Writing this several months after the London-Edinburgh-London cycling event (LEL) I’ve found my mind is already playing tricks with me. How lovely it was to cycle through the purple heather of the North York Moors. What fun it was to ride over into Weardale in the dead of night. And how refreshing it was in the afternoon heat to have my thirst quenched by the volunteer with a hose-pipe in Thixendale.
The gnarly bits have strangely faded from memory. Was it really a seven-hour slog from Malton to Barnard Castle, did I nearly freeze descending into St John’s Chapel at 4am on Tuesday morning, and wasn’t I lucky not to be watching a heart monitor as I slalomed unsteadily up Dalby Bank at Terrington west of Malton? Did the drivers in Essex repeatedly really squeeze me into the verge at every pass as I plodded across the final miles back to Loughton?
I had done LEL in 2017 – it had been a fabulous experience. But doing it a second time brought a new set of challenges – as much in the mind as in body. And in both cases the preparation was as troublesome as the actual doing. Here’s the tale of someone who nearly didn’t start.
The route to the start
When I arrived at registration in Loughton on 6 August, the best advice I could give anyone about LEL was that if you’d done it once you really shouldn’t put yourself through it again. I was only there to get my life back. LEL had taken over my mood during the preceding months. I didn’t comprehend why I had risked spoiling the memories of 2017 by attempting to do the whole thing over again.
Signing up
I’d been a fully paid-up AUK (Audax UK) since 2017, and had a guaranteed entry now for 2022. So, in January, and without any deep contemplation, I paid the money for LEL, bookended the week with two hotel reservations, and then promptly forgot about it all. I could cancel anyway if I changed my mind before the end of March and few people would be any the wiser.
Signing off
I used to commute most days in London on my Brompton (Brompton Bikes) – and I loved it. I’ve always been at home in city traffic. What’s not to like about cycling on the busy arterial roads of Cambridge, tricksy cycle lanes in Edinburgh, or for that matter the trek up to Loughton from Kings Cross. Far sooner that for me than the A70 from Carnwath to Edinburgh, or the B7076 between Gretna and Lockerbie.
But Covid put paid to commuting – and my Brompton now spends too much of its life unhappily folded. So, from 2020 onwards my only cycling was for “pleasure”. However, since the 2019 Paris-Brest-Paris (PBP) I’d been having doubts about audax. What I really longed for instead was slow tours where I could start after breakfast, stop for coffees, amble to lunch, and turn-in before dusk for a pint.
The most difficult bit about LEL was getting my head in the right place to turn up to Loughton in the first place! After all, 400 people DNSed (“Did Not Start”) for good reasons. I only turned up because I wasn’t clever enough to think of a good and honourable reason not to.
My main problem was that I just hadn’t been cycling much. For me n = 1.5 (the 0.5 is the Brompton). My “1” is a ten-year old Cannondale aluminium tourer. I’m fond of it in the way an old pullover feels comfortable – but I hadn’t been inspired to ride it over the winter. I had a new house to fix up, and it was a good time to insulate the loft, and build cupboards in the garage. The Cannondale sat still gathering sawdust.
In to action?
To rouse myself into action I signed up to do North West Passage – an audax event near Rochdale in February . The forecast looked a bit naff the night before so I figured that I’d just do the 120km route. The weather did its worst: it didn’t rain, it didn’t snow, it didn’t hail, it slushed! 6 inches of heavy soggy slush. Even the most considerate driver couldn’t help but spray me with icy water as the population of Blackburn swept by me on weekend trips to Asda and children’s swimming lessons. I bailed into a Starbucks on a motorway junction looking like something that had come in from post-climate change permafrost. I was just about able to fumble my credit card out of my wallet and pay for a latte and panini. I sat as far away from everyone else as possible, wrapped my hands closely round the coffee, and dripped into an expanding lake of icy water on the tiled floor. Once recharged I ventured out – and eventually the sun came out. So, may be for every negative there is a positive? But really, how on earth would I do LEL in August if I could only make 120km in February?
Kippered!
The search for alibis
The March date when I could silently withdraw had slipped by. I was now well and truly kipperred. My name was on the listing. I was a certified DNS now if I quit. LEL was now taking over my life. I couldn’t pencil in meetings with friends at weekends as I needed to spend at least some time on my bike. I needed a cast iron alibi to wriggle out now – and from April I set to conjuring up alibis. But most came with a stark admission of some shameful physical or mental weakness. I was overweight. I was getting older. I needed more sleep. I’d failed to buy a better bike through indecision.
Finally, I thought I had found a great alibi. I recalled I had done semi-permanent damage to my body on the PBP in 2019. I had had tingly feelings at all five points of contact between my body and the bike for many months after. In the autumn after PBP my hands got so bad it was keeping me awake at night. Now surely, I had to take this very seriously. And my bike was an inflexible aluminium frame, and the failure to get a better bike could be laid at the door of weak global supply-chains. The alibi was becoming convincing – maybe I could see a way to freedom and a summer without LEL!
All the gear?
As I hadn’t yet played the alibi card I reckoned that as a precaution I should get my bike serviced, and so took it to my local bike shop (Arthur Caygill Cycles in Richmond, Yorkshire). If I ever did do LEL the last thing I wanted was a volunteer cycle mechanic looking at me and the bike and silently judging both as a liability. I mentioned to the bike shop that I was having trouble with pins and needles on “longer rides”. Unfortunately, they began to unwind my alibi by suggesting that they could replace the aluminium fork with a new flexible carbon one, which would make for a smoother ride.
A week later I collected the bike. It was noticeably lighter – and was doubtless more kind to my hands. My spirits lifted – and I was now less worried about honing my alibi. What next? Obviously, I needed more and more new gear. A new red Carradice saddle bag, lighter tyres, and some aero-bars. There is something faintly ridiculous about aerobars on a touring bike – but in the final analysis they were brilliant.
Strava detox
After that I was going out on weekly 100-150km pootles mainly over the flatter bits of Teesside. However, my slow uplift in confidence was being eroded by Strava where my friends in the York Rouleurs appeared to be effortlessly knocking off 200, 300 and 400km rides over the Pennines, Peaks and Lake District at speeds I could only dream of. I self-prescribed a Strava detox – and cut myself off from even more friends! Needless to say, I also told as few people as possible about LEL. If Amundsen could leave Oslo in 1910 for the South Pole without even telling his crew (South Pole expedition), then I surely could be cagey about my plans for an August cycling “holiday” in Britain.
Doing LEL a second time
Turning up
I did eventually turn up at Loughton on 6 August – buoyed up by my new kit and a conviction that simply getting to Edinburgh would be respectable enough.
Doing LEL a second time was different. At registration everything was very familiar. I wasn’t as excited by the buzz of things, and superb organisation, as I had been five years ago. But I was still worried about doing physical damage to myself. And more than anything I was worried about simply getting bored by being on my bike almost continuously for five days. Notwithstanding a level of jadedness, and although I’m not religious, I was buoyed up by the LEL prayer of Graeme Holdsworth, the audaxing vicar, and 2022 volunteer!
Sleeping
I had had no firm plan for where to get to on the first day. Not over-thinking sleeping stops actually helped me in retrospect. I recalled the crowding at Louth in 2017, and decided after Saturday’s registration to get as far as Hessle in my first stretch. After meeting up with a group of VC167 folk I finally began to take things seriously, and with some luck was able to book myself into a room in the Premier Inn four minutes from Hessle control. I ended up sleeping there for 90 minutes and enjoyed their cooked breakfast. I’d then hoped to get to Brampton by my second night – but after the struggles of the North York Moors I was completely trashed. I couldn’t face going over the Pennines, so I pitched in at Barnard Castle for three hours sleep. On my penultimate day I decided to push on to Boston for my final stop. I’d previously stopped at Louth going south – and recalled just what a long slog it had been from there back to Loughton – and I wanted to make the last day easier on my head.
Route knowledge
It helps knowing the route – and apart from the sections to/from Dunfermline I’d ridden pretty much the whole route before. This helps in that you can pace yourself – and avoid the gloom that descends on you when a section becomes harder than you’d presumed. I was ready for the uphill slog out of Edinburgh towards Innerleithen, and then on the last day across north Essex – which I never expect to be hilly at all!
Avoiding boredom
I had prepared for boredom too. I listened to some podcasts and an audio book for the first time – and found that helped create variety on two or three days. I navigated by Garmin – but in 2017 had used paper maps. I did print off a set of maps just to look at as I cycled – and after an extensive trawl of Wikipedia had labelled the maps with points of interest for me to find en-route. Here are four: Ramsey Heights north of St Ives is exactly at sea level – and about one metre higher than the surrounding fen; the model of the Spitfire on the bridge over the Tees at Winston commemorates a Red Arrows pilot flying a Spitfire under the bridge in 1980 [The Winston Bridge Spitfire Story]; the lonely stretch on the A70 near the Clyde-Forth watershed in the Pentland Hills at Tarbrax is the site of one of Scotland’s best-known UFO incidents where the witnesses claimed to have been abducted by alien creatures; and, Thaxted in Essex prospered from the fourteenth century as a centre of cutlery production, supporting in turn its striking grade-one listed Guildhall.
A finisher!
So, I think I got round in the end more by sorting out the mental challenges than physical training – but then those carbon forks, the aerobars and the new Carradice saddle bag I’m sure made a huge difference. My hands and feet are still a bit tingly but I had no real issues at all whilst riding. Funny how LEL 2022 now feels like the fabulous event LEL was in 2017! Who knows I may even be foolish enough to sign up in 2025.
The vital statistics
| day | Start/Finish | Stop | HIGHLIGHT |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 13:00/05:26* | Hessle Premier Inn | Climbing over the steep Lincolnshire Wolds towards Louth at night with the lights of Belmont transmitter to the west. |
| Monday | 08:12/20:14 | Barnard Castle | The tops of the North Yorks Moors towards Osmotherley. |
| Tuesday | 01:29/19:35 | Dunfermline | Crossing the Forth Bridge. |
| Wednesday | 01:38/22:33 | Barnard Castle | Descending from Chapel Hill towards Middleton-in-Tees as the moon rose in the west. |
| Thursday | 04:22/00:16* | Boston | Impromptu pub stop in the afternoon heat in North Dalton |
| Friday | 04:35/17:51 | Loughton | Bollywood music with Indian group of cyclists at 6am in Spalding. |
Yorkbadger 