I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like…
The falsetto vocals of Freddie Mercury pierce the silence of the freezing Cairngorms night. Behind the pulsating speakers stand row upon row of riders next to their bikes. Our breath billows in steaming white clouds, illuminated by hundreds of handlebar lights. Cleated feet shuffle forward as each wave departs, anxious to get the blood moving, anxious for the red smudge of dawn.
Now my group stands beneath the inflatable façade of the start line, gazing up at the slogan emblazoned on the fabric. More is in you. My heart skips a beat and I feel the familiar surge of adrenaline. I see in the exhilarated smiles of the others that they feel it too. There is a volley of snaps as shoes lock home to pedals. The marshal raises a hand and shouts over the music, “good luck today, boys.” The hand comes down. As one, we surge forward into the darkness.
On the road again
It is our eighth day of riding and as usual we have more than 100 miles to cover before nightfall. Behind us stretches the whole of England and most of inhabited Scotland. Ahead lies the vast, remote expanse of the northern highlands, a slice of Scandinavia grafted to mainland Britain. Not many of my countrymen venture up here to this stubby chunk of land so often traced on maps and so seldom truly contemplated. Nought but bogs and midges and Loch Ness monsters up there, my lad.
It’s only the middle of September, but there’s a hard frost over camp and the saddles are covered in a thin sheen of ice. Melting it with your rear-end is a rather unpleasant, but highly effective, wake-up call. I curse myself for choosing fingerless gloves as we gain speed and the rushing air snatches greedily at every scrap of body heat. Soon the wind chill is so unbearable that I adopt the unorthodox riding posture of one hand on the bars and the other jammed tightly under my jersey.
By degrees, the mountains emerge from the gloom as the sun hauls itself reluctantly into the sky. Kwok pedals out from our motley pack of riders, the most experienced among us and our de facto leader. “Chaingang,” he calls, and we fall obediently into formation.
When cycling over flat terrain, air resistance is everything. The chaingang is the most efficient way for a group of eight riders to eat up the miles. We arrange ourselves in four pairs, the pair at the front taking the brunt as those behind tick along easily, taking full advantage of the air corridor. Every couple of minutes the rider at the front right of the formation surges ahead of the front left and all the others shift one place counter-clockwise, like the rotation of a chain. At each changeover you find yourself next to a new companion, just in case you were getting a bit bored with your partner’s chat. Sort of like speed dating, but with the added excitement of drain covers and tree branches to dodge.
Food, glorious food
I drop from the lead, panting hard, and reach into the back pocket of my jersey to pull out a gel. When you are travelling the length of Britain under you own steam, it is a constant battle to keep the metabolic fires burning. Luckily, this is a fully supported ride and we are spoiled for sustenance.
Each day begins before dawn with porridge, or a full English, or preferably both. There are at least two feeding stations en route, trestle tables piled high with chicken caesar wraps, mounds of jelly tots and teetering towers of tangerines. There is afternoon tea on arrival in camp, then at least two helpings of boeuf bourguignon closely followed by sticky toffee pudding. As if that wasn’t enough, our water is mixed with isotonic powder and our jersey pockets are brimming with biscuits, flapjacks and energy gels.
The purpose of this obscene calorific intake is to avoid the dreaded bonk. The bonk is a term used in endurance sport circles to describe a state of feeble exhaustion induced by precariously low blood sugar. I had experienced a bonk or two in training on long rides with no food and I was anxious to avoid a repetition in the middle of the highlands. So, I ate religiously every half hour or so, though I regret to say with little relish. For while the food was undeniably delicious, my stomach railed against the digestive demands of 5,000 calories per day. I can hardly credit it in retrospect, but even a sticky toffee pudding can become an ordeal.
All in the mind
It is full light now and I can feel my hands again. Ahead the road begins to steepen as it rises out of the glen. A faster group of riders in matching black and yellow jerseys thrum past us in a haze of whirling spokes. “It’s a bit grippy up ahead,” calls a particularly grizzled Scotsman over his shoulder. Grippy is cycling parlance for steep, a reference to the firm hold you must keep on your handlebars to avoid sliding off the saddle backwards when the tarmac turns vertiginous. As it turns out, the next section is very grippy indeed.
The Lecht is a remorseless climb up to a mountain pass topped with a ski centre. It is one of the first roads to close when the winter snows fall and is consistently ranked among the toughest climbs in Britain. We round a bend and gape at the paved black strip rising with fairy-tale steepness like a highway to heaven. The tarmac is dotted with riders, but most of them are off their bikes, cleats clacking ignominiously as they resign themselves to pushing. The first section is steepest of all and I grind it out in my easiest gear, zigzagging to lessen the gradient, all thoughts of formation forgotten. With grim determination, the rest of the group follows, veins popping from necks as they stand up in their pedals. We have come over 700 miles and we are not going to push.
Coda
Around 3 o’clock the next day, we arrived in John o’Groats. It was a surreal moment. Little more than a week before, standing on the storm lashed rocks of Land’s End, the feat had scarcely seemed possible. Since then, I had chased a chased a professional over the Severn Bridge, been chased by a disgruntled dog over Shap, had a wasp down the jersey just south of Perth, and been clipped by a car just north of Altnaharra. The final day felt like a victory lap, with tailwinds so strong that we scarcely had to pedal. We had spent more waking hours on the bike than off it and our group moved like a single organism, as though steered by a collective consciousness. Our bodies had transformed from the pale, quivering pulp of office workers to the lean, sinewy muscle of man as he was meant to be.
And then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over. We met the cheering crowds at the finish line, toasted our success with bottles of beer, and snapped a few photos at the famous signpost. We shook hands warmly, promising to remain in touch, though of course we never did. We went back to our office blocks and soulless city flats, where cycling mainly involves dodging enraged bus drivers and inhaling exhaust fumes. But although we went our separate ways, on one point I am entirely certain. We’ll always remember The Ride.
Photo credits:
Bike in darkness: Thomas Jarrand
Cyclist gripping handlebars: Josh Nuttall