article – overview of the ride

Here’s an article I wrote, following my ride. I sent it to Cycling Plus, who asked me to revise it, which I never did. So it’s been sitting around, being ignored whilst I struggle to make progress with the book.

 

Like many cyclists, I’d long wanted to ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats. It’s one of those ‘must do before you die’ things.

I also felt there was a good story to be told about British cycling, and riding the end to end would be a great way of weaving the different parts of that story together. My end to end route could form the narrative of a journey through cycling.

I planned a route which included popular off-road routes such as the Camel Trail in Cornwall, the Granite Way in Devon, and the Tissington Trail in Derbyshire. These are places where almost everyone is happy to ride a bike, occasionally. You might get drenched, blown about by the wind, and end up with a sore bum and aching legs, but you’ll arrive back at the cafe and car park with some good stories.

I also wanted to ride through places where relatively few people are currently prepared to get on their bikes, but where the Government is keen to increase rates of cycling. That’s the big cities. So my route cut right through the hearts of Exeter, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh. I rode out of Birmingham as the school day was ending, but saw not one child on a bike. If the number of kids on bikes is a good indicator of cycling’s overall health, we’re in trouble.

There’s a buzz to urban riding. I loved hurtling down off the Peak District, and mixing it with the cars, trucks and buses on the A6 as I rode through Stockport and into central Manchester. But most of all I love the proximity to urban life which being on a bike brings. On a bike in Manchester, you don’t just see, but you hear and smell the city’s vibrant multi-cultural life.

I rode sections of Sustrans’ routes, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design. At times this involved meandering through quiet countryside. Once, just north of Buxton, it involved shouldering my bike over a rock-strewn ‘lane’, a price worth paying for the quiet alternative to the main road it opened up. Between Edinburgh and Inverness, it meant weaving a northerly path in and out of the fearsome A9. There, despite sometimes feeling as though I was riding through the debris of the road – all discarded plastic bottles, dislodged hubcaps and shredded tyres – I welcomed its safe passage.

The biggest revelation of the trip was my treatment by other road users. I’m a cycle campaigner, a critic of a car-based society who is sometimes guilty of thinking the worst of all motorists. Yet from the south-west of Cornwall to the north-east of Sutherland, whether on urban roads or country lanes, I was usually shown enormous courtesy and respect by others.

I had just over two weeks. During that time, I wanted to visit and talk to many different people about cycling. So I devised a route which took me via interesting people and places, but which didn’t involve too great a diversion from a reasonably straight line between Land’s End and John O’Groats. All up, I rode around 1,200 miles over 16 days. Mostly I made an early start and rode through the morning and early afternoon, devoting the late afternoon and evening to conversations. Some days I lurched from one meeting to another, and was glad of the chance to rest on my bike in between! All up, it’s a great way to do research – fascinating conversations followed by plenty of time in the fresh air, on the bike, to digest them!

Parts of my route would be familiar to many end-to-enders. North from Edinburgh, I followed a popular easterly course up through the Cairngorms, to the north coast at Bettyhill, and then east to the finish. At the other end, my train journey to the start stopped at Penzance. The town is home to Britain’s most south westerly cycling club, the Penzance Wheelers. I met members of this friendly and vibrant Club, and a few of them escorted me on the scenic route down to Land’s End.

Most end-to-enders probably don’t travel along the Camel Trail or visit the wonderful British Cycling Museum at Camelford, but they easily could do. Neither are very much out the way. And, if only for a bit of variety, I’d recommend taking in one of the cities. Actually, although most people bypass the cities to the north, it’s not too unusual for end-to-enders to go via Exeter and Bristol.

Exeter is one of Cycling England’s six cycling demonstration towns. I was given a guided tour of the city, and a real insight into the progress it’s making at the project’s half-way stage, by the man in charge, Zsolt Schuller. Exeter is probably doing best of all the demonstration towns, though it’s methods are controversial. Across the city, people are being encouraged onto bikes by – among other things – the conversion of footpaths to shared-use routes. I left the city unsure what to think. On the one hand, I applaud Cycle Exeter for fulfilling its responsibility to demonstrate innovative ways of promoting cycling. On the other, I worry that Exeter is becoming a confusing place to ride a bike, and I question how far you can promote cycling without seriously tackling levels of car use.

Bristol is home to Sustrans.

With the National Cycle Network, Safe Routes to Schools, Bike It and its other projects, Sustrans is today at the very heart of British cycling promotion. I was made very welcome at its city centre HQ, with a bunch of people happy to discuss the reasons for promoting cycling, and the best ways of doing so. For this organisation, the big issue is now clearly climate change. We all know that climate change is bad news. Our challenge is to make some good come out of it, using it to encourage people onto bikes.

Sometimes I went slightly ‘off-route’ in search of good cycling stories. I rode out of Bristol along the old railway line to Bath, the route at the start of the Sustrans’ story, and one which is today a very fine cycling corridor. My companion was Peter Atkinson, a man with three young children, but no car. My route to my home town of Lancaster then took me over the Cotswolds and the Peak District. This allowed me the privilege of a guided tour of the Pashley factory in Stratford-upon-Avon, one of the few places in Britain where cycles are today made in significant numbers.

This midlands route took me through the middle of Birmingham on the roads of my childhood, roads which I came to know through the car before escaping onto a bicycle. Revisiting them, and noting the thoughts they threw up, formed an important part of my ride. One objective of the book I’m writing is to encourage people to reflect on their own relationships to cars and bikes, as our societies struggle to wean themselves off the one and onto the other.

This route also meant I could drop into Bridgtown Bikes, just south of Cannock, to meet Lynne and John Taylor. Lynne holds both the women’s record for cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats (2 days, 4 hours, 45 minutes), and (with Andy Wilkinson) the mixed tandem record (2 days, 3 hours, 19 minutes). Five days into my own ride, Lynne’s achievements had gone from seeming impressive to plain immense. How on earth did she manage to keep going, so fast for so long? Lynne’s Dad, John, no mean long-distance cyclist himself, is author of The End to End Story. This chronicles end to end record-breaking attempts and provides a fascinating glimpse into the psychologies of those who try to ride this route in record time, and the challenges they confront.

Bridgtown Bikes is one of a new breed of bike shops. The old Bridgtown Bikes, just down the road and now shut, was the kind of bike shop I remember from my childhood, cramped and packed to the rafters with cycling treasure. The new Bridgtown Bikes is still very much a family affair, but it’s enormous. There’s space for the stock to be displayed. It feels light and airy. As a customer, you’re able to browse. The apotheosis of the modern cycle retailer is the new Edinburgh Bicycle Co-op store in Manchester, which has so much floor space you get the impression they don’t quite know what to do with it. A customer leaving the store told me to wheel my bike in, where it sat, its grubbiness contrasting with the new and shiny goods all around.

I also wanted to try out different kinds of cycling. I couldn’t ride through Scotland without giving mountain biking a go. It’s become a key part of the Scottish rural tourist economy, and there’s been huge growth in specific facilities. At Glentress, one of the 7stanes, I stayed a stone’s throw from the trails at the splendid Glentress Hotel. Chef and proprietor, Olivier Bony, lent me his own mountain bike to give the downhill trails a go. Not having done anything quite like this before, I was slightly nervous. But what a rush! As close to tumbling down a mountainside as I’ve ever come.

I doubt that mountain biking centres such as Glentress have the potential to revolutionise the way we travel. For now, they remain rather too car-based. But recumbent cycles might quite feasibly be a technology for a sustainable future, and I wanted to try one out. I got the chance in Edinburgh, with David Gardiner who runs a very neat enterprise, Laid Back Bikes.

After patiently helping me get the basics of staying upright on a recumbent, David took me on a slightly wobbly tour of the city. The future requires drastic changes in our transport habits. Hopefully it’ll be largely pedal-powered, and recumbents should form part of the equation.

All the way along my ride, I met warm, wonderful and inspiring people who love cycling and are hugely committed to its future. People whose lives have embraced, and become shaped by, cycling. Towards the end of my ride, at Ardgay village hall in northern Scotland, I met Steve Carroll, slap-bang in the middle of the 400km Audax event he’d organised. As Steve prepared food for the riders, we chatted about what motivates people to live their lives on and through bikes. By this point, the sociologist in me was looking for continuities, and perhaps they are these: a feeling of tremendous well-being – call it joie de vivre – when riding; riding as an escape from the everyday; riding to be well; riding as a need which grows the more you ride; riding as taking you close to the sacred.

People who ride feel better. What’s really wonderful is riding also has the capacity to make our planet better.

Cycling is full of stories. The stories of campaigners, struggling to transform their towns and cities into places where people will want to ride bikes. The stories of families, using off-road trails to get fresh air, exercise, and spend quality time together. The stories of tourists, investing their precious holiday time in riding bikes. The stories of end-to-enders, completing private journeys for private reasons. We cyclists all have beautiful stories. That’s the magic of cycling.