More of Wednesday Avo & Into The Evening

Onwards, onwards. Always pushing north.

Leaving Preston at 3pm I'd been on the go for eleven hours and covered 436 miles, but I wasn't half way yet and unfortunately I was well aware of that. The scenery between Exeter and Preston had rarely been exciting, the odd pretty building aside. To keep me from getting too bored I sung to myself over the sound of the engine. With no natural talent or even a vague ability to carry tune in a bag it's probably for the best I'm inside a helmet. My bike had started to make suspiciously loud noises since Liverpool so helpfully it drowns out the racket I'm making. It's funny what will set you off, a shop window displaying the words Want More? has me singing(ish) Freed From Desire. A fish sticker on the back of a car that's doing 40 in a 60* has me yelling Take Me To The Church Of The KLF. I know less than half the words to the songs I sing, but if anything it just encourages me. I've got rhythm though, stacks of the stuff...

Not long after leaving pitstop 3 I start getting a mild feeling of déjà vu, for quite good reason. It's been over a decade but in 2012 my friend and I cycled these roads in the opposite direction for what was known as the Long Way Downhill. This time I'm now astride what sounds like two stolen motocross bikes and heading up the A6 through Kendal and Lancaster. I recognise a place we refuelled with tea and cake a decade ago, but this time the need to press on is all important. Into the lake district and over a beautiful hill called Shap which we battled up eleven years ago and very much enjoyed the ride down. On the GPZ I had fun on the bends down the other side, and for the first time in a long while it felt like the roads were getting less congested.

I stopped at 510 miles for a wee and took a picture of the bike. On the descent down from Shap I'd caught up with another LDU'er on an old aircooled Honda with a beautifully painted tank as he stopped for a picture. He came past me as I was stopped and a little while later I caught and passed him again, it was fun seeing another of us on the road and quite mad to think that we'd ridden all this way on wildly different bikes but were occupying the same stretch of tarmac despite the miles and hours that had passed since we started off.

I know I've slated it on a number of occasion but it's a good bike in many ways, especially for this. Wide bars and an upright seating position you can shuffle back and forwards on that had cosseted me this far, I was still feeling a distinct lack of aches. Now one of the exhaust header gaskets has failed it was sounding much less healthier than in Cornwall, but I didn't doubt it would make it. I did give my ear defenders an extra hard twiddle in before jamming my helmet back on though. One thing I'd certainly do differently if I ever was stupid enough to have another go would be to buy a flip up touring helmet with a drop down sun-visor and one that was hopefully much, much quieter.

Into Carlisle and amongst the traffic the aircooled Honda rider another two riders on a Transalp and a Yamaha and myself all bunch up. I end up leading which is good for making progress through traffic, not so good at finding the right direction though. Eventually after taking a harder than necessary route through the towns rush hour traffic we were out the other side and seeing signs for Edinburgh.

As the roads widened I picked up the pace then split off for fuel at Longtown and our little group fragmented. Not long before 6pm I made it to Gretna Green and at that point I'd completed 50% of today's necessary countries...

I still had 120 miles to go through Dumfriesshire and Argyll before getting to the ferry terminal. The last ferry was at half ten that evening and I knew I'd easily make it. Once over the border the traffic thinned out, although there were plenty of 40mph zones and warning of speed cameras to keep you sharp. Overhead the clouds had gathered again and it had started to drizzle, but the roads were awash with standing water in places so it must have utterly tipped it down not half an hour before me. Thankfully the heavy stuff was being pushed north faster than I was making (my good) progress so hopefully I'd avoid riding through a deluge. Only once I was on the coast road north of Ardrossan did the scenery really get interesting again, looking through the occasional murk at the isles of Arran and Bute. It was noticeably getting a little darker now and the temperature had dropped, but thankfully I'd got some cold weather gear and a clear visor to put on at pit stop number four at Gourock ferry just ahead.

I made it to the terminal about 2032h, I'd by the slimmest of margins missed the half eight sailing. But it meant that I was embraced by the warm care of of the capable and charming Greg, his sophisticated and suave other half Sylvia, plus the dashing and debonair Alistair who had brought along a gas bottle, sausage heater grill thing and was handing out hot dogs with mustard and onions. How awesome is that? Very.

Whilst I was waiting the half hour for the next ferry (which was paid for already by another sponsor who I sadly have also no idea about but I'm very, very grateful for) I scoffed two sausage-in-a-bun, put on every bit of warm clothing I was carrying and prepared for the dark stage. It's a long way to Inverness, longer than I thought or actually would need to ride as it turned out but still, I figured this would be the hard graft of the ride. And I wasn't wrong.

It wasn't long before the others I rode with around Carlisle also arrived. We had a chat about the next three hundred miles that was left of this challenge and agreed that considering the darkening skies, suicide deer and the unappealing consequences of lobbing ourselves into a ditch alone in the dark we'd all stick together from now on. At five to nine we boarded the ferry and set off across the Clyde to Dunoon.

 

We all felt elated, we'd made the ferry! It had been a hard cut-off point for everyone, if you didn't make the last ferry then you had no chance of getting to John o'Groats in anywhere near a reasonable time. The drizzle had poked off, the big clouds were scurrying away from us and whilst the end might not have been in sight, you could feel it lurking just over the horizon.

 

 

 

 

*and continue that 40 into every 30 zone. As they always do...