We made it!

That’s 13 days on the road, from one end to the other. It looks like a really long way on that map. It all seems a bit like a blurry dream now though… The countryside certainly morphed a lot on the way, as did the accents and architecture. I spent enough time in the sun to develop ridiculous cycling tan lines that are going to take a very long time to fade. My hands still feel swollen and numb from relentless handlebar gripping. I also spent long enough with the others in the group to assign them Hogwarts houses (not that they know it). And yet.. it still only took a few days of cycling to reach Scotland, and a few days more to reach the top of the island.

For a relative time scale, it would take me around 11 to 14 hours (call it one day) to travel from Falmouth to Edinburgh by train. That same journey on the route we took would take me seven to eight days by bike. We may conclude from this that cycling is only a week slower than train travel 😉 Or, that with some working wheels and a lovely bunch of encouragement, even a week of cycling doesn’t feel that long 🙂 Or, that I’m already forgetting the miserable parts with rose-tinted hindsight…

Not all of it was fun. I think perhaps my previous posts might give some hint of that. There were some racing highs and swooping lows, some in very rapid succession, many had nothing to do with hills (which I’m sure made me very tedious to be around – sorry Dad!).

I have learned that the sleeps and the eats are excellent friends to maintain, and that a kind word from someone else can give a powerful push when the sleeps and the eats aren’t enough. I will also never, ever dismiss the wonder of ibuprofen and paracetamol ever again.

I have learned that the brain will happily fling forth the most random songs at the slightest provocation to dance round my head for the next however-many miles. Great if it is a good song. Not so great if it isn’t.

I have learned that 90 miles is a Very Long Way to cycle in a day (for me), but that I can do it if I have to. And repeat the distance again tomorrow, if I have to. I’ve also learned that I would prefer to linger in places a little longer, to see more, read more, dwardle more.

But most of all, I’ve learned that people are great. Re-learned, I should say (I do like people, really). I was more than a little apprehensive about spending the next fortnight with a group of strangers (except for my Dad), especially after months of PhD-enforced writing-up solitude. Socialising is a skill that requires practice, but socialising did not feature in my training program at all. There were definitely days when I would rather have cycled up another hill than face company over dinner. But a bit of time and hardship shared over endless hills in dratted weather brought out some of the best in everyone. Thank you Trailblazers for keeping me sane at the back. And especially thank you Dad, for the kind words of encouragement when I eventually reached the end of the day’s ride, a couple of hours after you.

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Ride tally

• Distance cycled: 976 miles
• Height climbed: something over 20,200 meters (yes I know I’m using different measuring systems – all the road signs are in miles and mountains are in meters, so I’m sticking with it)
• Calories burned: at least 40,000
• Days cycled: 13
• Days I put on damp socks: 11
• Time on the bike: nearly 100 hours
• Time on the telly: 7 seconds
• Bottles broken: 1
• Floods cycled through: 4
• Punctures: a miraculous 0
• Times that I got off and walked: also a miraculous 0
• Number of times I cried on the road: 1
• Number of times I wanted to cry on the road: >1
• Number of times I laughed on the road: more than the number of times I wanted to cry *

*I think that last point is the most important one 🙂