Stone the Crows
It's 5.30 am and I'm sat at my desk again thinking of what to write. Especially the experience of the fully laden run to Bedale, a pretty North Yorkshire town on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. As usual my mind is now all quiet and empty compared to when on the ride when it was all a buzz with flies and bees and everything else that hit me in my gob that day. I guess the best thing to do is to start at the beginning, add a middle bit and finish at the end. So here goes.
The bike had been set up and loaded ready to go a couple of days beforehand. A phone call earlier in the week to the Bedale campsite confirmed that they could fit big old me in a little old corner of the site and after a bit of faffing and fettling and checking for the n'th time that everything was loaded I'm ready to go.
It's a lovely sunny warm day. The crap nav has me set to head to the west and take the Rufforth, Cattal, Boroughbridge and Ripon route up to Bedale. With a rather good breakfast now inside of me and the world starting to turn under my wheels, away I go.
Bugger it. Not more than 4 miles in and there are roadsigns everywhere at Askham Richard. The route is closed. I normally sneak along closed roads as a man and his bike can normally squeeze past roadworks but signs this time say it is not open to pedestrians, horses nor bikes. I'm not taking the detour though as that would route me back onto the York bypass (not a good idea on a Bank Holiday weekend) and anyway I know that there is another shortcut further up the road. Which I take. At the end of it signs again say the same thing. Still closed. I'm ordered to go east young man which I stubbornly refuse to do. Therefore the only option is to continue west until I hit Thorpe Arch and then hang a right and cycle north forever. It's a big detour. Nonetheless its lovely cycling weather. Roads are quiet as by now everyone else is on the A64 in the Easter Bank Holiday traffic jam heading for the coast.
Within 2 hours I arrive in Boroughbridge. At a packed cyclist friendly cafe in the middle of town I collided with and quickly devoured a plateful of scrambled eggs on toast and a pint of Yorkshire tea. It's also where I got chatting to 3 elderly gents, similarly on their bikes and e-bikes for a ride-out from Leeds. One white haired and rather portly gent has done the lot. Mountaineered in the Himalayas he says atop mountains that were off the well trod body strewn Everest and K2 tracks and told how he'd suffered from oxygen starvation atop Kilimanjaro. Wowser(!) type stories. Well done I say. He's now in his mid to late 70's and still enjoying life on his e-bike. I hope to get there (to his age not to the top of a mountain) one day myself.
It's a beautiful evening in Bedale. The site owner, a nice chappie, says he's impressed with my bike having taken a big interest in the Gates belt drive cos his other job as Bedale's Motor Factor has him selling Gates cam belts belts to the car and truck industry. He has a good long look at my overloaded bike, then looks at me, and says, 'so where's the battery pack?'. Cheeky bugger.
The reason for this run this weekend was to start my shakedown rides whilst the weather was good and to tick some boxes. Bike? Good. [tick]. Tent? Good. [tick]. Food? Well it's a bit of a mixed opinion on that but I found that the tin of Tesco Jalfrezi curry and a bag of Uncle Ben's par boiled rice was pretty good for an evening meal intertwined with a rather large bag of dry roast peanuts washed down with a couple of mugs of Darjeeling tea. Lips were a bit 'mmmm...' after half the bag of nuts and so I packed the remainder away for a morning snack and as the light faded I'm away to bed in a nice 3 seasons sleeping bag [tick] and an 8 quid Tesco inflatable bed [double tick!] randomly listening to tunes on my old iPod. It's probably the best nights sleep I've ever had under canvas.
I woke up for a wee wee about 3am. I took the plugs out (from my ears) and all was quiet and with a warm bag calling it was not long before I was away with the fairies again. Bad idea though taking the ear plugs out as approx 30 minutes before dawn the outside of the tent erupted with a cacophony of bird song. Do they wear watches? Have alarms? How do they know? Incredible in its audacity from nearby rip roaring 'you're my wife now' shouty stuff to distant whistles cheeps and peeps it sounded like the best ever surround sound planet earth thingy of all time. All of a sudden there's a CAW! CAW! CAAAAAWWW! as though a Crow or Rook had perched atop the tent and with megaphone clasped betwixt feathered thumbs and fingers was shouting as hard as it could, 'GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!!!'.
Feck off Mr Crow. Plugs were firmly wedged back in and I slept on an off until the early morning Sun cast a burnt orange glow on the wet nylon tent walls. I lay quietly listening to a selection of tunes on the pod, spied the half eaten bag of Dry Roast nuts and so started to masticate for the next 20 minutes or so.
It's a tricky business eating nuts in bed (ah memories of girlfriends past) but the trick is to put the neck of the nut bag betwixt lips, let a few nuts fall into ones gob, clamp the neck of the bag shut betwixt fingers and chomp. And repeat. The last nut drops into my mouth and in my haste I take the bag out of my gob, forget to pinch the neck of it and so shower my right eye with nut dust and salt. Aaaaggghhh! I'm up. In a flash. Wipe, wipe, wipe. I can't see! Where the feck is the water bottle? Make sure you do not accidentally pick up the wee wee bottle you idiot. Flush, flush, flush. Gahhhh!
So I'm up. It's 6.30 am. Time to make some porridge. Easy to make stuff in small packets and with two of them, one original, the other golden syrup flavoured, mixed with UHT milk, my spirit fuel stove mangels that lot up and a big bowl of hot sweet porridge is stuffed on the powered chute and sent tout-suite to an anticipatory Audrey II.
The old boy in an adjacent camper van is nice and chatty. Turns out that he's from Ipswich and visiting his granddaughter who had recently moved to Bedale. I mentioned how I often went to Ipswich to the BT Site at Martlesham and it turns out he used to be gate security there before he retired. It's very likely this is the second time our paths have crossed at different ends of the country. Again I'm gobsmacked thinking of how many of my twice-in-a-million chance meetings have actually happened in the last 56 years. It surely is a small world.
I'm packed and ready to roll by 9.30am. The rest of my milk is donated to the family next door. As much to apologise for the scary snoring monster noises outside that they no doubt fretted about for most of the night.
I'm away. Interesting to note, cos of all the roadside paraphernalia, that the Tour of Yorkshire is coming through and finishing in Bedale on the 3rd May. On the 2nd of May it scoots to the south of York so I plan to find a bit of roadside and meet it near Stillingfleet. Anyway, its a headwind all the way home so whilst it is 10 miles or so less as there is no big detour this time there's no option really to freewheel and the pressure on the legs does not relinquish all day.
The route takes me back south mostly paralleling the A1 motorway. I'm on a long straight section of wide tarmac with a slight uphill grade and a bright sun reflecting from its smooth surface. There's something in the distance. It's like looking for Omar Sharif through the distant heat haze down a desert track in the early sequence of the film, Lawrence of Arabia. I get closer, slowly, slowly. I squint to see. A tractor? Nah too slow? A camel? Nope. A car crash? No, no-one's stopping.
It's a horse and carriage. You know, an old rag and bone man type. The only rags and bones out here today are those of the horses, and mine which are rather carefully covered with a mountain of blubber. I'm now 30 yards from it and preparing to overtake. The road follows the A1 up into a gentle climb. Just as it does so a gentle flick on the reigns has the horse into a trot. He's now doing 10.3 MPH uphill. I'm doing 10.2 MPH behind him. Imperceptibly, he's getting away from me! Oh no you don't. Even on a fully loaded bike on a slight incline into a headwind I squeeze the thighs a bit harder and start to catch up.
Just before the brow of the climb the horse slows to a walk. The farmer gent shouts, 'Its a lovely day!', as I pass and I agree with him and say, 'I know exactly how the horse feels!'. And left him laughing in my wake. Then he's gone. He's no longer in my mirrors. Ghost like in how it happened with not another vehicle on the same bit of road. Nah, he turned in to that side road you prat.
By this time the crap nav is bored and decides what is now needed is to extend my ride to find a road to nowhere. I just don't get it. I programmed the ride 'on line' and gave the route and waypoints to the crap nav before I departed yet is still mangles it and manages to take me up another stiff incline into a headwind to the top of the A1 where the only option is to go west to Ripon or back the way I came. I check the map. Yes the fecking machine has missed the turning approx 1 mile back down the road. Why it decided it wanted to show me [again] the sight of a thousand cars and trucks on a hot bank holiday weekend from a flyover atop the A1 only God and the mad fecking Garmin programmer knows.
I pass to the west of Topcliffe. I stop for a drink a sarnie atop an embankment at the side of the road under the canopy of a rather large and aged holly tree. It's a perfect parasol on a sunny day. Cyclist appear from everywhere. Mostly invisible whilst riding cos we are riding parallel paths but suddenly appear out of the heat haze whilst I'm sat in the shade of a lovely tree with my head in a nosebag. From here it is a straight run south past Alne and Tollerton. I make a short detour to Benningborough Stately Home's farm shop and cafe to push lunch number 2, a late burger and chips, down to Audrey II as I sit and admire my bike. I'm home by 3 pm.
So that's another 4 and a bit hours cycling and an hour and a bit lozzocking at the side of roads. I've used 7000 calories on the round trip and I'm hungry for more food. Audrey II is back. She's well prepared for this years rides having installed a new powered chute to help get the calories in. Legs are feeling a little sore yet are still strong. I swear my thighs have grown a little again. If not that perhaps a little more defined than before. It's noticeable. Ma Boy has been a good un on this run. I've been kind to him and not stood up on the roof of his bedroom. Keeping the pressure off has helped to keep him quiet. Good.
Strava milages are starting to build. Confidence is growing. My next shakedown ride will be York to Hornsea on the coast, overnight again in the tent then ride up to Scarborough with a final overnight on the edge of the town then back home. More miles, more hills, more to write about.
I'm so looking forward to it :-)
The bike had been set up and loaded ready to go a couple of days beforehand. A phone call earlier in the week to the Bedale campsite confirmed that they could fit big old me in a little old corner of the site and after a bit of faffing and fettling and checking for the n'th time that everything was loaded I'm ready to go.
It's a lovely sunny warm day. The crap nav has me set to head to the west and take the Rufforth, Cattal, Boroughbridge and Ripon route up to Bedale. With a rather good breakfast now inside of me and the world starting to turn under my wheels, away I go.
Bugger it. Not more than 4 miles in and there are roadsigns everywhere at Askham Richard. The route is closed. I normally sneak along closed roads as a man and his bike can normally squeeze past roadworks but signs this time say it is not open to pedestrians, horses nor bikes. I'm not taking the detour though as that would route me back onto the York bypass (not a good idea on a Bank Holiday weekend) and anyway I know that there is another shortcut further up the road. Which I take. At the end of it signs again say the same thing. Still closed. I'm ordered to go east young man which I stubbornly refuse to do. Therefore the only option is to continue west until I hit Thorpe Arch and then hang a right and cycle north forever. It's a big detour. Nonetheless its lovely cycling weather. Roads are quiet as by now everyone else is on the A64 in the Easter Bank Holiday traffic jam heading for the coast.
Within 2 hours I arrive in Boroughbridge. At a packed cyclist friendly cafe in the middle of town I collided with and quickly devoured a plateful of scrambled eggs on toast and a pint of Yorkshire tea. It's also where I got chatting to 3 elderly gents, similarly on their bikes and e-bikes for a ride-out from Leeds. One white haired and rather portly gent has done the lot. Mountaineered in the Himalayas he says atop mountains that were off the well trod body strewn Everest and K2 tracks and told how he'd suffered from oxygen starvation atop Kilimanjaro. Wowser(!) type stories. Well done I say. He's now in his mid to late 70's and still enjoying life on his e-bike. I hope to get there (to his age not to the top of a mountain) one day myself.
It's a beautiful evening in Bedale. The site owner, a nice chappie, says he's impressed with my bike having taken a big interest in the Gates belt drive cos his other job as Bedale's Motor Factor has him selling Gates cam belts belts to the car and truck industry. He has a good long look at my overloaded bike, then looks at me, and says, 'so where's the battery pack?'. Cheeky bugger.
The reason for this run this weekend was to start my shakedown rides whilst the weather was good and to tick some boxes. Bike? Good. [tick]. Tent? Good. [tick]. Food? Well it's a bit of a mixed opinion on that but I found that the tin of Tesco Jalfrezi curry and a bag of Uncle Ben's par boiled rice was pretty good for an evening meal intertwined with a rather large bag of dry roast peanuts washed down with a couple of mugs of Darjeeling tea. Lips were a bit 'mmmm...' after half the bag of nuts and so I packed the remainder away for a morning snack and as the light faded I'm away to bed in a nice 3 seasons sleeping bag [tick] and an 8 quid Tesco inflatable bed [double tick!] randomly listening to tunes on my old iPod. It's probably the best nights sleep I've ever had under canvas.
I woke up for a wee wee about 3am. I took the plugs out (from my ears) and all was quiet and with a warm bag calling it was not long before I was away with the fairies again. Bad idea though taking the ear plugs out as approx 30 minutes before dawn the outside of the tent erupted with a cacophony of bird song. Do they wear watches? Have alarms? How do they know? Incredible in its audacity from nearby rip roaring 'you're my wife now' shouty stuff to distant whistles cheeps and peeps it sounded like the best ever surround sound planet earth thingy of all time. All of a sudden there's a CAW! CAW! CAAAAAWWW! as though a Crow or Rook had perched atop the tent and with megaphone clasped betwixt feathered thumbs and fingers was shouting as hard as it could, 'GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!!!'.
Feck off Mr Crow. Plugs were firmly wedged back in and I slept on an off until the early morning Sun cast a burnt orange glow on the wet nylon tent walls. I lay quietly listening to a selection of tunes on the pod, spied the half eaten bag of Dry Roast nuts and so started to masticate for the next 20 minutes or so.
It's a tricky business eating nuts in bed (ah memories of girlfriends past) but the trick is to put the neck of the nut bag betwixt lips, let a few nuts fall into ones gob, clamp the neck of the bag shut betwixt fingers and chomp. And repeat. The last nut drops into my mouth and in my haste I take the bag out of my gob, forget to pinch the neck of it and so shower my right eye with nut dust and salt. Aaaaggghhh! I'm up. In a flash. Wipe, wipe, wipe. I can't see! Where the feck is the water bottle? Make sure you do not accidentally pick up the wee wee bottle you idiot. Flush, flush, flush. Gahhhh!
So I'm up. It's 6.30 am. Time to make some porridge. Easy to make stuff in small packets and with two of them, one original, the other golden syrup flavoured, mixed with UHT milk, my spirit fuel stove mangels that lot up and a big bowl of hot sweet porridge is stuffed on the powered chute and sent tout-suite to an anticipatory Audrey II.
The old boy in an adjacent camper van is nice and chatty. Turns out that he's from Ipswich and visiting his granddaughter who had recently moved to Bedale. I mentioned how I often went to Ipswich to the BT Site at Martlesham and it turns out he used to be gate security there before he retired. It's very likely this is the second time our paths have crossed at different ends of the country. Again I'm gobsmacked thinking of how many of my twice-in-a-million chance meetings have actually happened in the last 56 years. It surely is a small world.
I'm packed and ready to roll by 9.30am. The rest of my milk is donated to the family next door. As much to apologise for the scary snoring monster noises outside that they no doubt fretted about for most of the night.
I'm away. Interesting to note, cos of all the roadside paraphernalia, that the Tour of Yorkshire is coming through and finishing in Bedale on the 3rd May. On the 2nd of May it scoots to the south of York so I plan to find a bit of roadside and meet it near Stillingfleet. Anyway, its a headwind all the way home so whilst it is 10 miles or so less as there is no big detour this time there's no option really to freewheel and the pressure on the legs does not relinquish all day.
The route takes me back south mostly paralleling the A1 motorway. I'm on a long straight section of wide tarmac with a slight uphill grade and a bright sun reflecting from its smooth surface. There's something in the distance. It's like looking for Omar Sharif through the distant heat haze down a desert track in the early sequence of the film, Lawrence of Arabia. I get closer, slowly, slowly. I squint to see. A tractor? Nah too slow? A camel? Nope. A car crash? No, no-one's stopping.
It's a horse and carriage. You know, an old rag and bone man type. The only rags and bones out here today are those of the horses, and mine which are rather carefully covered with a mountain of blubber. I'm now 30 yards from it and preparing to overtake. The road follows the A1 up into a gentle climb. Just as it does so a gentle flick on the reigns has the horse into a trot. He's now doing 10.3 MPH uphill. I'm doing 10.2 MPH behind him. Imperceptibly, he's getting away from me! Oh no you don't. Even on a fully loaded bike on a slight incline into a headwind I squeeze the thighs a bit harder and start to catch up.
Just before the brow of the climb the horse slows to a walk. The farmer gent shouts, 'Its a lovely day!', as I pass and I agree with him and say, 'I know exactly how the horse feels!'. And left him laughing in my wake. Then he's gone. He's no longer in my mirrors. Ghost like in how it happened with not another vehicle on the same bit of road. Nah, he turned in to that side road you prat.
By this time the crap nav is bored and decides what is now needed is to extend my ride to find a road to nowhere. I just don't get it. I programmed the ride 'on line' and gave the route and waypoints to the crap nav before I departed yet is still mangles it and manages to take me up another stiff incline into a headwind to the top of the A1 where the only option is to go west to Ripon or back the way I came. I check the map. Yes the fecking machine has missed the turning approx 1 mile back down the road. Why it decided it wanted to show me [again] the sight of a thousand cars and trucks on a hot bank holiday weekend from a flyover atop the A1 only God and the mad fecking Garmin programmer knows.
I pass to the west of Topcliffe. I stop for a drink a sarnie atop an embankment at the side of the road under the canopy of a rather large and aged holly tree. It's a perfect parasol on a sunny day. Cyclist appear from everywhere. Mostly invisible whilst riding cos we are riding parallel paths but suddenly appear out of the heat haze whilst I'm sat in the shade of a lovely tree with my head in a nosebag. From here it is a straight run south past Alne and Tollerton. I make a short detour to Benningborough Stately Home's farm shop and cafe to push lunch number 2, a late burger and chips, down to Audrey II as I sit and admire my bike. I'm home by 3 pm.
So that's another 4 and a bit hours cycling and an hour and a bit lozzocking at the side of roads. I've used 7000 calories on the round trip and I'm hungry for more food. Audrey II is back. She's well prepared for this years rides having installed a new powered chute to help get the calories in. Legs are feeling a little sore yet are still strong. I swear my thighs have grown a little again. If not that perhaps a little more defined than before. It's noticeable. Ma Boy has been a good un on this run. I've been kind to him and not stood up on the roof of his bedroom. Keeping the pressure off has helped to keep him quiet. Good.
Strava milages are starting to build. Confidence is growing. My next shakedown ride will be York to Hornsea on the coast, overnight again in the tent then ride up to Scarborough with a final overnight on the edge of the town then back home. More miles, more hills, more to write about.
I'm so looking forward to it :-)
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