I've been wondering what I think about LEJOG.
I live just South of the City of Preston, which is where all the North/South routes on the West side of England converge. Our local economy is about movement, I can see the largest truck assembly plant in Europe, on the other side of the railway line from London to Glasgow from where I’m typing this.
I’m quite taken by the German word ‘Heimat’, which has no direct equivalent in English, but this might be one meaning.
‘"Home functions as the close environment that is understandable and transparent, as a frame, in which behavioural expectations are met, in which reasonable, expectable actions are possible – in contrast to foreignness and alienation, as a sector of appropriation, of active saturation, of reliability.”
The irony is that my ‘Heimat’ is a place that people pass through, it’s a transient space. That means that some of my sense of home includes the routes that intersect within a mile of where I live. ‘Heimat’ extends to the ribbons of steel and asphalt that radiate from Preston.
The single longest of those routes is from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and that’s become something of an iconic challenge. It’s a realistic achievement to aim at, and it’s readily envisaged. In 1891 the first ‘official’ record for a bicycle was set by George Pilkington-Mills in 4 days 11 hours and 17 minutes. Lilian Dredge set a women’s record of 3 days 20 hours and 54 minutes in 1938. Those records were officiated by the Road Records Association, founded in 1888.
I think it’s possible to have a temporal ‘Heimat’. That’s what nostalgia is, a fondness for a time as well as place. Much of the fabric of my ‘homeland’ dates from the period between 1880 and 1910. So it’s hard to avoid the echoes of the era that was the highpoint of Lancashire’s relative prosperity.
I’m pre-programmed to be interested in Lands-End to John O Groats, as part of a continuous tradition of long-distance cycling stretching back to the 1880s. It’s also genetic. My father was a keen cyclist and cheered Gethin Butler on during his record ride in September 2001. Dad passed away in late May this year. A week after the funeral Michael Broadwith attempted to break the LEJOG record.
It’s now possible to follow the progress of these rides online, via a tracker. I wasn’t inclined to follow the attempt from Lands-End, partly out of superstition, partly for reasons of economy. So I kept an eye on Michael’s progress, with a view to filming him close to home. Dot-watching is quite popular, but it’s not close enough to the 1880s to satisfy my tastes. So it was inevitable that I’d be tempted to follow what was looking to be a successful challenge on the road. I had all the right equipment to convey some of the feeling of the ride on video, and I’ll get around to doing that when I’ve worked out how what I feel about it.
I’m not sure what the Irish equivalent of ‘Heimat’ is, but I got the feeling of a series of ‘homelands’ while following a 1200km Audax called ‘Mile Failte’ mainly in Cork, Kerry and Clare. Each peninsula had its own character, and the Burren was obviously a world unto itself. We visited another extreme point of the British Isles, at Slea Head, the most Westerly point, a compensation for not going to Lands End.
I suppose the French version of ‘Heimat’ is ‘Terroir’. We visited the Vosges area of France in August, a historic crossover between the French and German worlds. That was for the annual gathering the French Cycle Touring Federation, which explores a different home turf every year. We encountered Gethin Butler stringing together all the most difficult rides on the day out in the Vosges mountains. I wonder if he fancies his record back.
There’s been an increased interest in women’s long distance cycling, and last September Jasmijn Muller tried for the LEJOG record, following a very full season of distance riding. I was poised to film some of that, and followed the online dots to the nearby village of Coppull, where they stopped.
LEJOG record-breaking is an odd business. The fastest times result from bad weather, ideally a storm which brings a following wind for the longest period. But the Roads Record Association requires 48 hours notice of an attempt. The weather had been remarkably stable throughout the Summer of 2018. Michael Broadwith had been lucky to get one of the few breakdowns in the good weather, which made for an uncomfortable, but fast ride.
Jasmijn had prepared for a July ride, but the weather stayed resolutely hot and still. September was set for the attempt, and she announced a start on September 1st, the day of my 60th Birthday. There was a certain symmetry in the two main events of my year, my Father’s demise, and my 60th. That made me inclined to do some filming, especially as we planned a trip to Scotland. But I felt the need for some sort of party.
The dots were trending down from a fast start, and the iconic locations of Shap and Gretna were likely to be visited in the dark. It was also a very warm and still evening, ideal for a back-garden barbecue, not so much for LEJOG records, So I felt able to hit the booze and burgers. On Sunday we decided to head for Pitlochry as a first stop on our Scottish Tour, with half an eye on filming the LEJOG finish.
Jasmijn’s schedule put her well beyond Pitlochry by our arrival time, but coming onto the A9 at Perth we saw a lone female cyclist, well-lit, and well-equipped. We debated if it was Jasmijn, and tried to get the dots on Heather’s smartphone. Reception was poor enough for that operation to be inconclusive, so we headed to Pitclochry, and fired up the laptop at the Backpackers Hostel. Jasmijn seemed to be stalled about 10 miles South, near Dunkeld, so we headed down the road to see what was happening. We found Jasmijn, her team and the RRA officials stopped in a layby on the A9.
Jasmijn was having a short sleep, so we had a chat with Jon Williams, the RRA observer. The attempt was clearly in the balance at that point. Jasmijn got on her bike, as her team stressed their overriding concern for her safety. We drove about five miles up the road to set up for a shot of her riding in the dark. There wasn’t enough light for a planned drone shot, all we could do was to switch to infra-red on the video camera, and hope to get something.
It was surprising how much traffic there was on the A9 on a Sunday evening. It came in batches, perhaps because it was delayed by the following vehicle. Jasmijn came past, and didn’t look too bad. By the time we bought some chips for dinner, and got back to the Hostel, the website announced that the attempt was over. We’d been the last people to cheer Jasmijn on.
We hadn’t really planned where we’d go in Scotland. I’ve long seen the area North of Ullapool as a sort of spiritual homeland.. But I do wonder if that’s just a sort of fixation, amplified by interaction with the internet.
We now found ourselves in Perthshire, so we went with the flow, climbing a succession of 3,000+feet mountains, in a non Munro-Bagging way. By Saturday 8th September we’d logged 12, in a spirit of Munro-denial.
We’d been treating Pitlochry as a place to to bypass on the A9, on the way to somewhere else for over 35 years. It took a stalled LEJOG attempt for us to connect with a new ‘Heimat’ including Schiehallion, Meall Nan Turmachan, and the Glen Lyon Horseshoe. One irony is that we’d been across a good part of Breadalbane on the Daylight 600 Audax on a number of occasions. It looks a lot different when you’re not on a bike, and not on a schedule.
I do wonder if it’s possible to disconnect yourself from performance indicators in the modern era. Heather’s phone could tell us how many steps we took in our exploration of our newly apprehended part of Scotland. Our temporal and physical homelands can be as detailed as we want, and we can readily compare them with others.
I suppose one appeal of LEJOG is that all that effort, and all that detail, can resolve itself down into a single entry in a book that you might have got for Christmas as a child. I wonder what that will mean when no-one has a memory of getting the Guinness Book of Records, and such information is spread across the web.
