The weather continues to confound, swinging from a frigid -4°C on Wednesday’s early morning commute, to disturbingly mild, double-figures for the weekend.
With no ice to worry about and the morning’s starting to get lighter too, the big concern first thing Saturday was perfecting the balancing act and getting the layering just right – we were looking for the Goldilocks ideal – not too hot and not too cold.
So, a single base layer, Galibier jacket (in case the threatened rain or sleet materialised early than forecast), thin gloves with liners, no buff, no hat or headband. It was a reasonably, solid effort, a self-scoring 7, or an 8 out of 10 and I only feeling chilly the few times we were forced to stopped.
The roads were strangely quiet of fellow cyclists as I made my way across to the meeting place, but it seemed to be a day for solitary runners, who were out in force, in all sizes, shapes and styles.
There were so many, I wondered if there was an upcoming event they were all training for, or perhaps we now had a National Running Day to go along with National Hugging Day, National Pie Eating Day, National Rubik’s Cube Day, or whatever new nonsense they’ve come up with. (Apparently National Running Day does actually exist, but it’s in June.)
On the final approach to the meeting point I was caught behind a vaping driver, billowing plumes of sickly, sweet-smelling smoke out of his car window. It took me a while, but I finally recognised that he seemed to be indulging in a blackcurrant vape, possibly Ribena, or perhaps Vimto? A new one to add to Taffy Steve’s list of improbable and nauseating vape flavours.
Main Topics of Conversation at the Meeting Point:
G-Dawg pointed to the cheap, emergency, strap-on LED light on my handlebars and recounted how he’d attached one to his dog, after its purpose built LED collar failed. He said it worked as a great substitute, until the dog went plunging headlong into the river, at which point he mentally wrote it off.
He was then hugely surprised when the dog had emerged, with the light still blinking away furiously. At this point he decided that for a cheap light, he’d found something that was surprisingly sturdy, waterproof and wholly reliable … until he tried to turn it off to save the batteries for another day and found he couldn’t.
I imagined the disgruntled dog sitting at home, still blinking away like a stray satellite and unable to sleep for the disturbing bursts of light searing through its eyelids every time it tried.
Crazy Legs revealed he’d finished last weeks ride, taken off his gilet and hung it over the handlebars of his bike in the garage. It had still been there waiting for him this morning, but he’d only managed to half pull it on before its rank stink had dissuaded him and he’d been forced to consign it directly to the washing basket.
OGL commented on someone suggesting that he could wear a base layer ten times in a row between washes – or was it ten years in a row? Anyway, this is entirely possible because it was made with miraculous non-stink, Merino wool. I think it’s probably fine – but only if you can pedal fast enough to outpace your own odour …
Still, G-Dawg thought you could get at least 4 “good” wears out of a pair of Y-fronts, worn normally, back to front and then repeating the process but inside out. He was joking. (Right?) The disturbing level of detail he added, such as saving the right side out and the right way around “for best” did make me wonder …
OGL then mentioned some all-day British Cycling, regional meeting in February and wondered if anyone wanted to accompany him to represent the club, a sort of sharing of the pain. He didn’t seem to find any irony in the fact that nobody else has any kind of official status in the club (other than being a paid-up, or even non-paying member.)
In other news, he suggested that the city’s £11 million development plan for two sporting hubs could see a cycling track and possibly clubhouse, built at the Bullocksteads site near the rugby stadium. This, he offered, could be a better meeting point for club rides. This vision was enthusiastically embraced by G-Dawg who lives right on the doorstep of the proposed development. I’ve no doubt he could see his future-self rolling out of bed at 8:55 and still being the first one to arrive at the meeting point.
Taffy Steve nodded over to where Princess Fiona and Mini Miss had gathered and were chatting away.
“The red car and the blue car had a race…” he intoned, drawing attention to the fact that they were dressed almost identically, except one was wearing a red jacket and the other a blue one.
“Do you remember that Milky Way advert?” he asked, “I hated it.”
I wondered what it was provoked such hatred, could it have been the art style and direction? The patent absurdity of it’s storyboard? The jaunty, jangling soundtrack? The ear-worm effectiveness of its jingle? Perhaps it was the product itself, the rather effete, light-weight Milky Way that made him curl his lip in disdain?
“It’s the lyric’s he explained, starting to sing away, “The red car and the blue car had a race, but all Red wants to do is stuff his face, he eats everything he see’s, from trucks to prickly trees, but smart old Blue he took the Milky Way.” He paused, but not for long …
“So, what’s wrong with that? Prickly trees? Prickly trees! Pah! They obviously meant cactuses, but were too lazy to find anything that would rhyme with cactuses, cacti or whatever. Even as a kid I knew it was just a lazy cop-out. Grrr!”
It’s amazing what superficial ephemera we carry from our yoof and how much it can still trouble and annoy us …
Our route architect for the day, Crazy Legs asked if anyone was interested in the full details of his grand plan. Apparently not, so without further ado, he invited G-Dawg to lead out those who wanted a faster ride, adding that there’d be no waiting to regroup.
The first group started to coalesce around G-Dawg, with the majority of riders joining. I hung back to try and even out the numbers, but it was still a two-thirds to one-third split – apparently no one wants any kind of association with a “slow” group.
Crazy Legs did have a little rueful chuckle to himself, as the (always game) Goose bumped his steel behemoth down off the kerb and went to join the fast group.
We agreed he’d be fine, he likes a challenge and the route wasn’t too hilly.
The second group followed, but we hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards before the Red Max’s front tyre gave out with a sound like a sputtering Catherine Wheel – fzzzzit-fzzzzit-fzzzzit-fzzzzit.
We all pulled to a stop and clustered around and I moved up in unison with Crazy Legs to see how we could help.
“Don’t worry,” he declared, “We’ll soon have it fixed, the Dream Team’s here!” as he referred to the time we’d fruitlessly spent half an hour struggling with Big Dunc’s unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims (Trial of Tyre’s.)
We’d failed in that instance, only to later learn that Big Dunc had saved himself through the simple expedience of flipping the wheel around and inserting the inner tube into the other side. Why that made a difference, I really don’t know, but it obviously did and it might be worth trying if you’re ever stuck with seriously recalcitrant tyres.
Despite the close attention and best ministrations of the Dream Team, the tyre change went pretty smoothly and we were soon back on the road again.
I was on the front with the Ticker, (Ticker-less, now he’s on his winter bike) and we spent much of the time calling back, trying to determine what the route was – I really should have paid attention, or at least encouraged Crazy Legs to give us an actual and foolproof briefing.
Occasional incoherent shouting punctured our ride, apparently caused by a RIM in a Volvo taking exception to our right of way, but I was well insulated from any altercations as we plugged away on the front, up through High Callerton and toward Medburn.
Here, we were drawn to a halt when the Red Max’s tyre gave out again. While he cursed his shoddy and useless Continental summer tyres, that seemed shot after “a mere 5,000 miles” of extraordinary wear and tear, I double-checked the rim and carcass for offending objects – glass, thorns, shards of metal, flints, rough edges, caltrops, thumb tacks, whatever. There was nothing.
Meanwhile, the Red Max realised he’d used a Vittoria inner tube, so he had a little rant about “Italian crap” while he was on. Even as a proud Vittorian I wasn’t going to stand in front of that particular runaway express.
“Badd-bing-badda-fzzzzit,” Taffy Steve added helpfully.
Meanwhile, Crazy Legs took the flaccid, holed tube off the Red Max, ostensibly to locate where the puncture was, but really just to hold it up to his nose and inhale deeply.
“Ah, I love the smell of rubber,” he declared, evidently quite content with the world. Apparently it smelled considerably better than his gilet.
There then followed a very deep, lengthy and philosophical discussion about how inner tubes can smell so good, when the air inside them is so rank.
“Like stale kippers,” I suggested and nobody disagreed.
We got going again and pressed on to the crossroads at Heugh, where a bronchitis-suffering OGL made a bee-line for the cafe. The Red Max decided to cut his ride short too, hoping to lessen the chances for further punctures and departed to provide escort duties.
Somewhere along the way I found myself directly behind Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs as they rode along, for some reason arguing about similarities between OGL and, somewhat randomly, football manager Neil Warnock.
Things turned a shade darker when Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein were somehow added to the equation Still, the only conclusion they could agree on was that, if Idi Amin was a club member, they were pretty sure he hadn’t paid his subs in a good long while. Bizarre.
Having been delayed by recurrent punctures, we took a slight short cut toward the Quarry and, as the road started to climb, I nudged onto the front alongside Crazy Legs.
As we pulled the group along I complained about how I seemed to have become a dirt magnet for the day, liberally spotted and besplattered with mud from head to toe. My boots had turned a deeply unpleasant shade of brown and I was peering out at the world through seriously spotted glasses.
It was bad enough to start me singing “Teenage Dirtbag” – a selection that was at least tolerated by Crazy Legs as a “not-too-bad” earworm.
“Left, or right?” Crazy Legs pondered as we dragged the group toward the top of the Quarry.
“Left,” I declared, “We haven’t been that way for a long time.” So long in fact that I’d forgotten bits of the road had actually been patched and was (in places) almost decent.
So, left we went, slowing to allow everyone to regroup after the climb. As we rolled on, Crazy Legs bent right over to point, his finger hovering scant inches from the road surface as he bellowed out a lung-shredding “POT!” – a warning that was probably heard in the Scottish Borders.
“Sometimes, I really think I need to become a little more mature,” Crazy Legs considered.
“No, don’t go changin’ – we love you just the way you are.” I assured him.
He rode on in silence for a good dozen or so pedal strokes while he digested this …
“You bastard! You utter, utter bastard!” he complained, “First you give me Wheatus and then snatch it away for … for bloody Billy Joel!”
“Oh, is that a Billy Joel song?” I enquired innocently.
He then swore me to silence as he had a huge confession to make, needed advice, but demanded the ultimate in discretion. (This blerg doesn’t count, as no one reads it.) He looked around cautiously to make sure no one could eavesdrop. The group was still reforming behind us after the climb and we had a brief exclusion zone.
“I’ve been thinking about my set-up for the mountains and … Well… I don’t think I can get what I want with Campag.”
I was deeply shocked, almost speechless, as he hurriedly and in hushed tones, talked about Shimano, or even SRAM groupset options. Oh and the sky is falling down and meanwhile, in deepest, darkest hell, the thermostat’s been nudged up just a little …
Further discrete discussions around this bombshell were abandoned as we started a slow burn for the cafe, gradually picking up the pace.
“Do you want to go for this sprint?” Crazy legs wondered.
“Nah, I’m happy to just roll through.”
We built up the speed until all the talking behind stopped and we were lined out, clipping along, bouncing and juddering across the rough road surface.
I nodded up ahead where the road rose, before starting to drop down toward the Snake Bends.
“Take it to the top and then unleash the hounds?” I suggested.
So we did, peeling off neatly to either side and ushering the rest through for the final charge.
Cowin’ Bovril was the first to try his hand, surging off the front as we drifted toward the back.
He briefly had a good gap, but was slowly reeled in. Then, just before the road started to level, Taffy Steve attacked from the back, an astute masterclass in timing.
The gap quickly yawned upon, Cowin’ Bovril was washed away and only Carlton seemed able to give chase. I nudged onto his wheel and followed, but the move proved decisive. Carlton closed, but couldn’t come to terms with a flying Taffy Steve.
Main Topics of Conversation at the Coffee Stop:
In the cafe, Carlton apologised for our slightly ramshackle and disorganised riding at the start of our grand adventure, but explained that, when you’re on the front with your nose in the wind, it’s really difficult to hear what’s being shouted up from behind.
We agreed we needed a better system and Crazy Legs’ idea of passing messages forward always seemed to stall half way up the line.
“Perhaps we need a dog whistle?” Crazy Legs pondered.
Visions of One Man and His Dog sprang to mind. Cum ba Shep, cum ba. No, don’t think that’s going to work.
Changing tack, Carlton wondered what was going on with the weather. “It’s at least three degrees warmer today,” he remarked.
“Did you say three degrees?” I queried.
We paused…
I looked at Crazy Legs, Crazy Legs looked at me and we both shook our heads. Luckily, neither of us could remember any Three Degrees songs. A narrow escape.
We reminisced about our old representative from the Hollow Lands, De Uitheems Bloem, who we have traded in for a younger, newer model in Rainman. (It’s my understanding that Dutch riders are held in in such high regard, that UCI rules limit them to one per club. As such I can’t recall if our two ever actually rode together, but I do know we weren’t allowed to keep both.)
Crazy Legs remembered planning a winter break to Amsterdam and asking De Uitheems Bloem for some recommendations. He later received a 5-page email, detailing a full itinerary of all the things to see and do on his trip. This was appended with a long range weather forecast for the weekend; sunrise and sunset times, temperature, wind speed and direction, chance of precipitation, air pressure, cloud cover and pollen count. It concluded that it looked like being a particularly mild weekend, “so don’t bother taking your skates.”
On returning, Crazy Legs had sought out De Uitheems Bloem, “Thanks for all the recommendations, that was brilliant. By the way, English people don’t own skates.”
“They don’t?”
We shared tales of riding in the Alps with Carlton, who seemed surprised that the Col de la Croix de Fer was Crazy Legs’ favourite climb. He couldn’t recall seeing the (admittedly modest) iron cross, perhaps because his overriding memory of the climb was being paced up it by a wild horse. This beast, rather worryingly, refused to leave the road and didn’t seem all that bothered by the gaggle of cyclists lined out behind it.
“It was obviously a draught horse,” I offered. I thought it was funny, Crazy Legs was simply dismayed. Secretly, I just think he was upset because the only wildlife we saw on the climb was a sun-blasted, completely flattened, giant toad-in-the-road. (The Circle of Death).
Talk of climbing mountains led Carlton to talk about Jimmy Mac’s 900 gram, special climbing wheelset. First, Crazy Legs thanked Carlton profusely for introducing the subject of wheels into the conversation, something he felt we hadn’t discussed for … oh, at least 3 or 4 weeks. Then things got serious as we fired off a range of questions to try and frame the fearful symmetry of Jimmy Mac’s climbing wheelset …
“What type of spokes, how many and how are they laced?” Crazy Legs demanded.
“When you say 900 grams, is that with, or without rim tape?” I pondered.
“Quick release skewers?” Crazy Legs added.
“The cassette?”
“The freehub?”
A rather overwhelmed Carlton could provide none of the answers and was now probably regretting mentioning wheels in the first place.
Now Crazy Legs wanted Jimmy Mac to ride out on his fabled wheels and then strip them down completely, so he could fully weigh them and see if their claimed mass could be independently verified.
Luckily, Carlton spotted Jimmy Mac entering the cafe at just that moment and was able to deflect Crazy Legs onto the actual wheel owner. Crazy Legs immediately got up to pursue the issue, before coming back and reporting it was a dead-end, as Jimmy Mac had trashed the wheels during his International Grand Fondo horror smash.
I thought this would deflate Crazy Legs somewhat, but it actually cheered him up. He now felt fully vindicated in his view that such wheels aren’t robust enough to stand up to the wear and tear of actually riding on them.
All good things come to an end and were soon lining up to head for home. Here I noticed the Monkey Butler Boy visibly shivering.
“Feeling the cold?” I asked him, proving yet again just how startlingly perceptive I am.
“Yes,” he replied tightly, “And it’s all his fault” he pointed at the Red Max.
“But that’s unfair, surely your dad didn’t tell you what to wear this morning?”
“No, but I inherited a stupid gene from him.”
Ha!
As we set off I found myself chatting to the Red Max as we trailed the Monkey Butler Boy. He despaired at his progeny’s lack of common sense and choice of attire, short sleeve jersey and arm warmers, shorts and knee warmers, already despoiled white socks and once pristine (now poisonous ivory) shoes. Looking at Max bundled up in a winter jacket, gloves, boots, and hat, I determined that genetics isn’t always the answer.
I also noticed that of the four teens out today, at least three of them were riding bikes without mudguards, whereas just about all the older set had at least some semblance of protection for themselves, their bikes and most importantly, their fellow riders.
I wondered if that says something about generational differences – perhaps the youngsters are more concerned with style, or maybe they’re more willing to put up with discomfort? More daring? More stoical? Harder? Less cossetted?
Then again, perhaps I’m over-thinking it and they are what they seem to be when I’m at my grumpiest – at best thoughtless, or just plain inconsiderate.
The Red Max told me he’d taken the Monkey Butler Boy along to see a professional coach, who told all the youngsters that they were training too hard and in the wrong way. He’d described the ideal training programme as a pyramid, a base of solid, core, low intensity miles, capped with fewer, high intensity efforts only once this base had been established.
The concept resonated with the Red Max:
“That was interesting wasn’t it?” he’d asked.
“Yes, it was good.”
Something to think about?”
“Nah, it obviously doesn’t apply to me.”
A “3-2-1-Go” countdown signalled an impromptu sprint up the final few metres to the crest of Berwick Hill, fiercely contested by G-Dawg and the Garrulous Kid.
What can I say, the Garrulous Kid, in the full prime of youth and with all the advantages of modern technology, astride his ultra-light, uber-Teutonic, precision engineered, carbon Focus, was up against the grizzled veteran, three times his age and hauling an all steel fixie. It seemed a very unequal contest …
And so it proved. The Garrulous Kid was chewed up, worked over and unceremoniously spat out the back. Score one for the wrinklies.
I slotted in alongside Jimmy Mac as we started down the other side of Berwick Hill, where we were passed by a lone Derwent C.C. cyclist, all elbows and a busy style.
“He’s a bit far from home. I wonder what he’s doing on the boring roads over here, when he has the choice of all those good hilly routes south of the river?” Jimmy Mac mused.
This prompted a discussion about possible rides and the challenging terrain “over there” in the south of the Tyne badlands, (or Mordor, as my clubmates will refer to it.)
We hit the climb up to Dinnington and, in just a few metres, the gap between us and the Derwent C.C. rider almost entirely evaporated.
“Ah,” I suggested, “He doesn’t like hills.”
“Which is why he’s riding over here!” we both decided in unison.
As we entered the Mad Mile, I was completely and wholly unsurprised when a sudden headwind seemed to rise up out of nowhere. I’m getting used to this now.
I sheltered behind Caracol and G-Dawg for as long as I could, then I was on my own and plugging my way home. I got back suitably tired – I might not have been running with the “fast group” but I felt I’d had a good workout nonetheless.
YTD Totals: 648 km / 403 miles with 8,825 metres of climbing.
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Club Run, Saturday 10th November, 2018
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 110 km / 68 miles with 1,174 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
Average Speed: 23.6 km/h
Group size: 26
Temperature: 12°C
Weather in a word or two: Not bad at all
Ride Profile
First off, my apologies if, in my incessant babbling last week, I wrote off your cycling club and it’s still going strong. This was prompted by a blerg comment I received, suggesting the members of the Tyne Road Club would be very surprised to learn of their apparent demise.
In my own paltry defence, I will say that they must be operating in a particularly clandestine manner, or at least one that easily thwarted my (admittedly amateurish) research capabilities: the club no longer appear to be registered with British Cycling and their web domain registration has expired.
I did subsequently find a Strava group for the club, but this had the same link to the lapsed website and was only showing a single, solitary member. Still, I’m very happy to be proven wrong and do hope the club continues.
The one benefit of my research activities was stumbling across this film of the 1960 Dunston C.C. road race. (I think I’m safe in asserting that this club, is no more.)
Meanwhile discussions between Toshi San and OGL revealed that VC Electric were composed of electricians from the Swan-Hunter shipyards. Since the once mighty Swan-Hunter closed a long time ago, I think VC Electric are another club we can safely consign to the past.
Anyway, back to the present … A lone seagull, circling high over the house marked the start of my ride with a series of plaintive, mournful cries. I’ve no idea why it was so sad, it was a bright, breezy, not too cold day. A large band of heavy rain had passed over us through the night, but now the skies were clearing and it would be a dry throughout. Not bad. Not bad at all.
My trip across the river to the meeting point was wholly unremarkable and I arrived to find G-Dawg, the Hammer and the Colossus already there and waiting.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
That film of that 1960’s road race did spark some lively debate about the two front pockets that used to adorn all cycling jersey’s and just what purpose they could possibly serve. Too shallow for spares, or tools, too precarious for money, or valuables, I felt they were perhaps ideally sized to carry a pack of fags, or maybe they were designed for more refined times and specifically for a gentleman’s, freshly pressed, linen handkerchief or pocket square.
OGL was the only one of us who could remember owning a jersey with front pockets, which he suggested were simply there to catch the wind, like twin drogue parachutes. Like us, he had no earthly idea of their actual purpose and could recall getting his mum to sew a couple of press-studs on, to try and keep them from gaping, like a slack-jawed village idiot.
The Garrulous Kid started telling us about his “posse” of “friends” and their university choices and I wondered where he ranked in the group pecking order, was he the Alpha Male or Beta? Perhaps he was even his own man and a newly-minted Zeta?
Talk of his peer group prompted Plumose Pappus to muse what collective noun we might best apply. A “chatter” I suggested. He countered with a “chaos” which seemed altogether more appropriate.
It was time for route announcements, with Richard of Flanders bounding up onto the wall and, somewhat astonishingly, priming the crowd with his opening declaration, “Hello! For those that don’t know me, I’m Richard and this … is your route for the day …”
With numbers requiring a split into two groups, he then broke standard etiquette, by declaring he would be leading the front group and hustled off before anyone could object.
In the second group, OGL wanted a more organised rotation, with no one doing more than 3 miles on the front, before ceding their position and dropping all the way to the back. No one had any real objections, so off we set, with this rather novel restriction in mind.
I found myself riding along beside Ovis, out on his fixie because he’s not happy with the cantilever brakes on his winter bike. He’s dropped it in to his LBS for a service and to see if they could find a way of increasing braking power. I suggested better brake blocks could be helpful.
“Oh, I have to admit the last pair I bought were cheap as chips,” he conceded ruefully, “and for all the effect they were having, I might as well have been using chips.”
After three miles, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs dutifully swung off the front, accompanied with loud cries of “get thee behind me!” and “go on, all the way to the back now.”
Spoons and Goose took over and we pressed onward. Out through Ponteland and up Limestone Lane, until it was our turn and I moved onto the front with Ovis, as, with perfect timing, my Garmin ticked over to 23 miles.
“That must be three miles done already, ” Ovis suggested hopefully a few moments later.
“Close, but that’s actually only about 0.2 of a mile. But don’t worry, we’re about to a hit a nice, smooth patch of tarmac.”
And we did, to a noticeable, collective, dare I say, almost orgasmic sigh from those behind.
Ovis considered calling for a pee stop, but wavered as he couldn’t remember the right gate and he recalled the Gategate incident, when all sorts of trouble accrued to those who dared to worship and … ahem, “spend their tribute” at the wrong gate. Much better to ride with the discomfort of a full bladder and treat it as a sort of humble debasement, a sign of true dedication.
A little further on a cluster of cyclists could be seen at the side of the road. “Perhaps,” I mused, “they’re at the right gate and they’re pilgrims paying homage to that most holy of cyclist sites?”
But no, it was just our front group, stopped and pulled up at the side of the road with what looked like another front wheel puncture for G-Dawg.
I doffed an imaginary cap and we pressed on. After exactly three miles, I had us swing over and the next pair took to the front as we drifted all the way to the back. In this way the ride progressed, sensibly, orderly, organised, equitable, overly fussy and, according to Crazy Legs, ultimately boring.
A bit further on and we had to stop for our own puncture, as Spoons rear tyre was slowly softening. He set to work changing the tube and then starting to re-seat the tyre, lining up three tyre levers to help him. Even without Crazy Legs’s magic thumb, I thought it was worth trying to push the tyre on manually and with a bit of grunting, gurning and groaning I managed to roll it back onto the rim. It was only at this point that I realised I’d been wrestling with a Schwalbe Marathon, tyres that are notoriously difficult to fit. I have to admit I was quite smugly pleased with myself.
As Spoons began inflating his tyre, Goose fished a snack-sized Malt Loaf out and devoured it in three bites. Ovis snorted in derision, then drawled, “That’s not a malt loaf, this is a malt loaf,” reaching back and pulling out his usual, family-sized, malt loaf brick out of a jersey pocket.
In between bites, he explained how he’d completed the Fred Whitton Challenge fuelled purely on malt loaf, with two stashed in his jersey pockets and a third, for emergencies, strapped to his top tube.
“Only trouble was, I was a bit sick of it by the time I got to the last feed-station. You know what they were serving there? Bleedin’ malt loaf!”
I was fully expecting our front group to catch us while we were tyre wrangling and talking nonsense, but there was no sign of them. I later learned we’d deviated slightly from the planned route. (Shh! Don’t tell Richard.)
Underway again, Biden Fecht was struggling to hold the wheels and obviously in the throes of a major jour sans. We nursed him along to the Quarry, where he joined those making a quick strike for the café, while the rest of us went plummeting down the Ryals.
It must have been on the cusp of the 11th hour, of the … wait, what? 10th day? … when we shot past a small group observing a (surely premature) minutes silence at the war memorial at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully we didn’t disturb them too much.
The planned route was for us to climb back up through Hallington, but we took the longer, less hilly loop around the reservoir instead – Taffy Steve’s preferred option, even on his svelte summer bike and given even greater appeal now he was astride the thrice-cursed winter bike.
Half way around and Spoons was calling a stop to sort out his leaky, rapidly softening tyre, going for a few blasts of his pump rather than a full tube change. He set out for the café, pushing well ahead of everyone in a desperate race against time, hoping to make it before having to stop and force more air into the troublesome tube.
We followed, accelerating toward coffee and losing Ovis on the short, but savage Brandy Well Bank, that could legitimately bear a warning sign declaring “death to all fixies.”
Speed was up and we were humming along now, with Taffy Steve pulling on the front and rapidly closing in on Spoons, as we hit the stretch down to the Snake Bends. I pushed through, as we caught and dropped our front runner, rattling along on what I suspect was an uncomfortably flaccid tyre. Then Taffy Steve went blasting past with Crazy Legs on his wheel and the pair opened up a gap as they duked it out for the final sprint.
Punctures and stops had us arriving at the cafe way behind our usual time and, while the other groups were already indulging in refills and thinking about leaving, we were just sitting down.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Enthusiasm for the rugby international was somewhat dampened by realisation that the game would only be live on Sky, a company and service all right-thinking people should morally object to giving money to, regardless of your thoughts on their cycling team.
Crazy Legs questioned just how smart Sky were though, as he knew of at least one family sharing their Multiroom package between a house in Tyneside and a flat in East Finchley.
“You could always argue you’ve just got a very big house,” I decided.
“And the Multiroom subscription was just for the west wing,” the Colossus added.
Talk of big houses reminded OGL he’d once been asked to deliver a boatload of expensive Pinarello gear to a certain chubby, charmless, money-grubbing, shifty-grifter, Sir Alan Sugar. Mrs. OGL had been suspicious of the order, so OGL had Googled the address to reveal a palatial, sprawling monstrosity of a house, that convinced him this was no scam.
This reminded Crazy Legs of a tale he’d heard about a fellow cyclist who’d hauled himself to the top of an Alpine climb to find Sir Alan Sugar, complete with personalised Pinarello, camped outside a cafe, sipping an espresso.
“I know you!” the cyclist had declared, seemingly much to Lord Sugar’s initial delight, until the cyclist pointed a finger and declared, “You’re fired!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Lord Sugar had allegedly replied, with remarkable wit and sagacity, before throwing a leg over his bike and quickly riding off.
The Garrulous Kid dropped by wondering if he’d done enough to deserve a prize at the club’s annual dinner and awards ceremony.
“What would you like a prize for,” G-Dawg queried, “The shortest club ride, ever?”
“How about finishing a ride without falling over?” I suggested, “Oh, wait …”
But the Garrulous Kid had already flitted to the next topic, declaring he had a great idea for improving the club run: free rides. I’m not sure what he was getting at, we don’t pay anyway.
As everyone seemed to be packing up to leave, Big Dunc finally arrived at the cafe, having been riding with our group, but suffering an unremarked puncture on the run in. I persuaded Crazy Legs to join me in a coffee refill (to be honest, it wasn’t difficult) and we stayed behind to keep Big Dunc company, as everyone else left for the run home.
The three of us finally left the cafe and started to head back. I was riding on the front chatting with Crazy Legs, until he turned round and we finally noticed our trio had become a duo.
We back-tracked to find Big Dunc stopped by another puncture. We hustled into the entrance to a farm track and started to replace the tube. The tyre proved to be a complete and utter bastard to get off the rim, with tyre levers pinging everywhere, skinned knuckles, a lot of polite swearing and everyone trying and failing horribly.
Finally, we managed to drag the tyre off, pulled the tube out and replaced it. If we thought getting the tyre off was difficult, getting it back on was to be even more of an ordeal. Rolling it didn’t work, levering it didn’t work and in this instance, even the Crazy Legs magic thumb failed us.
All the while we were entertained by a postman driving his van in and out of farm entrances as if he was auditioning for the Fast & Furious 10 (Ogle Burn Up) and Crazy Legs started judging the steady stream of passing cyclists by how sincerely they enquired if they could assist us in any way.
Meanwhile, I wondered how Big Dunc had managed on his own, when he’d punctured on the run into the café? Truth be told he didn’t know – I suspect a supernatural burst of adrenaline, similar to the phenomena that lets desperate mothers lift cars off their run-over children.
My new found confidence in being able to handle difficult tyres following success with the Schwalbe Marathon’s, quickly evaporated, defeated by an unholy alliance of Continental Grand Prix tyres and Shimano rims.
Finally, with all hands to the pump and injudicious application of tyre levers, gloved hands, grunting, straining and swearing, the tyre grudgingly snapped over the rim. Unfortunately we could see numerous places where it had trapped the tube under the bead and it would be impossible to inflate.
Working the tyre vigorously from side to side for five minutes, we thought we’d finally released the tube, screwed a pump onto the valve and I gave it a dozen or so good blows.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Either my pump was refusing to work, or, much more likely we’d damaged the tube with all our industrial manhandling.
Unable to face another round of tyre wrangling, Crazy Legs volunteered to ride home, get his car and come and pick Big Dunc up. We agreed the plan and I handed over a spare tube in case Big Dunc’s superhuman strength and mystical tyre changing abilities suddenly reasserted themselves. Then we left him, vowing to replace his tyres with something that was a little more forgiving and easier to fit.
Pushing along with Crazy Legs and discussing year end distance totals, he recalled last year being stuck on 3,973 miles at Christmas and having to spend an hour or so on the turbo, just to round things up to an even 4,000.
This compulsion was something he’d previously tried to explain to an uncomprehending Taffy Steve and me, when he was horrified to learn we track our Garmin numbers in both miles and kilometres and therefore would have the impossibility of two numbers to round-up.
“I’ve probably topped 4,000 miles sometime this week,” I told him.
“Bloody hell, 4,000 miles in a week? That’s impressive.”
Funny man.
As we approached Kirkley Hall, about 45 minutes behind our usual schedule, Crazy Legs proved we’ve been riding together too long, by rightly guessing I was planning to turn right to shave a mile or two off my route home. Or, maybe he was trying to prompt me to go that way, because as soon as I confirmed it, he started grinning.
“Good,” he said, “Then I can ride the rest of the way at a more comfortable pace.”
“But, I’m only riding at this speed to keep up with you!” I insisted.
We fell into an uneasy silence, until we approached the junction.
“Right. Bye.”
“Bye. I’ll see you next week.”
“Next week.”
Next week, when we’ll probably continue to ride together at a pace just a little too fast for either of us to be truly comfortable, but we’ll both be to stubborn and conceited to admit it, or back down …
YTD Totals: 6,584 km / 4,091 miles with 80,581 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 116 km / 72 miles with 1,183 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 20 minutes
Average Speed: 26.8 km/h
Group size: 34 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature: 23°C
Weather in a word or two: Muy agradable
Road Profile
Saturday again and everything was looking good. It had been so cold during a couple of early morning commutes that I’d been forced back into wearing gloves, but the temperatures were creeping up as we approached the weekend. The arm warmers were still a necessary accessory, but I felt safe in discarding the windproof jacket as I took to the roads.
A pipe had burst at the top of the Heinous Hill and water was bubbling up around a manhole cover in the middle of the road. I rode downstream, getting a somewhat uncomfortable early shower for my efforts. I would like to say that it was refreshing and woke me up, but all it did was make the descent a little chillier.
At the roundabout in Blaydon there was yet more water washing across the tarmac, although this time I couldn’t determine its source. Again, I was liberally and unpleasantly sprayed and chilled, but the road was soon climbing and fighting the slope warmed me up again.
The factory digital readout I passed said 24°C already and once again, I questioned how accurately it had been calibrated. It was however undeniably pleasant out, the traffic was relatively light and I passed numerous other cyclists as I made my way across to the meeting point. With the good weather and a certain over-blown event in Windsor to try and avoid, I suspected it was going to be a well-attended ride.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
Caracol arrived on a new bike, a Parlee frame that he’d built up from scratch. The only problem was, something around the back end was constantly rattling and it was driving him too distraction.
“Too much oil on the chain,” Crazy Legs suggested knowingly, he thought a bit more, “Or, maybe too little oil on the chain.”
A few people had a good look and a poke around, but the source of the annoying rattle remained elusive.
OGL was looking for volunteers willing to ride the 106 mile Cyclone Route and generate a Strava file for him. Although he’s very much a Strava-denier, British Cycling have requested the files, so he doesn’t seem to have a choice. He seemed blissfully unaware that you can plot a route without actually having to ride it and, as a result, he’s intent on setting out early on Sunday morning for a 6-hour plus excursion to plot the 90-miler himself.
I suggested that if he did need to physically record the ride, he could do it a lot quicker and easier in a car, but he just looked at me blankly, so I left him to it.
I’m no Strava-superfan, but it definitely beats colouring-in the little 10-mile blocks on a mileage chart pulled from Cycling Weekly and pinned to the bumpy supaglypta in my bedroom in the “good old days” (i.e. when everything was … well, all a bit crap, really). I always started out with good intentions, but don’t think I ever fully completed one of those charts across a full year.
As suspected a combination of good weather and a desire to avoid a sadly unavoidable, turgid, bombastic and anachronistic event happening about 300 miles away, drew out a bumper group of over 30 cyclists, who, it just so happened, appeared to be exclusively male.
Jimmy Mac took to the pulpit-wall to outline the route for the day. As threatened, it included a rare ascent of the Ryals, perhaps as a sop to the Garrulous Kid (who has probably ridden up them more times in the past 4 months than I have in my lifetime) – or perhaps because Jimmy Mac was feeling underutilised and unappreciated at work and wanted to drum up a few more vascular surgeries. Then again, perhaps he’s just a sadist of the highest order.
(We have asked the Garrulous Kid why he has such an affinity to the Ryals, which are a short, violent and not especially enjoyable climb and learned that “they’re fun” and “good training.” Good training for what I’m not quite sure, other than riding up and down the Ryals. We expected him to show a high degree of expertise when we finally got there.)
Our group included Big Dunc in a new, riotously colourful, Bardiani CSF jersey, which we all felt would make a decent, exotic substitute for our own remarkably unloved club jersey. OGL studiously ignored it.
The good weather had even drawn out Famous Seans, a triathlete who, even by triathlete standards, is a bit different and resolutely marches to the beat of his own drum. As usual, he expressed his individuality by wearing very long, knee length socks and short-shorts – he was probably exposing as much flesh as everyone else, it was just framed a little higher.
The plan was to split into two groups and I hung back to try and assess just how well we managed this simple-sounding, but seldom successful task. Miracle of miracles, for once the front group actually looked slightly smaller than the one behind, so I tagged onto the back of it and away we went.
Heading out along Brunton Lane, we passed a high-speed Captain Black heading in the opposite direction, having forsaken his clubmates for a solo run and evidently intent on getting home in time to watch the Royal Wedding.
Through Ponteland, buzzed and flipped off by a motorist overtaking at high speed, Richard of Flanders fully embraced his, Grey Pilgrim/Gandalf persona, chasing down the car at some traffic lights before intoning, “You cannot pass!” to its clearly Balrog occupants.
He tried reasoning with them and even went as far as gesturing to the Garrulous Kid and explaining we were riding with youngsters and such driving was decidedly anti-social, if not downright dangerous. For his part, the Garrulous Kid tried to duck down and look younger than his years. It didn’t work, but I’m not sure it would have made any difference anyway.
Through the town and we picked up a waiting Cowin’ Bovril, who’d used the pre-published route to intercept us without having to ride to the meeting point. He rode with us for a while, before I confirmed his mates were riding in the second group and he dropped back to join them.
We set a fairly brisk pace, covering much of the route that will be used for the National Road Championship in July and noting just how bad the road surface is in places, gravel-strewn, potholed and broken up. So bad, in fact that on the downhill from Hallington and travelling just behind me, Famous Seans hit a pothole with a yelp and pulled over.
As we turned onto the main road leading to the Ryals, I told Jimmy Mac about the possible mechanical and the call went out for everyone to wait at the top of the hill to regroup and assess the damage.
I slowed as the slope loomed ahead and found Crazy Legs cruising along, suffering from a self-confessed jour sans. He gestured at the Ryals and told the Garrulous Kid that this is what he’d been waiting for and to go and get on with it. The Garrulous Kid raced away and I followed at a more considered pace, running my chain up the block as the first and steepest ramp started to bite.
Ahead of me, the Garrulous Kid began thrashing and flailing his way upwards, all jutting elbows and a too-busy style, like Fabio Aru trying to simultaneously shake off a cloud of flies while keeping both hands gripped firmly on the bars. He spearheaded a small knot including Keel and the Rainman as they clawed their way, slowly up into the sky.
Cresting the first ramp, I changed down, accelerated toward the second, slightly easier slope and started climbing out of the saddle. Then, in super-slow-motion, I started to winch back those ahead of me. I swung across into the opposite lane and eased past a flagging and weaving Keel, then passed the Rainman, before tracking back to the left to draw alongside the Garrulous Kid as the slope finally started to level out
Digging in, a re-invigorated Rainman found the impetus to latch onto my wheel as I passed and I pulled him over the crest. As the gradient lessened, he accelerated away and I dropped in behind for a fast tow up to the village.
Regrouping, we learned that Famous Seans had jarred his tri-bars loose, but was good to continue, so we pressed on toward the Quarry.
“I’m gonna put you in the shade!” Biden Fecht declared as he eased out in front of me, blocking the sun. I told him I’d always consider myself as riding in his shadow.
Away up the Quarry we went, swinging right at the top this time to avoid any chance of a repeat of last week’s double-puncture disaster. The pace increased and I took whatever opportunities I could to move up the outside, before slotting into fourth place with just Jimmy Mac, the Colossus and Caracol in front.
I wanted to put in a little dig on the rises up to the final junction, but approaching traffic kept me confined to the left hand lane. At the junction itself, a call of “bike left” made me hesitate and look twice and a small gap opened in front of me as we turned onto the road down toward the Snake Bends. I worked to close it, even as the Colossus and Caracol put clear air between themselves and Jimmy Mac as they fought out the final sprint.
Slowly, painfully, I closed on Jimmy Mac’s rear wheel, until I reached a point when I thought, you know, if I really shred my legs, burst my heart, trash my lungs and inflict horrible injury on myself, I might just be able to squeeze ahead of him … but, was it even worth trying?
Well, of course it was …
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
We arrived to find the café almost completely empty, but the garden already half full. It was good timing, as by the time everyone else had piled in, the café would still be empty, but the queue would extend out the door and the garden would be ringed in a perimeter of bikes, sometimes two or three machines deep. Much to the disgust of the Monkey Butler Boy he even found that someone had dared to carefully lean their bike up against his brand new machine. For one moment I thought he might cry.
Caracol was still perturbed by his mysterious rattle and had decided that when he got home he’d try swapping out different parts to try and locate the errant component. He started a litany of things he could consider changing over:
“Wheels … cassette … derailleur … pedals, even though I know it’s not the pedals … brakes …saddle …”
“The frame?” someone suggested helpfully.
A late arriving Red Max press-ganged the Monkey Butler Boy into getting him a Coke and a cake and a coffee, and Caracol offered up his mug for a refill too; “While you’re there.” It all seemed simple enough and reluctantly the Monkey Butler Boy dragged himself off to join the queue.
5 minutes later and he was back, Caracol’s still empty coffee mug swinging loosely in his hand.
“What did you want again?” he asked the Red Max.
“A Coke and a cake and a coffee.”
“Oh, yeah. Got it” Off he went to join the back of the queue again.
I took a few mugs in for a refill and found the Monkey Butler Boy about a third of the way through the queue. I relieved him of Caracol’s mug, thinking it would ease some of the pressure on the Red Max’s terribly complex order. If pressed, I would swear the Monkey Butler Boy was standing there mumbling too himself, “err … a Coke and cake and a coffee … a Coke a cake and a coffee …”
Sometime later, the Monkey Butler Boy returned triumphantly. With a Coke and a cake…
Meanwhile, the Garrulous Kid had appeared, pointed to a teeny-tiny graze on his elbow and informed us that he’d punctured and not only punctured, but fallen off too. I’m still not sure if the two actions were in any way related. Close questioning was no help in revealing how, or when, or where these events occurred, but we may just have been distracted by the concept of the Garrulous Kid successfully sorting out his own puncture.
Slow Drinker wandered past and Crazy Legs wished him a happy birthday for the day before. Crazy Legs then spotted that he too seemed to have been in the wars, as the Slow Drinkers legs were marred with grazes.
“Oh, have you come off?” Crazy Legs wondered.
“No, no, they’re just carpet burns,” Slow Drinker replied cryptically, before wandering away.
Must have been one hell of a birthday party…
The Monkey Butler Boy confessed he’d almost been late this morning as he’d been cornered in the bike shed by his arch nemesis a wasp. Luckily, he’d somehow managed to batter his way out of this dire predicament by using a spare pair of wheels as an improvised, giant fly-swatter. I thought such undaunted bravery deserved a mention.
He also revealed his dad had told him if he shaved off his incipient, bum-fluff moustache, it would grow back thicker, stronger and much manlier. Two months on and with a completely bare upper lip, he’s still waiting.
The Garrulous Kid had family commitments and had to leave early. This coincided with OGL’s departure for a ride back “at his own pace.” It looked like they’d have the opportunity to ride together…
“I don’t know which one to pity the most,” I confessed to the Colossus.
He reassured me not to worry, they’d probably ride the whole way back separated by about 10 yards and in stoic silence.
When it was out turn to leave, we got split into two groups by traffic and as we left the main road for quieter lanes, I decided to try and bridge across to the front group. I made good progress at first, but they weren’t hanging around and as I drew closer I found myself battering head-on into a stiff breeze that had blown up out of nowhere.
I was just deciding whether to sit up, or give it one last effort to avoid an embarrassing stint of chasse-patate, when the Monkey Butler Boy announced from behind that he’d decided to come across too. He took the lead, I dropped onto his wheel and with added impetus quickly closed the gap to the front group.
Here I had time to learn from the Red Max that last week, I had correctly identified the Monkey Butler Boy as a virulent, sock-length fascist, before the group started shedding riders as we each took our own route home.
Despite the nagging headwind, the sky was bright and clear and it was still uncommonly hot. For perhaps the first time this year, I noticed a clammy feeling of sweat forming behind my knees as I pushed the pedals round. The water, from who knows where, was still washing across the road in Blaydon, but this time I welcomed the cooling, impromptu shower thrown up by my tyres.
Sadly, the effect didn’t last long and I was soon heading uphill and hot and bothered.
Finally I stepped across the kitchen threshold, over-heated and gasping from climbing the Heinous Hill. Here, with impeccable timing Mrs. Sur la Jante pressed a Solero ice cream into my sweaty hand. Now that’s what I call service.
YTD Totals: 2,952 km / 1,834 miles with 34,562 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 104 km / 65 miles with 819 metres of climbing
Ride Time:4 hours 26 minutes
Average Speed:23.3 km/h
Group size:16 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature:7°C
Weather in a word or two:Rotten to start, decent to end
Ride Profile
The start on Saturday morning felt pretty much like a continuation of last week’s weather – temperatures hovering just above freezing and cold wind driven in on a blustery wind. Still, it wasn’t quite wet enough to resort to my rain jacket and was nowhere as bad as my commute into work on Wednesday morning, when it was so cold it had actually hurt, a stark -4°C.
And, while the Prof is still distant and riding with the Back Street Boys tribute band, he’d taken the time out between dance rehearsals to warn us on Facebook that it was going to be “flaky.” It wasn’t.
(Yes, I had to ask too. Apparently, he meant that we might encounter a few snowflakes en route.)
It was while riding across that my slow-witted mind finally understood the glaringly obvious reason why my right foot had been soaked and freezing last week, but my left foot had been relatively unscathed – helped in part by a car that flashed past and dumped a sheet of icy water down my right lower leg. Yeah, I know, a bit slow on the uptake.
This slight discomfort aside, I made decent time and was the first to arrive at the meeting point, where a light rain drove me to seek shelter in the bowels of the multi-storey car park.
Main topics of conversation at the meeting point:
The worst kept secret in the club is now out and OGL appeared bright and early to “officially” inform us the 2018 British National Road Championships will now be held in the North East, after the proposed host area backed out. These races will be incorporated into the Cyclone Festival of Cycling and will see the best of Britain’s pro road-racers and time-triallists battling it out on the roads of Northumberland.
To accommodate this, the Cyclone Challenge Rides have all been pushed back a week or two to the 30th June. There are rumours that these changes have been made solely to allow Crazy Legs to not only lead a group of club renegades in a raid across various French mountain ranges, but also fully participate in the bigliest, bestest, most beloved and wildly participated in sportive event known to man. These rumours are patently untrue, false, deceitful, scurrilous, fabricated. Fake news.
OGL reported some baffled looks and politically-correct hyperventilating when he’d used a Scottish colloquialism to refer to an opportunity “disappearing faster than snow off a dyke.” It didn’t appeal to our childish humour quite so much as Taffy Steve’s recounting of a chainsaw safety course, where he was told you didn’t have to wear chainsaw boots and could substitute a Kevlar strap-on instead.
Crazy Legs is lamenting the lack of Russian athletes at the Winter Olympics, not because he particularly supports them, or condones state-run doping programmes, but simply because he likes their rather martial national anthem, which makes him want to march in circles around his sofa. When I confessed to being unfamiliar with its precise strains, I was instructed to go away and watch the Hunt for Red October on repeat until I got the hang of it.
Biden Fecht pulled up and asked if anyone had any oil on them. Huh? He then decided whatever mechanical he was suffering from probably couldn’t be fettled with the simple application of lubricant salve and dashed back home to undertake some minor repairs, vowing to meet up later. He hasn’t been seen since.
Aether outlined the route for the day, mainly dictated by the freezing conditions and need to stick to main and treated roads, at least until things warmed up a little. As an alternative, Crazy Legs declared early for another multiple coffee-stop ride, he was naming the Flat White Club Run. He had a sizable number of takers, right from the outset.
Much to OGL’s disbelief, Slow Drinker arrived on Zipp deep section, carbon rims that are probably worth more than my entire bike collection combined. “They’re just his winter training wheels,” G-Dawg remarked dryly.
As we stood there a guy came round to check the bike lockers, mysteriously hidden at the bottom of the car park. Wrestling with a key, he opened the door of each to its widest extent, before sticking his head inside to carefully and thoroughly survey the interior. It was obvious from where we were standing a couple of metres away that the lockers were all empty, but each one was subjected to the same close scrutiny, just in case a teeny-tiney micro-bike, or perfectly camouflaged stealth machine had been left inside.
Aether led for the first few miles, until with a tacit, father and son agreement, G-Dawg and the Colossus surged forward to take up position on the front. And there they would stay, up hill and down dale, an epic turn, impressively and selflessly (or so I thought) leading the line for the next 30km or so.
As we pressed on we seemed to be heading toward random patches of blue sky that grew in size, until even Taffy Steve had to admit my optimism for improving conditions was actually in danger of becoming reality. It was till cold, the roads were still soaked and fields water-logged, but at least the rain had stopped falling on our heads.
A dragging (dragon?) climb had us strung out and then came a shouted warning that there was a wagon behind. A couple of seconds later and there was some almighty bellowing, that told us there was a wagon behind and then, just for good measure, shouting and screaming that there was in fact a wagon behind.
We’d actually taken note at the first warning, but the road was narrow and twisting and there was nothing we could do, short of pulling over and hurling ourselves deep into a hedge. At this point, the repeated shouting became more irritating than useful or informative and we responded with our usual childish humour.
“What was that?” someone shouted back, “There’s a dragon behind?”
“A flagon? There’s a flagon behind?”
“Is it a dragon with a flagon?”
“Ah, does it hold the brew that is true!”
Etc. etc. Well it keep us amused, at least until the dragon, sorry wagon, decided it would be quicker to take an alternate route and turned off at the next junction.
We pushed through to Stamfordham, where our usual layby was inconveniently occupied by a parked car. We were forced into using the wrong layby, although there was surprisingly (disappointingly?) no over the top ranting about the “wrong layby.” Here we split, with Crazy Legs luring a surprising number away with promises of an early hot beverage and some manly discourse in Matfen.
Five of us pushed onward to complete the planned route out to the Reservoir, with G-Dawg and the Colossus still powering away on the front, Ovis and Aether following in the wheels, while I tucked in behind. A bit later, we were caught by the Cow Ranger and Benedict and our numbers temporarily swelled.
I did a brief spell on the front and then, as the road swung north and we started to close in on Matfen, the Cow Ranger and Benedict took to the front and imposed an infernal pace, which they held all the way to the turn off for the Quarry. While our front pair continued on to sweep down the Ryals, the rest of us regrouped, recuperated as much as possible and started to winch our way up the Quarry climb.
We then hung a right at the top and pressed on to the café. Finding ourselves in amongst the local hunt, we had to thread our way between a series of parked up 4×4’s coupled to horse trailers and hunt supporters who lined the roads, hoping for a glimpse of who knows what.
I mentioned to G-Dawg that it seemed a particularly unrewarding and futile spectator sport, standing beside a muddy field in the cold, not knowing if you’re actually going to see anything remotely interesting. Then I realised I was talking to a bloke who travelled to the Stadium of Light last week, to stand in the cold beside a muddy field and watch the Sunderland team trying to win a game of football…
Up ahead, Ovis briefly challenged the Colossus in the sprint before falling back, while I was content to roll in alongside G-Dawg.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
In the café queue, I noticed my bibtights were patterned with a silvery, ghostly patina of salt marks, like permafrost polygons. G-Dawg suggested there’d been so much salt on the roads you could taste it and, while we all agreed too much is infinitely preferable to too little, you had to wonder what damage it was doing to bikes and components.
The Colossus also revealed that the pairs epic turn on the front hadn’t been quite as selfless as I’d assumed and was largely designed to get out of the spray being kicked up by the wheels in front. It would appear that, despite the almost universal deployment of mudguards, not all guards are equal.
Hero of the week was determined to be Tongan taekwondo athlete Pita Taufatofua, who had appeared at the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics wearing little more than a shark tooth necklace and a thin sheen of coconut oil. We had naturally assumed he was on a bobsleigh team, where the trend seems to be for one skilled pilot and three make-weight, short-track sprinters who have to be big, fast and powerful, but perhaps not especially gifted – or, if you’re Jamaican, four big, fast and powerful short-track sprinters who are not especially gifted.
Taufatofua surprised us all though, by qualifying for the cross-country skiing. We couldn’t imagine how, where or when he managed to practice for this in his native, typically tropical Tonga. (He apparently didn’t see snow until he was into his fourth decade on the planet and started out in the sport by strapping planks of wood to his feet and running up and down sand dunes.)
The Matfen Flat White Mob finally materialised and Crazy Legs and Taffy Steve purloined a couple of spare chairs and drew them up to squeeze in around our small table. Then, spotting a group of civilians gathering to leave, they quickly jumped ship, moving to the new, more spacious table and leaving the two chairs tantalisingly and invitingly open.
And then, a double whammy, as the Garrulous Kid shambled across and flumped down on one chair to entertain us with his unique perspective on life, followed a few seconds later by OGL. The latter was already working through story # 32. (I can’t honestly remember which precise tale it was, I’d heard it before and switched off). Meanwhile, across the room I could see a benignly grinning Crazy Legs, comfortably removed and looking on with utter contentment. Bastard.
G-Dawg shared fond memories of the Matfen café the Flat White Mob had stopped at, recalling having turned up there late on a club run as business was winding down for the Christmas holidays. The group of ever-hungry cyclists had been approached by the staff with a massive cake, a handful of forks and what I can only assume was a purely rhetorical question, “Do you think you lot could help us finish this cake? Otherwise we’ll have to throw it away.”
Of the few things that club cyclists are actually good for, cake disposal must be quite high on the list.
The leg home was relatively uneventful until just after Berwick Hill, when we made the turn for Dinnington. There, to everyone’s complete and utter astonishment, the Garrulous Kid actually rode onto the front alongside Benedict, engendering a resounding cheer from our serried ranks behind.
Strangely, a blue moon shone brightly in a sky that remained completely clear of porcine UFO’s, hell refused to freeze over, time ticked on regardless and the Garrulous Kids head did not suddenly explode. Perhaps there’s hope for him (or us) yet.
He took us all the way to the turn-off, where the majority swung away and I took over to lead G-Dawg and Colossus into the Mad Mile. I kept the pace as high as I could manage, not relaxing until they’d jumped away to chase each other home and see who could win first use of the shower.
I dropped to a more sustainable pace and began slowly plotting my own course back.
YTD Totals: 858 km / 533 miles with 9,522 metres of climbing
Total Distance 89 km / 62 miles with 862 metres of climbing
Ride Time:3 hours 51 minutes
Average Speed:23.1 km/h
Group size:5-6-5 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature:3°C
Weather in a word or two:Turning Arctic
Ride Profile
A week of commuting into work through snow, hail, slush and ice, had prepared me for the worst on Saturday, when temperatures remained manically depressed and I found myself questioning the wisdom of my own actions, even as I layered up and prepared to head out to ride across to the meeting point in the still gloomy dawn.
But, as I told everyone at work throughout the week, the roads seemed a whole lot safer than the pavements, although I wondered if I’d miss the reassuringly fat and heavily-ridged mountain-bike tyres of the Rockhopper, as I pulled the Pug out of the shed in preparation for the ride.
Down the hill, cutting wide of the icy ribbons down the gutters, it was chill, but we’d already ridden in much worse conditions once this winter. My digital checkpoint informed me it was a flat 1°C. The low temperature hadn’t discouraged the rowers out on the river though, where half a dozen or more fragile-looking white hulls stood out stark against the cold, black waters.
As I’d found on my commutes, the roads were generally ok, as long as you didn’t stray off the beaten track and I had absolutely no issues as I passed through Swalwell, Blaydon, Newburn, Denton and Blakelaw on my north-east bound trajectory.
Then I got to what Wikipedia describes as the “affluent and well-established” area of Gosforth and things became increasingly sketchy. Side streets and pavements resembled ice-rinks, every speed bump was like a snow-boarders wet-dream of the perfect berm, and the cycle lane down the Great North Road appeared to have been commandeered to store all the excess snow that the ploughs had scraped off the road.
Rolling up to the meeting point, a dodgy road/pavement interface layered in ice, had me unclipping and trundling to a less than elegant stop.
Made it.
Main topics of conversation at the start.
Awaiting me were just two stalwarts of the club, G-Dawg and Taffy Steve. Referencing the high incidence of dodgy roads through Gosforth and lack of snow and ice clearance, I had to ask G-Dawg if its fine and upstanding citizens had stopped paying their council taxes, or perhaps it was just assumed that everyone here could afford a 4 x 4.
Taffy Steve had likewise been commuting by bike into work, where he’d had a grandstand view of his fellow workers trying and failing to negotiate their un-gritted car park. From his observations, he concluded that most modern 4 x 4’s were only good for appearing in rap video’s and not actually all that suited to tricky road conditions.
Even as we were talking a middle-aged woman swaddled in scarves and muffled in a massive parka emerged and went shuffling down the opposite pavement, shaking out a thin, meagre trail of road salt from a small Tupperware container.
“There you go,” remarked G-Dawg dryly, “The council’s emergency response team in action, that’s where all the money goes…”
As we stood around, hopping from foot to foot in a vain attempt to keep blood circulating, up rolled Aether and our plucky trio, expanded to a string quartet, the four riders of the all chapped lips. Aether had been suffering all week with a heavy dose of man-flu and, like me a few weeks ago, had pondered Crazy Legs’ recommendation to try riding through it.
Aether had even gone as far as consulting Dr. “Snake-Oil” Crazy Legs via social media:
A: “I’m feeling rough with the cold. Do you think a run out on Saturday will do me good?”
CL: “Yes…”
And a minute later,
CL: “No…”
And then,
CL: “… Not sure.”
To which Benedict had helpfully added, “CL is correct on this one.”
Oh well, I guessed we were going to find out.
G-Dawg informed us that OGL was suffering with his own version of man flu and wouldn’t be out today. Apparently, he was even too sick to drive past to tell us we were all insane, the roads would be lethal and we were all doomed. We discussed the possibility that his contact in the “Outer Hebrides” was just a massive wind-up merchant, who liked scaremongering with exaggerated tales of dire weather engulfing the region. The weight of evidence certainly seems to be leaning that way.
News had filtered through that Richard of Flanders would be out of action for a few weeks with his wrist wrapped in plaster following an accident. We had to clarify for Taffy Steve that this accident wasn’t of the bike-on-ice variety, but a seemingly far more common sporting injury, the kind all too familiar to middle-aged men who tried to defy time by haring around 5-a-side football pitches like a bunch of hoodlum teenagers. Now that’s what I call lethal.
Biden Fecht arrived as we waited, negotiating the icy road/pavement interface with far more aplomb than I had. He’d apparently been slightly delayed by layering on top of his layering, allegedly up to 5 different strata of insulating material on his feet alone, including a reflective, tin foil barrier.
We’ve all been there, all tried and all pretty much concluded it doesn’t work – although G-Dawg’s the only one to claim his sheets of tin foil were utterly destroyed and emerged from his shoes shredded into a million tiny flakes. (I’ve no idea what he does with his feet while pedalling and really don’t want to know.)
At Garmin Muppet Time + 3, we decided we’d waited as long as possible and that this was it in terms of numbers. With a verbal agreement on a basic route, including plenty of room for on the fly adjustments, the five of us pushed off, clipped in and rode out.
I dropped to the back and slotted in between the last pair on the road, in what I thought was the ideal, sheltered position. Later though, Taffy Steve rotated off the front and dropped back to chat. This left Aether sitting alone, right in the middle of the pack between the front and rear pair, and if anything this looked even more sheltered. I’m sure that, physically and temperature-wise, there was no discernible difference, but psychologically it just looked a whole lot cosier.
As we passed through Ponteland and onto lesser trafficked and less clear roads, we picked up the Big Yin who’d missed us at the start, but more by chance than good management, picked a route that neatly intersected with our ride. He swung round to give chase, dropped in amongst us and we reshuffled the pack and pressed on.
For the most part the roads G-Dawg chose were good, but you didn’t have to stray far to find yourself in all sorts of trouble and there was plenty of snow and ice to go around if you looked hard enough.
You didn’t have to stray far to find yourself in all sorts of trouble
Taffy Steve suggested we take a leaf out of his recent mountain bike excursion with Crazy Legs and call into the café at Kirkley Cycles for an early, warming and fortifying beverage. This sounded like an eminently sensible and civilised suggestion and was duly adopted.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop … Part One
Biden Fecht revealed that his multiple layering didn’t seem to be working all that well, his feet in particular were already frozen and he couldn’t add any more layers as his shoes couldn’t accommodate the bulk. The Big Yin was toting chemical hand-warmers and I wondered if they’d help if I shoved them down the front of my bib-tights. G-Dawg went one further and suggested you could buy a couple of dozen of them to gaffer-tape all over your body.
Taffy Steve thought we’d done well to sit away from the cycling merchandise displayed on the walls, avoiding the temptation to buy up their entire stock of clothing to wear on the go.
For some reason the conversation turned to Rolls-Royce cars, with Taffy Steve recounting that Crazy Legs had done some work at one of the Rolls-Royce plants. Apparently, they’d been thoroughly unimpressed with his devotion to his Renault Cactus, while Crazy Legs in turn had been thoroughly unimpressed by their offer of an obsidian coated “Spirit of Ecstasy” hood ornament, that just looked discoloured, black and gunky. Taffy Steve suggested this would only appeal to someone with an unhealthy Minecraft obsession, or far more money than sense.
The only thing I knew about a Rolls-Royce was the much over-quoted, Ogilvy ad-copy from marketing lectures in the dim and distant past, to paraphrase, “at 60 miles an hour, all you’ll hear is the clock ticking.” Biden Fecht recalled getting a lift in a Roller once, something he considered the very pinnacle of his hitch-hiking activities. He reported it had been the ultimate in comfort, but rather disquietingly smooth and silent.
Having enjoyed our brief, impromptu sojourn and a chance to thaw out a little, G-Dawg identified two more cafés en route to our usual stop and we considered whether we should call in to those as well.
As we were bundling ourselves up to leave a fellow cyclist burst through the door and loudly declared, “the roads are bloody shoite.” Nobody argued.
Out once again, onto the bloody shoite roads, I pushed on at the front alongside G-Dawg, refusing to look back or acknowledge Biden Fecht’s forlorn cry of disappointment as we rode straight past the next potential café without even a glance.
Much more frequently than usual, we now started encountering feral packs of cyclists with hungry looking eyes. Much like us, they travelled in small, buzzing, compact groups of half a dozen or so riders, roaming the roads as if searching for easy prey – the old, weak and infirm, the abandoned and those who had become dangerously separated from the herd.
We finally hit a T-Junction and had a choice to make, turn right and in 3 or 4-miles we would hit Morpeth. Turn left and we were just a few miles away from Whalton and on direct route to our usual coffee stop, where we’d be arriving just a tad too early. The only issue with the Morpeth route was we couldn’t think of a good return leg that wasn’t likely to be ice-bound and potentially dangerous.
After a lot of hemming and hawing, we decided to head straight to the café and from there work out a longer route home for the added miles.
As we turned onto the road for Whalton, our senses were assailed by the gagging, eye-watering stink of muck spreading in the surrounding fields and we pressed on quickly to escape.
A little further on, and G-Dawg’s phone started ringing insistently and incessantly and, assuming it was important, he rode off the front to buy himself the time to answer. Taffy Steve surmised it must be serious if someone would knowingly interrupt G-Dawg’s sacred, Saturday morning, club-run ritual.
As G-Dawg pulled out a gap ahead, a tractor and trailer sneaked out of field in-between us and we found ourselves not only on shoite roads, but closely following a farmers shoite-wagon – fresh from muck-spreading in the fields and trailing its own entirely fearsome smell behind it. Caustic! That certainly clears the nostrils. Perhaps it’s something Team Sky could investigate for beneficial marginal gains, although to be fair they’re doing a fair job of creating their own malodorous stink at the moment.
G-Dawg re-joined and we guessed his intrusive phone call hadn’t been a matter of life and death after all. From his grumpy face, I could only assume that during his essential phone call, he’d just learned he’d been miss-sold PPI, or realised he’d been involved in an imaginary traffic accident that wasn’t his fault.
He took his evident frustrations out on his pedals and he and Biden Fecht rode off the front to contest the café sprint. No one else seemed all that bothered and we all trailed in behind and at our own pace.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop … The Sequel
In the café, a Morpeth-based cyclist in civvies stood at the counter waiting to be served and declared he couldn’t decide if we were brave, or foolish to be out riding today. I didn’t actively disagree with the foolish moniker, but then again we weren’t the ones who’d driven out to a café, sans bike, to meet up with our cycling buds when we could have been lying-in at home, in a nice warm bed.
Amongst our many, many fond memories of Superstars; Kevin Keegan’s bike-handling abilities, Brian Jacks devouring oranges (seemingly whole), Mo Farah’s canoe-piloting …err… skills? and Brian Hooper’s all-round excellence, G-Dawgs recollection of 1980 Tour de France winner, Joop Zoetemelk’s performance in the gym tests stood out.
Asked to see how many push-ups he could master in one minute, G-Dawg reported Zoetemelk bravely and elegantly managed to lower his upper torso to the floor … and that was it. Apparently, he then needed assistance to get back up again.
Someone had spotted an Internet video of a group of cyclists in South Africa being impressively paced and then schooled for speed by an ostrich. Although judged irascible, dim-witted, unpredictable, fractious, powerful and dangerous, Taffy Steve vowed he’d rather take his chances riding alongside the ostrich than with the Garrulous Kid.
Further discussion about layering for the cold and the use of tin foil led to the thought that Biden Fecht might consider an insulating layer of goose fat, once the best-in-class, fat of choice for discerning Channel swimmers, well, after baby dolphin fat became somewhat frowned upon.
“Goose fat stinks, though,” Aether declared, knowledgeably. He seems to know a lot about such things, though I’ve never had him pegged as a Channel swimmer.
His assertion immediately set off alarm bells for me … we pass so many hunts that the lingering aroma of roasted game bird could easily trigger the prey-drive instinct in the dogs. Being chased by a pack of hounds could possibly be as dangerous as being stalked by a rabid ostrich … although it obviously pales into insignificance in comparison to the risks of riding with the Garrulous Kid.
We then overheard, or perhaps mis-overheard, the staff talking about an old boiler in the gent’s toilet. While Aether boldly went to investigate, the rest of us quickly started gathering up our things in anticipation of having to make a swift exit …
Our usual, longer, alternative route home through Stamfordham was mooted and then quickly agreed. Off we went. Once again, we were struck by how frequently we encountered other small groups of roaming cyclists. It wasn’t until G-Dawg explained the obvious that I finally caught on, the snow and ice had forced us all onto the few roads that were guaranteed to be more or less clear, safe and passable. Restricting road choice meant we were much more likely to pass other cyclists. Ah, now I get it.
As for the fact all of the groups were small, only 6, 7 or 8 strong? I seemed to recall it’s a little known British Cycling bye-law that each club has to nominate up to “half a dozen stout, cycling yeomen volunteers” who will be named “the Usual Suspects“ and deemed “foolish enough to turn up for the club run regardless of the prevailing weather conditions.” British Cycling, Club Rules: Section 12, Subsection 2.4, Sub clause 17b.
Channelling his inner-roving troubadour and making up for the absence of Crazy Legs to provide us with musical accompaniment, Biden Fecht took note of the branding on my bib-tights and invited me to join him in a rousing chorus of UB40’s, “I am the one in Tenn.” I politely declined.
Then, the road was dipping down, everyone was slowing for a sharp left, while I kept straight on, starting my solo ride back home.
At the lights before the bridge, I pulled up behind a large estate car, much to the excitement of two Jack Russel terriers travelling in the cargo well. Being too small to see directly out of the rear window, they kept springing up, one after the other like demented Whack-a-Moles, trying to catch a glimpse of the mad cyclist stupid enough to be out in the cold and ice.
Luckily, there was no need to call into Pedalling Squares this week to see how Thing#1 was getting along, she’d shipped herself off to Leeds to check out her University accommodation for next September.
Besides, although Pedalling Squares seemed to like her and had offered her more work, she’d declined and I think I understand why … too many bloody cyclists.
Anyway I’m not sure yet another coffee was such a good idea – I was likely to be buzzing until Wednesday as it was.
Year Totals: 360 km / 212 miles with 4,402 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 94 km / 58 miles with 980 metres of climbing
Ride Time:3 hours 51 minutes
Average Speed:24.5 km/h
Group size:22 riders, 1 FNG
Temperature:8°C
Weather in a word or two:Bright but raw
Ride Profile
The Ride:
A band of heavy rain passed over in the night, but by morning the skies were clear, it was bright, but cold and the wind had a raw edge to it. I’d misplaced my Galibier “disco-headband” and suspected my ears were going to suffer unless I found them some cover.
Rather handily, there were a couple of girly hairbands that either Thing#1, or Thing#2 had carelessly abandoned on the sideboard. The red, sparkly one was a bit garish, but the black one would just about do. I slid it up into my hairline, pulled it down low at the sides to cover my ears and plonked my helmet on top. Perfect – almost as if they’d been made for this very purpose…
I was a little late leaving, so went with the quicker route option and the closer bridge over the river, looping west to approach from the east and minimising the amount of dual-carriageway surfing I needed to do. Swinging left onto the span I was somewhat surprised to find an Ee-Em-Cee rider approaching directly from the south, a route I’ve never attempted, suspecting the traffic’s a bit too busy and wild. He’s a braver man than me, or maybe just more confident.
Anyway, I was glad of the company as he dropped in behind me on the bridge, figuring two riders were a little easier for motorists to spot than just the one. Unfortunately, we never got to chat as once across, he followed the river west, while I took a sharp right and started my climb out of the valley, arriving at the meeting point in good order.
Main topics of conversation at the start:
G-Dawg was once again out on his best bike, this time using the excuse of a new pair of shoes that he needed to road test, before packing them away for the summer. His new Sidi kicks, a very welcome birthday present, were super-classy, super-stiff, super-light and super-bling – I did however question their inherent thermal properties and suspected G-Dawg might have to suffer a little for his sartorial splendour – but he obviously couldn’t have desecrated the Sidi’s by hiding them under overshoes or Belgian booties. Just for the record, I was wearing winter boots and my trusty Prendas Thermolite socks and my toes were only just ok throughout the ride.
It turned out G-Dawg was not the only one with shiny new toys, the Colossus having acquired a new turbo trainer. Crazy Legs suggested it wasn’t the one voted “Best Buy” in Cycling Weekly, but the Colossus was unmoved as his turbo had red and blue light’s!
Crazy Legs persisted, this time with the suggestion you could tell how hardcore and pro a rider was by the fans they deployed with the turbo. He said there should be a minimum of two, slightly off-set at a 18° angle to maximise bodily surface exposure to the airflow and at least 60% of their construction had to be in carbon-fibre.
The Colossus countered that the only specialist equipment he felt needed was one of those triangular sweat nets. Someone suggested that a sweat net would be relatively easy to make from an old pair of tights, while I felt the answer was fisherman’s waders, with regular waddles to the bathroom to empty them out during the turbo-session.
An FNG rolled up and greeted us with what I took to be a pronounced Antipodean twang. “I’m guessing you’re not from around these parts?” I suggested.
“Aw, I’ve bean heer twinny yeehz,” he assured us. He turned out to be an Ironman triathlete, who’d seen us ride past his home on many a Saturday morning and he’d finally decided to come over to the dark side.
Crazy Legs tried to explain to the FNG an unseemly, on-going social-media spat between the absent Prof and OGL, by drawing parallels between Kin Jong Un and Donald Trump’s slightly less fraught and contentious relationship.
G-Dawg also explained Our Glorious Leader wouldn’t be riding today as he was off to a British Cycling meeting which, according to some rather self-serving Facebook posts, OGL claimed he was looking forward to, as a chance to relax without having to wear a stab-proof vest to protect his back. Huh?
Taffy Steve simply welcomed the opportunity for a good ride, as we were absent at least three potential sources of friction that he could think of. Ultimately, he had the right of it.
Aether was set to lead the ride and had picked a route that Crazy Legs had posted in the summer, emphasising we didn’t need a new and novel plan every week and there was no harm in repeating things. He hoped this would encourage others to set and lead future rides and briefed the opportunity in, along with outlining the planned route for the day.
Another decent turnout of 22 riders, all seemingly in a relaxed and rather amenable mood, pushed off, clipped in and rode out.
As we turned off toward towards Great Park and the filthy, muddy, potholed and often thorn-strewn Brunton Lane, G-Dawg took his regular detour, aimed at keeping his good bike and fancy new shoes in pristine condition at the expense of a slightly longer and busier route out of the city.
As we emerged from the end of the lane and scurried uphill, an injection of pace had us all spread out. Mini Miss eased alongside me and asked, “Is it just me, or is the speed really high this morning?”
I peered up to the front where the Colossus and Caracol were driving us on, with Rainman waiting in the wheels to take over if either faltered and let the speed drop.
“Nope,” I replied, “It’s fast,” before kicking to close a gap that was threatening to yaw open.
The pace was evidently too fast for G-Dawg, whose detour usually spits him out well ahead of the group, just before we hit Dinnington. This time he wasn’t there waiting for us and when I looked down the road he would emerge from, it was completely empty.
Having missed us and then waited at the junction thinking we may have been held up by a mechanical, G-Dawg spent the rest of the morning trying to find the right time and place to intersect with our ride.
We continued for some distance at a pace I felt was just the tiniest increment above comfortable and it would be some time before I was able to infiltrate the front alongside Crazy Legs and drop the speed by a good 2mph or more. No one seemed to be struggling particularly, but I needed a bit of a breather, even if everyone else was ok.
We then found that Aether’s cunning plan of using one of Crazy Legs’s summer routes was not without its flaws, the small lane we took before Meldon being wet, slippery and thick with mud kicked up by farm traffic. At this point the FNG punctured and, while we were stopped for repairs, the Colossus discovered G-Dawg was still missing and set off to find him.
As we waited, Taffy Steve and Crazy Legs kept me entertained with tales of the labyrinthine, convoluted and quite frankly bizarre local government rules and regulations relating to business expenses. I think my soul is still scarred from this nonsense.
We then pushed through to Dyke Neuk, where we unleashed the now twitchy racing snakes and shooed them away for a faster, longer, harder ride before they became too irritable. The rest of us pushed on, down the dip through Hartburn and toward Middleton Bank at a more considered pace. As we approached the hill, we met G-Dawg flying down the other way and he was able to swing round and rejoin us, reunited at last.
Reaching the steepest part of Middleton Bank and, just for the hell of it, I bounced off the front and opened up a gap before sitting back down and easing over the top. We slowed to regroup and Crazy Legs, who had no intention on mixing it in the café sprint on his fixie, offered to provide a lead out. I dropped onto his back wheel as he slowly began to wind up the pace and lined us out. Perfect it was like having my own personal derny moped.
Crazy Legs pulled us past Bolam Lake and then, with a professional flick of the elbow, peeled away and I took over at the front and tried to hold the pace he’d set, as we rattled through Milestone Woods. I attacked up the first of the Rollers and as my pace slackened G-Dawg rode off my wheel and away, the others only slowly coming around me in pursuit, as we tipped down the other side. As we began the last drag no one was committing to bringing back G-Dawg’s lead, so I dug in and accelerated to the front again.
I pulled everyone to within maybe 5 metres of G-Dawg’s back wheel, just before he nipped around the last corner, but that was it, I was done and cooked and sat up. The others zipped past, but I suspected it was too late and G-Dawg was long gone.
Main topic of conversation at the coffee stop:
The main topic of conversation at the café was the dark, dangerous and twisted plotting within the Byzantine world of cycling club politics, but this is a family friendly blerg … so let’s move swiftly on…
Somehow the conversation eventually morphed into a discourse on political leaders, with Taffy Steve’s assertion that all you needed to succeed was a good haircut, sharp suit and a pithy slogan, “You know,” he outlined, “Make Uh-murica Great, or Strong and Stable Leadership, Things Can Only Get Better, that kind of thing”
“Ah, like Strength Through Joy?” I suggested helpfully.
We then had a chuckle that Bradley Wiggins felt he had in somehow been exonerated from the “living hell” of his “malicious witch hunt” by the conclusions of the UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) investigation into the contents of the now infamous Jiffy bag. Under the circumstances, UKAD appear to have done as good a job as possible and their conclusion of “no definitive evidence” was logical. As far as I can tell, this is a very neutral statement that exonerates no one.
It’s laughable that Wiggins and Team Sky claim there was no wrongdoing on their part and both think the verdict backs this up. The assertion by Shane Sutton that they would “game the system” and use TUE’s for marginal gains sounds much closer to the truth and more adequately explains the injections (injections, Bradley?) of triamcinolone Wiggins received before several races. As for what was actually in the Jiffy bag – the truth is, we’ll never know.
A group of cyclists from the University made their way, wide eyed and blinking into the café and Sneaky Pete and I rolled our eyes at the folly of youth and the fact they chose to ride out in weather like today only wearing shorts and short-sleeved jerseys. The fact there flesh looked raw and marbled like corned beef seemed to suggest we well-wrapped, old curmudgeons had the greater sense.
Outside and I had a quick look at the FNG’s Trek Madone Aero bike with fairings over the front brakes that opened and closed like aircraft ailerons whenever he turned the bars – it seemed like an awful lot of engineering for a very minimal gain.
The FNG himself said he’d enjoyed his first ride out with the club and it made a companiable change from all the solitary Ironman training on his TT bike.
A blast up Berwick Hill tracking Biden Fecht got the blood flowing and it wasn’t long after that I was swinging away for my ride back home, reflecting on what had been a perfectly amiable, amenable, run, with no objectionable shouting or swearing and no encounters with dangerously crazed motorists.
Things weren’t quite so peaceful at home though, where Thing#1 and Thing#2 were engaged in a spat over Thing#2’s missing black hairband. I ‘fessed up to being the guilty party, pulling the offending article out from under my helmet and proffering it back to Thing#2 on the end of my index finger, where it hung, limp, damp and shapelessly unappealing.
“Ugh! It’s all sweaty.”
Oh. Sorry.
YTD Totals: 6,819 km / 4,237 miles with 78,229 metres of climbing
Club Run and Hill Climb, Saturday 14th October, 2017
My Ride (according to Strava)
Total Distance: 112 km / 70 miles with 703 metres of climbing
Ride Time:4 hours 42 minutes
Average Speed:23.9 km/h
Group size:28 riders
Temperature:15°C
Weather in a word or two:Dank, damp, dark and diluvial
Ride Profile
Anyone with any sort of connection to a British cycling club will realise we are in the midst of hill climb season, a peculiarly national, highly traditional affectation, that encourages even those of advanced years and who really, really should know better, to bodily hurl themselves at short, steep hills to see how fast they can be ridden up.
The fact that this hurts like hell, puts immense strain on your heart and lungs and leaves you jelly-legged and coughing, spluttering and wheezing like a 40-a-day-smoker for a week afterwards is, apparently, all part of the appeal. In fact, British hill climbs are such a fixed, established tradition that they have their own National Championship and this has even inspired a book, the truly excellent A Corinthian Endeavour by Paul Jones.
Jones suggests it is the brutal simplicity of the hill climb that makes it so compelling. In his words you “ride uphill until your eyeballs explode and the fastest time wins – the paradox is that such a savage and unkempt experience can be so life-affirming.” Hmm, life-affirming? I’m not so sure.
Still, despite Mr. Jones’ claims, I would suggest any of our Continental, Trans-Atlantic or Antipodean cousins stumbling across a hill climb, would probably back away quickly, shaking their heads at the eccentric, nay, certifiably insane excesses of the British cyclist.
This was to be my 7th participation in the futile endeavour that was our club confined Hill Climb and I’ve said I’ll stop as soon as I can no longer improve on the time I set the previous year. Each time I think that day is coming closer – I’m not getting any younger and I can’t think of anything equipment-wise I could buy that would make me demonstrably quicker (well, aside from the obvious PED’s, or hidden motors.)
Still, I cling to the fact that I’m a year older, a year nearer to retirement, a year nearer being fully licenced to wear Farah trousers and dress exclusively in beige. Something has to give, surely. So I was semi-hopeful this year would be the last, results would finally show a deterioration and I’d be free of the curse.
As the day started to loom I had a lot weighing on the plus side and had started to marshal a veritable cornucopia of excuses lined up in anticipation of failure (or, do I actually mean success?)
Preparation hadn’t been ideal – a lengthy knee injury has hampered me recently, although sadly it seems to have cleared, so I can’t use that as an excuse not participate. I’ve also been plagued with random, seemingly migratory abdominal pains and been extensively poked and prodded and pricked and sampled and trialled and tested by my GP – all to no avail. I’m a medical conundrum.
Along with seemingly most of the medical community, I’m still in the dark as to the cause and awaiting further scans. An ECG did however come back clean, robbing me of another potential excuse for not riding, but not to worry, I’ve plenty of others…
My fair-weather commuter bike of choice, my shingle-shpeed Trek (I’ve no idea why I need to pronounce it in my head like Schteve McClaren impersonating a Dutchman speaking English – perhaps I’ll just call it the Shrek from now on) has been out of action with a seized rear wheel, while my winter bike, the Pug (Peugeot) has also been laid up in the LBS with the rear mech and hanger inextricably fused together. This still worked after a fashion, but made removing and replacing the rear wheel a tricky, almost Herculean task, so needed fixing before the inevitable puncture on a cold and wet winter ride in the middle of nowhere.
All this meant I’d done far less commuting in the past fortnight than I would have liked, (or, to be more precise, exactly none) but as of last weekend both bikes have been restored to full working order.
I’ve been suffering with a heavy cold all week, but remembered the patented Crazy Legs cure, as he swears by trying to ride through them, so I’d managed to commute on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday with this in mind. Halfway through and I was already imagining the ensuing conversation in my head:
Me: “I had a cold last week and remembered how you always try to ride through them, so thought I’d give it a go.”
Crazy Legs: “How did that work out for you, then?”
Me: “Just made me feel worse.”
Crazy Legs: “Yeah, it’s always the same for me…”
Oddly though, it does seem to have helped, or maybe the cold has just run its natural course regardless of what I was doing. Anyway, by the Saturday I was starting to feel on the mend, although still plagued by a head full of intractable, irradiated, green snot. On a positive note, it did stir up some nostalgia, reminding me of the thick, viscous Gloy gum we used to have at school.
I had planned to take it easy on the Friday, but encountered what may have been the vanguard to Hurricane Ophelia and couldn’t resist the strong, strangely warm tailwind that whipped me into a drag race, daring me to see just how fast I could actually ride in to work. The “easy” return in reverse, then became a solid grind into blustery, strong headwinds. (Not that gurning my way up the Heinous Hill on the shingle-shpeed Shrek can ever be considered especially easy.)
Still, the weather looked like being just about perfect for Saturday, warm and dry, so a lack of grip and traction wasn’t going to assist me to underachieve, the wind would be a non-factor and it wasn’t going to be cold enough stop my legs, muscles and lungs performing at their usual modest levels. With the forecast looking so benign and amenable, I planned to ride, instead of drive across to the meeting point and even allowed myself an extra quarter of an hour so I could arrive relatively fresh.
Saturday morning revealed the weather forecast had been nothing but a malicious fantasy, the sky was bleakly and uniformly grey beneath a low cloud base that leeched an intermittent, sifting, and drifting mist of cold rain. All the while the temperature just barely struggled into double figures.
On went a pair of arm warmers, on went the long fingered gloves and then I pulled on a rain jacket and, leaving it as late as possible, reluctantly left the warmth of the house.
The weather had cleared a little by the time I got to the meeting point about an hour later, but it still wasn’t warm enough to persuade me to shuck and stow the jacket.
Main topics of conversation at the start:
G-Dawg was waiting at the meeting point on his fixie, a deliberate choice to ensure that, no matter how tempted, he wouldn’t be able to participate in the hill climb for fear of blowing out his knees. Instead G-Dawg had volunteered to help out as holder and had co-opted Crazy Legs to help as official starter and timekeeper. With OGL handling timings at the finish at the top of the hill, we were all set.
The Monkey Butler Boy was obviously taking the whole thing very seriously and rolled up in his club skinsuit and brandishing magnetic number holders. I joked that they looked heavier than safety pins, but apparently not, as they are infinitesimally lighter and that’s before you even consider their more advanced aerodynamic properties. Allegedly.
The Red Max wandered behind the Monkey Butler Boys bike and returned smiling contentedly. The Monkey Butler Boy looked all around, fear and real concern in his eyes.
“What’s he done? What did he just do to my bike?” he demanded to know. Luckily his paranoia was quickly diverted when, to his everlasting shame and horror, he discovered a perfectly formed, chain-ring tattoo branded on his calf. Amateur.
He was then taken to task for seriously over-lubing his chain. In demonstration, like the pickiest ever contestant on 4-in-a-Bed, G-Dawg ran a finger along his own, gleaming, shining silver links and showed us the faintest trace of clean oil forming a slight snail-trail across the pad of his finger. Repeating the process with the Monkey Butler Boy’s chain his finger came back stained with a thick, grungy, greasy smear that he ostentatiously wiped off on the grass. And then returned to wipe some more, as the filthy black grunge proved surprisingly sticky and indelible.
The meeting place has sprouted a new bin that seems to have grown up organically, straight through the pavement. Being deeply conservative and suspicious of anything new, we kept a good distance and eyed it warily as we waited to leave – delaying until the last possible minute to ensure we captured a full contingent of hill climb victims participants.
I rode out with Biden Fecht, chatting about this and that, everything and nothing, as we picked our way up through Dinnington, before swinging left to head down into the Tyne Valley. This was to be the plucky fellers first hill climb and the usual gallows humour had already started to infect him. He confessed to thinking about staging an accident to avoid the hill climb, if only he could find a suitable grassy knoll. I made him promise to make sure he brought me down if he found the right opportunity.
We dropped down through Wylam and started skirting the river, all bundling into a parking area at the bottom of the climb to regroup and for everyone to pull on jackets as the intensity of the rain increased and started to bounce back off the tarmac.
We picked our way along the north bank of the river, while I had a chat with the Hammer about creeping paranoia and the fear of being a dissident. Or, at least I think that’s what we were discussing, he’ll probably deny it under oath.
We paused at Stocksfield to regroup again and I took the opportunity to ride out onto the bridge to look over the parapet at the river, flowing fast and high beneath us. We crossed into more rain and took to the wide, but fast and busy road up through Riding Mill toward Corbridge and our chosen scene of torture, Prospect Hill.
The group splintered on a couple of rises and I found myself chasing across the gap onto the Red Max’s wheel, sitting just off centre of his rear wheel and trying to find some shelter from the wind, while avoiding the arc of cold water his tyre was kicking up into my face.
A sharp left and we were there, joining a throng of happily babbling kids, our Go-Ride section, who all looked delighted to be riding up a steep hill in the cold and pouring rain.
“Have we started yet?” G-Dawg enquired, before remembering he was the actual starter and no one was going without his say-so.
I signed on and press-ganged Captain Black into slapping my number on my back, “any-which-way.” He was surprisingly adept at any-which-way and I was soon ready to start. Unfortunately, I think I was number 22 or so, with all the young kids setting off first so we could get them out of the cold and the rain as quickly as possible – although they seemed to be coping with the grim weather conditions much better than all us grumbling, auld gits – they were excited and happy and hyper and it was brilliant.
It could have been a lot worse, I think last year we probably had over 40 starters, but the weather had obviously put a damper on things and deterred a lot of participants. Still it meant I had 20 minutes or so to hang around and get progressively colder and damper.
We stood chatting aimlessly for a while, talking the usual nonsense. The Natty Gnat outlined his strategy, which included waiting until “he could see the line” before changing up and charging at it. I suggested if he could see the line, he was probably doing it all wrong and he amended his strategy to” sensing the line” through the red-haze of hypoxia and tunnel-vision of hurt.
I checked that Jimmy Mac our Consultant Vascular and Endovascular Surgeon was ahead of me in the start list and would be at the top and able to help the old feller in crisis who would come staggering up behind him. I then realised his services might be in high demand and in any triage situation I was unlikely to be a priority. I could feel his eyes already coldly appraising me, with a look that seemed to suggest, “this one’s too old, far too troublesome and not worth saving.”
Meanwhile firm-favourite to win, broad shouldered, Steven Kruijswijk look-alike, Eon discovered his Di2 had given up the ghost and he’d be essentially reduced to riding the hill in just a single gear. What to me would have been the perfect excuse to scrub the ride was just seen as an additional challenge to Eon, who considered and discarded the idea of borrowing someone else’s bike and decided he just needed to choose his one gear very, very carefully.
With ten minutes to go I went for a short spin to try and warm up a little. Then the bike and pockets were stripped of any extraneous weight and finally and very, very reluctantly I slipped out of my rain jacket and took my place in line behind a visibly shivering Colossus.
With just a long, last, blood-chilling glower at Crazy Legs, our official timekeeper for the day (as if this was all his fault!) the Colossus roared away and I was next up. I nudged up to the line and was clamped in place by G-Dawg on one side and another big bloke I didn’t recognise on the other. I was now locked in, rock-solid, unwavering and utterly motionless.
“Thirty seconds,” Crazy Legs informed me brightly.
I clipped in and paused.
“Hold on! I’ve changed my mind, I want to get off.”
I could feel the unknown bloke wavering, his grip loosened just a little. G-Dawg though was unmoveable, implacable and his hold unrelenting, there was no escape, I wasn’t going anywhere…
Crazy Legs then began a very fine impersonation of Ted Rodgers doing the 3-2-1 countdown, or maybe it was that Phones-4-U thing. Either way I’m not sure the UCI would have approved and his struggles would later find him practicing his manual dexterity in the café. In his defence, I have to say that both the double-digit and single-finger salute he greeted my gentle ribbing with were delivered with suitable aplomb and professionalism.
“5-4-3-2-1 – go, go, go!”
Shit! Shit! Shit! I was released, managed not to fall over and headed for the bottom of the first ramp, legs quickly whirring up to speed
I was determined not to bury myself too deeply on the first corner, despite the encouragement of a group of “cycling moms” who’d stayed behind to add their support to the senior riders with much shouting and the shaking of home-made rattles. Great stuff, thanks ladies.
I exited the first corner in good order, distractedly noting that at some point I’d actually managed to stop shivering. Unfortunately, I think I’d also been a little too relaxed and I wasn’t carrying enough momentum with me. The speed began to drop and I did what I usually do, leapt out of the saddle and tried to add a little oomph.
Nope, not happening, not today…
The rear wheel slipped and slid with no traction, the ground was much too wet and too greasy for a sudden application of power. Three times the wheel spun ineffectively as I teetered on the edge of disaster, before it finally bit and I was back in control and climbing upwards again.
Now I started to notice how bad the road actually was, the surface was rough, cracked and pitted with potholes, while the corners were strewn with dead leaves and gravel and, just outside a new construction site, liberally daubed with slippery mud.
I was now concentrating on trying to pick a clean line, while running my chain up the cassette, trying to find the right gear that would let me accelerate while staying rooted firmly to the saddle. I already knew this wasn’t going to be a good time but pressed on, legs burning, lungs strangely okay and breathing not quite as distressed as usual.
As the road dug eastwards, I glanced over the dry stone wall to my left and saw the murky, misty clouds in the valley slowly burning off, lifting and blowing away as the sun lanced through in bright columns. I think I might have appreciated the sight for at least a nano-second, before it was back to the task in hand and I was threading my way around a gravel moraine, skirting the edge of an elongated crevasse and pushing my way around one more corner.
I rose out of the saddle a few times, but far more circumspectly now, trying to gradually add power without losing grip, working constantly upward. The tyres were still slipping a little, but it was far more controlled and through it I was able to slowly pile on a little more speed.
I rounded the final bend, squinting toward where a hazy collection of people outlined in bright sunlight marked the finish. I crashed back down the cassette, willed my legs to maintain the same cadence and closed quickly, throwing the bike over the line.
I hung over the frame for a minute or two trying to control my ragged breathing, before turning and looking back down the road. Shattered riders and discarded bikes were scattered on the grass verges like a column of refugees after a strafing attack by dive bombers.
I slowly made my way back to the finish line, congratulating Biden Fecht on a good ride and in time to cheer on Buster, the Monkey Butler Boy and, last man up, the Garrulous Kid, all of whom did great rides.
Me? I came home in 6:24, that’s 23 seconds down on the previous year. I am officially no longer getting any faster.
The law of diminishing returns
Jimmy Cornfeed helped me unpin my number and I picked my way back down the hill now there were no more contestants racing up it. At the bottom I met up with G-Dawg, Crazy Legs and others, as we set out to find a café – hopefully in Corbridge, but definitely anywhere other than Brockbushes, where we have been made to feel especially unwelcome in the past few years.
We failed to locate a café rolling through Corbridge and set out in a wide loop around the town, before heading to a place the Red Max had pinpointed as a potential stop. As we pressed on into the wilderness and seemingly angling North toward the border, Biden Fecht cheered me up by suggesting that if all else failed he knew of a good café in Jedburgh. Then as we pressed on further with no relief in sight, he concluded there was always our usual stop at Belsay.
This slight detour turned into a bit of a grind, as the rain started falling again. Crazy Legs and G-Dawg had set off at a pace designed to restore some circulation and warmth to their much beleaguered bodies. They must have had it even worse than the participants, having stood around from start to finish of the event, without the benefit of even the most ineffectual warm up, or the opportunity to actually ride the hill.
So, while they pressed on, full of energy and desperate to warm up, I found my legs drained of any strength and on a long, dragging climb drifted slowly off the back of the group. On we pushed, seemingly with a final destination in mind, but finally regrouped so I could find a bit of shelter in the wheels and hang on grimly.
“A right turn, somewhere along here …” G-Dawg informed us.
“Or here?”
“Maybe here?”
“Ah, here.”
We turned in, Biden Fecht read the sign as Valium Farm, but that was only wishful thinking on his part – the great horde of unwashed cyclists had finally descended on the otherwise peaceful and sedentary Vallum Farm Tea Rooms.
Main conversations at the coffee shop:
The Garrulous Kid was found wandering around asking people the quickest way home as he had an appointment with his lah-di-dah hairdressers for another fresh trim. Earlier, G-Dawg had patiently explained how he could retrace his steps back, crossing the river at Stocksfield.
“You know where that is, don’t you?”
The Garrulous Kid just looked blank.
“Wylam? You know Wylam and how to get back from there?”
The Kid still looked blank.
He’d asked me the quickest way to get home and I unhelpfully suggested he cadge a lift back with someone who’d brought a car. In retrospect, perhaps it was the most sensible suggestion he’d got all day.
Now, the Red Max, who seemed to be the only one who actually knew where we were, told him to turn left out the farm, then first right and then right again and he’d be on the road to Stamfordham.
The Kid still looked blank, but left regardless. We still have no idea if he’s actually made it home yet, let alone in time for his salon appointment.
I got my time for the hill climb – significantly slower than last year. I said I would stop once my time started to regress, so “never again!” I vowed to anyone who cared to listen.
The possibility of transporting a set of rollers up to the start of the hill climb for a more considered warm up was discussed. Caracol was surprised the Red Max hadn’t pulled a set out of his “bag of tricks” while G-Dawg wanted to see someone riding with a set of rollers strapped to their back. In his absence, we all volunteered the Garrulous Kid to transport them to the bottom of the hill climb for us next year.
Crazy Legs pondered whether you couldn’t make some exceedingly narrow, portable rollers and wondered how narrow they could be made before they became unusable.
OGL left, returned to tell us he’d been harangued by an old harridan who objected to cyclists clogging up the country lanes (for once he didn’t seem keen to acknowledge any form of leadership over our ranks). He left again, then returned realising he hadn’t paid (important in case we wish to return to this venue next year, hopefully without circumnavigating the whole of the Tyne Valley to get there) and then, he finally left for good.
As we packed up and made to follow, Crazy Legs congratulated the Red Max on finding an even more expensive café than our usual haunt. The Colossus tried to wipe down his chair and I followed suit, finding a cold, damp and gritty film had permeated the seat.
“Yeuk!” I observed.
“Yep,” the Colossus agreed, I don’t like sitting in that, I certainly wouldn’t want someone else to.”
Hmm, perhaps we won’t be welcome back here next year after all, even if we all remembered to pay our bills.
We followed the Red Max out into the dank and dark day, as he followed the directions he’d given the Garrulous Kid, turning left, then right, then right again. True to his word (I know, I checked the map – but only after the event) we were now running just south of Stamfordham, but the road we were on was slick with mud and grit and who knows what else.
“Don’t ever let my Dad choose the route again,” the Monkey Butler Boy protested as he bounced and rattled along the smashed up surface and his bike, shoes and new skinsuit developed a thick coating of filth. I felt even worse for the Natty Gnat on his all-white bike and predominantly white University of Newcastle cycling kit. I must admit I don’t recall ever getting the bike this filthy and it took 3 full buckets of car shampoo to get it clean again.
White bike, white kit, white shoes … all a big mistake
A little further on and we slowed for three horses and riders, at the same time as a car approached from the opposite direction. One of the horses baulked, crabbing sideways, before turning a full 180° and trotting back past us, the rider wearing a rueful grin and trying to pretend that he was still the one in charge. As we rode past we were somewhat surprised to find the riders all dressed in tweeds and ties and formal shirts, despite the foul weather. Skinsuits be damned, we vowed we’d have to organise our own Gentleman’s club run in woollen plus fours, knitted ties, brogues and flat caps.
Aware that time was pressing on and I was already late getting back, I saw a sign for Stocksfield at the next junction, knew it was south of the river, so split with the group for (hopefully) a more direct route home. I soon found myself passing the familiar roads around Whittledene Reservoir and having to track west to find a place to cross the A69, before heading east again.
The usually buzzing A69 dual carriageway was eerily quiet and I rode quickly across without having to pause. It wasn’t long before I was dropping down into the Tyne Valley again, crossing the river and heading home.
That was a long day, over 70 miles and with lots of hills, despite the usual rain foreshortened climbing metres on my Garmin. This somehow recorded a total less than the previous year, when I’d driven across to the meeting point and hadn’t climbed in and out of the Tyne Valley five times, or tacked the Heinous Hill onto the end of my ride.
So another year and another hill climb ticked off. Now I’ve had time to reflect and recover, will I do it again? I’m not ruling it completely out, but won’t feel as compelled to keep the streak going. So if the weather isn’t filthy, rotten, dirty, cold and wet and I’m relatively fit I might line up. If not, I’ll hopefully be able to shrug, give the thing a miss and not feel any remorse.
YTD Totals: 6,053 km / 3,761 miles with 68.935 metres of climbing
Anyone with a Kindle and a strong and a powerful, unfulfilled Sur La Jante addiction (and who am I to judge?) can now access the collected witterings from all of 2016 in one handy volume.
All this for a nominal fee of 99p or US $1.29, or whatever the equivalent is in your local currency and exclusively available from an Amazon site near you.
The UK version can be found here and the US version (complete with whacky/wacky UK spellings) here.
Amazon wouldn’t let me give the book away for free, so this is as low as it goes until I find a way to manipulate their marketing promotions. The exact same content is of course always available completely free on this very blog site.
Reviews of the first Sur La Jante Chronicles – Float Like a Buffalo, Sting Like a Moth:
“Genuinely funny, well at least my lines are.”Taffy Steve
“I hate that wheel-sucking scumbag.”G-Dawg
“Great. I’m pretty sure I can re-purpose this to make all sorts of different things.”The Prof
“Attack! Attack! Attack!”The Red Max
“Is. It. Safe?”Szell
“Who? Nah … Never heard of him.”OGL
Cover by the extraordinarily talented, Mr. Phil Smith
Of course, for the truly masochistic, the 2015 edition, Float Like a Buffalo, Sting Like a Moth is still available. The UK version can be found here and the US version (complete with whacky/wacky UK spellings) here.
Total Distance: 116 km / 72 miles with 1,119 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 4 hours 31 minutes
Average Speed: 25.5 km/h
Group size: 29 riders, 2 FNG’s
Temperature: 16°C
Weather in a word or two: Perfect
Ride Profile
The Ride:
All the forecasts were pointing to a fine, fine day and didn’t disappoint, although clear skies overnight meant a very chilly start to the early morning. The grass down the sides of the hill was pale and stiff with lingering frost and it didn’t take long for the cold to gnaw through my light gloves to chill and numb my thumbs. Nonetheless, I was certain it was going to warm up quickly, so guessed the choice of shorts, short-sleeved jersey and base layer, arm and knee warmers, would prove wise. Eventually. Wouldn’t it?
Overhead the sky was a washed out blue, mottled with high, gauzy clouds, while a jet plane seemed intent on carving a lazy, chalky contrail from horizon to horizon. As I approached the river a handwritten sign caught my eye, “No Litter! No Rats!” That, I thought is a rather outlandish take on a much-loved, Bob Marley classic.
When I looked over the bridge, bright sunlight splintered and bounced back glaringly from the broken surface of the river below, temporarily dazzling me, so I didn’t even see the deep chasm I smashed through. It felt like someone had created a hole by lifting an entire tombstone-sized slab of the road out of the surface and I hit it so hard I felt the shock right down through my toes. Ouch!
Amazed I didn’t blow out at least one tyre, I spent the next few miles checking everything was intact and in working order, before picking up the pace to hit the meeting point well on time.
Main topics of conversation at the start:
I found the G-Dawg Collective sitting on the wall, enjoying the sun, which was such a contrast to last weekend. I naturally enquired how their MTB trip to Kielder had gone and how much they enjoyed slogging around in the mud and freezing rain, while getting hacky-mucky, filthy-dirty. To be honest conditions out on the roads hadn’t been much better, so the smug quotient was non-existent.
They reported that, all in all it had been great fun and an enjoyable off-road, adventure that’s bound to be repeated sooner or later. The only slight blemish on the day was the BFG, with near perfect timing, managing to snap his chain right before one of the day’s heaviest, most prolonged downpours. Ooph!
This week we learned that the club has (allegedly) 259 members registered with British Cycling, of which a grand total of 48 actually pay their membership fees. Since he’s a stalwart of the club and much longer serving member than me, I was interested to find out if G-Dawg had ever met these mysterious 211 “Others”– all of who, incidentally may well have voted illegally for Hilary Clinton in the recent US elections too.
We then wondered what problems it would cause in the highly improbable event that they all decided to turn up for a club run on the same day, although we would of course be rolling in it if they also coughed up for their membership fees at the same time. I did like the idea of getting them to turn up en masse and all hand over their subs in £1 coins to OGL, just before we set out for a ride. At the same time I realised this would be almost impossible to co-ordinate, as we can’t even organise the club members who do show up regularly.
The reasonably warm, bright and dry weather brought out lots of long absent faces, including both Andeven and Richard of Flanders, back from various assorted broken bones. Richard felt he was just about fully healed, but didn’t want to be falling on his fractured elbow again, so if any problems occurred he made it known he would be hurling himself bodily to the left, curled into a foetal ball and whimpering ever so slightly.
He said he didn’t think there would be any long-term side-effects from his injury, although I couldn’t resist suggesting his left arm was now two inches longer than the right.
“You’ll probably find you’ll only be able to ride in a circle now.” G-Dawg warned.
The Red Max rolled up wearing some brand new, super-shiny, carbon-soled road shoes from Planet-X, bagged half price, along with other swag totalling a couple of hundred pounds. He revealed he’d tried to pre-empt and mitigate censure from Mrs. Max, by including some pink bar tape in his order, solely for for her, but sadly she’s too wise to his ways and had seen right through this sop and purely token gesture.
Goose arrived somewhat flustered and seriously over-dressed in a waterproof and windproof winter jacket, having failed to plan ahead and swap out at least some of his winter kit for warm weather gear. Running late, he’d panicked and just grabbed whatever was to hand, hence the jacket. I was somewhat reassured by his explanation, which confirmed he hadn’t acquired secret knowledge of a freak, radical change in the weather heading our way and we could look forward to a pleasant ride. Meanwhile Goose tried to determine if he could ship the jacket in favour of just the short-sleeved jersey he wore under it, but decided it was still too chilly.
With OGL mysteriously absent, we still stuck to the plan, G-Dawg outlining a proposed route and then leading off the first group, while Red Max volunteered to take a second group off a few minutes behind on a slightly shorter run.
So, around two-thirds pushed off, clipped in and rode out, while the second group waited to allow us to get clear, before following on.
I slotted in alongside Rab Dee as the Prof and De Uitheems Bloem led us out, frequently checking that the pace was ok for everyone. At one point, the Prof called back and asked what speed he should set, but typically half a dozen people suggested half a dozen different answers, none of which were particularly helpful, or remotely sensible.
Because I’m a smart arse, I wanted precisely 16.37mph, while Rab Dee wanted us to try and achieve constant angular acceleration. Not getting a reasonable response, the pair just decided to stick to their own pace, which worked for a while, although as the ride progressed their enthusiasm began to get the better of them and they ultimately slipped the leash.
With the bridge leading up to the Cheese Farm temporarily closed, we looped east instead of west and I found myself riding next to Kermit, who’s not from around these parts, so obviously knew far more about local history and the countryside’s assorted attractions than I did. He even engaged his best tourism guide persona to point out the Cale Cross monument as we rode past, transported stone by stone from its original site on the Quayside. It’s now a feature of the Blagdon Hall Estate along with an interesting, if eclectic mix of local art and history that, according to Kermit is open to the great unwashed public “about one day every other year.”
I caught up with Taffy Steve, who confessed to being as giddy as a kid at Christmas at the thought of a ride where numbers were manageable and speed and distance weren’t dictated solely by the weakest. He even admitted to being up extra-early, so brim-full of anticipation to get started that he couldn’t sleep any longer. And so far? So far, it had all gone perfectly well and he was in acute danger of actually enjoying the ride.
We were soon dropping down to the River Wansbeck, but again our route nudged a little east instead of west, to miss the dubious pleasure of the Mur De Mitford climb, skirting around the edge of Morpeth before climbing inland again.
Here the enthusiasm of the Prof and De Uitheems Bloem would get the better of them and they started riding off the front, before taking the wrong turn, or looping back to find us again. I wondered if we weren’t witnessing a movement for Dutch independence, or a “Hexit” if you will, while G-Dawg suggested it was just like taking a couple of loopy young Labradors out for a walk; they’d enthusiastically bound on ahead, only to panic when you were out of sight and come lolloping back briefly, before haring off yet again.
(Their habit of riding up the inside of cars stopped by traffic lights and then holding up the traffic when the lights changed was much less endearing though, and probably not a great way of fostering mutual respect and understanding with other road users.)
After all the shouted warnings of pots, ice, water, mud and gravel that had become such a staple of our winter rides, it was refreshing for a change to hear the warning cry of “squirrel” – what better indication could there be that the weather is at last improving.
We stopped to regroup and outline route options for the rest of the ride, G-Dawg in particular looking to check that Sneaky Pete was ok and knew what was coming up. He then spent a good two minutes scanning all the assembled faces looking for Sneaky Pete, who just happened to be camped two feet in front of G-Dawg, hiding in plain sight directly under his nose. That kind of stealthy anonymity and ability to blend in must be an absolute boon to someone of Sneaky Pete’s sneaky proclivities.
The stop also revealed that the Goose was well and truly cooked and he took the opportunity to finally pack and stow his jacket as, all across the group, zips were inched down and gloves and arm warmers abandoned.
Route options aired and outlined and splinter groups agreed, we set off, climbing the Trench and then began the long, hard and hated haul up Rothley Crossroads. A pause to regroup again and then we set off – all fractured and strung out at high speed, as if the scent of coffee was already hanging in the air.
At one point, I cut a corner, picking up a few quick bike lengths, but finding a car approaching head on, if still some distance off. A quick twitch and I was back into the right lane and slipped easily past.
I can honestly say that the incident didn’t even register as noteworthy, there was no panic, no sudden surge of adrenaline and I never felt even remotely endangered. Everyone around me thought it had been a “close call” though, which I found a bit more disturbing than the actual incident.
We approached Middleton Bank at high speed and, as the climb began, I just had time to acknowledge a flash of black and green as the Monkey Butler Boy whipped past downhill with his new training compadres.
I hit the steepest ramp of the climb and, in an instant, all the strength just drained from my legs, like one of those jointed toys held up by elastic that collapse when you push a button on the base. Someone had just cut my elastic and I was going nowhere fast.
I ground on upwards, managing to just about hold onto Taffy Steve’s wheel over the top – and then we started to chase down the front group.
A mile or so further and Son of G-Dawg cruised past, with Zardoz in tow and we jumped across to this train. Then, as Son of G-Dawg pressed to re-join the front group, Zardoz slowly lost his wheel and declared himself all done. By the time I’d rounded him, Son of G-Dawg was gone and had successfully hooked up with the front group, but we were still adrift.
With what little energy I had left I tried to narrow the gap for Taffy Steve to jump across, pounding away until my efforts became ragged and there was nothing left. At this point, he dropped out of my slipstream and was on his own as he tried to close down the group up front.
I dropped the pace back and sat up until the next train churned past, this time driven by Aether and with a recovered Zardoz sitting on his wheel. Zardoz tapped me on the backside as he passed, a move that, had it occurred in Catalunya would probably have seen us both docked a minute for pushing, as it was I took it as a cue to slot in behind him.
As we hit the rollers, I pushed to the front and dragged the group up and over, then down the final descent and back up toward the café, which we found rammed full of both cyclists and civilians, lured out by the fine weather. Luckily, this was good enough to let us sit comfortably outside, so we decamped to the garden for hopefully just the first of many visits this year.
Before this, I had the fun of watching Zardoz place an order with one of the staff and then attempt to pay a completely different one, who wondered why a strange man was offering her money for no apparent reason. Apparently, “they all look the same.”
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
Squeezing onto one of the seriously crowded tables, I learned Buster had nearly-almost joined the club Velogames Fantasy Cycling League for the Spring Classics, but had missed the deadline. I had to admit that three races in we were all doing so badly that there was still a chance he could still sign up and win. I guess the unpredictability of the Classics is part of their appeal and perhaps why the bookies love them.
I mentioned how cold it was starting out this morning, especially on the long chilly drop down to the valley. The Red Max was unsympathetic, suggesting it was a natural consequence of living “across the river” in a land he suggested was always shrouded in black clouds.
“You think I live in Mordor?” I asked.
Apparently so, and not only that the Red Max believes the Tyne Bridge is the Black Gate, which … which means my path home leads through Cirith Ungol! No, man, not spiders, I mean, like I don`t dig spiders…
The Red Max revealed the Monkey Butler Boy is now taller than he is … and still growing. He has also proven surprisingly feral and an adept forager, so even refusing to feed him hasn’t helped.
Max was lamenting that he used to be able to punch, jab or slap the Monkey Butler Boy (one of the abiding, constitutionally encouraged requirements of fatherhood) and elicit the odd, offended yelp, such as: “Aye-ah!” or “Ow!” or “Hoo-man!” Now he says the Monkey Butler Boy just brushes off such rough and tumble horseplay, glares at him stonily and mutters “Soon, Dad. Very soon.”
To cheer himself up he’s off to a fancy dress party tonight as a 70’s porn star. Captain Black wondered aloud if he wasn’t actually going as his barber, which amused half the table and left the other half suitably perplexed.
Meanwhile Zardoz tried to convince the table that we’d deliberately not contested the café sprint because the front group have such fragile ego’s that they would have been crushed if we’d caught and dropped them. It was a good effort, but no one was buying.
Zardoz declared he was going to wait for the arrival of local legend, the indomitable Ray Wetherall – three quarters of a century in and still riding, so we left him behind, sitting out and enjoying the sun while we gathered for the return trip with everyone in high spirits.
The Red Max led from the café at a furiously fast pace, trying to burn up the surfeit of energy that remained after leading the shorter ride. I mentioned to Son of G-Dawg that had been just about the perfect ride, a good route, good group and bright, dry, not too windy and not overwhelmingly hot either. We had to wonder if this was our allotted, one and only perfect ride for the year.
When the Red Max finally faltered, G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg picked up the lead and drove us at high speed home. I held on as long as I could, until they hit the Mad Mile and started the race for first use of the shower in earnest, at which point I tailed off and started to pick my own way home.
The roads were surprisingly quiet, the weather remained good and the trip back was supremely pleasant and incident free. I even discovered the chasm in the bridge wasn’t quite as big a hole as I’d assumed, but still deep and steep-sided. I’ve committed its exact location to my fallible memory – hopefully I can avoid it from now on – I’m pretty sure I’ll notice if I don’t.
That was fun. Small steps taken and more to come. Roll-on next weekend.
YTD Totals: 1,520 km / 944 miles with 15,948 metres of climbing
Total Distance: 119 km/58 miles with1,280 metres of climbing
Ride Time: 5 hours 10 minutes
Average Speed: 22.9 km/h
Group size: 17 riders, 0 FNG’s
Temperature: 5°C
Weather in a word or two: Bright, but the brass monkeys were singing alto.
Ride Profile
The Ride:
But first some exciting news. One considerate reader has kindly developed and sent me a prototype cake spade. I tell you, this thing is going to be huge …
Honestly, who wouldn’t want a cake spade?
The windows of all the parked cars I passed first thing on Saturday morning were opaque with frost, and where windscreens were exposed to the wind they were glittering with fractal diamonds of ice. It was cold, the temperature barely nudging above freezing and a couple of brass monkeys were out searching earnestly for something they’d lost. I was conscious there could be ice still lingering in the shadows and down the sides of the road, hiding amongst the curled up piles of fallen leaves that had their ridges and edges limned in tell-tale white.
I tipped tentatively down the hill, fingers already applying pressure to the brake levers, threading my way between the dully gleaming metal drain covers and trying to remain as upright as possible as I navigated the tight bends. I was going so slow I was even passed by a mountain-biker who looked at me quizzically, obviously trusting his fat, knobbly tyres more than I trusted my own skinny slivers of slick rubber.
Safely down, I noticed that If anything, the air was even colder on the valley floor, the meadows either side of the road frosted white, the grass stiff and unmoving in the wind, while the bursts of water vapour each time I breathed out looked like I was toking on the chill air.
Crossing the river, I saw possibly the same crew as last week had actually got their 8 out into middle of the Tyne, where they seemed to be sitting becalmed, unmoving and broadside to the current. I couldn’t help feel they really needed to do some rowing to stop the rapid onset of hypothermia.
I made it to the meeting point safely, noticing only one slight wheel slip and hopeful that by the time we got out into the country lanes the danger of encountering unexpected ice would largely have diminished.
Main topics of conversation at the start:
I was surprised to find G-Dawg on his best bike, while he rather evasively muttered something about the weather not being all that bad, really. Really? He then announced he was in charge for the day, as OGL was away at the British Cycling AGM. G-Dawg outlined a pre-planned route down into the Tyne Valley and out again and we finally understood the real reason why he’d left the venerable fixie at home.
Of course, being G-Dawg and particularly averse to social media, he’d not publicised the route, although he had at least warned Son of G-Dawg that there’d be a whole heap of climbing, so he too had taken the opportunity to break his best bike out from its hyperbaric, deep storage chamber for one last fling.
Channelling his inner OGL, G-Dawg then demanded to know numbers for the Annual Club Awards and Boofee and, after much prompting and cajoling, stuck on the traditional tirades we all expect to hear before setting out: club fees are due and if you want to race stick a number on your back etc. etc.
There was also some discussion about when to have a Christmas ride, complete with seasonally naff jumpers, tinsel, baubles, reindeer antlers, fancy-dress and all that malarkey, with the 18th December club run being favoured. While there’s likely to be a Festive Ride on the Saturday of Christmas Eve, the feeling is that only a few are likely to make it out, so the weekend before will allow a greater spectacle and the best chance for as many as possible to make fools of themselves.
I was found winding a rubber band around my camera casing and had to explain it was a safeguard because the catch wasn’t overly secure and could spring itself open on the less than billiard smooth roads we had to negotiate. I also explained rubber bands represented the apogee of my engineering expertise and that I was certain the Prof wouldn’t approve. The Red Max contended that rubber bands, superglue, gaffer tape, zip ties and silicone sealant, were all that was needed to solve most engineering issues and as the Prof joined us, we were able to conclude loudly that all engineers were mentally unbalanced.
The Red Max also told me there’d been a bad crash last Sunday, when a guest rider from Essex had joined us for the day and had managed to plant her wheel into a deep pothole swooping down through Milestone Woods. Maybe it’s a girl thing, or maybe it’s an Essex thing, but Max suggested the guest rider had appeared much more upset about the damage done to her phone than the fact that her front wheel was a write off.
The Prof was eager to get some good miles in today as he was pushing toward his year-end target of 6,000 in total. The Red Max declared he was content to have already gone over 5,000 miles for the year and then the Monkey Butler Boy piped up with “I’ve done almost 14,000 kilometres” to cries of disbelief from the Red Max.
“Well, I meant all time” he concluded lamely.
With the anointed hour of Garmin-time fast approaching, we pushed off, clipped in and rode out, each to add to our own personal mileage totals.
Holy sardine! I dropped in beside Taffy Steve to find, exemplary parent that he is, he’d introduced his son to the joys of the original Batman, via the 1966 Adam West movie. The kid had been particularly delighted by Batman climbing the Bat Ladder to the Bat ‘Copter, while being attacked by a massive rubber shark that attaches itself to his leg. Having failed to dislodge it with several roundhouse punches – “BIFF!” … “ZAP!” … “POW!” … Batman reaches for his Bat Utility Belt, plucks out a can of Bat Shark Repellent (obviously) and unleashes a dose in the shark’s face. Pure class.
We stopped at some traffic lights long enough for me to notice Sneaky Pete’s jacket was held together with a few wrappings of gaffer tape – to my eyes precision engineering at its finest.
Having already skipped ahead to expose himself (at a bus stop?) the Plank (aka I.P. Freely) was soon riding back up to the front to negotiate yet another pee-stop, perhaps egged on by the Prof.
He blamed the cold. I blamed an infinitesimally small and weak bladder.
Back in motion, we were soon a-whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ down into the Tyne Valley, where a few startled inhabitants visibly drew back, looking fearfully at us as we swept through their sleepy villages. We traced our path along the banks of the river, the Tyne to our left looking millpond smooth and placid and then we left the river behind and began cutting inland, starting a series of climbs as we began to work our way back.
And then – Lo! With a shimmering in the air and a fanfare of trumpets a bridge did appeareth beneath our wheels and it vaulted us up and over the four lanes of rushing madness that is the A69!
A bridge? Over the A69? Who’d have guessed such a wonderful thing existed. That’s what you get for looking at maps – they’re dangerous, subversive things. G-Dawg had obviously done his homework, consulted some old dusty grimoire, or almanac and delivered a peach of a route that meant we wouldn’t have to engage in our usual game of real-life Frogger with the speeding cars. Good man.
The climbing though, did go on for quite some time and I began to appreciate why G-Dawg had been reluctant to try this on his winter fixie. Back onto much more familiar roads, we re-grouped as Taffy Steve paced the Monkey Butler Boy back up to us. I naturally told him has job was only half done and he still had to deposit the Monkey Butler Boy at the head of the group before the café sprint.
We pushed through to Matfen and began to pick our way up to the Quarry, where I learned this particular bit of road was one of Son of G-Dawg’s most hated stretches – a broken, heavy and grippy surface that just seemed to be harder to ride than it should be.
We turned off for the Quarry, pausing to regroup and then stopped once again at the top of the climb to make sure everyone was on. Here I caught Richard of Flanders engaged in a foul mouthed tirade, seemingly at himself: “Fugga-rugga-cumba-rah!”
With the speed building down toward the Snake Bends, the group slowly began to be whittled down as riders were cast out the back.
The Garrulous Kid managed to uncleat himself again, lost the wheel in front and drifted away, then Richard of Flanders dropped back. A spirited flogging of the thrice-cursed winter bike wasn’t enough for Taffy Steve to overcome its mechanical and weight disadvantages and then it was my turn and I was slowly distanced as The Plank, Red Max, Jimmy Cornfeed, G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg increased the speed with a series of attacks on each other.
Hitting the cracked, lumpy surfaces of the road leading down to the Bends, I eased and sat up. Ovis came through on my inside and I jumped onto his wheel for a tow through the curves and down to the junction.
Heading along the main road for the café I was brought to a juddering halt by the sight of the Red Max rolling on the ground in pain, helmet smashed, glasses splintered and a massive welt forming around one eye and bubbling with blood.
He was able to tell us the Plank and Jimmy Cornfeed had touched wheels in front of him, the Plank had come down and Max had been unable to avoid the danger and had gone over the top. It was just as well he managed to tell us this, because 5 minutes later he was looking around dazed and asking us what had happened. At least we were able to tell him exactly what he’d told us.
The Plank seemed to be there one minute and gone the next, but he didn’t look too bad from the accident, although rather bizarrely his shoe covers were in tatters, flapping around his toes and looking like they’d been fed through a shredding machine.
We got Max off the road and onto the verge and then got him stood up, then back down again as he complained of feeling dizzy. Unable to put his weight down on his right leg, Taffy Steve took charge: he had the Monkey Butler Boy call Mrs. Max for pick-up and sent the Prof up the road try and coerce a good citizen to come back and transport Max to the café.
As the Prof disappeared on his assigned mission, Taffy Steve wondered aloud if he’d sent out the right emissary, thinking perhaps he should have selected someone more recognisably human and was assailed by doubts, perhaps recalling the catastrophic misunderstanding between homo sapiens and aliens during first contact in films such as Mars Attacks and The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The Prof however did a sterling job and soon arrived back in a car with a selfless, good Samaritan called Paul, who had interrupted his leisurely Saturday morning coffee and cake to help us out. He loaded the Red Max into the car and whisked him to the café, while the Prof rode back on Max’s spookily undamaged bike.
Main topics of conversation at the coffee stop:
At the café the Red Max sat grimacing with pain and looking a little lost and bewildered. As the adrenaline ebbed and the pain sharpened, he began to suspect a broken collar bone to go with the nasty clout on the head, concussion and all the collateral damage to hip and knee.
Our table had a discussion about café sprints and how I was surprised we were still riding hell for leather along the main road to the café. I explained how G-Dawg, Son of G-Dawg and Crazy Legs always called the sprint before the Snake Bends and never took it through those dangerous curves, or out onto the main road. Crazy Legs assures me there’s even a white stripe across the road at one point to serve as an unofficial finish line. I think I may even have seen this, but it could just as easily be my fevered imagination.
Taffy Steve decided that once the speed got above 25 miles an hour the Plank “gives off vortices of madness” which are contagious, at this point common sense is abandoned and all bets are off.
I asked Richard of Flanders what had prompted his effusive, foul-mouthed tirade at the top of the Quarry Climb, but he seemed strangely unaware of it. We decided it was just a sudden outbreak of cycling Tourette’s, liable to strike at any time when the pain in your legs gets too great and has to be exorcised orally.
As another group of riders rolled into the cafe, Taffy Steve wondered what it was with ninja cyclists and their affection for wearing black kit on dark and dreary days when they should be making themselves as visible as possible. He proclaimed his new (very orange) gilet, “The Beacon” might amuse Crazy Legs and me, but it served a very useful purpose. I readily agreed, but he knew in his heart he was fighting a lost cause and we’d still rip the piss out of it at every opportunity.
Returning to the theme of great engineering bodges, Richard of Flanders explained how he carefully crafted, machined and fitted an extension to his mudguards, selecting the finest quality tensile steel fittings: nuts, bolts and washers to carefully secure them in place as neatly as possible. Another rider had then achieved pretty much the same effect with none of the effort or craft by simply using two cable ties to fix a bit of old washing up bottle to his guards.
Richard was somewhat mollified when we told him the guy was obviously just a weight weenie and chose the cable tie bodge just to save a few infinitesimal grams on the nut, bolt and washer arrangement.
We watched as the Red Max slowly and gingerly levered himself upright and, wincing all the way, hobbled to the car where Mrs. Max whisked him straight to A&E. It turned out he had no broken bones and they even managed to find and scan enough grey matter in his skull to proclaim a surprisingly intact brain. He’s going to have one hell of a shiner though and the mother of all headaches to go with it.
With the Red Max safely en route, we stopped to thank the cafe staff and all-round good guy, Paul the Samaritan, before a slightly delayed exit and push for home.
I confessed I was feeling the cold after the warm sanctuary of the cafe and Taffy Steve laughed at what he considered my clothing excesses – to him I was ridiculously cocooned in a long-sleeved thermal baselayer, winter jacket and windproof gilet. To be fair though, he has better thermal properties than the very latest, ultra-green Scandinavian eco-home.
He said he thought all Geordies were meant to be tough, you know, “oot on the Toon” in the middle of winter, wearing nothing but a T-shirt or mini-dress. I explained that this was just a particular young, feckless underclass, insulated from reality by copious volumes of alcohol.
He wondered if they were perhaps kept warm by the latent radioactivity of their orange, glowing fake tans, or perhaps it was somehow the high-pitched, dolphin-like squeaking of the female Geordie that was the secret. I confirmed that this was the case, the ultra-high frequencies of Geordie wimmin-speak does in fact causes all particles to oscillate at a much higher frequency and this throws off a surprising amount of heat. “Ah!” Taffy Steve exclaimed, “Like human microwaves – now I understand.”
On the first hill out from the cafe Aether shipped his chain, but everyone seemed eager to get home and there was to be no stopping. I dropped back to wait and ride escort and by the time we got going again everyone else had disappeared up the road. I figured it was a futile effort and we were unlikely to see the group again, but gave chase anyway.
As we turned off into the lanes, we caught a fleeting glimpse of the tail of the pack disappearing around a bend up ahead. Spurred on, I increased my efforts, finally latching on as we started to clamber up Berwick Hill, with Aether managing to make the junction on the descent.
Perhaps it was that effort or perhaps I’d wasted too much energy fending off the cold during our prolonged stop, but I was left feeling totally wasted now. I yo-yoed off the back on the short, sharp climb up to Dinnington, before catching on again and clinging grimly to the wheels until we hit the Mad Mile. Most of the group then swung off to the left, while G-Dawg and Son of G-Dawg skipped lightly away and I began my plodding trek back home alone.
If I wasn’t bonking I was desperately low on energy and running on fumes. I stopped at a garage, but realised I could only afford a packet of Polo’s and those suckers weren’t going to get the job done, so I drained my bottle dry and pressed on.
Every hump now became a hill and every hill a mountain. I seemed to get caught at every traffic light, but instead of an inconvenience this became a boon, affording a few moments of respite while I waited for the lights to change to green.
Luckily the roads were quiet and there wasn’t much traffic to contend with, which may have been just as well as I started to get fixated on the road just beyond my front tyre.
I crawled up the Heinous Hill, the Savage Slope, the Fearsome Fell, almost coming to a freewheeling standstill on the flat sections as I tried to gather my strength for one last effort upwards. Finally, I was home and only half an hour behind my usual schedule.
I’ve now got an extra week to recover, as we are heading up to Edinburgh for the Christmas Markets next weekend. I’m looking forward to it, but probably won’t take up Taffy Steve’s suggestion that the family each adopt the nickname, persona, speech patterns and mannerisms of a different character from Trainspotting for the duration of our visit, fun though that sounds.
I’ll be back, but in the meantime be careful out there.
YTD Totals: 6,398 km / 3,975 miles with 63,917 metres of climbing
Sur La Jante 