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  • Reliability

    Reliability

    From the regularity of the straight lines between the fields of the flatlands around Ripe into the twisting roller coaster of ancient ways of the High Weald. Rolling over sandstone ridges into river valleys deeply cut into the clay. Following ancient ways scratched and scraped into the soft rock by water and footfall between the scattered dens and farmsteads. Ghylls in which you you could be lost forever, where time feels like it is slowed, or maybe folding in on itself like the steep sides of the droves. A remoteness, hidden in the hills and woodland. Exposed roots and bright moss. Mud and water stream across the lanes from fields and shaws, tarmac being slowly consumed by the soft earth on which it has been lain. The land reminding me of my temporality.

  • Turn Turn Turn

    Turn Turn Turn

    Sneaking out of and into the city in the dark and half light. Looking for gloves and the right route. Lights plugged into wall sockets and USB ports. An increased interest in the weather forecast. The rush of starlings overhead as they head for the fields. A change in wind direction. Chilled air snatching at my throat and the reluctance of not yet warm muscles. Not quite awake. Stars fade. Light eases into the day. Clouds castellated in gold on the horizon. Leave the sea behind and into the quiet of the hills between the coast and the town. Chalk like ice and crunchy grass. Cold air stings my eyes, vision blurred as tyres search for something to grip. Falling through frozen puddles. Sunlight never quite making it into the dips. The quiet of the cold. One more layer. The white noise of wind on the tops and the cold air in the gaps between. Elongating shadows fall down hillsides. Chasing sunsets. Greens fade into browns, desaturated and muted. Skies blaze for a moment before the almost light not quite dark. The hills flatten to a curved line that fades as light drains behind the ridge. A barn owl and the occasional rabbit in the headlight. Villages sparkle like constellations in the valleys. The waxing gibbous moon hanging over the amber echo of the harbour town drags the tide into the sea wall.  Shadows disguised as objects and things hidden in the shade under the cliffs. Follow the sound of the sea and the lights of the city until back in the glare and noise. The starlings have long since roosted and not a murmur until the days stretch out again.

  • Hidden

    Hidden

    Hidden Valley. That’s what they called it. Not everyone, just a few friends, some of the ones that ride mountain bikes. Not everyone knows about this place. Hidden Valley. It sounded mythical or far away, but it’s not, it’s on the edge of the city, right behind the houses. Though once there you feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. Secluded, seemingly isolated. Hidden Valley. That’s not the name printed on the OS map. On the map it has many names as it is formed of a handful of combes – Balsdean Bottom, Falmer Bottom, Newmarket Bottom, Standean Bottom, Stump Bottom – it is from that first one that it has inherited its given name, Balsdean. In the South Downs country of the Deans; Saltdean, Woodingdean, Rottingdean, Ovingdean, Roedean, there was also the hamlet of Balsdean. Once all villages located in the shallow valleys of the Downs between Brighton and Lewes and the sea most have been consumed by the urban spread of the south coast, still separated by hills but the old village centres lost amongst modern housing and busy roads. However Balsdean – Beald’s Valley – is a truly lost village.

    Existing from medieval times, with human activity as far back as Roman and Saxon times, the hamlet consisted of two farms, Sutton and Norton, the first commonly known as Balsdean Farm. There were also a couple of cottages and a Norman chapel. The chapel was deconsecrated and used as a barn by the 20th century but by halfway through the Second World War none of this existed anymore. It wasn’t destroyed by enemy bombing though, the valley was used by British and Canadian troops for practice in the lead up to the Dieppe Raid and it is they who flattened it. There are still clues to what happened here. There are small dips and divots that don’t comply with the usual soft lines of the Downs. Then you realise they are the remains of old craters from bombs and ordnance slowly softening back into the landscape. It is still farmed though, both crops and grazing. Many evenings I’ve ridden through here when tractors at seeming impossible angles scribe lines along the hillsides.

    The chapelry of Balsdean existed within the parish of Rottingdean but separated by High Hill, and if you enter the hidden valley using Bazehill Road you cross over High Hill which is where the modern Balsdean farmhouse stands. From here you can still see Brighton to the west and Rottingdean and the sea behind you, but within a few metres you have dropped into the quiet of the valley. I say quiet, I did once follow the sound of an illegal rave from the top of the hill outside Newhaven five or six miles away all the way here. Ravers, they know the hiding places too. They were in Falmer Bottom and that night I wild camped with friends on the side of Standean Bottom one hill away and we barely heard a sound. The wind didn’t carry the music around the corner. Hidden from each other in Hidden Valley and all of us hidden from everyone else. Despite that fact you are within a mile or so in various directions as the crow flies from towns and roads you are oblivious to it all. In Standean Bottom we were barely a few hundred metres from the houses of Woodingdean but down here you are in a pool of silence sequestered in the downland. The valley wriggles through the hills, something that is not so obvious when you are in it but is clear when you view it from Kingston Ridge or Swanborough Hill to the north. Up there you can see the farm tracks twisting between the hills which look to interlock like teeth from giant green cogs. On days when a fret hangs low in the bottoms they look more like headlands disappearing into a white sea.

    Brighton based band Grasscut made an album about this place. Their music is often about place but their debut album 1 inch: ½ Mile is firmly located in this very particular space. It even comes with a map of the valley with marked locations for listening to each song, from the gate off Norton Drove between Newmarket and Bullock hills down to the ruined barns in the valley. Barns built and left to decay since the war time destruction. I’ll often find my way into the valley from that gate, and following that path skirting in an arc around the contours of Bullock Hill into Standean Bottom. A path cut into the hill by Italian prisoners of war I’ve been told. Dropping smoothly into the valley, sometimes fleet skies above, rapidly shifting and morphing clouds cast a shadow map of an ever changing sky across the soft curves of the shallow valley. Other times at dawn on clear days sunlight catches on the edges before being slowly rolled out down the hillsides. One winter’s morning I entered the valley through this gate in cloud and the valley slowly revealed itself as I descended to its base, mist wrapping around trees and getting tangled in the branches, cold wet air catching the back of my throat as my tyres struggled for grip on the mud and leaf mulch below.

    From the south I rarely enter from Bazehill Road (I come to this place to avoid tarmac) but from the paths from Telscombe Tye or Swanborough Hill, both paths converging near a gate where the track dips in and out of a field along a fenceline, a track called You Never Can Tell With Heffalumps to even fewer of the same friends that know this place as Hidden Valley. No one remembers why. The hills are low this end of the valley but at certain times of year ploughed ruts make the contours of the hills more pronounced, shadows cast by a low sun accentuating them even more. Mostly crops are grown at this end, but the other end is for grazing, usually sheep in the middle by the barns and cows at the far end below Kingston Ridge. It’s not often I venture that far, into Balsdean and Stump Bottoms where it is often boggy and rutted and to get there you have to cross a field where the path is not always obvious amongst the barley or beets. One morning I got to a gate in the shadows of Balsdean Bottom and a bull just stood and stared at me, turned to look at his cows, turned back to me and snorted. I turned around and went back the way I came. I often think that the farmer would prefer it if there wasn’t a path through this end of the valley. The twist and curve of the hills close in on you this end and it always seems damp and cold. I remember Shirley Collins, the English folk singer, also saying this in The Quietus Hour, “cold, even in the height of summer” and going on to say she feels there’s “something unpleasant there”.

    Maybe that’s why I don’t venture to that end of the valley that often, or maybe because the other way in and out at this end is a steep path of rubble of chalk and flint. There are other ways into the valley too. A steep chalk path from Castle Hill through the nature reserve, or through the field on the side of The Bostle that turns into what seems to be an old drovers track worn into the chalk, steepening as it turns and sharply drops to the junction of paths and tracks near where the old village of Balsdean once stood but now only trees stand.

    It’s not really on the way to anywhere but always worth the detour to visit, often an excursion on the extended work day commute between Brighton and Lewes. Hence more often than not I am here at the start or end of the day when the light is fading and the colours muted. Spring and autumn the base of the valley will be in shade because despite the shallowness sunlight rarely reaches down here when I’m passing through. At twilight there’s little to see other than the ripple of hilltops against the deepening blue-black. Some mornings I might be running a bit late and don’t stop but most times I’ll stop just for a moment to listen to the silence or watch the stillness, forgetting how close I am to busyness of life just over the hills in all directions. Even the low level traffic hum of the A27 present elsewhere on the Downs around here doesn’t encroach upon this place. Early mornings you have the place to yourself. Not quite yourself maybe, this place belongs to the cows and sheep, the larks and crows. I just borrow it for a few moments every now and again. It’s a good place to hide, to be alone, to think.

  • Further

    Further

    I’ve always been attracted to landscape and distance rather than speed. I watch grand tours for the helicopter shots of roads winding around mountains, along valleys and across patchwork fields as much as the actual racing. As a kid I would often go out and ride my bike all day, and it’s something that has continued into adulthood. Reading maps and daydreaming comes easily.

    A bike is transport to me, a tool, both beautiful and beautifully simple, that facilitates escape and adventure. Not necessarily grand adventures, I don’t need to travel half way across the world, or even huge distances to have an adventure, to get a sense of wonder. It could be a ride over my ridge of hills to sit and look and think on that other ridge over there. It could simply be riding the long way home from work. Just to be somewhere different.

    Adventure is proportional to what makes me uncomfortable. I’m not always the most daring person, so riding a bike a long way in one go counts as an adventure for me. To ride around another county, one I don’t live in, one I don’t know like the back of my hand, is sufficient to feel adventurous, to cast my gaze on landscape new to me, have time to watch it and read it, to see it change, lose myself in it. Travelling into and through it rather than across it.

    Having said that, distance does become addictive; If I can ride this far then maybe I can ride that far. Distance is relative and gained incrementally. I may be able to ride 400 miles in one go now but it started with a ten mile ride, then twenty, then sixty, then a hundred. Each new distance achieved extends the boundary of my comfort zone and hence slightly further is required next time to feel pushed beyond my limits, to experience that fizz of excitement, of adventure. Every successive ride alters the scale and recalibrates what I think of as ‘a long way’.

    There’s always a fear, well not fear as such, an anxiety – What if I can’t do this? What if something breaks? However all that is easily suppressed, it falls to the back of my mind and is forgotten the moment I push off. I’m drawn to ride into the unknown and have learnt that I have the ability to cope with getting lost both literally and metaphorically. I’m comfortable with self-reliance. I’ll happily head off on my own for a day or long weekend (damn the day job). It appeals to my nature which tends to the introverted and insular.

    Friends say “I don’t understand how you can do that”, and it is hard to explain when you just look at the numbers, miles and hours are simply markers, easily communicated and understood, at least some kind of relative comprehension, but they tell you little. The other stuff, the unseen, untold, felt and experienced in a specific place and time, the particular, the incidental – a spitfire over a fen, the dawn chorus on a darkened lane, a sunset over an unknown coast, the song of a skylark reminding me of home, the frozen silhouette of alert deer across a field, the curve of that hill, the way the wind plays with the wheat, how light glances off those trees over there, meeting sunrise on a hill top – these are the things that long rides are about. Then there are the things that make a smile emerge across my face for no discernable reason, the things that I can’t put into words.

    You find these moments on any ride if you’re open to them but it’s the way they add up and multiply on a long ride describing the passage of time and a changing land that gets into my core and makes me want to do this again and again. Yes, there are the bits that hurt – physically and mentally – and the scruffy bits on the edge of towns and crappy roads, but all that fades from the memory. This other stuff stays. It’s the reason for coming back, to unfurl the maps, look for somewhere new, something further away.

    Photo by George

    Originally published on the Morvelo website in 2016 as How Can You Do That

  • Bookends

    Bookends

    I love a commute that initially sets off deliberately in the wrong direction and then loops almost back home some time later, before reluctantly turning for work. Between me and work there is a chunk of coast, a river valley (three if I venture west or further east before heading for the office), some woodland and some hills. A lot of hills, if I so wish. Depending on which bike I grab heading out of the front door I have choices; bridleways, chalk paths, farm tracks, a concrete path squeezed between the cliffs and the sea, fields, river banks, woodland singletrack.

    Some actual roads too but they are not so much fun, too many cars and just a bit crap if not verging on dangerous. I don’t ride these routes too often if I can help it. I don’t need to be constrained by urban tarmac anyway. Perusing the map I consider the dotted lines across the spaces empty but for contour lines. Then there is all that squiggly stuff through the woods that’s not on any maps other than those in my head. If I can afford to waste some time on the way in I can start combining this bit with that bit, maybe throw in that little bit there too, and a myriad of choices opens up. On the way home these are the head emptying rides, decompression, fresh rather than conditioned air. It’s not often that I’ll ride the reverse route for the ride home. In fact I don’t need to ride the same way for days on end, weeks even.

    Anyway, why save the fun rides for the weekend when you can squeeze them into the working week too? It might be raining at the weekend. Admittedly this time of year it could well be raining anyway, and almost certainly dark when I leave home. Those days when the sky is clear though, oh my, how good are those! Watching starlight fade into the dawn, the planets the last to pierce the blue, catching the sun peek over a distant horizon, hills gently laying their shadows across the coombes, ridge line trees casting long dark echoes of their shapes down hillsides. Stopping for a moment, to simply listen; to birdsong, to waves lapping at the shingle, to the silence of the valley. Those are fantastic, glorious mornings. The only problem on these days is the fact I do actually need to go to work. Those days I could simply keep riding to the next ridge of hills. There’s always the ride home though, sunsets to be chased.

    The sky doesn’t need to be clear though. Days where the sky hangs low, shrouding the hills in mist can be just as stunning, or when it slumps like white blancmange in the valleys and the nooks and crannies between the hills, inverted days, clear on the tops, mizzle below. There is something just as special about these days. A landscape changed, familiar but different, things usually missed seen because the usual is hidden. I might not want to be out for so long on these days, the cold and the damp eventually penetrate into my skin and bones, but they are worth a detour over the Downs.

    Some days the shortest, easiest line to the office beckons, either the legs aren’t willing or I need to be in early (and not covered in mud). Functional rather than enjoyable. Most days though, I’d happily follow wherever my imagination leads me. I’d rather sit at work with legs aching under my desk than with sad eyes gazing out of the window, longingly at those chalk hills, just over there.

    This is an updated piece that was originally published on the Morvelo website as The Long Way Home a couple of years ago.

     

     

  • Chianti Classico

    Chianti Classico

  • Newhaven – Welcome to England

    Newhaven – Welcome to England

    Rolling off the ferry at Newhaven it’s lashing down, absolute stair-rods. I get to the train station only to discover there are no trains this weekend. It may be the metal roof of the station but the rain sounds like it’s getting harder. I zip up my waterproof jacket and pull up my buff. Four very drunk teenagers walk through the gate. One lad says “I need a piss” and strolls off down the platform.

    Very pissed girl: “Hello”

    Me: “Hello”

    “Are you English?”

    “Yes.”

    “That’s good. Where do you live?”

    “Brighton.”

    “Why have you come here? Have you been here all day!?”

    “No, I’ve been to France.”

    “REALLY! WOW!”

    (a few seconds silence)

    “What’s it like?”

    “It’s nice. It was sunny there.”

    “Really!?”

    “Yeah. Has it been raining here all day?”

    “Yeah. All day. It’s rained here all day. It rains every day.”

    “OK, thanks. Bye.”

    “It rains all the time here.”

    (It stops raining over the hill)

  • Transcontinental pt.IV – scratch to Poland via CP3

    Transcontinental pt.IV – scratch to Poland via CP3

    The amount of mess we could make seemed inversely proportional to how much stuff we were carrying. The rest of the room and bathroom look like an explosion in a laundrette.
    Officially out of the race so race cap rolled up into bivvy kit for the remainder of the trip.
    Hunkered down in Poprad for 36 hours whilst working out a plan to get home.
    Flights home booked from Krakow in Poland for a few days later so the scenic route is plotted.
    …but first CP3 has to be ticked off. We had to go back over the Tatras mountains to get to Poland so it made sense to go to CP3 on the way. Maybe not made sense but needed to be done.
    CP3.
    CP3 in sunshine, which it wouldn’t have been a couple of days before. We probably wouldn’t have been able to see the view, we would have climbed into cloud.
    …and back down from CP3.
    Into the wilderness. It all went a bit bandit country for a short while in the borderlands between Slovakia and Poland.
    Ice creams and brass band music over tannoys throughout the town.
    Almost the last view of the High Tatras.
    The last view of the High Tatras.
    Welcome to Poland.
    Bivvy with a view. Sienna. Not the Italian one.
    Ice creams at 8.30 in the morning. It was already hot.
    “Honestly, Google maps says this is a cycle route.”
    Coffee and ice tea and washing my shoes in a river.
    More bus shelter glamour. Also, never trust a Garmin to find the nice way to somewhere.
    Kazimierz district of Krakow.
    Kazimierz district of Krakow.
    Bikepacking.
  • Transcontinental pt.III – CP2 to (almost) CP3

    Transcontinental pt.III – CP2 to (almost) CP3

    Monte Grappa at sunrise.
    Monte Grappa at sunrise.
    Monte Grappa.
    Monte Grappa (still, it goes on for a while).
    The view from nearer the top of Monte Grappa.
    Summit.
    …and back down the other side of Monte Grappa.
    Switchback…
    …after switchback.
    Ice creams and water to stop us from melting after heads down on the big road up the valley.
    Getting close to Carnia, where it all went a bit crap for an hour or so looking for how to get to the cyclepath and not using a race banned road which we ended up using a bit of anyway due to a washed away bridge. And we didn’t have any dinner.
    Breakfast the next morning was much better. Ham and cheese piadina and pastries, coffee and more coffee. Bumped into Jonah (#tcrno5cap81) who we last saw on the final stretch into CP2.
    Sunrise in Pontebba.
    Under the A23. Not the one that goes to Brighton.
    Towards Austria.
    One last glimpse of Italy as we cross the border back into Austria.
    Villach.
    Coffee and fanta and a bit of shade.
    Climbing again.
    A substantial climb that deserves more than a little sign hidden away in a carpark.
    Cooling down.
    The picturesque bit after the really fast fun bit.
    …and the gravelly bit.
    The morning after Dilman’s, nondescript breakfast from a nondescript petrol station in a nondescript town on a nondescript bit of road through Austria.
    Another petrol station, another coffee, another snooze.
    Another long straight road, another snooze.
    As it turns out the nearest we got to Greece.
    More ice cream, more fanta, more shade.
    Goodbye Austria.
    Hello Slovakia.
    Bratislava.
    Supplies for riding through the night to try and make CP3 before it closed.
    The bit after the really scary fast bit of road and the bit before the really dull bit of road through nothing but darkness.
    Pedaled through the night.
    Good morning Slovakia, so that’s what you look like.
    Another country, another petrol station, another coffee.
    Trying to get across Slovakia to CP3 in under 24 hours and no proper sleep for three days meant a lot of short bus stop naps.
    Another bus stop.
    And another.
    Not a bus stop. A petrol station. Crap coffee and half a hog dog each.
    And another bus stop.
    About 50km short of CP3 and we decide food and a sleep are required.
    Bike clean. Standards must be maintained (despite the fact we are filthy and stink).
    Somewhere on the side of a mountain on the climb to the climb to CP3 in the rain my body goes into shut down and I need to find somewhere warm quickly. Hot chocolates in a fancy hotel up a mountain. The painful decision to scratch has been made.
  • TCRno5Cap262a misfiring in action

    TCRno5Cap262a misfiring in action

    Monday, 10:14

    It’s raining and I’m cold. I’m wearing an insulated gilet under my waterproof jacket and climbing up a mountain and I’m cold to my core. I shouldn’t be this cold. I’m fifty maybe a hundred metres behind Jo and struggling. I have little strength and my reserves are empty. Even if I can drag something from the gritty sludge at the bottom of the tank that will be it, there will be nothing left for later, and we’re getting close to the part of the journey where we know it’s definitely going to get harder. I realise that I am about to scratch. I don’t know what else to do. This thought hadn’t entered my head when we set off this morning. I look up the road to Jo. Shit.

    Jo slows long enough for me to catch up. I ride alongside and look across and I can tell he knows instantly without me saying a word. I need to get somewhere warm quickly. There’s a hotel ahead somewhere, I’ve seen signs. I ride on, head down. Jo drops back for a moment then rides up to me, says nothing, puts his hand on my back and pushes me up the road. The road levels and Jo drops back again, I ride on looking for the hotel. I follow signs but I can’t tell on the Garmin whether to follow the road or the gravel track. There are no more signs. I stop and take my phone from my pocket. The screen is wet, my hands are wet, raindrops fall on the screen. I swipe the screen, nothing happens. I wipe it on my jersey. I swipe it again. Nothing. Fucking hell fucking work! Jo appears by my side,

    “Where are we going?”

    “There’s a hotel up here somewhere. I need to get warm for a bit.”

    I break down in tears on his shoulder. I’m shaking.

    “I’m sorry.”

    This isn’t how it was meant to end.

    Giving in hurts.

    Letting a friend down hurts.

     

    The previous Wednesday, a bit before 6am.

    I look down at my Garmin. 19kph. For fuck’s sake, 19kph. I’ve done tired commutes on a Friday night faster than this. At the end of the cyclepath I ride straight past Jo, turning left instead of right, lean my bike against a wall and sit on the floor, head in hands. We set off about 20 minutes ago and it’s gone to shit already. I am full of snot, most of which seems to have settled on my lungs. I have no energy whatsoever. I can’t get oxygen into my system quick enough. My legs don’t ache, nothing aches, my body understands and accepts what I’m asking it to do but there’s just no energy getting to it. Less than a kilometre into the day I was dropped. I watched Jo’s rear light fade into the distance and then disappear. If this is frustrating me then I know it’ll be really pissing off Jo.

    There is a stark realisation that the pay-off for the benefits of riding as a pair – the chat, the support, the laughter, the “did you see that?” – is an absolute crapload of stress and guilt when you know you’re the weaker rider. Fully fit I’m not quite as strong as Jo but we’ve trained together for months to get to the same place. I’m not the rider I was 12 months before. I trained well and rested properly. I’m better than this, I know I can ride better than this. I knew when it came to the big climbs in the mountains I would get dropped, but I should be able to, know I can hold his wheel and take my turns everywhere else, but right now I can’t even hold on to it on an ever so slightly downhill cyclepath. Why can’t I breathe properly? Why can’t I pedal. Fucking hell, what am I going to do? The mix of guilt and stress and just simply my body not working properly is starting to play with my head. I know from audaxing and 24 hour mountain bike racing that if my head goes then I’m, and hence we’re, in trouble. Big trouble.

    Do I scratch? I can’t scratch, what will Jo do? I know if I scratch, he’ll scratch. It’s not something we talked about before the race, neither of us considered anything other than finishing. At least I hadn’t. Start thinking about this shit before you start and you’re halfway to fucked already. I don’t know what to do. This is bad. Really fucking bad. Do I tell Jo to just go ride his own race? He’s strong enough. We promised to ride this thing, no not ride, race this thing together two summers ago as we were both unsure we had what it took to do it alone. But I’m not racing it now, I’m getting by, and that’s not what we agreed. Maybe we weren’t ready two summers ago but a lot has happened since then, a lot has happened in the last four days, and I know that we both probably could ride it alone so perhaps I just tell him to go on. I’ll keep riding as far as I can, I’m not ready to stop yet but I can’t hold Jo up any longer. He could have got to CP2 yesterday if it wasn’t for me. I should tell him to forget about me and just ride but I know Jo and I know his unwritten codes of conduct and if I stop he’ll stop. I didn’t come this far, literally and metaphorically, to screw up his race. Anyway that agreement to do this was made at the memorial service of one friend whilst at the same time knowing about another’s terminal illness. I can’t stop just because I’m full of snot. I’m in bits. I don’t know what to do. Giving up was never part of the plan. I didn’t train for months and months to give up. Anyway I can’t let Jo down, he’s also given up the best part of year to be ready for this, but I’m letting him down already by not riding as well as I know I can. I think again I should just say “Go ride your own race, you can finish this on your own, you’re strong enough.” Mentally and physically. I know he won’t though.

    Right from the first morning something hadn’t felt right. I was sluggish and had no appetite. I was eating but just didn’t want to and wasn’t eating enough. That first night and day we’d done 330km and ended the day in Metz. We should have been well on the way to Strasbourg by the end of the day. If we were going to get to CP1 on Sunday then we needed to be further than this. I felt rubbish, suffering from a headache all day and then cramp. Perhaps it was dehydration, but I’d been drinking a lot. Maybe I just needed to ride myself into this thing. Perhaps it was the result of not enough rest in the couple of days leading up to the start – travelling to Belgium and the whole registration process. I don’t know but something wasn’t right.

    Day two wasn’t much better and again we didn’t cover as much distance as we needed to. We don’t make CP1 and that was where we should have got to. I cramped on the side of a mountain in a thunderstorm. Great. I wake up on day three with a sore throat and headache. Dehydration again? We make it to CP1 before it closes. Just. My sinuses started to ache on day 4 and by the end of the day I am full of snot. At least now I knew what I was dealing with and it explained the previous few days. A cold, now? Seriously. Why now!? Usually this wouldn’t stop me from doing what I need to do but I’m not usually trying to ride 4000km across Europe in under two weeks. My body is struggling to deal with both these things.

    That day we had to get across the Alps, twice and in extreme heat. It was a hard day and I spent a lot of it feeling shit and off the back. In fact I didn’t see Jo for large chunks of the day. I punctured half way up the climb to the 2500 metre Timmelsjoch pass and had to sit down and have a word with myself before I completely lost it. (The 40km down the other side to Merano was stupendously awesome though. Switchback after switchback, lots of laughter and overtaking cars in the hairpins.)

    And now I’m being dropped on the flat. Fucking fuck. We find a petrol station and Jo buys me a coffee and donut whilst I pretend to look for the phone charger in my framebag in order to wipe aways tears with a filthy snotty mitt. Shit, what the fuck do I do? I rationalise in my head what I can do, what is feasible in the circumstances. I check the distance to CP2. OK, even slow and steady I can get there before it officially closes later today. Let’s just get there.

     

    Monday, 10:47

    We’ve been going better the last few days. We’d made the cut at CP2, just. I’d had a minor breakdown on the outskirts of Trento when I realised I didn’t have a mountain climb in me so we changed from our planned ‘pretty way’ to the easy valley road alternative. Fortunately I had three alternative routes plotted for that bit of Italy. Unfortunately the valley route started the other side of Trento. Up another hill. After much swearing and finger punching of Garmin and phone screen trying to work out how to get onto the other route we’d settled into a rhythm for the rest of the day. I was determined we would get to CP2 before it closed. Rather than climb Monte Grappa that evening in the heat we stopped for pizza and sleep so I could recharge the batteries as much as possible. We climbed Monte Grappa at sunrise the next day and then started to drag ourselves into the race a bit. Checking the tracker I could see we were gaining on others, finding ourselves amongst other dots rather than scattered out the back of the pack. We rode across Italy in not much more than a day, then Austria, and now Slovakia.

    We’d ridden pretty much non-stop since the night at Dilman’s. Forty hours straight on petrol station coffee and bus stop naps. Almost 600 kilometres. We were aiming for CP3 before it closed but that slipped but getting there the same day had seemed possible. We knew friends would be there. George was there and sending messages willing us on but yesterday had been tough. After refuelling in Bratislava in the evening we had ridden through a very black night into a day of headwind and then the weather deteriorated as the roads steadily got worse. We ended the day on a road which under any other circumstances I wouldn’t ride but was the only real choice, riding through the foothills of the High Tatras mountains in the gutter of a main road in rain and spray as cars speed and trucks thunder past. Eventually we had to give in to our bodies and sleep and after finding food we hid behind a shipping container behind a department store next to a multiplex cinema and multistorey car park and fell asleep some 50km from CP3.

    This morning after petrol station coffee and three breakfasts in MacDonalds we set off on in the rain again and that’s how I ended up here – sitting in a wood lined hollow in the concrete entrance hall to a very plush hotel high in the mountains. Jo has gone to see if there’s a cafe or bar where we can get a coffee. I’ve now got my down jacket on over my insulated gilet and not thinking very much other than I’m glad to be warm. Jo returns and says he’s found a bar upstairs. I leave a chamois shaped damp patch on the wooden shelf as I get up. Upstairs we order hot chocolates and try not to think what our rain sodden shorts are doing to the nice cushioned bar stools.

    Using the hotel wifi I cancel the booking I made for tonight in a hostel in Kosice. The plan had been to get to CP3 this morning and then get as far as Kosice by evening and treat ourselves to a bed after a week or more of essentially sleeping rough. I make another booking for a hotel in Poprad, the town that sits at the foot of the mountains we’re sat in. It’s about thirty kilometres away. We’ll get there and work out what to do next.