I had an idea I was going to start this blog with an introductory post; a mission statement of sorts. I was getting around to it. But yesterday Flynn and I had a particularly interesting time of it, so hang the introduction, I’m going to dive right in.
My plan for yesterday was to head out of Bristol via Whitchurch, over the Mendips, through Cheddar and Congresbury and out to Weston-super-Mare, which is easy to get home from as it’s a mere half-hour train ride from Temple Meads. It was a good plan. Right up until it suddenly wasn’t.
We set out, Flynn and I, at first light, just before six. Fuelled by Weetabix, we took Route 3 out of Bristol and stopped for our first break at Chew Valley Lake around seven thirty.
The first break of the day is always my favourite. The world is still so quiet then. The sky was a broody, mottled grey and the lake was steely, but the grass was green, the reeds were a warm yellow-brown, and a pair of swans were drifting by on the water with their wings folded up behind them in that particularly regal style swans have. Before I could photograph them, they suddenly took to the sky in a flurry of honking and beating wings. I was left with the mallards and squirrels for company – two of the squirrels were engaged in a fierce and scrappy battle over the contents of the rubbish bin outside the Salt ‘n’ Malt. As soon as one bounded off with a mouthful of greasy paper, the other would dive in head first and then pop back up to defend his castle from the returning first squirrel until the second, too, found a worthy prize and skittered away with it. And so they went, around and around.
After a flapjack and some hot cocoa from my flask, I pressed on. The Mendips were beckoning. “Come at me then, you mothercusser, I’ll ‘avya,” I growled at the impending 850ft elevation gain, as the road rose up ahead of me and disappeared into a bend. When I puffed around the bend, the road ahead zigged the other way. After that it zagged. Then it zigged again. Always upward, always in my lowest gear, turning and turning and turning. It wasn’t fun, but I was relieved to find it actually wasn’t impossibly steep either. Getting up the north side of the Durdham Downs on Route 4 is worse. Several parts of Route 4 out to Swansea are much worse.
I did it. I did it without stopping, and felt like a major boss. So then there I was, up on the Mendips and extremely full of myself, unable to resist the opportunity for an “I’m the King of the World!” selfie. Propping my phone against a signpost at a crossroads, I set the camera to take three photos after a ten second delay, and just, just made it into position with the final snap.
Then it was smooth sailing across the top of the plain, with cows and calves to be seen aplenty, followed by a gradual sloping downwards toward Cheddar Gorge. The closer we got, the more Nice Rocks we found.
And then, as soon as I got into the gorge…
DO do DO do DO do
DO do DO do doodle-oo
DO do DO do DO do
(I ain’t afraid o’ no goats)
After that climb, I was hungry again. I decided to stop in the gorge for a Second Breakfast that would also be my second ever attempt at putting together a hot meal in the wild – and hopefully, my first successful attempt. As I whipped down through that shadowy cleft in the landscape, barely pedalling, the cold really began to chew through my clothes. So when I saw a grassy patch with some flattish rocks at the outside of a bend, I pulled over, threw on both my jumper and my hoody, and extracted my shiny new mess kit from my pannier.
I had first taken my mess kit out with me on my previous day trip with Flynn, a fortnight ago. It had been a very windy day, but I’d ensconced myself in a three-sided shelter on the platform of a village train station, and I had been about to open a pouch of curry when I realised I hadn’t brought a spoon. Since I didn’t fancy eating curry with my dirty fingers, I had ruefully packed it all away again and demolished a couple of flapjacks instead.
This time, I had rectified that error. I took the diligently packed teaspoon out from inside my smaller mess tin and set it aside. I poured water from my bottle into the small tin, and squeezed a pouch of All Day Breakfast into the larger tin. It was exactly like squeezing out a pouch of wet cat food in gravy, only even more awkward and messy because the pouch was three times larger. I had baked bean juice smeared up my right hand almost to the wrist by the time the whole meal was in the tin.
Then I set up my little hexamine cooker, arranged two fuel bricks overlapping each other slightly as shown in the diagram on the instruction leaflet, and took up my lighter.
I tried to light those bricks for twenty minutes, to no avail. No matter how carefully I put my back to the cold wind pouring slowly but persistently down the gorge, the exceedingly cheap little lighter just wouldn’t stay lit for long enough to allow the fuel bricks to catch. The couple of times a corner of a brick began to burn, the flame was snuffed out by the wind the moment I set the cooker down on the rock.
At last, my right thumb sore and threatening to blister, I gave up. I needed a windbreak, and a proper zippo lighter, and some backup matches certainly wouldn’t hurt. It would be much easier, actually, to simply strike a match and poke it into the gap where one fuel brick rested on the other. Lesson learned, I sat back and regarded my all-day breakfast dismally. It seemed to look back at me. I’m cold, it said. Join the club, I replied. I had nothing I could store it in for onward travel. I could either eat it as it was, or tip it out for the goats.
Waste not, want not. I ate it cold. Cold beans, cold mini sausages, cold chunks of omelette, and a few small, cold lumps I struggled to identify. Potato? Mushroom? Temperature aside, it was pretty good, though it bore a faint chemical aftertaste – the preservatives, I guessed. Of course, the cold food inside me made me even colder. By the time I’d done my washing-up (using the cold water in the small mess tin and a couple of old holey socks I’d brought to use as washcloth and tea towel) I was starting to shiver. A stiff drink of cocoa took the edge off, and then I packed up, the wet socks going under my pannier snap to dry. The best cure now for being cold was to get back on the road.
I sailed down through the rest of the gorge still wearing all my warm layers, and then connected with Route 26 to head north to Congresbury on the old Strawberry Line. In retrospect, I realise I really should have stopped at the little Tesco in Cheddar to buy more water, since I’d used all I had left on washing up. I didn’t think of it at the time. I must pay more attention to water in future; it’ll be extremely important to keep plenty on me when I’m finally fulfilling the mission statement.
Anyway, after a couple of miles on Route 26 I was much warmer again, and I took my jumper and hoody back off when I stopped to take this photo.
As I was passing out of the far end of this tunnel, there came a sudden loud hiss from my front wheel. I hit the brakes and leapt off at once. The hissing was so loud I identified the source in a second – a chunk of brown glass was lodged in my tyre. I pulled it out, and in another two seconds the tyre was completely flat.
Well, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t dealt with before. I unloaded Flynn, set him upside down at the side of the cycle path, and rolled up my sleeves.
Wheel off, tyre rim popped out, inner tube extracted. Tyre checked – nothing else stuck in it. The actual puncture repair could wait. Spare inner tube inserted, tyre rim popped on, pump pump pump pump pump, wheel back on bike. Throughout this process, almost every cyclist who passed slowed down to ask if I needed anything, and most of the joggers and dog-walkers checked in with me too. The one notable exception was a trio of teenage boys who zoomed by. One shouted “Should’ve gone to Bikesavers!” and then laughed, apparently extremely pleased with himself. Little cuss.
Back on the bike, and on up the Strawberry Line.
The sun was out by then and it was a beautiful morning, but I was heading into the wind now. It wasn’t terribly strong but it did make the going a little tougher. Never mind, soon I would be heading west and south again out to Weston-super-Mare. But I was getting thirsty, and remembering I had no water on me, so I decided to head all the way up to Yatton and call in at the wonderful Strawberry Line Café to rehydrate and use the facilities. When I arrived, a cluster of passengers were in the car park, waiting for a rail replacement bus service. I observed idly that the track was closed for works, but I didn’t think much of it.
The Strawberry Line Café is a pure delight and I thoroughly recommend it. Set in one of the original old station buildings, its stated purpose is to provide employment opportunities for people with learning disabilities. In fact its policy is to only employ people with learning disabilities, except for its shift supervisors. It’s generally patronised by a mix of rail passengers, passing cyclists and families with a member who has learning disabilities. They serve a variety of hot meals as well as all the usual hot and cold drinks, cakes, sandwiches etc you would expect. So that’s my plug for this trip: the Strawberry Line Café is doing good work in the world, consider spending some money there if you’re ever in Yatton. Also its mugs of tea are pleasingly massive.
Do you know, I sat in that café for twenty minutes and was about to leave when it finally occurred to me that this was the very stretch of track I was counting on to get me home from Weston-super-Mare. The track was closed. And while I could take one of those replacement buses home instead, Flynn couldn’t. I would have to either cycle him back to Bristol, or leave him behind in Weston-super-Mare and come back for him on Monday evening after work.
Well, that put paid to Weston-super-Mare. Flynn and I are a team – no man gets left behind. I would just have to continue north from Yatton and cycle back into Bristol. It wouldn’t be much of an increase in distance. So I leapt back onto Flynn, and then swore loudly. The front tyre was flat again.
I closed my eyes took a deep breath. Sweet are the uses of adversity, Ma would say. Whatever I’d overlooked in changing the inner tube, it was a mistake I wouldn’t make again. I just had to find out what it was.
First I sat down and patched the old inner tube I’d taken out earlier, and hung it up for the patch to set while I did the other work. Then – wheel off. Tyre rim popped out. Inner tube extracted. Pump pump pump pump pump. But, and it was the oddest thing: I couldn’t find a puncture anywhere on that inner tube, no matter how much air I put in it. The valve didn’t seem to be leaking either, and there was nothing stuck in the tyre. But man, that inner tube sure threw some bizarre shapes.
After ten minutes of passing the irregularly inflated tube before my lower lip, centimetre by centimetre, waiting to feel a tiny jet of escaping air that never materialised, I gave up. It must just be that the tube was faulty in some way, I fervently hoped. If there was still something tiny and sharp stuck in the tyre that I’d missed, I’d soon find out when I put the new tube in. I inserted the freshly-patched inner tube, reassembled the wheel, pumped it up, reassembled the bike. And then I packed up once again, and gingerly set out to the north. Every couple of minutes I darted an anxious glance at the front tyre, but it was holding its air. Once we’d passed through Clevedon and started eating up the miles toward Portishead, I finally began to relax. The tyre really was fine this time. But the headwind – that would be with me all the way home.
I knew cycling into Portishead would be a detour that added yet more miles to my day, but it had a Wetherspoon, and I was getting hungry again. The choice was clear, and a hot creamy mushroom risotto with roasted vegetables on the side did wonders for my fortitude after all the setbacks. Then it was back to Bristol by the reasonably direct if somewhat hilly Route 334, a blessedly uneventful leg which saw me coming down through Ashton Court around six in the evening.
the road ahead
the sky behind
So, that was the complete trip!
A summary of thing I learned:
- I need to get a zippo and some matches.
- I need to learn how to fashion a non-flammable windbreak for my hexamine cooker – my dad used to be in the army, I’ll ask him how he did it back in the day.
- I need to keep a closer eye on my water supply now I’m using extra for cooking, maybe bring more with me when I start out.
Okay! All in all, a pretty good day’s work. Time to start planning a trip for next weekend!
Chasing Laura 