungry and cold as rain rained and snow snew
Full bellied we slept, as our comrades were slain
slaughtered, run through, in the blood and the rain
Soaking the moor between the stone walls.
I survived Prestonpans, and the rout of Culloden
Went back to my clan in the highlands of Scotland
Ready and willing if the call came again
And the call came again
But I died in my troop train, at Quintinshill junction
On route to a troop ship in Liverpool dock
On route to the Dardanelles campaign, I was shot
by my captain, trapped, as the flames engulfed me
No further got than Gretna Green
And think only this of me
That I should die by fly bite
By the island of Skyros
The three goddesses of Moirae decree
That I die of septicaemia
Never mind the irony
I drowned in the channel, on route to Passchendaele
Where I might have sunk in the mud of the battle
I sank to the bottom of cold Scapa Flow
A rating among many aboard Royal Oak
Holed by a Uboat, afloat in safe haven
The block ships left holes through which they might go
And they did, and I died
One never can know
Or Liverpool bound with barrels of gun cotton
Many we drowned, off the Old Head of Kinsale
No one will tell me if Churchill’s complicit
How quickly we sank, how thickly the veil
I got my ticket home from the hell of Gallipoli
A first class wound on that HMHS
Just my luck, that mine that we struck
And I drowned just as quick, off the island of Kia
With Britannic I sailed and sank
I would have been safe on the Mauritania
I survived 4 long years in trench and in dugout, saw all my pals die, blown to beef, torn shredded on wire, gassed chrome yellow, gagging, blue, or slowly green of gangrene, yet I outlived them all, to die in 1918 of Spanish flu
If the call comes again, and it will, and I will join them for sure
I can’t tell you why, but can tell you what’s more
I might die in my bed, or washed up on some shore
Mine not to reason why, mine just to do and die
If the call comes again, the more fool I
For glory they say, we wend our way to war.
Wednesday 18
Very wet and windy last night, so much so that even the campervanners on site were taking about it in the morning - but I put my ear plugs in and went to bed around 9.00, waking around 9.00 this morning sunshine and rain, and more wind, but with mission accomplished, I have obviously, if unconsciously, taken off the pressure - till now I’ve been mostly sleeping 11.00 ish to 6.00 ish. 12 hours sleep! - the earplugs against the wind and a hat pulled over my eyes against the light. And waking to warmth! Full English breakfast in Kirkwall, and a blustery cycle to the standing stones of Stenness and the Ring of Brodgar, where I sat all afternoon in the sun, shelters from the wind behind a hillock, writing poetry, and thinking of Jim and Jon who died this week, and Gita and Carly (Nell's mum) whom died the week before, shedding some tears, and gathering some heather to lay in the centre of the labyrinth for Jon’s ceremony later this summer. As I lay there, French and American tourists passed by behind, and occasionally I had the whole place to myself. I couldn’t get in to the ring, as it is closed off to visitors, but my calm warm sunny spot just hit the spot.
Then a cycle to catch the Tingwall - Rousay ferry, which I missed by 5 minutes, having stopped off at the Harray Pottery on route. So I am wild camping tonight at Evie sands, overlooking a fabulous white sand beach, with Rousay across the water. What could be better! Here is my poem for Jim and Jon:
Ring of Brodgar
A ring of stones stand like a circle of ancestors, gathering together
And here our ancestors gathered in circles, proud and strong as a ring of stones.
And we hold out our hands, and we join them.
Thursday 19
A cycle along the coast road to the Broch of Gurness, the remains of an Iron Age fortified village, very well preserved, with hearths, stone sleeping platforms, cupboards, and evidence of the depressions for hinge pins in the stone slabs underfoot, there are many of these Broch’s on the islands. It would have stood quite tall, an inner and outer wall, with staircase between. One entrance, with a little kennel for a guard dog at the side.
It being quite early, I had the site to myself. I then walked the bike back along the beach, stopping off for a skinny dip in the beautiful clean clear azure blue water - and it wasn’t as cold as I was expecting either. A short cycle via a little shop at Evie, to buy some food, and then the ferry across to Rousay. Still windy and chilly, and the one sheltered spot near the harbour, in the gateway to a war memorial, was occupied by a wild haired woman, with a similar idea to mine, so I cycled on a bit and found a breakfast spot in a field, leaning up against a fence post, and in the sun at least. As it turned out, the camping/hostel spot that I was aiming for was just up the road, crazy French style barns, with towers, and a high archway, a farm belonging to Eric and Carol, friends of Diana. They also run the little holiday lodge. So I set up camp, greeted the aforementioned, and met again with the wild haired lady - Mary - who was holidaying there too. Tea, chat, shower, then off again in search of more Neolithic and Iron Age sites, of which there are many scattered along the coast - a double decker burial cairn, Taversöe Tuick, single decker burial cairn, Blackhammer, both of which can be climbed into via ladders, and the Knowle of Yarso (closed), then a very steep walk through a couple of fields, down to the coast, to Midhowe, where there is another Iron Age Broch, and a Neolithic chambered tomb that might be 5500 years old, housed in a big hanger now to preserve it. Next to these two are the ruins of several farmsteads, one of which had been occupied by members of the same family for 700 years, till mid way through the last century. Another the remains of a Viking homestead, with hall for feasting, and next to this St Mary’s church, propped up with huge buttresses to stop it slipping into the sea. Also a farm with the remains of a large kiln, used for drying barley. All these ruins, one atop the other, reminded me of the layers of the drystone walls themselves, beautifully crafted, tightly fitting, resting one stone on another.
I had half a plan to cycle fully around the island, but it’s all up and down, and the far side would have meant another face full of wind, so I headed back to home made fish and chips and chat with Eric and Carol - who have farmed this wild but of Orkney for 40 years. Their farm, like so many I have seen, is half new, half old stone, half tumble down, with mountains of scrap, old cars, the detritus of years, that no one bothers to tidy up or remove from the island - it’s all just gently rotting back into it’s elemental state - the metal at least - not so sure about the plastic - black silage wrap flapping from every barbed wire fence, and brightly coloured plastic fishing buoys, boat fenders, and thick rope hanging from the gate posts.
Friday 20
An early start to get the first ferry back to the main island - and I decided to follow the coast around past Evie and Birsay, rather than take a direct route. I began to regret this decision on the tenth or eleven steep hill, with the ever present chill wind on my quarter - so took a left following a little bike route sign without consulting my map, which took me on a long long straight undulating road to Stromness, with the wind full face for full on 20 miles - thereby missing Skara Brae, which I had planned to pass by, but thus unintentionally passing through Twatt - yay!
A tough last ride into Orkney’s wind, to Stromness, past much evidence of wartime defencification, a visit to the local museum, with more wartime artefacts dredged from the wrecks in Scapa Flow, a contemporary art gallery, wool and craft shops, and a last plate of fish and chips before getting on the ferry to Scrabster.
Saturday 21
Beautiful sunny morning, sitting on a bench at Thurso station, awaiting a train to Edinburgh via Inverness, then watching the little dot on my phone map whizz along, back along the way I cycled - I followed the railway quite closely much of the Scottish leg - and the .gpx files on my phone show me both my cycle route, and the train line - fascinating - much quicker by train, even this slow train, stopping at every stop, and zigzagging from the Beauly Firth Firth back up to Dalwhinnie and down to the Firth of Forth through Stirling.
Meal and reminiscing with Adrian and family, and Justin and Eva - till last week I hadn’t seen Adrian for 40 years.
Sunday 22
Final cycle up the hill from J and E, round the back of Arthur’s Seat, through Holyrood park, to catch the 9.00 to Kings Cross - and a dot that really did travel fast! then on to Bristol.
My bike computer reads 1249.7 miles cycled - and it might be a tad more, as it ceased working on some of the steep uphills in Devon - I guess I was going too slow for it to register...
Back home, and new challenges ahead - back to a veganish diet - no more hot chocolate or bacon and maple syrup pancakes till the next long ride - which is already an idea - northern Spain perhaps?
Credits:
All photographs taken by Ross Wallis except the bookends taken by Joe in LE and another lejoger in JOG