Worms to Catch Read online

  Then it was time to ride. First I went out on the Indian and set the record at 70.33 mph, beating the 60-mph limit that would get the attempt an official Guinness record, and then I had a go on the triple. I was over the moon that I’d done 80 mph in practice, but I couldn’t quite do it again on TV.

  I came in and was told I’d done 78.15 mph. I asked if I could have another go, but they’d run out of time and it didn’t happen. I’d pushed my luck. I wasn’t thinking, Give me another hour on this thing. I was never going to do 90 mph. I might have done 85, but it was all guesswork, because I was riding around blind. I’m not sat here thinking anyone has denied me a chance. I have no regrets, because you can’t see what I could see, which was fuck all. I bet I shut off a fraction before the green line on the live telly attempt. I had proved I’m not a TV wanker, too.

  I was dead pleased with how it all went, but I was most pleased for the Channel 4 and North One lot: Neil Duncanson, Ewan, Tom and the rest. It had been a way of life for them for a month. They’d thought about everything, and the hard work and effort they put in impressed me and stuck with me more than the experience of riding the wall at 80 mph. It was a long programme for four or five minutes of riding, but I didn’t hear anything negative about it.

  There was a big after-show party at the hotel the TV lot were all staying at, but Sharon, Cammy and his missus, Hannah, loaded the van up with me, and we got back to my house at about ten, unloaded the van, had a beer and went to bed because I had to be at work the next morning. There was no high-fiving or whooping. I gave Cammy the Guinness certificate. I’m not ungrateful, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Never say never, but I’d be surprised if this record is ever broken.

  I got into work the next morning, but Moody wasn’t there. He turned up late and explained that his missus had an epileptic fit in the audience and got taken away in an ambulance. He said, ‘That was embarrassing, wasn’t it? I missed the best bit.’ Dry as you like. It was all too much for Belty, our valeter at the truck yard, and he didn’t turn up till Wednesday.

  I’m glad I managed to achieve what I set out to do, but even in the van on the way home on Easter Monday I was saying to Sharon, ‘What’s the next thing?’

  CHAPTER 7

  I’d only slept four and a half hours in four days

  WITH THE WALL of death bike built and the record broken, I could spend more time training for the Tour Divide. I didn’t know what I was letting myself in for. I knew it was 2,745 miles, alone and unsupported, only relying on what I could carry on my bike or my back. I knew it involved the equivalent of cycling up seven Mount Everests. I knew that the people who set quick times were sleeping rough for four hours or less a day, but the only way you know if you can finish something like the Tour Divide is to try to do it. I wanted to get a feel for what it might be like, so I planned a training ride with Jason Miles, the top endurance mountain-bike racer that I broke the 24-hour tandem distance record with in 2014. We called it ‘the coast to coast to coast’.

  The idea was to ride from one coast of England to the far side of Scotland, get the ferry to Northern Ireland, then ride from the bottom to the top. We would treat it like I’d treat the Tour Divide: ride a bloody long way, sleep for a bit, ride some more. Not only did we want to leave the east coast and ride west, we also wanted to ride as many trail centres as we could do, and do the same in Ireland. Trail centres are purpose-built mountain-bike tracks that are dotted around the countryside. Some have nothing but a car park at the start and one or more signposted and maintained tracks through the woods to follow, others have cafés and bike shops and even elevated trail sections made from wood.

  I chose Berwick-upon-Tweed, right on the Scottish border, as our start point. We would meet there late on the night of Wednesday 13 April. With the Tour Divide filling my head I came up with another idea. Any spare time I had I wanted to spend riding, so any way I could lengthen the ride I thought was a good idea. I worked late on Tuesday night, getting everything finished at the truck yard, and instead of driving up to Berwick, I reckoned I’d ride there to meet Jason.

  So, at eight on Wednesday morning, I left home on the Salsa Fargo I planned to ride in the Tour Divide. This wasn’t the first long ride I’d done in 2016. In January I set off from home, rode to the north of Scotland and, once I got there, had a night in a hotel before taking part in the Strathpuffer 24-hour mountain-bike race, which I’d done a few times before. It was cold and hard, dark and wet for most of the time, but what did I expect? It was January, in Scotland.

  I rode on my Rourke single speed, so only one gear, meaning I had to slog up the hills in a gear higher than you might normally use. I’d ridden up through England on my own, but then 50 miles south of Edinburgh I met Alan, who, along with the Dungait brothers, I’d done a lot of biking with for years. We rode together from there up to Strathpuffer, a village in the Highlands, north of Inverness, where the event is held. On the way up the chain had totally dried out and was graunching like hell because of all the shit and blather. Alan had an idea to get some butter from a café to lubricate it.

  The ride to the Strathpuffer was another thing I’d set my mind to do and it hadn’t broken me, even though it was only a few months after the operation to bolt my spine together. The weather wouldn’t be as bad on the coast to coast to coast, but the mileage would be higher.

  Leaving Grimsby, I didn’t use a map. I was just riding off the compass on the Garmin, heading north. As long as I kept going that way I’d work it out. I rode over the Humber Bridge into Yorkshire, staying on small roads from then on. From Malton I knew a few back roads, and I knew that when I got to Northallerton I wanted to be heading more north-east, and then a bit north-west.

  Last time I rode up this way, to the Strathpuffer, I went a bit further west, so this time I stuck east and headed towards the North York Moors. I got to the topside of Malton and followed true north on goat tracks. Five miles in, I was wondering if I’d done the right thing. It was a proper dirt track, which was alright, because I was on a mountain bike – a bit of an oddball-looking mountain bike, but built to cope with it. The bike was loaded up with sleeping bag, roll mats, inner tubes, chain, spare set of clothes and toothbrush. I didn’t know where the trail would end, but I knew it wouldn’t be a dead end. You never reach a dead end on a mountain bike because one dirt track always leads to another. The weather was spot on till one or two in the afternoon, then it pissed it down for most of the day and night. After 50 miles of these tracks, seeing no one, I came to a road with no idea where I was. I cycled into the nearest village and found out it was Great Ayton, near Guisborough. I was in Yorkshire, but only just, and right on the Cleveland border, eight miles from the centre of Middlesbrough.

  It was four or five o’clock, and I found somewhere in the village to get loaded up with pork pies. I was loving the ride, even though I was soaked through. I had no one telling me what to do, no phone, and all I had to do was follow my compass and pedal north. It was great. It doesn’t have to stop raining for long for you to dry out. I was wearing Lycra leggings with baggy shorts over the top; a Hope cagoule-type thing and Endura wool top; short socks; Endura gloves; and Sidi cycling shoes with old waterproof overshoes that I taped to my feet and only took off once in four days.

  As I rode around Middlesbrough, the weather was misling – that drizzly, misty, soaking rain. I had the choice of bridle paths from Middlesbrough nearly to Newcastle, but they’d take me a fair way west before I got going north again. I’d been on them before and the Garmin will take me on them, but the A19 is true north. It’s legal to ride a bike on this dual carriageway, but you’re an idiot if you do. It’s so dangerous – you’re asking to get run over. But, I thought to myself, it’s rush hour, the roads are heaving, so nothing is going too fast. Confirming that I am an idiot I set off towards Newcastle on the A19, and pedalled the 35 miles right to the Tyne Tunnel.

  You’re not allowed to ride a pushbike through the Tyne Tunnel. You have to go into the office
and they put the bike in a van and take you through. I’d met the maintenance lads in the office when I’d cycled up to the Strathpuffer in January, and they remembered me from then. I had a brew in their tea room.

  I’d gone from Yorkshire with the ‘Tha knows’ accent, not seen anyone, then come out in Great Ayton, with a Middlesbrough accent, and now I was at the Tyne Tunnel with ‘Hadoway and shite, champion man’ Geordies. I’d only been on my bike half a day and I’d heard all these different accents.

  It was seven or eight by the time I got through the Tyne Tunnel, and I knew Berwick was 70 or 80 miles north on B roads, so I decided to ride up the more direct way on the A1 rather than going on the coast road. Again, I was asking for trouble, pushbiking on such a fast and busy road, but I got away with it. And north of Newcastle the A1 isn’t like it is south of the city. It’s a two-way road for a lot of the way.

  I reached Berwick after two on Thursday morning, 18 hours after leaving home.

  I’m not a big McDonald’s fan, but I’ll stop in for tea if there’s nowhere else, and I would spend a lot of time in McDonald’s on this ride. Those 24-hour places are good when you’re pushbiking like this. They’re open, for a start, they’ve got bogs with hand driers, they’re handy for loading up calories, and as long as you keep eating it doesn’t matter what you look or smell like, they let you in. I chose the fattest thing I could see. I get the biggest burger with the most shit on it possible. What I realised on these rides was that every McDonald’s plays the same music. It made me wonder, in a small way, what our world is coming to. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Northern Ireland or London, the music is the same. I imagined them having meetings at head office about what kind of music is going to be on next month’s playlist. The answer is always the same: ‘Just modern shit.’ I kipped in the McDonald’s for half an hour, with my forehead on the table, waiting for Jason.

  When he arrived, having left home at one in the morning to drive up from Manchester, he unloaded his bike, parked his car where he was happy to leave it for three or four days, and we went over the plan quickly before setting off at five. The first part of the route was six hours on the road from Berwick to the first trail centre at Innerleithen. We met another lad, Sam, one of Jason’s mates, who would do the rest of the Scottish part of the route with us.

  Innerleithen, near Peebles, on the Scottish border, is one of the 7stanes mountain-bike trail centres on Scottish Forestry Commission land. There are eight locations, but Innerleithen and nearby Glentress are counted as one, and the trail centres are spread across the width of Scotland, all south of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The stane part of the name comes from the old Scottish word for stone, and there is a carved stone at each of the centres. There are trail centres all over Britain, but the 7stanes are some of the most popular – a big draw for folk from the whole of Scotland and beyond.

  We weren’t going hard at it, pacing ourselves for the rest of the ride, but we were going too hard to talk. The 11-mile loop around Innerleithen took summat like two hours. There wasn’t a café or anything there, so we set off straight away to Glentress, only half an hour’s ride down the road, for a good feed there. This is one of those trail centres with good facilities, like a bike shop, café, a bike-hire place and even showers. We only needed the café, and I had a jacket potato with everything you can get on it and a massive slice of cake. Anything with calories will do. I had been nibbling on pork scratchings all the time too. On a ride like this I get sick of eating. You’re burning so many calories, and if you begin to feel hungry, it’s too late. You can’t let your body run into the reserve, because your energy has gone. Every bakery or butcher’s I passed I would stop. I had an hour’s kip at Glentress at the side of the road. I was out like a light. I hadn’t slept since Tuesday night, and it was Thursday dinnertime. I wasn’t hanging out my arse, but we knew we weren’t going to make Newcastleton, the next trail centre, in the daylight, so it didn’t matter if I had an hour’s sleep.

  I hadn’t washed since Tuesday, and I was suffering with rashes from the stale sweat and dry skin – even up my nose was giving me grief. We left Glentress at four, heading for Newcastleton, 60 miles away to the south-east, in the middle of nowhere and in the opposite direction to the west coast we were aiming for.

  We reached Newcastleton on B roads, arriving there at gone midnight. I put any extra clothes I had over what I was already wearing and swapped my cycling helmet for a woolly hat, before climbing into my sleeping bag at the side of the road. I didn’t have a tent – I wouldn’t take one on the Tour Divide, so there was no point. I had two or three hours’ kip, but I was still cold. It felt like good practice for America.

  We got up at first light, about five o’clock, and rode the Newcastleton trail for a couple of hours. People drive for hours to get to the trail centres for a pedal round, and I was enjoying riding them, even though the bike I was on wasn’t the best tool for the job. It’s got a hardtail, only 100 mm of front suspension travel and those handlebars, but it was going to have to do the same kind of riding that the trail centres would throw at it in America, so I wanted to give it stick to see what, if anything, broke on it or needed changing. Something like an Orange Gyro or Five, a full-suspension bike, would be better for the trail centres, a bike that deals with the ruts and bumps at speed. But they’re heavier bikes, and that weight, multiplied over 2,745 miles and all that climbing, is no good. The Salsa I was riding had drop bars, called woodcutter bars, not regular mountain-bike bars, and it wasn’t easy riding trails with them, but I had to try it. The benefit of the bars, with extra time-trialling bars bolted to them, is that they give a load of variation to where you can put your hands so you can change your body position and give yourself a rest. It’s comfy, but the bike’s slow because it’s still a heavy bike compared to the one I’d use to race in the Strathpuffer.

  We headed to the village shop to get breakfast. My method for deciding what to eat was picking up what looked tasty and comparing the weight of everything in my hand to see which was the heaviest. I picked up some custard slices, and they were heavy buggers, so I had them, thinking they’d be full of calories.

  The next trail centre was Ae Forest, just west of the M74 near Dumfries. I had probably covered 350 or 400 miles since leaving home, and we had 40-odd miles and three hours to Ae. We stopped at a café for a banana milkshake, feeling under no pressure. I rang up Nutt Travel in Northern Ireland, to book a ferry.

  At Ae we met Michael Bonney from Orange, the mountain-bike company. He was one of the top men there and I met him after I mentioned I had an Orange in a column for Performance Bikes years ago. Back in March 2013, Michael was out on a road ride with friends when he crashed his bicycle, just from a second’s loss of concentration, and went off the side of the road. It wasn’t anything unusual, the kind of crash people have all the time and climb back on their bike with nothing worse than a skinned knee, but Michael broke his neck and severed his spinal cord and was permanently paralysed from the neck down. A charitable trust was set up for him, and someone suggested our coast-to-coast-to-coast ride could become a way of raising money. I had no problem with that. I was doing the ride anyway, and we did it in aid of the Ride for Michael Trust.

  There was a local TV crew at Ae Forest. I’m not sure how they happened to be there, but it must have been someone at the Trust who organised it. I’m not a big charity sort of man, but I have done plenty of stuff when it’s meant something to me, and if it could help Michael out, then all well and good. He’s had it hard and he’s getting on with it, and I admire that. People had kindly donated money, and Michael got summat like £5,000 from the coast to coast to coast, I was told.

  We didn’t have time to ride the Ae Forest trail because we had to get to Cairnryan for the ferry. We missed the Kirroughtree trail centre too, because we were running a bit late and it was pissing it down. It was 85 miles to Cairnryan, and we had eight hours to do it. Now we were taking turns at the front, like they do in races like the Tour de France.
The rider at the front is taking the brunt of the wind and those behind are riding close enough to be in the slipstream and have a slightly easier time of it. You do your bit at the front – don’t go mad, only a few minutes – then pull out to the right so the other riders can come up the inside of you, and then you tag on the end, the place that’s got the most aerodynamic benefit. You recover as best you can for another shift at the front. My arse was a bit sore by this point. I was trying a new seat. I’d always used SDG seats, but the Salsa came with a WTB and I quite liked it.

  People go out for an 85-mile ride on a weekend and it would be a proper ride, but we had 85 miles to go in the dark to the ferry, and I’d already done 205 miles the first day and over 400 miles since leaving home. It was minus two with the wind chill and pissing it down. I wasn’t cold while I was on the bike, but as soon as you stop it gets you.

  Sam wasn’t going to Ireland with us, so his dad met us at the ferry. We climbed in the back of his van and had a brew. Jason was shivering so much he was spilling his tea. He’s as hard as nails, but he thought he was borderline hypothermic. He said, ‘We have to get going.’ He wasn’t saying he wanted to stay in the van longer to get warm. He knew that getting back on the bike and starting pedalling again would be better.

  We rolled on to the P&O ferry from Cairnryan to Larne. Cairnryan is near Stranraer, and if you’ve ever had to ride or drive there for the ferry to Ireland or the Isle of Man, you know it’s a long way west.

  We got another right feed on the ferry and the crew really looked after us. We were let into the lounge, and because we were soaking, one of the crew asked if we’d like our shoes putting in the drying room. There was complimentary wine, so me and Jason drank a bottle between us. Red wine has a good calorie value, so it was doing us good.