1993 Biking Britain

Disasters – LARGE and small

Thirteen miles outside Ullapool, in the middle of nowhere, my back tyre shredded along the rim, and the tube burst through the hole and punctured. I decided I would abandon my bike at the first house I came to and hitch a ride into Inverness some 40 miles away, to buy a new tyre and tube. After pushing my bike for three miles or so, I came across an isolated holiday home where I was not only given permission by young Steve to leave my bike, but was allowed to lock it in the shed and take the key with me in case he and his girlfriend were out when I got back. And so with shredded tyre in hand (clearly a damsel in distress!), I hitched two rides into Inverness: the first car containing a family with a tow-headed boy-child who asked, “D’ye ken Tom ’n Jerry?”; the second a businessman who’s business took him just into Inverness and next door to a bicycle shop! Hitching back with my new tyre I got a lift with a butcher from Lewis Island who had come to the mainland to collect a truck load of lambs for slaughter. His inebriated friends kept asking me the same set of questions over and over again. Every time he swore, the driver would nudge him and whisper: “Ssshh, you’re swearing”. Back at Steve’s I replaced my tyre and completed my interrupted journey to Garve in record time – 18 miles in 90 minutes.

In beautiful, beautiful Chester my beautiful bike, at last exactly the way I wanted it, was stolen. I had chained it to a bicycle post outside a busy pub and gone to see a movie. And when I came out, with just enough time to get back to the youth hostel before closing time, it was gone. The police told me that theft is the biggest growth section in the bicycle industry and that my bike was probably already in a warehouse being stripped, painted and reassembled for sale in Europe. Of course I was uninsured and so had to dip deep into my dwindling resources to buy a new bike on which to complete my journey. I got a bike with 18 gears (as opposed to 21) and could only afford to equip it with a gel saddle and a new odometer and not the other little luxuries to which I had grown accustomed: water bottle holder, rearview mirror, front pannier for my camera bag, gel handlebar covers, special tyres and so on. MAJOR disaster!

On my second day on the new bike, I got my first ever puncture. Before I left for Britain I was bragging that I had not had one Puncture in the year I cycled to and from work in Japan, had not even carried a pump with me in Korea, and was not planning on any punctures on this trip either. But on the outskirts of Shrewsbury I ran over a two-inch headless nail and that was that. The sun was shining and the disaster proved more of an adventure with me upending my bike on a sunny bank and spending a considerable amount of time working out how to fix a puncture. In fact it only really qualified as a disaster because I had made a no-puncture bet with a Groundswell colleague and so certain was I of winning that I could not remember what I had bet!

The road on which I entered Bath was under construction, men and large yellow vehicles galore. To pass them I had to cycle up onto the pavement. At the end of the pavement I bounced my bike down onto the road and much to my astonishment my handlebars came loose and twisted 90 degrees. In the ensuing confusion, I lost control of the bike and down it went. As I was travelling very slowly, I managed to get my feet onto the ground so that I didn’t join the bike, but the bottom of my culottes got tangled and as the bike fell it began to drag my clothing off. To save my bike and camera or my modesty – that was the question. Modesty won!