Once upon a time in the west.

There are times when what you intend to do and what actually occurs are something quite different. When this happens, you may be left mildly inconvenienced or you may find yourself in some epic adventure that you feel you don’t any longer have control over. We tend to call it Sod’s law; a world where bad things happen in multiples of three (allegedly) and a world where shit definitely happens, just not when you expect it.

Now I think you can see where this is going, can’t you? I have just had a big birthday, my sixtieth to be exact. I don’t know how I got this far, but I’m glad that I did. Having spent my life riding motorcycles, climbing cliffs, flying paragliders and cycling on and off the road, chances are that I should have been dead long ago!  But by hook or crook I’m still here and by Keith Richard’s standards I’ve led a gentle and sheltered life.

Teresa asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday. Bearing in mind that nobody wants to party on the second of January, I decided that I would like to do a short tour. Maybe we could spend a few days riding back from Bristol, where Teresa grew up, to Dawlish where she now lives. Nothing too strenuous, a gentle new year introduction to 2020.

Not expecting the weather to be as warm as summer (It nearly was) we booked ourselves into a night with a Warm Showers host and a second at an Air B and B. Teresa was staying with me and part of the reason we were making this trip was to retrieve her Specialized Vita from her mums house, where it had been for two years. Therefore, we would initially travel independently. I would cycle to Eggesford from Hatherleigh and catch the train to Exeter whilst Teresa would catch a bus from my house to Exeter station. We would meet up, just as planned, and then travel to Bristol together. Along with one bike, get it? No, neither did the nice man we booked our tickets from during a twenty five minute phone call that only cyclists get to make, and pay for!

We had taken a quick look at the Vita on a previous visit to see Teresa’s mum and everything seemed to be in order. Even this was an omen; we couldn’t open the shed. It was stuck, and when I eventually forced it to let me in I then spent the next hour trying to rebuild a mortice lock that stubbornly did anything other than what it was designed to do. Having got nice and cold outside repairing the lock it was then time to ride Chuggaboom, my motorcycle, back to Devon, which was not ideal. The traffic was horrific on this journey and it took over twice the time it normally takes. But I digress.

The magic day arrived, and we were all ready to go. Excited like a child at Christmas, but a week late, I set off to ride to Eggesford station with plenty of time to spare and a great café to sit in at the station. The bike rode really well. It’s light and responsive nature made me grin and the vibration from the carbon-forks, when I braked, reminded me of skinny steel forks from times long gone.

It was cold, and windy, but it was also sunny and bright. The ride had two halves. Being only about twelve miles long it was mostly uphill for the first half and downhill for the second. Glorious Devon scenery of rounded, rolling hills in many shades green, unfolded like a woollen blanket as I slowly pedalled along. All the time I was getting closer to the warmth and the coffee that awaited me at the station café at Eggesford, a private run affair with excellent food and beverages.

I rumbled over the railway crossing and there was a big sign saying, ‘café open.’ I grinned. I love it when a plan comes together. I walked across to the narrow alley that leads to the door and there, all but hidden from public view, was another, much smaller sign saying ‘Café reopens on 6^th January 2020.’ Bugger. I spent the next 45 minutes shivering and shaking, waiting for the train, on a platform especially designed to allow and amplify maximum wind flow. The train arrived eventually bringing warmth and some comfort to my old bones.

Ah well, there are always a few hiccups. On arrival at Exeter St David’s I met Teresa and lunch was enjoyed by huddling in the Starbucks and pretending we had bought our sandwiches there along with the extortionately priced coffee. At least we were warm. On collecting our tickets from the ticket machine there was no bike reservation, despite the promises made during the excruciating long phone call with the man at GWR, who was actually a man in India who could hardly speak English. Having spent twenty-five minutes on the phone trying to book our bikes onto a train and paying for the privilege, I now had to go to the ticket office as well. A hopelessly useless and discriminatory system for reserving one of just two spaces per train.

Making our way to the suggested platform we noticed that there seemed to be a bit of a kafuffle going on. The screens had gone down and nobody knew what was happening. Our train, that originated in Plymouth, was delayed, first by minutes but growing all the time. Then we heard the Manchester train needed to arrive and terminate at our platform and we shouldn’t get on it. This was followed quickly by all the advisory boards going blank and then coming back online to say that they had been lying about that Manchester train and that we should all get on it if we still wished to go to Bristol and hadn’t lost the will to live. We were all confused.

Even the guards were clueless as this process repeated itself until nobody had any idea, nor cared, what was happening. Eventually we did board the train and aside from the guard constantly apologising for not being able to organise a piss up in a brewery every five minutes, we trundled off worry free to Temple Meads in Bristol.

A pleasant evening was spent with Teresa’s mum and the dawning of a new day saw us forgetting the hassle of getting here yesterday. It was bright and sunny as I removed the bikes from the now mended shed, Sadly, as soon as I did, the lock went again! After a short burst of swearing, and remembering what I did previously, I soon had it ‘fixed’ and we were on our way.

We were heading out of Bristol toward Clevedon when we came across the first hill of the day. I changed gear and was settling into a rhythm when the scraping noise of non-compliance from Teresa’s bike caught my attention. It wouldn’t change down at the front. Of course, I hadn’t checked that, being in a hurry to depart Bristol on our previous visit. It had been nagging me. Don’t tour on an untried bike, my mind kept repeating. This thought had been with me for over a week, but I kept suppressing it. What a fool I am?

For the next thirty minutes I was a whirring mass of spanners and swear words. I hate front mechs. They are fiddly and all seem have a mind of their own. I don’t mind when I’m at home with my tools, but not out here at the side of a main road whilst others stared as they went about their morning run. Why didn’t I try this prior to leaving? I kept chastising myself, unnecessarily. Oh well, needs must, as they say. I did fix it eventually, noticing the partly shredded cable that you couldn’t see until I removed it! I wonder if that will last I thought, as I remembered that I hadn’t packed a spare cable, something I always do. I also wondered whether the bottom bracket was the right one as the changer would only travel so far, but that’s another story.

We set off again into a world of ever-increasing peace and quiet. The noise briefly rallied to a sharp crescendo as we pedalled over the motorway bridge, containing masses of vehicles all travelling somewhere to the sales after the Christmas break. It was with great pleasure that we turned away from this and picked up the route we needed to follow to Clevedon.

National Cycle Network route 410 saw us riding through Pill and Easton in Gordano. Easton in Gordano is a much nicer place than anyone who has been to the services might think, strewn with pretty cottages. Pill made us laugh, especially the Pill Clinic. Anyway, we didn’t get the last laugh because as we climbed the hill somewhere in this region there was a loud crack from Teresa’s bike, and she had to stop. This had happened twice previously, but now it became obvious what was going on. The pedals turned quite freely without driving he wheel around at all. The freehub was broken. I knew from experience that if I could get some lubrication into it that it might free up the pawls that I suspected were all gummed up from the bike sitting around for two years in a garage. We sat by the pavement sorting this out and a nice chap from one of the local houses came out offering support and possibly a lift, if we needed one. We chatted about all and sundry and I worked on freeing up the not-so free-hub. Eventually it was done and working, kind-of. I’m sure it would get us back to Bristol, if ridden gently, and we decided that that was it, game over. How could we trust this to get us back to Devon? We couldn’t, so it was back to Bristol to decide what to do next, get it fixed or go home.

We said goodbye to the lovely man who and set off again. It seems that every time you have difficulty when touring that somebody will appear from nowhere to help. It’s very uplifting and alters your view of the world and the people that live in it as it is so often sold through the media.

We headed back through Pill and Gordano, picking up National Cycle Network 41 into Bristol along the south bank of the Avon river below Leigh Woods (famous for its mountain bike trails). This route was suggested by the lovely man we had been talking to earlier. What a surprise. It was stunning. We had both wanted to come this way for a long time and not yet made it. Yet here I was squelching through the muddy trail of my imaginings by accident and enjoying every minute.

Slowly, slowly, we made our way along the ten miles back into Bristol. Given the timings and the weather forecast, we had all but decided that we were being told to go home on the train, after which we could ride around with impunity in our local environment. For me, those miles brought great memories. I haven’t seen the Avon Gorge climbing areas since I last climbed there back in 1984.

My mind whirred, remembering he climbs that I had completed there with my friends, one of whom now lives just up above the cliffs in Clifton. They were fabulous days and fond memories and I savoured them as we rode under the suspension bridge as I recalled the routes I climbed on that great buttress of limestone, belaying under the bridge itself.

My mind jerked back to the present. We had a plan. Find out about the train and then eat. On arrival at Temple Meads we found that their monitors had gone down here also and that they were not able to book our bikes on the fast train. We looked at each other and laughed. They did manage to book us onto another, less direct train at a much later time and we could still try to gain access to the earlier, faster train. As if that wasn’t enough, the lovely lady behind the window told us that we couldn’t get a train from Exeter to Dawlish as everybody was on strike. We would have to ride, broken bike or not, the twelve miles home along the estuary as replacement bus-services don’t take cycles. We sloped off feeling that we really weren’t supposed to have left home at all but that we were having a great adventure none-the­-less. We had seen things we wouldn’t have if it had gone to plan and were still riding the same distances, despite not going in the same direction as intended!

Luckily, we made it onto the first, faster, train, finding the awkward-to- use bike cupboards a real challenge. We’d had a good feeling about getting aboard this train and we alighted in Exeter a while later knowing we could always dump the bike Ride On and catch the bus. Well we would have been able to if Ride-On was open. We later found out that it was still closed for Christmas holidays. It looked as though we were meant to ride back to Dawlish, so we just got on  with it.

The gentle ride down the Exe Estuary was stunning. The sun shone intermittently, with soft showers of rain and distant rainbows making our eyes sparkle. Tinted in shades of yellow the water almost sparkled as the sun sank low in the sky. There was nobody around, just us, and whilst we were pleased to arrive home, we felt we had had a proper adventure, just a different one from the one expected. Needless to say, the bike ran, and continues to run, faultlessly ever since. A few beers helped us to mellow out after the stresses of the day and we soon felt dog-tired from our efforts.

The next day we took the Vita out for another ride after I had done a little work on her. We cycled the lanes around Dawlish and Exminster, far from crowds and surrounded by peaceful and soft countryside. Sometimes you do what you plan and sometimes you do something you are forced into. Both are enjoyable and both have their own purpose. The bike that had let us down now showed no signs at all that it wouldn’t have got us home had we chosen to continue.

Uphill and down dale the Vita shone, and Teresa smiled. She loves this bike, and I have now promised to rebuild it for her. If I was shut in a garage for two years, I would complain. That’s what the Vita did. Now released from captivity, she is enjoying life as it should be, covering miles with smiles that only cycling can bring. The moral of the story is simple: never leave a bike alone for years, and if you have, give it a good service prior to riding it any distance.