Guerilla Knitters
Day 1: 12th May, to Woolavington 25 miles, total 25 miles.
D-Day has arrived. I wake up and realise that I’ve just spent the last night in my bed for 6 weeks. I pop down to my workshop; there are still a few things I want to sort out, before I leave everything until mid-June. It’s an odd moment as I take a look around the sawdust strewn floor and the hand tools that are laid out on my bench. Nothing in here will move until I get back, if we get back! I write a small congratulatory message to myself on the whiteboard I use for work scheduling. “Woohoo, you made it!”
At home, I scramble to finish my packing, despite having had six months to prepare. We are putting our clothes in plastic freezer bags, even though our panniers are supposedly waterproof. We heard that before. Everything except shoes goes in two A4 sized freezer bags, it seems ridiculously little for 6 weeks away.
We have lunch, load up Edith in the kitchen and put each wheel in turn on the scales. Total 76Kg! Edith is too heavy and awkward to get through the house, so we take everything off, wheel her through, chipping more paint off the front door as usual. Nicky holds Edith and I load up again. The new bungees holding the day bag on top of the rear panniers are reassuringly tight; things slipping off is not good. Big Blue the solar panel is strapped on top of everything ready to soak up the sun. No need to charge anything today we are only doing 25 miles, and all our battery packs are brim full.
Where’s the band?
Unfortunately, the brass band is late. We give up waiting; it’s time to go. Someone takes some pictures, then we hug and say goodbye to our grown-up children, Olly and Freya. Freya’s boyfriend James, and Margaret our lovely neighbour, are here too all of us trying to get our heads around the intended 1400-mile trip. I am momentarily overwhelmed by the thousands of cycling decisions we will make over the next month and a half. There are potholes and lorries to avoid, roundabouts to take the wrong way, not to mention following the route, or staying upright! Anyway, it is time for the starting ritual to begin.
Let me give you the travelling arrangements from my perspective. I’m obviously at the bottom rolling along the road. If this ever changes, things are not going well, and I’m likely to have scratched paint. He is always on the front; this is not for any alpha-maleish reason, anyone who knows them as a couple will know that’s not how they roll.
I was handbuilt by the fab’ team at Thorn, and my frame size is different front and rear to make the most of their strengths as individuals; even the length of my pedal cranks is different for each of them. So, he pedals, steers, changes gear, brakes, deflects rain and flies from hitting her, and rings my bell as needed. She navigates, monitors traffic in my mirrors, keeps an eye on all travel stats, indicates left and right turns, dispenses sweets when required, and trusts that he will not put us all under a bus. However, as we are told by helpful passersby when we cycle in England, she doesn’t pedal. It will come as no surprise to my female readers that these comments from the pavement are usually made by men, who are, how can I say this kindly, a little bit cuddly? To set the record straight, Nicky is a fierce pedaller.
It’s fun to be loaded up and pointed down the road ready for the off, I was born ready for this type of extended European trip. I almost want to hide as we go out for “Namby pamby” 20-mile jaunts on a Sunday afternoon, but this is much more like it. I know the chain oil went in, along with the spanners and spares, so if the one at the front keeps us out of the ditch, and the one at the back tells him the way, I know I can do my part. To be honest, I’m quietly impressed that they are prepared to cycle off for six weeks with a hiking tent as they approach their sixties. I hope they put in the Ibuprofen Gel.
I’ll go through the starting ritual for you.
Nicky raises my left pedal just forward of upright ready for the first push.
Chris selects an appropriate gear on my righthand twist grip, usually 7-8 if flat, checks for traffic, when happy says, “Ready?”
Nicky checks my rear-view mirror, when happy says, “Ready,”
Chris replies, “Go.”
At this point they should both push off with their left foot, pick the right foot off the floor, and off we go. A few seconds later they will try and get their cycle shoes locked into the sockets on my pedals. There is a sort of unwritten race between them to get ‘Clipped-in’ first.
We’re off! From our house we head west on Fosse Rd to the T Junction, where Wayne the landlord of the Oakhill Inn, is watering his hanging baskets. A little way on we see Mark the Postman who says, “Going far?”
“Spain,” we reply. He doesn’t believe us; we can’t believe it either. In another two hundred yards we see the lovely Jane. We have been friends with Jane and her husband Andy for over 30 years, half our lifetimes. We’ve journeyed on the path of parenthood together, raising our respective six sons and one daughter. Jane has promised us a cream tea and a finishing line banner if we pass back down the high street in 43 days’ time. We wave and wobble, she just waves and shouts, “Good luck, you crazy fools!” We try and say something coherent about seeing her soon, but we are already puffed, this bike is effin heavy!
Half a mile further on, at the Mendip golf course, we spot our friend Julian, we are truly knackered by now, so we stop gratefully and tell him where we are going. I think he believes us, but I get the impression that he’s wondering if he’ll ever see us again. Soon after, we are at a high point and can see Glastonbury Tor and the Somerset Levels laid out below us. We don’t look back, but if we had, it would have been our last glimpse of home until we get back to this spot in mid-June.
The sun is shining, the hedgerows are bright green with Spring growth, and it’s downhill for five miles from here to Wells and beyond. Suddenly life seems beautifully simple again. It’s just the three of us, and our responsibilities are only to ourselves. With every pedal the minutiae of family and work life recede behind our blinking rear light. Ahead is only fun and safe adventure. We hope.
“How fast are we going?” is a question I ask Nicky a fair amount. I don’t want to break records, but guessing our speed is one of the few games you can play with both hands on the handlebars and your feet busy on the pedals. Nicky is running Mission Control; between her watch and phone she probably has way more computing power than launched Apollo 11. Speed, position, route, elevation, time to destination, she has it all, that is if she’s pressed the right buttons and remembered to start the gadgets. Having done a few miles with Edith now, I’ve got a feel for what’s happening and I’m not too shabby at guessing our speed. In 14th, our top gear, on a decent flat surface, we cruise at 12-17 miles an hour depending on the wind.
We drop down Maesbury Hill and turn steeply down again towards Dinder, on one of those single-track country roads with grass growing along its middle; my hands are squeezing the brakes gently to take the edge off our speed. Further down it gets steeper still, and I’m hauling on the brakes; I dare not ease off for a second. I just hope a car isn’t on its way up. Note to self, it would be acutely embarrassing to have a trip-ending crash this close to home.
Perched on my saddle at the back I may be running Mission Control, but I have no brakes and no bell. As we descend this first steep hill, I find myself wondering if I am right to put my safety in his hands for the next 6 weeks. As the narrow hedge bound road falls away ahead of us, Chris’ head and shoulders wobble about 18 inches in front of me, partially obstructing my view. My body leans forward as the hill steepens, and I find myself momentarily crossing my fingers as I grip the rigid handlebars. To keep myself from knocking into Chris I concentrate on locking out my elbows while pushing against the bars- I can feel the force of gravity through my wrists and hands. In my head the “Anxiety chatter” is now in full flow. I find myself shutting my eyes and soothing myself by repeating over and over again, “We’ve done steep hills before -its ok, its ok, its ok – we’re safe, we’re safe”.
On long straight downhills we might reach 30-35 MPH, but as we weigh just under a quarter of a ton all up, we take a bit of stopping, despite having three separate brakes - Edith has two brakes on the back wheel and one on the front. Nearly forty years ago, on an Exmoor hill, I ended up clamping my shoes around the front wheel of a hired tandem, when the puny brakes showed no sign of slowing us. The smell of my smoking trainers was the first clue Nicky had that all was not well.
The squeal from Edith’s brakes tells the inhabitants of Dinder that we are passing through. We wiggle our way around Wells and its wonderful cathedral and out on to the dead flat Somerset Levels. I say flat, the roads are generally anything but flat. The Levels are effectively a peat bog and the flimsy ribbons of tar calling themselves roads are constantly writhing and sinking. The good news is that cars bottom out and tend to stay away from here, so it’s nearly always a quiet cycle.
Apart from having to concentrate on handling the increased weight of the full panniers, it’s a nice little pedal to our first campsite at Woolavington. En route we notice that Shapwick village still has a knitted coronation scene crowning their village pillar box. Top work by the local ‘Knitterati’; I wonder if there was an agenda item at a Shapwick Parish Council meeting to approve it? Or was it done Banksy Style, by a guerilla knitter in the dead of night?
Nicky isn’t quite certain that I am totally sold on this trip, so her plan is to ply me with beer and wine every night! Not wanting to scupper her plans, my beer radar clocks the Woolavington Co-Op as soon as it pops over the horizon. I point Edith towards their bike rack, lock her up, and we pop in to get this evening’s essential happiness supplies. With our final destination being Spain I peruse the Rioja selection and then grab a bottle of beer from a Somerset Brewery for balance. Nicky seeks out, and then raids the chocolate and crisps aisle. We don’t even feel the slightest bit guilty, both of us are expecting to lose weight on this trip. Exercising for six hours a day has got to burn a bunch of calories, hasn’t it? Running out of energy will probably be the bigger problem; we think we might struggle to shovel the calories in quickly enough.
With our purchases stuffed under Edith’s bungees we roll downhill from the Co-Op and arrive at Nut Tree Farm, around 4.30pm, campsite numero uno. We’ve only been going for two and a half hours and, apart from the first 20 minutes, it’s been almost all flat or downhill. What’s even less impressive is that we can still see Priddy mast, the TV transmitter, just a few miles from our house. Maria the campsite owner spots us, waves, and comes over to show us to our pitch. While we push Edith through the lush grass Maria asks about our trip, she says all the right things and leaves us to it.
Camp one.
Having unloaded Edith and locked her to a wire fence, we put our house up. Together we put the poles in our dark green 2-man tent, nicknamed Hotel Vaude. Nicky then gets on with inflating the Lilos while I peg out the tent. I finish first and put the Big Agnes chairs together (Big Agnes is the brand). The chairs are designed for backpacking and fold neatly into a zip-up sausage. The aluminium tubes that make up the frame are all connected by elastic strings which make them look like mutant Nunchucks; I imagine I look like Jacky Chan as the tubes flail around during assembly. When Nicky finishes the Lilos, she gets the kettle on the boil. Excellent, we should have warmish tea in under 2 hours.
Dinner is frozen Bolognaise from home; however, this leg is so short it hasn’t defrosted. We only have weight-saving plastic spoons on this trip, so we attack our Bolognaise iceberg with a Swiss army knife and pliers, to break it up in our collapsible saucepan. Once the kettle has got hot enough to make a passable cup of tea, we stick the pan full of supper on the Primus and wait for it to heat through.
Once our home from home is sorted, we notice the other campers are all cyclists. Phil, our campsite neighbour, is on his way to a friend’s funeral in Torquay. He tells us that this is his first big trip since a recent cycle accident, he doesn’t elaborate, and we don’t pry. Another couple are experimenting with cycle touring and are on day two of a trip to Bude, they say in unison, “Our bums are on fire!”
There is no shower here, but the loos and washrooms are good, and there is free mains electricity to charge our phones. With the washing up done we sit and chat. We are happy and pleased with ourselves. We’re doing it, we’re on our way; ahead of us lies adventure and, with any luck, a glimpse of enlightenment. Nicky sips her tea, and I swig my beer as the light fades and the temperature plummets. Even with all our clothes, plus our woolly hats, we are getting cold, it’s time to head inside. We tidy up a bit, flip the chairs over, unzip the tent, and wriggle into our sleeping bags, still with all our clothes on. Nicky is deliriously happy; she is giggling like a schoolgirl; there is literally nothing she would rather be doing right now. I eat more crisps and drink red wine, write up the diary like Captain Scott, and post on our Chris, Nicky and Edith Instagram. We both read our Kindles, then fail to get to sleep for several hours.
