The Loop has an End
Well, it’s been four months now since I returned and it feels like so much has happened following my return from Euroloop, the main thing being getting married (whoop!). For that reason as well as returning to work at Fearsomengine, moving flats and many others, I still haven’t got round to posting the final photos, videos and blog entries, not to mention making a final appeal for sponsorship. About time to get round to all that stuff me thinks.
On the sponsorship front, including all cheques, cash and online sponsorship, I’m sitting at £3119. This is brilliant - thanks to everyone who has donated - but it is still a little short of the £1 per mile target I was going for, a total of £5000. I’ll be closing down the online donation page on Friday 12th February but you still have time to donate any last pennies you can throw my way.
So where did I get up to with the blog….ah yes. I had to say a hard goodbye to Kate in Bordeaux in the pouring rain after spending a tremendous two days there. The next 7 and a bit days of riding were to be the most daunting and also the most exciting as I felt so close to the finish line. Most of what I remember about north France was that it was seriously wet and quite a marathon effort to make the ferry. First of all Bordeaux turned out to be a sprawling city and it took me over an hour and a half to get from the city centre out past the northern limits, with quite a few frustrating wrong turns and some detours thrown in too to avoid the dreaded no-bikes-allowed signs. The only bonus was that after putting off my departure from the Bordeaux hotel for an hour to avoid the rain, I then miraculously didn’t get rained on after that, despite ominous black clouds hanging around overhead for the next 4 hours.
That night I stumbled across what was to be my final campsite for the trip, coming in at the bargain price of £4 and found the small restaurant next door was open where I could indulge in burger and chips. It rained all through the night leaving me with a sodden tent to pack up in the morning and a heavy mist. That day proved to be lots and lots of ups and downs which weren’t too pleasant and then the heavy rain began - this wasn’t to stop for the next 24 hours. I tried riding through a town in the dark that night to find a campsite or cheap hotel to find refuge, but all that achieved was to waste time. After much searching in the suburbs, I found a spot to camp in some bushes that were in the garden of a derelict house. In the pouring rain I was now totally drenched and so was my tent.
I woke up in the morning to hear the now familiar sound of heavy rain on the tent. I also knew I had to put in some serious miles that day in order to stand any sort of a chance of catching the ferry the following evening. With a feeling of dread I lay there for 30 minutes or so hoping it would ease off a little but it soon became clear the weather was there for the long haul. I packed everything up as quickly as I could feeling damp and miserable. My wheels weren’t turning due to the mud that had accumulated on my tyres when searching for a sleeping spot so a frustrating amount of time was spent unclogging. After only a few minutes of riding I passed a petrol station and decided to stop to take on some food, and hopefully get a little warmer and drier. The chap in the station was really nice and let me sit in his office and gave me a cup of coffee. It came up in conversation that I needed to be in Roscoff to catch the ferry the following night, to which he raised his eyebrows in a little disbelief. I hoped I could prove him wrong.
Later that day at around lunchtime, I rode through the centre of Nantes and the rain was absolutely bucketing it down, to the point where you just had to laugh that you were so wet. My goal for that day was to get to a town called Pontivy, which was still a long, long way away from Nantes. Finally, at around 6pm, the rain had stopped making it a little easier to carry on and cram in the miles that I absolutely had to squeeze in. At around 7pm, just as it was getting dark, I reached a town called Le Roc-Saint-Andre only to find that the road up ahead, which was the only one going to Pontivy, was closed and the signposted diversion took you on the motorway - no good for bikes. At this point I started to panic a little. I couldn’t afford stuff like this happening in order to make my target, it was already late in the day. Very fortunately, I asked a woman working in a restaurant what to do and she told me about a canal path that ran 15km to the next town that followed the closed road and I should then be able to rejoin it there. So off I went riding along the canal in near pitch blackness with bats swooping around all over the shop. It was such a relief to make it to the next town called Josselin where, as the kind lady had said, I could rejoin the road. What then followed were mind-games riding on country roads in pitch black hoping cars could see me lights and willing the lights of Pontivy to appear around every bend. Whenever I saw somewhere I could stop to set up the tent and sleep I got very tempted. But I’d set my sights on Pontivy and that was where I need to be by the end of the day, besides the tent was a soggy wreck and all but useless. At 11pm I rolled into Pontivy feeling relief and severe tiredness but the day wasn’t over, I had to find somewhere to sleep. I was looking around me like a hawk to try and eye-spy a hotel but had a horrible thought in the back of my mind that it was too late at night and nowhere would be open. After riding back and forth for 3o minutes I was overjoyed to find a hotel that was open, quite a posh affair that turned out to cost an eye-bulging £65 for the night, the most expensive stop of the trip by a long way. However, by that point I was past caring and it was worth that money just to get the opportunity to dry out all my kit. By the time I’d sorted everything out and got into bed it was 1.30am and I was totally exhausted after completing over 12 hours on the saddle and 150 miles that day. I don’t really want to have a day on the bike like that ever again.
After rising at 6.30am to get a good start the next day, I had only got 5 hours sleep and felt totally rubbish. Still, today was the day I leapt over to Ireland on the ferry and that fact was enough to keep me going. The day turned out to be a painful one with my body aching from yesterdays efforts and my mental reserves pretty low. At lunchtime I bumped into two British cyclists who had just landed at Roscoff that morning and were a few hours into their 4000 mile adventure to Egypt. It felt very odd to be stood there talking to them so close to the finish line and there they were just starting out, with shiny new kit and not much experience under their belts. I was encouraged as they told me the terrain to the ferry port wasn’t too bad and wasn’t too far away either. I was nearly there and going to make it with an hour or two to spare as planned. The riding was pleasant with sunny spells, some downhills to the coast and good views. However, I was totally spent and willing the town of Roscoff to show it’s face. Finally I got there and the plan was to set foot in a supermarket and buy a tank load of food to devour on the ferry and maybe a beer or two - I was really looking forward to that. I found the big Casino supermarket only to discover to my dismay that it had closed 3o minutes ago. I would have to pay the ridiculous ferry food prices instead. At this point I met Michael, who was to become one of my cycling comrades over the next 12 hours. He rode an odd tandem contraption where he was the solo rider and his plan was to ride round the world picking up hitch hikers who wanted to join him on his tandem for any period of time (you can see his website here). I briefly left him to get some dinner, which consisted of the most I have ever paid for the least amount of burger possible, I was gutted! We then met again in the queue for the ferry and also met Jean-Noel (or as he translated his name into English for me ‘John Christmas’) who was spending the next few weeks cycling around Ireland. Then on the ferry, I met more cyclists in the form of Frank and Brige, a couple from New Zealand who had been on the road for 6 months. My time on the ferry was great but different to how I’d imagined. I’d thought I would curl up somewhere by myself, grab a shower, enjoy some rest and then set off in Ireland raring to go. Instead I ended up chatting for ages, swapping stories with the folks I’d met until late into the night. Again in the morning we all hung out together, Frank and Brige kindly bought me a fantastic fry-up so I wasn’t even subjected to silly ferry prices.
Once on Irish soil, it was the weirdest feeling being back on the left hand side of the road again. I set off in convoy with the rest of my cycling comrades that I’d met on the ferry; destination Cork. Brige had told us all about a cycling rally that was happening in Cork that day, something to do with promoting the use of bikes in the city. So we were all going to join in. I was now caught in a bit of an awkward spot where I would have really liked to have spent more time with these folks and hung out a bit more in Cork. However, what actually happened was that we joined the cyclists who were parading around the city and the whole time I was feeling slightly edgy as I needed to set off ASAP in order to get to Belfast for my next ferry. No matter how much I told myself it was OK to hang around for a bit, I couldn’t relax. So after lunch I took my chance and fled - but it turned out to be not quite as simple as that. Riding around in the rally I’d noticed there was a large bulge in my rear tyre which was causing a massive bump every time the wheel went round. Frank helped me change the inner tube when we stopped for lunch and I hoped that this would fix the problem. After stopping at a petrol station to get enough air into my wheel, the bump was back and it was clear that my tyre was dead. So I rode around to find a fellow cyclist who then kindly guided me to the nearest Cork bike shop where I bought a new tyre. It had lasted over 4700 miles, which is totally amazing for a tyre under load and I genuinely felt sad to see it go, I had begun to have hopes I would complete Euroloop on one set of tyres. Anyway, by this time it was well into the afternoon and I was wasting precious time. I’d already decided to make my route through Ireland shorter than originally intended as I had plenty of miles in the bank to make reaching 5000 a certainty, but I still needed to push on to make Belfast in time.
Campsites in Ireland were few and far between on the major roads so I knew I would be wild camping for a few nights. However, what I came to realise is that Ireland is a land of fields as far as the eye can see. There is virtually no land that is wasted. This meant finding somewhere to sleep out of the way that wasn’t overtly trespassing was difficult, almost impossible. That first night after searching in the dark for a long time, I ended up on top of a grassy embankment just above the main road. I awoke in the morning to find the air absolutely freezing and it came as quite a shock compared to the heat I’d been experiencing for the past 2 months, but there was a great sunrise backdrop for packing away the tent. I’d camped about 10 km south of Limerick so the job for the morning was to navigate my way around the city on the ring road and head north east for Northern Ireland. However, the main roads in the area were getting a serious overhaul and had partly been converted into motorways, which wasn’t on my map. These were the only roads I could take without a serious detour. I asked a policeman what the deal was and he said seeing as it was super early on a Sunday morning that it wasn’t really a problem so I should just go for it - and that I did. It was a beautiful morning, amazingly my body felt great and it was about this time I got the first gusts of a tailwind that was to stay with me all the way to Glasgow. A puncture in my front tyre gave me a bit of a nasty feeling, it felt as though my bike was falling apart but with a coffee and a sausage roll in my belly I was off again. The day carried on without much to note except the constant pedalling and a welcome lunch stop at Tesco (hadn’t seen one of those in a while) where I sat outside the store in the freezing cold eating a boat-load of food. As night drew in I was back to searching in vain for a hidden place to sleep amongst all the fields. On the Cork ferry, Brige had told me that if I ever got stuck I should just ask a farmer if I could sleep in a spare field, a tactic I’d never used during my trip - but tonight was the night. I knocked on a farmhouse door where the farmer’s son said it was fine and I found my pitch for the night. In the morning I packed up all my stuff and realised it was the last time I’d ever have to do that for the ride, what an amazing, exciting and relieving thought. I was about to head off when the farmer’s wife called me in for a cup of tea, fed me cheese on toast and we had a nice chat. Back out on the road, the pain in my backside had reached high levels and I resorted to wearing both pairs of my cycling shorts at the same time in order to ease the discomfort. I hit quite a bit of rain in the morning and got lost attempting a shortcut that turned out not so short, but for most of the time I was chugging northwards at a good pace. I crossed the Northern Irish border and that was me in the UK, digging out my Stirling, passing all the familiar road signs and shops and logos, distances now shown in miles - home was so very close now. The tailwind pushed me into Belfast on a beautiful sunny evening and I navigated my way through the city to the Mawhinney’s house, parents of a friend of mine. I got a warm welcome, slap up dinner, a shower and a proper bed (thank you the Mawhinneys!) as well as discovering that I’d lost a shocking two and a half stone on my travels.
I arose the next day with the awareness that this was it, the final sprint to the finish line, the last day of 69 days worth of riding that had taken me through 19 European countries. It was 5.30am and in some bleary eyed way I had to make a mad dash for the ferry at Belfast port, which I only just made in the end. An excitable and slightly surreal ferry journey left me on the other side of the Irish Sea at Stranraer, Scotland.
This was it, over the next 8 hours a few thousand pedal turns were going to complete what I’d started and be the last chapter to so many stories, emotions and dreams. There were some big hills to climb up from the coast but nothing I hadn’t seen before, and the combination of a large tailwind with the prospect of Glasgow made the rest of the days riding seem to pass quickly and easily - although miles seemed to tick down horrendously slowly compared to kilometres. I was meeting friends at the finish line in George Square at 6pm and found I had plenty of time so stopped at Pizza Hut for a few hours to gorge on two pizzas as a treat. I’d climbed steadily for what felt like most of the day but I can vouch that the mantra “What goes up, must come down” is very true. About 7 or 8 miles outside Glasgow I was on top of a hill that looked down onto the city, I could see all the way to my final desitination. I was getting drizzled on but the sun was shining on Glasgow in big streaks of light through the clouds, an amazing scene at the end of a long journey. The downhill miles that followed into the city were easy with surroundings becoming increasingly familiar and my excitement/impatience levels rising at the thought of the finish. And then there it was, George Square, and there were my friends, and there was Kate, I’d made it. Feeling slightly sheepish, awkward and socially out-of-it, words and hugs and laughter were shared with everyone (as well as a bottle of champagne) and we went off to celebrate at a small party my friend Colin had organised for my welcome home.
I’d just completed 5083 miles in 69 days (56 days on the bike) and 750 of those miles I’d done in the final 7 days. I was exhausted and skinny, with ludicrous tan lines. I had 5 blissful days to spend with Kate doing absolutely nothing before having to think about returning to work, planning my imminent wedding and resuming life as normal.
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