A Belated Long LEL Report

[Nuncio]

The Prelude
I’d intended to leave it a while before doing my LEL ride report, to let some of the less memorable details fade away.  Not this long, but stuff gets in the way. Now I’m confined to home with a cold, with nothing much to do, so here is my ‘recollected in tranquillity and snot’ account.  Unfortunately, some of the boring stuff has not been forgotten, and some of the really, really interesting bits probably have.  The euphoria I felt at finishing has dissipated, so you’ll not get the hyperbole you might have done.  But I’m still proud of having completed the event all that time ago.  (Sorry to give away the ending, by the way.)

The Preamble
The background is that I have 10 years Audaxing behind me but have only started tackling the longer distances in the last 3 or 4 years.  I have lived with LEL vicariously through my brother since its inception, but the dawning that I was capable of attempting the ride, and maybe even finishing it, only grew after I’d completed my first SR in 2007.  That is when I posted my LEL entry.  This was not so much as to save a place in the possibility that I might do it  – the idea that the event would reach anything like the maximum entry number seemed inconceivable back then – but, never having DNSd, this was a commitment, a statement of intent, and yet another reason to get me out on the bike.

My 2009 preparations went well.  I managed two 600s - the Bryan Chapman and the Marches and Mersey Roads - without too many problems.  Both provided the sort of weather experiences on which it turned out I could draw during LEL.  The Marches one also provided a fairly laney and intricate flattish route in unknown territory - good experience for the southern part of LEL.

A fortnight before LEL I had a series of mechanicals on my one-and-only on my commute including a split front rim, the bearings going on my rear hub and a mudguard bracket snapping.  Any one of these would have inconvenienced me or forced me to abandon LEL.  OK, so the mudguard could have been jettisoned fairly easily, but on the spurious basis that these things happen in threes, I didn’t want something else hovering over the bike as I lined up at the start.  Those three meant I was magically protected from any serious mechanicals for the duration of the ride.  My only concerns therefore, were how I would cope with cumulative lack of sleep, and how my body would contend with riding 780km further than I’d ridden ’in one go’, as they say.

The team
On that start line I was to be with my friend and colleague Ian, with whom I’d ridden on pretty much every Audax I’d done over the past couple of years.  Our pace is very similar, as is our mental attitude to distance cycling.  We are happy to chat along, or to let whole legs elapse without so much as a grunt.  In addition, he navigates better then me, he provides a great wind break, he carries ‘our’ spare tyre, and he likes looking for glass/thorn/flint intrusions in tyres. His wife had driven us up the day before, and would come and meet us to take us home to South Wales when we’d finished.  In return, my pump is better than his and I sometimes let him use it.  In short, we were equals, and it was assumed we would ride wheel-for-wheel  the entire 1400km.  Indeed that is what we did, save for a couple of brief interludes. 

The Off
I’d wandered up to see the 8am starters get going, wishing my brother a ‘Go John’ on his way.  His reply was a bit unexpected – “I still haven’t got a frame number”.  He’d been promised a presentation of his frame number before the start, in honour of this being his 6th LEL, but it didn’t materialize.  It wasn’t until Coxwold, where Lynn Hedley managed to manufacture a laminated ‘1’, that his bike was properly dressed.  We tend to be a bit faster than him, and he professed to be unfit so I was wondering where we would catch up with him and reckoned it would be by Thorne.

We lined up at about 8:45 for our 9 am start, saying hello to Matt Haigh with whom we’d ridden back from Menai on the Bryan Chapman.  Chris Narborough and Paul Dytham I think had said they were also starting at 9 but there was no sign of them.  It transpired they had been caught on the wrong side of the railway barrier.  Given that the barriers were down and likely to stay down we were released 10 minutes early.  I wondered if those 10 minutes would be crucial.  If I finished within 10 minutes of the maximum time I’ve no doubt that the card would have been validated.  But I’d have known.

Within a few hundred yards of setting off I was asking Ian to stop, as my computer was not registering.  Strange, given that it had worked OK between the Youth Hostel and the start.  I fiddled with the position of the magnet to no avail, so we set off again and I resigned myself to staring dolefully at a 0kph reading for the next 4 or so days.  However, by pressing the unit into the bracket, it fired into life, only to die a few miles later.  We stopped again and I cleaned out some gunk from the contacts out and that did the trick.  I had been hoping to benefit from riding with a fairly sizeable group but within a couple of minutes we were on our own. 

This had been a somewhat anti-climactic start.   Still, we were very quickly into some pretty countryside, the weather was warm and it felt as if we had a tail wind.  Four-and-a-half days later, at this point on the return, a couple of things struck me. One: I don’t remember coming down these hills I’m now forcing myself to go up.  Two: what on earth had been going through my mind, knowing that I had that huge distance in front of me; how had I been able to cope mentally?  The mental battle of getting the first 20k behind me seemed harder than the physical challenge of actually doing 1400km.  Of course, the sensible way to approach a long ride, like any overwhelming ‘problem’ is to break it up into manageable bits ie in this case not to think beyond the next control.  So I guess that was what I was doing.  In fact, I know that was what I was doing because I now remember that I had a permanently looping first line of a song going through my head:  ‘Do you know the way to Gamlingay? Dum. diddy dum, di dum di dum dum day’.  Thanks, SandyV for planting that one.

After about 40km we witnessed the worst driving of the ride as an oncoming car had to swerve onto the verge to avoid an ill-advised overtake (by another car).  We got to chat with an American fixed rider – Spencer Klaasen – who was nearly cut up by the manoeuvre. I’d assumed he was with the North Carolina riders who had formed part of the fast group, presumably the 9:15 or 9:30 starters who had swept passed us not long before, but he was riding solo and was from Kansas.  We compared and contrasted a few American/UK randonneuring experiences and went our separate ways after Gamlingay.  I liked his undemonstrative, dare I say it un-American, sang-froid approach.  We passed him a few times when he had problems – split tyre before Thurlby, puncture (I think) after Eskdalemuir and, most dramatic, brandishing a bent chainring at Thurlby or Gamlingay on the return.  He didn’t appear fazed by any of them.

We were trundling nicely through country lanes, fields of burgeoning wheat to either side and the tail-wind whipping up nicely.  Patrick Wadsworth overtook us, then Chris N and Paul D edged  past.  We could see them easing slowly away until St Neots when they negotiated the lights better than us and were gone.  They were to overtake us again several times over the course of the ride, but with Toby from Cardiff joining them later.

Ramblings
The scenery was becoming very flat. On the approach to Sleaford you could pick out numerous towers and spires of the villages dotted all around.  These little totems of communities led me to muse what the social links were between these places.  Given the flatness, some of them may have been 15 miles apart.  Were they only linked in my mind, or did the inhabitants go to each other fetes, car boot sales and dances?  Or did they encounter each other centrally in Sleaford?  Pointless musings, but the geographical meanderings of a randonneur will often lead to mazy mental ramblings.  The towers and spires also led to a discussion, without a conclusion, as to what constitutes a steeple. 
Time passes.  Miles click on. Dalkeith gets a little nearer with every pedal revolution.
Sleaford itself announced itself amidst the flatness with 8 huge wharf-like, or warehouse–like buildings which subsequent investigation have shown to be the Bass maltings.  They impressed Pevsner as well: For sheer impressiveness, little in English architecture can equal the scale of this building. A massive four-storey square tower is in the centre of a line of eight detached pavilions. The total frontage is nearly 1,000 feet.  Well there you go.
After Sleaford navigation became a little easier with some long straight roads and several miles between instructions.  The tail wind was still strong so we made fairly rapid progress.  On the long approach to Ruskington there were signs for a party going on in a pub car park and sure enough it appeared that the whole of the population of Ruskington was turning out for it.  We gave it a miss.

Tim Wainwright’s photos show that first day as being predominantly bright and sunny.  I don’t remember it being that bright but I do remember it being warm.  As we rolled into Washingborough it was getting a bit gloomy and rain was on its way.  When we left the control it had set in so I deployed the Montane and we were off into the gloom.  We passed through Bardney, with its big sugar beet factory, and the site of a pop festival in 1972 that Ian remembered having gone to from Leicester. This stretch to Wragby was the first leg of a 50k Audax ride I did with my brother, wife, sister, and brother-in-law a couple of years back.  Five-eighths of the field was related to each other (not unusual for a Lincolnshire Audax, apparently).  For the non-LELers of the five it was their only Audax to date so we all have a 100% record, except for John: something I like to remind him of occasionally.  On that measurement he’s the worst Audaxer of the family.

The dark was beginning to set in as we approached the checkpoint in a car park in Wragby.  A dog-walker complimented me on my lights and the two noble checkpoint controllers were also keen to find out what it was.  It’s a B&M IQ Fly powered by a Schmidt (and me).  Not the brightest now perhaps but obviously showing up well in the twilight. 

Somewhere near Kirton Lindsey  we were waved down by a French rider with a split tyre.  He asked us to pass on a message to his riding partner who was riding up ahead.  We caught her up.  She was with John Stone who I think had been practising his French.  The wheel was a non-standard size so ‘our’ spare was no use.  He packed at that point and found a pub in Kirton.  Apparently he had a spare tyre in his bag drop in Dalkeith.  D’oh.
The darkness and the light-but-persistent rain were putting a bit of a downer on the ride.  I had held out hopes of continuing to Coxwold for the first sleep stop but by now I couldn’t wait to get to Thorne and some sleep.  We pulled in at a stone bridge for Ian to put on his helmet cover , but when wheeling off again discovered that his hitherto solid front tyre was completely flat.  Much profanity flowed.  We suspected a thorn or thistle in the verge but couldn’t find the culprit, and the tube did not deflate when pumped up again. It was replaced, but the non-puncture remains a mystery. 

Feeling a little down-in-the-dumps we hooked up behind a couple of other cyclists who seemed to know where they were going  and followed them wordlessly all the way to Thorne thanking them for their navigation when we arrived at about half-past midnight. 
I wasn’t expecting the space at Thorne to be so large, but thankfully it was, as it was an obvious sleep stop for many riders.  I briefly saw and spoke to John - he was about to set off to Coxwold, leading a small posse of Italians who seemed to be treating him as their road captain.  There followed a quick bite to eat, the removal of my sleeping bag liner from the bag, the finding of a space on the floor and a good sleep of around 4 hours.

Another Day
It was dry the next morning, and I enjoyed setting off alongside the canals and over the bridges to Howden, meeting ‘normal’cyclists coming the other way into work.  We had to stop to fix a puncture in Howden, but despite that all was going well.  We made good progress along fast roads, save for the crossing of some of the busy York arterial roads and a brief reference of the OS after being confused by the route instructions – there should have been a sign to Stockton-on-Forest but there wasn’t one.  It was still fairly obvious, we agreed with some Belgians.  But the Belgians went wrong a couple of km further on and wouldn’t listen to our shouts.

When we reached Crake the hill came as something of an affront.  It had been so flat for so long that I wasn’t really prepared for it.  Suddenly the responses from my legs were reminding me that this was not going to be the metaphorical walk in the park I had lulled myself into thinking it was.  As well as keeping the pedals going round, there was going to be some ‘gruntage’ coming up over the next couple of days. 

When Coxwold came it was therefore very welcome.  All the controls were like oases.  We may have been off the bikes but we were still in the ’bubble’ of the event, with people who understood us, understood what we were doing, and understood what we required of them to help us do it.  The food on offer always seemed just what was needed for that time of day we arrived, and was always served up with good cheer.  And there were other riders to talk to and share experiences with.  There may have been 420 or so of us but 420 gets spread out over that huge distance.   The concertina effect, however, means that you may have been riding half an hour behind one group, and half another in front of another, but you see both sets at the control and all those in between.

After Paul , Toby and Chris passed us again (there’s a theme developing here) there was a fairly long stretch on the B something before a turn-off to Scorton.  As we mosied along there I had a growing craving for orange juice.  This was a new one.  The cravings don’t happen very often but when they do they are usually either for crisps or milk.  It was getting sunny and warm again, and once this need had formulated itself I was praying for a garage shop or village shop to slake it; the squash in my bottle just wasn’t going to do the job.  The road seemed very likely to have a shop on it but it wasn’t until we turned off and round the village green at Scorton before we found a suitable outlet.  I made straight for the cartons fridge but had to pass the ice lolly cabinet and the sight of a strawberry split immediately vaporized my need for juice.   Ian bought a lolly as well, I think, and we lay on the village green in the sun as a few riders made their way past.  I still bought a carton of OJ but that was more to propitiate any gods that were observing than because I still needed it.

We shortly arrived at Middleton Tyas with the hill through the village making us feel we had deserved the rest.  We felt liked giants of the road, but that may have been because we were using the undersized furniture of the primary school.  Yet again SandyV from Australia was there.  I think she had been at every control on the way up, helping out and welcoming her husband Martin and sending him back out on his way. The food ordering system worked for us (I gather others may have had to wait a ‘normal’ time for service rather than the super-fast time we were getting used to) so we were off fairly sharply.    I think we overtook Martin shortly after the Middleton Tyas control.  He had been suffering badly with a cold, but having made the effort to travel that far for the event, he wasn’t going to give up without a fight.

[Nuncio]

False Summit
The route was being punctuated by more hills now – the climb after Whorlton Bridge comes to mind -  but we knew that they were nothing compared to Yad Moss to come.  So with that at the back of my mind, the pretty countryside and villages weren’t receiving the attention they deserved.  Nonetheless, the magnificent Bowes Museum shouted out at us when we passed.  Barnard Castle came and went and Middleton-in-Teesdale marked the last point of civilization for a while.  The climb turned out to be very long, but given our hill-fitness – there are some benefits from living in South Wales – well within our capabilities.  We sailed past the same Belgian who had gone wrong earlier in the day and he took pleasure in giving us an English lesson, explaining that the word painted on the road spelled ‘SLOW’.  We patently did not understand our own language.  My computer has an altitude reading and after a while Ian was asking me to report every 10 metres of ascent so as to judge how far it was to the top as there was not an obvious summit in view.  The altitude reading is subject to barometric pressure vicissitudes, and I wasn’t sure I’d reset the start height from the 117m of home to whatever Lee Valley stood at.  The result was that when we passed the 598m’summit’, we still had what turned out to be another 150m of climbing.  Ho hum.

The control at Alston was friendly, of course, but brisk and businesslike.  There was a touching moment outside when an American was trying, with the controller’s help, to get the number of a cafe in Middleton-in-TEesdale where he believed he’d left his expensive camera.  He obviously thought it was a lost cause.  But a fellow rider turned up, and after eavesdropping for a moment returned the apparatus to its grateful owner.

We were in-and-out quite quickly, fed and watered, and on our way for the evening ride into Scotland.  I didn’t quite know what to expect here.  My mind tends to simplify routes into straight lines and right angles, so this was going to be due west to Brampton, then due north to Langholme and west(ish) to Eskdalemuir.  Looking at the map now, I see that’s not quite right, with the route being pretty much WNW to Longtown before swinging North.  I also pictured the route to Brampton as being gently down from the town of Alston – England’s highest market town – to close to sea-level and the Solway estuary.  So the climb onto moorland out of Alston was a bit of an unwelcome surprise.  On the other hand, the road was very quiet, if not always very smooth, and it became a joy to sweep round the bends straight into the low sun, with the silica twinkling from the tarmac.  Bliss.

Ever on.  Legs were fine, saddle area comfy, spirits high, bikes behaving.  If we’d had a schedule we’d have been up with it.  Through Hallbankgate (signs boasting not only a beer festival but also a scarecrow festival), negotiating Brampton and stopping on the far side to report home that all was well.  Then what seemed to be a dash northwards (but was still WNW) along the straight road to Longtown, gobbling up the miles with what was probably still a strong tailwind.  Right along that stretch we hit clouds of midges.  We weren’t in danger of being bitten, but you had to be careful not to be breathing in if you hit one of the ‘clouds’ at the wrong time otherwise you’d be gobbling up more than miles.

For some reason I thought Longtown was right on the border, but it was several miles further on along the A7 that we passed the Welcome to Scotland sign and Ian gulped down his first ever lungful of, strangely, midge-less Scottish air.  The A7 was quiet but not very inspiring and I was beginning to feel tired and a bit fed up.  I guess it wasn’t unconnected with the darkness descending.  Things seemed to improve as we turned off at Langholm and started the long climb towards Eskdalemuir.  The route sheet warned ‘CARE: POTHOLES CATTLE GRIDS ANIMALS’ so on the brief flat and downhill bits we took it easy, peering carefully at the beams of light cast onto the road.  As it turned out we saw no potholes, no cattle grids and no animals, but it didn’t stop us being unnecessarily vigilant.  I got into a plodding rhythm enjoying the smell of the pines and trying to make out the surrounding hills in the darkness without much joy.  I was also looking out for my computer to click onto 629km which would mark unknown territory for me in terms of distance.  On the lower slopes a small group of Americans pulled alongside for a chat.  Then further along, Chris went steaming past on his fixed wheel, with Paul and Toby not far behind.  They had had a performance-enhancing Chinese takeaway at Longtown.  Still up-and-up with the road curling round and a strange light-show playing out into the forestry.  Never did work out what it was. 

I need to lie down
There was the welcoming sight of Phil Chadwick and Phil Dyson at the EDM community hall, ushering us towards the canteen area.  The food was good but it was now midnight and we needed sleep.  Trouble was, the sleeping room was full, the corridors were full – I recognized brother J as one of the prone bodies -  and the space in the canteen between and under the tables was occupied.  Some riders were slumped over the tables.  Even the deep-set window-sills were filled by slumberers.  I spotted a space but realized that lying beneath the hot water geezer was probably not a good idea.  Carrying on to Traquair was out of the question, because it was that stretch where the POTHOLES CATTLE GRIDS ANIMALS’ really were, and we didn’t want to do it in the dark.  Ian checked with one of the controllers when the first wake-up calls were, but they were not for another couple of hours.  I was beginning to despair, until controller ‘Glasgow Dave’ offered us the back of his estate car, parked out in front of the hall.   I may have thanked him a little too profusely, but he did seem a saviour at the time, and still does.  So we had another four hours sleep, slightly cramped and steamy, but quiet and dark and conducive to sleep to anyone who had just had 4 hours sleep in the last 30 hours, and had cycled 633 km in that time. 

Thinking back, I don’t think we had any rain at all that day.  There had been a brief, light shower when we’d been inside at Coxwold, and it had been threatening damp up to Eskdalemuir but we never got wet.  Don’t believe all they tell you about the weather on LEL 09 – it wasn’t continual deluge. Waking up on the Tuesday though, we could hear the steady patter of rain on the car.  The canteen looked a little less like a WWI dressing station, and spirits were rising as the breakfasts were sinking down the hungry stomachs of the early risers.  Another heartwarming instance of possessions, thought lost, finding their way back to their owner.  Alex Greenback’s glasses disappeared when he got up.  The ever-efficient helpers had swept up the table empties and paper table-cloth into a bin along with the spectacles.  A quick but frantic search and they were found, to Alex’s relief.  And we were off, passing the surreal Tibetan Centre, made more surreal by my not being able to get the name of it right, and it persistently being the Sammy Lee Tibetan Centre in my mind.
That morning’s ride was the most worthwhile of the whole thing.  I think we had rain on-and-off, but the scenery was, well, Scottish.  Well Scottish in fact.  I think we also had a good tail wind but I don’t think we were aware how strong it was.  Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till you turn round into the face of a roaring headwind, as Joni Mitchell might have put it.

The Catch 
Innerleithen was one of those very neat and proper solid stone lowland towns, well cared-for by its inhabitants.  The same went for the putting greens on the town’s golf course which we passed on the way out.  Up ahead I could just make out my brother and we finally reeled him in after a long chase, a bit later than Thorne.  He introduced us to his 3 Italian riding companions.  Franco was quiet, polite and undemonstrative – a ‘gentleman’, as John described him.  I’m still not convinced he was Italian.  Ausilia was petite, smiley and tough; a 24-hour off-road world champion, no less.  Roberto was tall and rangy, voluble, and he was gesticulating at most of the passing cars.  There wasn’t so much doubt that he was Italian.  As the effects of his antics were beginning to wear-off we found ourselves at the top of the last of the many climbs since the border.  Laid down beneath us for our ocular delight was Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth and the Kingdom of Fife beyond it.  Apart from the gorgeous view, with the southbound route being longer than the northbound, we were pretty much at the half-way mark.  The realization dawned that I really might be able to do this thing.  Soon we’d actually be pointing in the right direction, counting the miles down rather than counting them up.  Being there with John added to this special feeling.  And what’s more, it looked like a stonking descent. Hallelujah! With an imaginary (I think) whoop of joy, I let rip and threw myself and my bike down the hill, the euphoria lasting all the way to the A7 and the tricky urban approach to Dalkeith Rugby Club, waving at friends and acquaintances already on the return, and acknowledging other southbound riders with a nod or a wave.

Arrival.  First there was a request for a photo from Ausilo of  my besandalled feet next to John’s besandalled feet.  Then to business.  Get card stamped and stow it safely away.  Locate bag drop.  Shower.  Brush teeth. Change into clean fresh lycra.  That feels good.  Eat and drink. Take a breather.  Prepare to go.  And off.  Minimum faffage.   Going home.

Homeward Bound
I’m seldom at my best after a control, and this turned out to be worse than usual. By the time we got to the gradual climb of the A7 I was struggling, and all the pre-turn euphoria had disappeared.  The stream of passing lorries didn’t help.  Ian passed and told me to tuck in but I could see that he was finding it difficult to go slowly enough for me.  There wasn’t even a head-wind yet.  I couldn’t believe how far it was to the right turn off the A7, but when we got there I could make out a string of riders determinedly ploughing their own furrows up the hill.  Time to dig in.  Just keep the pedals turning.

And then after a couple of hundred metres or so a strange thing happened.  It has happened before - 4 times on the stretch between Llandovery and Brecon on the Brevet Cymru, twice on the Bryan Chapman, after Newton.  It seems to happen when I’m well into a long ride, about 5km-10km after a control, and on a long hill.  It doesn’t have to be very steep, just uphill and long.  And this strange thing that happens?  Well, I go quite fast, that’s all.   Quite fast for me. I wasn’t just passing other riders, I was zooming past them.  While they were seemingly gurning through their struggle, I was grinning.  It felt great.  I think there’s a morphing from ‘here we go, just keep going, it doesn’t matter how fast I go, just try and avoid walking’ through ‘the quicker I get to the top the quicker it’s over, even if it hurts’ to ‘wow, this is great, this can go on forever, bring it on.’  And I’ll bank those feelings from the Moorfoot Hills by Edinburgh for the next time I’m there.  Follow me if you can.

To be fair to Ian he overtook everyone else as well so I did not have to do much soft-pedalling to wait for him.  What little I had to do, though, turned into hard-pedalling because we were now facing the teeth of the gale which was being funnelled up the valley.  So head down and power on.  We picked up another silent Italian who tucked in behind and used us as far as Innerleithen, when we let him go ahead.  His overlapping wheel had become annoying. I used to get into the mentality when things were difficult that they would go for the whole ride. But experience teaches that is rarely the case.  The head-wind never seemed as bad as that first descent from the Moorfoots. 

In Innerleithen we met and stopped to chat to Yannig Robert.  He was going well on the bike he’d ridden for the first time the day before the ride, lent by Alex Greenbank after Yannig had discovered a crack in his frame.  He ended up riding pretty much all of LEL with a new French acquaintance, and was looking comfortable on the borrowed bike.

We reluctantly declined the delights of Traquair, other than the card-stamp.  I’m not sure why now, other than a desire to get to our sleep stop as soon as possible and maximize the chances of a bed.  Ian started speculating when it would be that we’d meet Dai and Ron on the Welsh tandem, and within five minutes there they were.  They had started in the afternoon and suffered worse weather than us.  They claimed not to be enjoying it but Dai’s grin gave the game away.

Eskdalemuir had a feeling of the day after the night before, with someone’s Mum having been in to tidy up a bit.   It was calm, dry and quiet, though apparently that was to change a couple of hours later when the weather closed in and some of the riders were stranded for hours, advised not to risk the weather.  I’m glad we had the early start and that we had pressed on somewhat. After the control was the first hill I’d encountered thus far which required use of the granny gear, though that may have been down more to post-control laziness than steepness.  The following descent to Langholm was a pleasure, knowing now that there were no POTHOLES CATTLE GRIDS ANIMALS, and I was able to enjoy the scenery I couldn’t make out in the darkness the night before.  I hadn’t been looking forward to the A7 but it turned out not to be so bad.  I’m not sure if the wind had turned, or died down a bit, but it was no real problem.
 

[Nuncio]

The Pact
We had just passed Don Black who was just emerging from a pub in Longtown when we stopped to light up.  At Brampton we had to stop again because my light didn’t seem to be running on full power.  A bit of fiddling with the contacts and it flared up again.  I also took the opportunity to report back home.  We had pretty much stopped at the same point we had on the way up.  It’s odd how places revisited quickly become associated with activities that had occurred there the first time, and there’s a desire to repeat that activity. Superstition perhaps?  There’s a gate by a lane between Beddgellert and Penrhyndeudraeth where I will always stop for a comfort break.  I will probably always call in at the Spar in Harlech for an annual lucozade. There’s a bench at the top end of Usk square where I will always stop for a brief dawn sit-down, whether I need one or not, on the Brevet Cymru.  No doubt I’ll stop for a lolly in Scorton should I ever do LEL again. Yes, it must be superstition.

We were just about to overtake Don Black again when he pulled into a pub in Hallbankgate.  Ian and I pledged not to mention on the return to work that at the 870km mark we were barely keeping up with someone who appeared to be riding in ‘slacks’ and brogues and treating the ride as an extended pub-crawl: it would undermine our athletic achievements somewhat.

On the high land between Brampton and Alston the wind was really blowing up.  It was gusty rather than driving, but the rain had started in earnest so we were being blown, buffeted and sprayed. At a dip I accelerated past Ian to get some momentum up and over the next rise, as is my wont.  On the flat I peered behind and saw 3 sets of bike lights.  One set belonged to Mark Hummerstone.  I assumed the others were Mark’s riding companion and Ian’s but when they passed, the third turned out to be a different rider.  I pedalled slowly for a while checking over my shoulder for Ian, but there was no sign of him.  I stopped and waited.  It was a bit Wuthering Heights-ish  up there and my imagination was running at top speed, envisioning Ian in a ditch somewhere.  He shouldn’t be this long.  So I started cycling back slowly, peering through the gloom onto the verges, but hoping for a B&M lumotech to hove into view.  Eventually the light appeared and it was Ian’s. He hadn’t realized that I had passed him, assuming that I was an outrider for the grupetto Hummerstone, and he himself had returned, down the hill, looking for me.  10 minutes wasted, but it could have been worse.

We walked up the cobbles in Alston – they looked very slippery in the wet – and started to grind up out of the town.  Apparently it was only 3km to the control but it seemed much, much longer, and in my confused and wind-battered state I was worried that we had somehow missed it. When I worked out that the lights to the right probably were the outdoor centre I felt some relief.  We desperately needed sanctuary in this weather.  It was in a very exposed site, and I admit to being frustrated in the howling gale that I couldn’t find anywhere to stand the bike safely.  I resorted to propping it against a gas canister which may not have been a good idea but seemed preferable to laying it in the mud.  As well as being relieved by the shelter we were delighted to find out that there were bunks spare.  The drying room was hellish but a hellish drying room in those conditions was better than no drying room at all.  The bunks were comfy with soft mattresses and downy duvets. I was asleep before midnight.   The wake-up call was at 5:30 I think, but we were all up well before then and ready to go at 5:45.  I’d been woken up twice in the night, the first time by the howling wind, the second time, somewhat bizarrely, by my brother’s voice outside as he arrived at the control.

When we left, my bike had been supplanted by a different one leaning against the canister, and mine was unceremoniously lying in the mud, front wheel gently spinning in the wind, clocking up a few more ghost kms on the computer.  It was damp and grey and still windy, but far less than it had sounded a couple of hours earlier. Toby and Paul were preparing to leave as well and I remember their conversation:

P: Remind me.  Why are we doing this?
T: Well I've left my car at Lee Valley.  Why are you doing it?
P: Level 4 on Mario didn't seem enough of a challenge any more.

I made a clothing mistake at this point.  I had my maximum on top – long-sleeve jersey, gilet and thin Montane – which was OK.   Below the waist it was just shorts and sandals – again OK -  but because it was a cold start, I put on a pair of socks.  Within minutes they were sopping.  It was a gloomy climb up and over Yad Moss, grey and damp.  Middleton-in-Teesdale was only 32km after Alston but most people were deciding to stop and have a top-up breakfast.  There was also the feeling that the last LEL monument had been conquered and in terms of terrain, there was nothing too scary between here and Lee Valley. Just the little matter of 450km. I took the opportunity to remove my sodden socks and immediately felt a lot better.

From there on I felt a bit more relaxed in general that day.  Assuming we reached it, we were assured of another comfortable sleep stop that night.  My mum’s village was on the route, located between Thorne and Washingborough, leaving less than 250km to do on the last day.  But I didn’t want to get there too late so we kept up the pace throughout that day.  After Barnard Castle we were joined by a (cue Jimmy Osmond) long-haired rider from Liverpool, and we rode most of the way to Thorne with him.  He was a bit faster than us – I think he was one of the last riders to leave Lee Valley on Sunday afternoon so had made good time – but slowed down for the company.

Not Very Much to Say Really
I’ll skip on here because I really can’t remember much of note apart from
-    Full English breakfast in Middleton Tyas – a British  Audax isn’t a real Audax  without a cooked breakfast
-    Our worst navigational error when we missed the right turn in Yafforth – we hadn’t realized we were in Yafforth and got to the outskirts of Northallerton before we were sure of our error
-    Another missing sign-post to Stockton-on-Forest, but an obvious turn, in retrospect, nevertheless

The roads were fast and busy approaching Howden.  There were not many instructions so we made good progress.  We stopped for a bite at the co-op in the town, and shortly afterwards were joined by a silent Italian who was happy to use us for navigation purposes.  I couldn’t complain, as I was also leaving it to Ian. 

I loved the next stretch after Thorne, not only because I was going ‘home’ as it were.   The lane alongside the canal shortly after Thorne was the narrowest of the event and we had to pull over a few times for oncoming cars.  At Sandtoft we turned onto the featureless stretch of road which went dead straight for 9km.  At one point it crossed a more major road.  The light was fading so the cars had their headlights on.  As we approached I decided I could see clearly enough in both directions that I knew I would hit a gap in the traffic, and I sped up rather than slowing down for the stop line.  I whizzed safely enough across but Ian pointed out that all it would take was a single unlit car and I’d have rapidly been going even faster at 900 to the desired direction, stuck to a bonnet.  As we went through the long village of Misterton the light became very strange.  We hadn’t seen the sun all day, but now there was a band of clear but orangey light to the west  And with a slight westerly, it was growing.  Briefly, for a minute or so, the sun appeared before setting, and a huge rainbow halo’d Gainsborough, my home town. A tight team 4 Italians slipped past in tight formation. “Ciao!” they called out. “Ciao!” we replied.  It felt hyper-real.  I was trying to imagine what my teeanage self would have made of me if it could have foreseen that 30 years later I would be approaching home, 1140 km into a 1400km International cycling event.

Over the Trent, up Foxby Hill, the first hill since Crake, and onto the roads between Gainsborough and Willingham.  I was flying now, enjoying the experience of cycling on such familiar roads, taking advantage of a slight tail wind and keen to get to my mum’s.  At the junction at Kexby there were a couple of cyclists, stopped and studying the route sheet.  I was able to shout ‘Left’ as we passed with a confidence I rarely have with navigation.  A kilometre further on I had to stop to explain to them that they should not follow us left but should go straight on - we were going to see my Mum and they hadn’t been invited.

It was before 9:30 that we arrived.  My sister was there to welcomes us.  We took off our sopping outer layers including my sandals.  She was amused by the patterns on my feet from my straps.  The sun-tanned areas had been made even darker by road dirt.  We each had a proper shower, change of clothes and a relaxed evening meal at a dinner table before sinking into comfy chairs.  There was even time to log on to the forum and catch up with happenings on the event.  The wet stuff was being tumbled.  The 10 o’clock News was on the tele.  All of a sudden it felt as if I was outside the bubble of the event.  I was reminded of this later when Charles Warner told me his LEL story.   He’d got lost on the return somewhere near the border.  He knocked on a door and was kindly offered a cup of tea by an elderly lady.  He accepted and was stuck for well over an hour while she proceeded to tell him of the recent death of her son.   Already close to being out of time because of the weather and going wrong, he was now so much out of the bubble of the event he just couldn’t get back in and, when offered a lift back to the route, decided to ask for a lift to Carlisle station instead.  It was more of a wrench for me to leave my Mums than it had been at any of the controls.

Back in the Bubble for One More Day
Nonetheless, refreshed after 6 hours sleep I was ready to cycle to London.   John had arrived late the previous night but was getting up just as we left.  He’d had a rough time after Thorne and ‘gone a bit mad’ on the Sandtoft/Misterton road, a stretch he had not been looking forward to, based on previous experience.

It looked as if the day was going to be brighter than the previous one, but there were some large banks of cloud building up, and showers had been forecast.  We had been warned by John of a diversion through Lincoln, but we worked through it and through the early morning city traffic with no difficulties, my local knowledge coming in handy.

About 4 km after the Washingborough control I had a feeling that I’d left something behind, and stopped to check.  I had been carrying my brevet card, cash and credit card in the same pouch, keeping it in the side pocket of my Carradice, but it wasn’t there now.  I have a history for not looking after my brevet card with the care it warrants and my solution was to keep all of my valuable eggs in one basket, on the basis that not even a fool as careless as myself would lose it. Wrong. Telling Ian to carry on slowly, I returned, meeting John and stopping to explain why I was going the wrong way. On the table where we had been having our second breakfast, there was my little bag, all present and correct.  Panic over.  I caught up with John and Ian before too long and we rode as a trio along the long roads through Ruskington, along the scary A15 through Sleaford, and on through the Lincolnshire countryside through villages and along bye-ways which must have looked very different from the other direction because I hardly recognized any of them.  I found myself in the drops a lot more than usual.  This wasn’t a conscious thing.  I think it was the result of a feeling of determination.  John told me I was riding with a very flat back.  I had to check later that that was a compliment.

Time passes.  Miles click on. Lee Valley gets a little nearer with every pedal revolution.

At Thurlby (I think it was Thurlby and not Gamlingay) there was quite a spread put on – stuff I’d never seen on an Audax before.  Watermellon, plums, strawberries. WI home-made cake. Even tablecloths and flowers on the tables.  All very welcome.  John had punctured on entering the school yard there, and told us to go on without him.  I haven’t seen him since (though I hasten to add he finished OK).

Big storm clouds had been building up and you could see them for miles and the heavy showers that were being spat from them.  We caught the edge of one but had seen it coming and had jacketed-up in good time.  Generally we were lucky and our course happened to avoid them, but as we approached St Neots it became obvious we were going to get a good wetting.  There wasn’t anywhere suitable to stop in the traffic but on the far side of the town we dived with some waiting shoppers under the awning of a Spar and watched the rain bouncing off the tarmac and the road turning into a lake.  It stopped as soon as it had begun and we were on our way. 

After Gamlingay we jockeyed a bit with Anton the Russian whom we had met at Coxwold, but were joined by the same Italian who had wheel-sucked the final miles to Thorne.  We introduced ourselves but the language barrier prevented much more than a swapping of names.  I think he was happy for us to navigate for him again and stopped when we did, for example when Ian phoned his wife to let her know when we’d be arriving at Lee Valley.  At one point there was some strangled exclamation from behind and our quiet Italian friend was asking us to stop with him while he fixed a puncture.  He was adept at removing both the inner tube and the thorn or glass, but his pump was next to useless so he borrowed my Topeak RoadMorph, made some approving noises as he used it, and we were off again very soon.  We didn’t have to stop but I pictured myself approaching Milan, not being able to speak the lingo and stuck with a puncture and a non-functioning pump.

We’d been warned about bad driving the nearer you got to Lee Valley, but we didn’t witness any.  We elicited a small cheer as we passed the pub opposite the station, and another small ripple as we rolled over the gravel at the Youth Hostel.  Matt Haigh was there, washed and changed, looking very relaxed and taking our photo.  Ian and I shook hands and congratulated each other. I felt a slight welling up.  We’d ‘done’ LEL.  Our Italian offered to buy us a drink.  And that was that.  We just had to wait for Ian’s wife who had become stuck behind an accident on the M25.  But wait.  There’s something else.  Ah yes.  D’oh!. Must get my brevet card handed in.  Now where did I put it?

Postscript
For us it was a fairly uneventful LEL.  No alarms. No near misses. No falls, no crashes.  Our bikes weren’t stolen.  Our chains and cables and spokes remained resolutely unsnapped.  My few navigational errors had been recognized and corrected within a couple of minutes.  One tyre had been breached once in the 2800km total.  We’d slept well enough at proper sleep stops that we’d had no need to sleep in verges, nor to knock on strangers doors.  No hallucinations were experienced.  No possessions were lost.  We’d got wet, and been blown about a bit, but nothing worse than on the two 600s we’d done.  My neck retained its function of being able to hold up my head – something I had doubted before the event.  I can’t speak for Ian, but my arse had not been shredded.  I had a slightly stiff achilles which went within a couple of days.  The ‘heels’ of my hands were a bit tingly – probably because I wasn’t so used to riding in the drops for so long.  My knees were fine, even the previously troublesome left one.  I weighed myself the following day and I’d somehow put on a couple of pounds.  But 2 or 3 days later, after some indiscriminate eating, I’d lost 6 pounds. I had a couple of days off the bike, and was then back on for my commute.   Hardly worth a ride report, really.  I wish I’d realized that earlier.

A final word of thanks to Mel, the organizer, and the big team of helpers.  You made the ride as easy as it could have been. 

[ludwig]

No no. brilliant report. I expirienced that out of the bubble thing again last friday on one of the cambrian 200 perms. I visited my girlfriend in her office in Llandeilo and had to go through the process of explaining to her work colleagues what the hell I was doing. I don't think you realise how much you concentrate on the ride until you come out of it. Anyway i think I had two minutes spare at the end in Newquay. Anyway hope to see you soon , perhaps on one of the Cardiff rides.

[arallsopp]

Thanks for posting this. Its always interesting to read of others experiences, particularly on a ride you shared. We must have been on the same strip of road at least once (unless you were already at Gainsborough South whilst I was at Wragby) and yet, every time you mention the odd colouration in the sky, I was getting hammered by a storm.

[Nuncio]

Thanks Arallsopp.  I'll be able to work out relative road positions better after I've read your book (ordered yesterday, coincidentally).  I think you were an afternoon starter, weren't you, and/or delayed by the mechanicals? I think those later on the road had the worst of the weather.

[arallsopp]

Yup. Was playing Lanterne Rouge through the first few checkpoints and... well, I'll not ruin it for you

Hope you enjoy the book.

Andy.