This trip should have been just a family affair. In August 2013, myself, my daughter Naomi, Ollie (son of one of our Churchwardens), and Callum (a teenager from the choir of the Good Shepherd Tadworth) set off to ride our bikes from Lands End to John O’Groats supported by my wife Julia driving our people carrier. We did this, not just for the adventure, but to raise money for various chosen charities. Sam, our son-in-law, couldn’t be with us, he had just changed jobs and was unable to get the time off work. Being an enthusiastic cyclist, he was very disappointed at missing the trip and so, early in 2015, a plan was devised for him and me to do the ride using the same route, with Julia and Jo (Sam’s wife) driving the back-up vehicle. The snag in this plan was that other people got wind of it – “Oh, I’d be up to do it again,” said Ollie, “I’d like to give it a go but I’m not sure I could ride all the way every day,” said Ollie’s sister Lizzie, a recent convert to cycling. Soon after Scott and Henry, regular visitors to the vicarage who had all been out riding with Sam and me, decided it would be a good idea if they threw in their lot with the scheme and so the whole enterprise, like Topsy, grew. So, it was that this group massed at the vicarage car park on Friday 31st July 2015 and packed up the two support vehicles to head off for the western most tip of Cornwall. We were, as planned, on the road by 9am. It was decided to name the support vehicles “Froome Dog” and “Big Cav” after our cycling heroes Chris Froome and Mark Cavendish (sorry Sir Bradly Wiggins, we had toyed with using your name but in the event, for no real reason I can think of, you were ruled out. You’ll have to make do with a knighthood instead). The aforementioned vehicles consisted of Sam and Jo’s car (Froome Dog) and a hired people carrier (Big Cav). Our old people carrier died a horrible death when it was written off in a high-speed crash on a German Autobahn the year before. It died, fortunately Julia and I didn’t.
One of my personal points of philosophy/psychology became instantly relevant at the outset of the 2015 journey, i.e. the only real mistake you can make in life is not learning from your mistakes. This philosophy kicked in at the beginning of our journey. I should explain that the vicarage drive has some fairly large overhanging trees. Prior to either the 2013 or 2015 LEJOG trips, Sam, Ollie and another member of the Good Shepherd Choir, Steph, had undertaken a ride from The Church of the Resurrection in Mainz, Germany, back to Tadworth, to raise money for the Centenary Fund. The beginning of this particular journey nearly ended in disaster before we had travelled less than a few metres; the people carrier with bikes on top was too tall to go under the overhanging trees. The impending catastrophe was averted by Ollie’s dad Ian, who had come to see us off, raising the branches a bit at a time over the bikes on the top of our people carrier with a garden rake and so, slowly proceeding up the drive, we eventually made the open road.
So, this time round we loaded the bikes on the back of the support vehicles not on roof racks. We bought a second-hand bike rack which could take four bikes, as long as they have cleat pedals and not the type of pedals I use. I have never quite trusted myself with cleats – old dog, new tricks, that kind of a thing. Whilst on the road I thought I could see, in the wing mirrors, the bikes shifting slowly from side to side, which was rather disconcerting. At the first coffee stop we examined the bike rack on Big Cav to find that the “dongles” (an old cycling description aimed at confusing the uninitiated) were on the wrong straps. We rectified this in the hope that the bikes on the back of Big Cav would be more stable than they had been. Fortunately, the coffee stop adjustment rectified this problem for when we stopped for lunch we found that nothing had shifted.
We had lunch at an American Diner near Yeovil and I had one of the nicest burgers I think I have ever tasted. After lunch, the journey proved somewhat tedious a lot of stopping and starting but we finally arrived at the Youth Hostel in Penzance at 6.19pm, accurately predicted by Julia in response to the competition (guess the time of arrival) with which we amused ourselves on the latter part of the journey. Once unpacked we sampled the local lager which was very palatable after a wearisome journey and then had Lasagne for dinner washed down with more local lager and then, in anticipation of a prompt start in the morning, we all went to bed.
As I lay in my bunk I was glad to have safely arrived and I remembered the hostel from the 2013 trip; the receptionist was the same person as last time, a rather jolly middle-aged woman. The familiar helped to calm some of the anxiety I felt at the beginning of this trip. I must admit that the bike rack issue had been rather stressful.
Well, I thought to myself the ride starts tomorrow, twice as many riders as last time. The weather is good at the moment; long may it continue. I can’t quite believe that I am doing this for the second time two years down the tracks but I am glad that at sixty-six I can still undertake such a venture. I wonder what Dad would have said, in all probability “mind you don’t fall off!” Well I am thankful that he introduced me to the joys of cycling when I was a boy and the boy in the man still wants him to be proud of me even though he died at the age of 96 back in 2012.
And so to sleep perchance to dream.
Ezekiel's Wheels 