On Yer Bike!

What do football supporters do all summer? Flick through TikTok, tittle-tattle and back-page gossip, I suppose, but it hardly fills the gap left by the game’s close-season. So it’s out with the bikes and maps and a couple of mates finding a week to spare and we’re set for the first leg of a well-known route I’ve long had in mind.

It’s July 4th, American Independence Day, but we won’t be travelling that far west! Three of us, Nottingham-born and life-long Forest fans, head for Cornwall, driven by George, another friend, kind enough to act as our ‘back-up team’ for the duration. Setting up camp each night and cooking hearty end-of-day meals, he excels in his role. And never mind the nutritional science that goes into training programmes for professional cyclists, we’re fuelled each afternoon by his mum’s fruit cake!

Not quite the Tour De France, with its famous Alpine climbs and long days in the saddle over a gruelling three weeks, but it’ll be a challenging week for us. We’re not aiming to smash any records or even complete the tour. Which would be an impressive achievement for blokes near 70, cycling for seven consecutive days, but we reckon we can make Wigan. That’s the plan, anyway.

George drops us off at Land’s End on a cool and breezy morning. The car park’s empty and the only other evidence of human life is a gang of cleaners readying the place for the influx of visitors later. An obligatory photo by the sign giving miles and direction for New York and John o’Groats and we’re off.

Within minutes, we’re hurtling down winding lanes and climbing out of tiny valleys. Glimpses of glinting sea to our right and snatches of open moorland to our left. Slender chimneys spike the sky, reminders that this part of the world earned much of its wealth through tin mining, well before tourism. Then a stunning drop into Newlyn and on to Penzance to pick up a promenade cycle path. St Michael’s Mount appears out of the blue bay like the magic you find in a fairy story and we stop to soak up the sight and check that bikes are fine. The world feels good. It’s the best of cycle touring: shifting – sometimes spectacular – scenery at a pace that allows you to keep a mental note of it.

That said, we have a schedule to keep and, from the profile of our route, it’s to be a day of up and down cycling, broken only by a brief rest when we catch the King Harry ferry to cross the estuary north of Falmouth. Sandwiches later, we tackle hills where there’s no shame in pushing bikes for a while before we descend through woodland at the Lost Gardens of Heligan and finish our day at St Austell. Back in the tent, it’s showers (no massage facility, surprisingly), piled-high food, a couple of beers and bed.

Day two in the saddle is a beast. On that we all agree. After catching the Fowey ferry and bumping into a group of purple, lycra-clad cyclists nearing completion of the route from Scotland (including Andrew Ridgely of Wham fame on a charity ride), hills feel like trying to scale walls. Gradients are acute and we all ‘feel the pain’. Respite comes in the form of a wonderful fifteen mile disused railway line turned cycle track called the Granite Way which delivers us to Okehampton.

More challenging terrain comes next morning as we push on through Devon and into Somerset. The day’s very warm and we allow ourselves a longer-than-usual lunch stop at Coldharbour Mill, still producing textiles, and sit in shaded gardens. Another plus when travelling by bike: spot somewhere that catches your eye and you simply pull on your brakes. No parking problems. Afternoon cycling is more benign and takes us along canal paths and on to our destination, Bridgwater.

Cold beers await back at camp and it proves to be the only evening it’s warm enough to sit out in comfort. We’re self-congratulating on the trip so far. No physical problems despite less-than-perfect preparation, excellent route-planning, some stunning countryside and some of the hardest cycling already done. What could go wrong?

Routines are pretty much established by now. Up at six, muesli, toast and coffee, check bikes and gear and we’re on the road by eight. Rain greets us next morning but the profile of our route for much of the day is pancake-flat. We breeze through the watery landscape of the Somerset Levels with views of Glastonbury Tor, skirt Weston-super-Mare via the delightfully named Strawberry Line and head north. The vastness of the Severn estuary comes into view and the industrial landscape to accompany it. Up and over the dedicated cycle track by the M5 at Avonmouth and then plunged into wastelands hard to negotiate after we lose our route on the phone due to the damp conditions.

Paper map-reading’s not quite the same in the rain. And how it comes. When we eventually escape back into more benign countryside, it’s to be sluiced along lanes. We pick up the pace and push on to Berkeley, arriving in the small town square drenched. At 76 miles, it’s our longest distance in a day so far. A visit to the local museum, dedicated to scientist Edward Jenner (pioneer of smallpox vaccine) is for another time.

Following the mighty Severn, next day, it’s into Gloucester and its impressively redeveloped dockside. Then miles by the Gloucester and Sharpness canal (once the widest and deepest in the world) before returning to the river as it sweeps through Worcester. The cathedral makes a perfect backdrop for some lovely urban cycling, including by the side of the race track to take us out of town. By the time we stop off for a pint – at the only pub we visit on the trip! – before easing into our campsite, we note that accents have shifted sharply from the burr of the southwest to the flat vowels of the west midlands.

Our route is due north on day six, through the old carpet-making town of Kidderminster and by areas where ostentatious wealth is on display. But it’s sporting territory, too, and we pass RAF Cosford, venue for many of the top athletics’ meetings years ago, and then cycle through Lilleshall Hall National Sports Centre with its well-surfaced, broad avenues. Youngsters who have stayed and trained here have gone on to become some of our most renowned sports people. In tribute, we put on a sprint (short-lived) and wend our way through manicured villages until we hit our first puncture of the tour. And it’s raining. And the replacement tube punctures, then a valve gets stuck and … well, you get the picture. It’s George to the rescue, some ten miles from our destination so the last day will be a long one.

We start the final day back at the scene of the puncture debacle and pedal briskly for miles through undulating countryside before we fetch-up at the UK’s largest and oldest working salt mine which stops us in our tracks. None of us knew we even produced salt these days! Then it’s over the Manchester ship canal and the river Mersey before dropping onto parkland paths and an outbreak of punctures. And rain. Lots of it. In the blink of an eye, three tubes come and go and we’ve no more. Fortunately, we’re in Warrington and the kindness of local folk leads us, eventually, to a bike shop and new tyres.

More waterside cycling beckons after that as we make for Wigan and follow excellent towpaths into town and to our final destination. I’d suggested Wigan Pier as it’s the location of the first book I read by George Orwell, called ‘Road To Wigan Pier’. And here we are and here is George to greet us with bottles of beer before we load bikes into the trailer and head for home Nottingham-way.

In the car, we talk sport: that Mark Cavendish has crashed out of the Tour de France; that Andy Murray is out of Wimbledon and Djokovic likely to win it (he doesn’t); how England have won the Headingley Test Match in dramatic fashion; that summer is actually packed full of sport, particularly with the addition of this year’s preparation for the women’s football world cup. And then: ‘Is what we’ve just done considered as sport?’ No records broken but feelings of pride and meeting a challenge of modest endurance. So, ‘Yes’, we agree. An average 65 miles a day is a decent statistic. And what a way to see your own country.