NC500 - True Grit

Imagine this.  You’re looking at a huge panorama of high mountains with awe inspiring music playing in the background.  The camera pans to a view of a bright mountain meadow on which there are two men….  Lucky London Alan Neddy Pepper is atop his pup of a bike and Rooster Fat Man Cock Burn is on his Koga 5 bar gate.

'Two against the 500 it is ill advised' we hear Maddy Lyn say.

The two men advance towards one another.  500 miles separates them..

Rooster and Neddy eye each other.

‘Well Rooster, will you give me the road?  What is your intention, do you think a ride on the 500 is a dogfall?’

‘I intend to kill you in 500 miles, Neddy.  Or see you collapse in Inverness at Judge Parker’s convenience store.  Which’ll it be?'

Neddy Laughs.  His split lip has now healed after the bad shaving accident with his toothpaste last night.  

'I call that bold talk for a one bike fat man'

'Fill your hands with water bottles you son of a bitch!’

Rooster puts his handlebars between his teeth, grabs his water bottles with his spare hands and stamps on his pedals. 

Maddy Lyn shouts ’stop them!’ via Apple text...

’They’re too far away and moving too slow', says 'find my Mac’ LeBoeuf…

The rasp and crackle of hard breathing can be heard over the distant cuckooing of cuckoos.

Rooster turns his head to either side as he furiously pedals, bringing his good video camera eye into play.

A 4x4 idiot is gaily waving a dead water bottle over his head squawking like a chicken as he pushes other cyclists off the road. 'Cock-a-doodle-doo!!'

A shot from Rooster’s LED light kills him and swipes him out of his Range Rover.

Rooster and Lucky Neddy are charging each other…    ’s credit cards….

Neddy crashes into the edge of the clearing with an 'aw feck'.  Rooster’s 5 bar gate has been hit and falls pinning Roosters leg.  The bike is bleeding black blood.  He's been sprayed on his leg and has wiped the black oily crap in his face, his eyes and down his nose…

Lucky Neddy reigns in his pup of a bike.  His right arm, neck, shoulders, back and both knees are very sore.  His left bum cheek dangles off the bike.  He walks his bike up to Rooster who is attempting (whilst furiously giggling) to unravel himself from the dead 5 bar gate..

‘Well Rooster, I’m shot to pieces.  It appears that neither of us will see Judge Parker's convenience store in Inverness today.’  

Lucky Neddy drops his handlebars (as they have now also come off), and reaches for his loaded water bottle with his one working cyclist's arm.  Rooster is trying to reach his water bottles which are just out of hand.  Lucky Neddy raises his water bottle to take a shot, pulls his head all the way back, forgets the lid is missing, tips the electrolytic contents all over his face, slides half way down one side of his saddle and dangles, briefly, with his rubber waterproof shoe cover tangled in his left hand pedal.  And with his pup standing unperturbed, he falls off the bike.  

Lucky London Alan (Neddy) Pepper groans...  

Maddie Lyn whoops! 'Some billy shot!’, she says.  ‘They’ve done 500 miles, at last!  And tomorrow he will be coming home.  YAY!’

The End.

Oscar! Oscar!  Thank You. Thank You. 

Or is it the end?  Personally I had also intended to do the ride from York via North Sea Ferries (to avoid getting my wheels wet) to Rotterdam and then continue to ride south east to Vienna following the rivers Waal, Rhine, Main, the Main to Danube ship canal and the Danube and to do this in September this year.  Greedy puppy.  I’m gonna park that one until next year.  

One week or more ago it was the end of the World.  I saw in London Alan's wet, drenched, cold blue and white featured grimace on the seriously long cold wet with the wind in your face uphill drag to Gairloch the ‘I’m thoroughly pissed off and do not want to go on’ moment.  I really thought that was it.  Game over.  Time to buy a train ticket home.  

For sure if Alan had wanted / decided to stop then so would I.  No way was I going to leave my partner in bike and body crimes to go home alone and for me to try to carry on.  One for all and all for one is our motto.  After all both of us could come back and do the rest of it at any time / on any date / in better weather if we wished.    

But he did not. I’ve not seen such dogged determination in anyone for a long long time.  Even with all the worries, and there were a few sleepless nights I guess before he set off, Alan was determined to complete the ride.  Not as some kind of masochistic thing but I’m sure that one core fact was that he did not want to let me down.  He had come to see me off at Land's End last year.  That plus the later blog and video (I have another fecking gigaton of it to edit - so watch out) really whet his appetite methinks.  So when I sent out the 'I’m gonna ride the 500 and would anyone like to ride with me' email I was not too surprised that Alan said yes.   

The planning started in February.  Alan only got his bike and started serious riding in April.  We both knew there would be bad days but also perhaps good days to look forward to (it is Scotland after all).  It takes some guts to start preparing for such an adventure so late and then persevere and push through all the crap stuff in the hope, nay belief, that there would truly be better days ahead.  

The amazing thing though is that London Alan not only did this mad cycle ride BUT has been chatting furiously with me about doing it again.  He is currently sat at the side of me on the train home trying to encourage his mates to do something similar; telling them in texts about the fantastical achievements over the last 13 days.   Like the enormous miles ridden, fanatical feet climbed, maximum speed reached, loudest WT snore (yeah he used a db meter app on his phone to measure me) etc.  I cannot believe it.  The difference!   Don’t let me though give the impression that it has been easy for me.  Not a chance.  It was harder than the LEJOG thing that I did last year which can be read earlier in this blog.  And that was tough.  I may have been a little bit better conditioned for the ride but we are both sore.  Nonetheless, with huge smiles on our faces :-)

The North Coast 500 has been one hell of a ride. 13 days has gone in a flash.  

I’d like to say a little bit more to finish this blog covering my key thoughts and memories:

Cuckoos - where have all the Cuckoos gone?  Fecking Scotland for sure.  Both the birds and the bird brained cyclists.  They’re everywhere hidden in all parts of the glen and mountaintops in places where normal cyclists do not venture and are most noticeable at the start of every day and at the start of every hard climb.  What does a cuckoo sound like?  Well it makes a earthy two part call which sounds to me just like a ‘yer fecking nuts, both of ya’ which whilst it may attract other Cuckoos, kinda put us both off our intentions for the day. 

The Road - Alan has already noted how the road surface can change significantly depending on which can or can’t be bothered council area we are cycling in.  All I know is I spent a lot of time ‘low and slow’ staring at the road.  I best describe it like I’m looking out of a spaceship window orbiting above some harsh planetary surface, perhaps as will be seen by future astronauts looking down at the mighty red planet Mars as it rotates slowly underneath, exposing in all its harshness the red stone plateau’s and cracked road canyons full of dust.    

The Rain - rain is not just rain in this part of the world.  We’ve had every single type of it.  From soft beckoning cool misty stuff to the hard hitting cold .303 machine gun bullet stuff given to us by the belt load.  From all angles.  Not a dry anything in the house.  How the hell Hairy Melon (my arse) got that wet God only knows.  It's like being in a car wash without the pleasant foamy bits or in a power shower with multiple jets pointing at our bodies, even from underneath.  Two images remain washed in.  Of the pleasant glide down Glen Torridon's water chute chasing white water rapids whilst blathered with not cold water avoiding swimming pool sized puddles watching the water extrude from the landscape as though it's God’s great bath sponge.  Secondly of being high and proper cold and wet heading downhill towards Durness looking out across a huge wide glen towards the smokey mist clad mountains on the other side with a hopeful faint brightness shining in the distance.  Beautiful in its steely grey way.  You can be wet, very wet.  Yet have a glorious time.

The Hills - The landscape has been 3D printed on some mega printing machine on its hardest setting.  Stupendous climbs and falls where it is not possible to determine what is flat.  Fence posts tell you which way you are heading, up or down.  French drivers try their best to feck you off.  Bike tyres raw with the rubber shredding nature of standing hard in the pedals trying to get up the grade before losing traction and struggling not to lock due to the force exerted through the disk brakes.  Its a mad 3D Doctor Strange world of twisted rocks and mountains where we pedal down hill cos we think it is up.  If you want to see the best bits you have to accept the worst bits. 

Our Bodies - I am amazed at the punishment that a late 50’s early 60’s body can still take.  And then be OK to do the same thing the next day.  How does it do it?  How can we process 4000 calories of energy more than normal every day and the body diligently works on repairing and recuperating overnight.  Then we give it the same harsh beating the next day.  And the next.  And the next.  On the LEJOG thing I wrote about different parts of my body and how they were not coping.  Of my knees (Ma Boy and Our Lass), of my arse (Hairy Melon), of my ‘ahem' (Balloon Dog) as all really suffered.  I’m massively grateful that they have all been fantastic with me this time.  Perhaps I have leant now to be kind to them.  For sure though I do not know how Alan has managed.  I’ve eaten all the bread in Scotland and will never be found without something interesting in my mouth (no not her) yet Alan has kinda kept his meals ’normal’.  The man has been on the bonking rev limiter for 13 days.  He’s worried his family on Face Time looking extremely tired at the end of every day.  Lyn, please be kind to him when you get him back.  Take him on holiday.  He’s done a cracking job of smashing the fat cells and must by now have a fantastical 6 pack underneath all those cushions he continues to carry under his shirt.  

The Achievement - I normally like to ride alone.  It’s just one person to think about and it’s easy being selfish and running at your own preferred pace.  But for sure this trip would have been less than half the trip it turned out to be without Alan.  There is absolutely nothing better than sharing an experience with someone.  To live through all of the fantastical stuff and the impossible stuff only makes things better when someone is with you.  We all become better people for sharing it.  I’ve immensely enjoyed all of it.  Thank you so much for sharing the journey with me Alan.  

Well to finish as I started...  

Rooster Fat Man Cock Burn is on his Koga bike talking to Lucky London Alan Neddy Pepper and says:

'He’s not as game as the Dawes Audax Giro but Stonewall says he’s a good five bar gate..'

London Alan says ‘ You’re too old and too fat to be riding five bar gates'

'Well, come and see a fat old man sometime!'

Thanks for reading, folks.