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Published: July 29th 2006
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away ye go!
so it begins... this trite and anodyne maxim was the greeting I received from a piece of plastic stuck up beside the road as I made my way into Lancaster, drawing to a close the first leg of this journey. In the past nine days on the road, i spent a total of 48 hours in the saddle, covering around 900 kilometres. Within hours of arriving in Lancaster, I was luxuriating in a hot bath back at Cousin Steve's, my aching muscles relaxing with every passing second. An unfortunate side effect of long distance cycling has been a loss of strength in the fingers of my left hand, most likely due to the constant gripping of the handlebars. It has meant that I have been unable to play the guitar to even my normal paltry standard. There is a reason why Jimi never rode a bike and why Lance Armstrong is never seen strumming away. However, Lancastrian R&R has been reviving my weary muscles and useless digits. The last two days have been delightfully bike free and Steve has been an excellent host, taking me to a varied selection of pubs where I have filled up on much needed carbohydrates.
My last update
more skin tight action
i know you can't get enough of me in my cycling gear was from Fort William. I left there mid-afternoon after an abortive attempt to see the peak of Ben Nevis. It turned out to be masked by lower, closer lumps of rock. I returned to the hostel, where I joined a group of girls from Crediton, preparing for their Duke of Edinburgh gold award by watching the Hollyoaks' omnibus. It gave me the chance to catch up with the latest goings-on in the big brother house before I hit the road once more. Due to the lateness of my departure, the day's distance was only around 55k, which took me down to a caravan club site in a place called Barcaldine. The site is managed by a Midlands couple, who generously allowed me to stay the night for free, against their bosses wishes. Rod and Sylvia's generosity and the clinical cleanliness of the facilities were the only redeeming features of this anal retentive's dream. Caravan club sites are not for the messy or wayward traveller. Not wanting to broach one of the many regulations governing the pitching of tents, I holed up in the overspill section, which was close to a body of standing water. It turned out to be the
you want scenery?
I'll give you scenery home of a good fraction of all the Scottish midges. The expression 'eaten alive' never really meant anything to me until that night. I had been warned about the midges, but I figured with my experience of mosquitos in SE Asia that the supposed horrors of midges were overstated. Not a bit of it. Someone recently described them to me as flying teeth.
Not wishing to have another encounter with midges propelled me to cover a decent distance the next day and I ended up on the southern shores of Loch Eck (my second favorite Loch name after the prosaic and rather lazily named Loch Lochy). This was the most expensive campsite I have stayed at to date, the manager initially wanting £12 for me to pitch a tent. After requesting a discount he let me stay for a still dear £8. It was here that I tried my first pint of banana loaf beer, which helped me off into a fitful nights sleep, free from the blood-thisty machinations of devilish Scottish insects.
Up early, I was away by 9 O'Clock and caught the ferry from Dunoon to Gourock, taking the coastal road down past Great Cumbrae, the
site of my previous furthest push into Scotland. It was two years ago on Great Cumbrae that I spent a week examining the flora and fauna of the waters around the island as part of my marine biology degree. With the day shaping up into a scorcher, I took Andy Cawthray's advice and stocked up on orange juice, which I mixed half and half with water for a refreshing, thirst quenching drink. On these hot days I must have been 'taking on' (remember, cyclists don't drink) around six litres of liquid a day. After cycling through the heat of the day, it became easier to cycle as the evening came on, so I managed to push as far as Sanquhar, where I spent the most Dr. Dolittleish night yet in a field surrounded by rabbits, birds and horses; all of them unfazed by my presence and happy to hop, fly or trot right up to me. That night I dined on lamb korma, rice, a naan bread, chorizo, apricot stilton, bread and two pints of tennants. My saddle rash was looking at its most virulent at this point, but a night spent with the soothing unguent that is sudocrem slathered
sound savers boys
chris and cousin steve doing what they do best around the cheeks-that-see-no-light put the kybosh on the worst of it.
The next day was to be my last in Scotland. I crossed the border just south of Gretna with an impromptu and unrehearsed fanfare, performed on the lip trumpet, which turned out to be the theme tune from the A-team. This rapidly morphed into the Littlest Hobo. It was another hot one, which meant I took plenty of pit-stops to top up my fluid levels with more-often-than-not free pints of squash from a succession of helpful landlords. Another long day in the saddle took me to just north of Penrith for the night, where I celebrated my return to England with a slap-up meal at the Stoney Brook Inn.
And so to the ninth day of the first leg of my oddessy. It one of the shorter day's rides that I have had, around 85k from Penrith to Lancaster, but it took me over Shap fell. I found out just before I went over it that a fell was a hill, and hill it was. It was a hill that kept on giving, peaking out at around 450m. There were fantastically useless signs all the way up warning me of treacherous snow and ice conditions. The free wheel down the other side was stomach-churningly exciting. From there it was another three hours or so and I arrived in Lancaster, found the music shop where Cousin Steve works and after a short but steep ride to his house high on a hill, slipped into the bath where this blog began.
Currently, the bike is being cared for in one of Lancaster's bicycle emporiums and I am being cared for by Steve and the staff of Sound-Savers (quality musical instruments and PA's at rock-bottom prices - they also sell fireworks).
go here for cheap musical product You can donate to CICRA here
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Hel B
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stinking dave?
Dave, i love your lycra. ooooo the thought of it keeps me awake at night........but i have a question. have you washed it since you started your epic journey? you might be a walking petri dish.