There had been plenty of time for thinking and musing as, once we had climbed gently to Bishop’s Castle, we descended equally gently through Hope Valley, Pontesbury and on to Shrewsbury where we crossed the River Severn via the Welsh Bridge. We cycled through Shrewsbury and on to Bomere Heath where Julia met us at the cricket club for first lunch. We were making very good time and were by now 33 miles in.
The afternoon’s riding was not completely flat, I would describe it as undulating. Time to muse again. On this part of the day’s long journey, my mind moved to thoughts of the origins of my faith. My mother was an influence. She had made it clear to my father, who was not really interested in church, that part of the deal when she agreed to marry him was that she would be free to practice her faith. I don’t really remember this, but my mother told me that one day I announced that I wanted to go to Sunday School and so I was duly enrolled in the Sunday School at St John’s Congregational Church, Thornton Heath, a stone’s throw from our house. She did not pressure me to go the Sunday School, evidently it was something quite spontaneous coming from me and so I grew up in this congregation.
At the age of seventeen I was in a Bible class at St John’s which was run by a Ghanaian man and his Australian girlfriend (later to be his wife). These two individuals impressed me in so far as they seemed to live their Christianity with complete sincerity and conviction. One Sunday Morning they played the group a tape of part of one of Dr Billy Graham’s sermons. Externally I showed little interest and like others in the group rather shrugged it off, making somewhat disparaging remarks about American Evangelists. Despite my external response, internally this tape made quite an impression on me, as Dr Graham seemed to speak with considerable authority. Some weeks later he held a month-long evangelistic Crusade at Earls Court, in London, the year was 1966. The Bible Class leaders invited the group to attend the meetings at Earls Court and were themselves involved in the choir and as counsellors at the rallies. I was in the middle of trade exams for my apprenticeship as a telecom engineer and so, for the first three weeks, I had a good excuse for not going. However, once the exams were over my excuses ran out and so I agreed to go with a car full of my friends from church to listen to Billy Graham. The journey to Early Court by car was eventful as the friend who owned the car in which we travelled always liked to do things on the cheap and so bought remoulded tyres for his motor, punctures were a regular consequence of his vain attempts to save money. This particular evening was no exception and so we got held up by the inevitable puncture. When we eventually arrived, we found a queue stretching right round the building and I thought to myself, “Oh, good, that’s ok then, we won’t get in”. Just as I was reassuring myself of this fact a man walked up to the four of us and said, “I’ve got four tickets here boys, I can’t use them and they are going spare, would you like them?” “Thanks”, replied one of my mates and in we went, jumping the queue in the process. I was profoundly challenged by Dr Graham’s message and decided that I wanted to respond and make a commitment to Christ. Fear of what my friends might think of me kept my rear end glued to the seat when Dr Graham made the usual call for people to respond by coming forward to the front of the auditorium. However, when I got home, I fell on my knees in my bedroom and asked Christ to come into my heart. An overwhelming sense of peace and acceptance came over me, a feeling which remained quite strong for several weeks. With this feeling also came a challenge. It was as if God were saying to me, “I have responded to your prayer; now go and make a public declaration of your faith.” I returned to the rally at Earls Court a couple of nights later and went forward at the altar call. I have over the years thought about that night, 28th June 1966, and how it set the direction of the rest of my life. Others have attacked it and tried to get me to see it as an illusion but I cannot deny, however I might interpret it or try to understand it intellectually, or psychologically, that it was very real and remains so to this day.
The latter part of the day, although not exactly difficult riding, started to take its toll. By the time we reached Mickle Trafford seventy miles in I was longing for the ride to end. I ended up thinking about nothing much beside my painful ankle and how the miles seem to become longer and longer. In the last few miles we hit heavy rush hour traffic which made things worse but eventually I made it to the Holiday Inn at Runcorn, where Nick Mitchell’s route ended for the day.
Ezekiel's Wheels 