Long ride planning and fund-raising.

Meeting a fellow TC rider last weekend pricked my conscience. All our circumstances are different of course. he didn't look 50 for a start, but then I know that I'm not the oldest rider by a long way. None-the-less I am overdue a longer than long ride and am no longer adding to my psychological reservoir by just doing 100 milers.

On Sunday I shall get out to do another of those before work, but the following weekend I have planned a 160 mile route back from Amersham, where I am due to visit family. This will take me well into the night and a little of the following morning too.

On the 19th June I have now planned a 600 mile round trip from here to Aberystwyth. I plan to start at midnight to mirror the start of the TCR, with the added benefit of hopefully crossing the Welsh hills in some kind of daylight. All I need now is a favourable wind.

On the fund-raising front I am hugely grateful to Linda for her work on our business cards. These are heading to the printers this week. If anyone would like to help distribute a few, please do send a message via facebook or twitter. The more followers of the event come the 24th July, the better. Initally we are printing 1000 on which you will find the details below.


In the mean time I shall continue to harry the local press. This was our local paper last week, for which I'm very grateful.

All the awareness I can raise about the work the Alzheimers Society do, the better.

Blog :- www.transcontinentalbikerace.blogspot.com
Twitter : -  @johnnymbakewell
Race website for tracking: -  www.transcontinentalrace.com
Fund raising page: - www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell4alzheimers/

What's the chance?

As a postscript to my visit to Scotland I have included a couple of pictures here because they were stunning places to visit.

On the way, we stopped at the Leaderfoot Viaduct. Built in 1863, this incredibly beautiful structure crosses the Tweed and was originally designed to carry the Berwickshire railway. Mmm, rather you than me. I think I might be keeping my eyes firmly on my paper!

Really though this post is to say how amazed I was to bump into another TCR racer at Scotch Corner as we headed south.

Paul Ward, Race No. 121, who from what I could gather was in the middle of an extremely lengthy ride, was instantly recognisable from his bike. Set up almost exactly like mine, I asked him if he was training for anything in particular later this year!!

'Oh, a race from Belgium to Turkey. The Transcontinental Race,' he said. 'Really', I answered. 'I'll see you there, then.'

Actually more than anything, what he made me aware of was the need to clock a double 100, some time soon. Just psychological you know. Where's my diary?

www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell4alzheimers/

Anstrother and Crail

On our last evening in St Andrews, with my daughter behaving shockingly like a university student, attending a beach party and bonfire, my brother and I headed south to the fishing villages of Anstrother and Crail. You could go almost anywhere around this coast, -indeed anywhere around the Scottish coast, -and find photo opportunities, wildlife and fresh, fresh air.

I of course travelled by bike. I was so pleased to have brought it with me, squeezing it into the car and hoping that all the returning student stuff would still fit in around it. Any of the country lanes around here make for beautiful cycling with Corn Buntings singing from the fence posts and telephone lines and Lapwings careering across the skies in their wild and carefree dance.

The fishing villages on the south east peninsula of Fife are stunning. Crammed with small cobbles streets, teaming high walled harbours and beautiful boats.
Crail is the more picturesque of the two and we spent most time there listening to the haunting calls of the male Eider as they marshalled their wives and children under the watchful eye of a hungry Herring Gull. If the gull flew too close, the little duckings would swarm together into a tight little ball surrounded by their parents. Amazing to watch.

In the end between packing up a first year student and visiting my old home, I managed 78 miles of the best cycling this year. This also brought my average back up above 20 a day for 145 consecutive days and my total to just shy of 2900 for the year.

www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell4alzheimers/

St Andrews the cobbles and the Open Golf Championship

This is not Geraardesbergen, but St Andrews does have some cobbles. Not having not ridden on them on this bike in particular, and in any case, not recently, I delighted in the opportunity to imagine myself at the start of the race in Flanders a couple of months from now. (OK, so it was flat, in the sunshine and not midnight, but that's what imagination is for.)

It wasn't comfortable. I can't see myself sitting in the saddle much and am already looking forward to heading south toward Mont Ventoux and the first checkpoint 1,000 km away. I have in the mean time been looking at the Muur on line and came across this interesting graphic on Strava:-

http://veloviewer.com/segment/608907/Muur+-+Kapelmuur+(zonder+Vesten)

I didn't get back on the bike until later in the evening, but instead excitedly gazed down the 18th fairway of the Old Course, with the grandstands up in anticipation of the carnivals arrival in a few weeks time.

As much as anything I was amazed at how accessible it was. We walked across the roadway that divides the approach to the 18th hole, to cries of 'Four!' We even managed to stand on the famous bridge. Forgive me, I was never a golfer. Indeed my Doctor advised me never to become one, since at the time of my diagnosis with Ankylosing Spondilitis, he realised that flexibility was never again going to be a strong point. I can but dream, however.

The ripple in the water behind me is not my ball! 

 www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell4alzheimers/

Craigrothie on the way to Hogwarts (St Andrews Uni)

I am indebted to my elder brother for offering to accompany me to Scotland to pick up my eldest daughter at the end of her first year at university. (I can't believe that I'm saying that for a start.) Anyway, it has afforded me the opportunity to cycle around Fife for a couple of days, or at least between hanging out with my brother.

So yesterday morning I retraced my steps along the A916 with a little detour past Balgonie Castle. Built around 1296 apparently, by a Knight, Sir Robert Sibbald. It is open to the public by appointment and somewhere that I shall definintely take the boys next time we're up here.

This mornings visit, being in daylight allowed me to take some photos of my old stamping ground. I have nothing but fond memories of the place, but my brother's experience was otherwise.

Get this!

So shortly after we arrived in the village, my mother took a knock at the front door. Two local kids are standing there. 'Is your boy in?' they ask. My mother, thinking how nice it was that children from the village are so welcoming, invites them in to meet my brother, then about 5, I guess, and leaves them to it in the front room.

'So. Who do you support, Rangers or Celtic?' begins one of the lads. My brother, totally ignorant of the significance of this question in Scotland, thinks for a minute. Mmm, well Rangers starts with an 'R' and Celtic starts with with an S', he thinks. So I'll pick the the last one in the alphabet. 'Seltic' he says confidently. At which point the two boys proceed to beat him up and promptly leave the house!

They became friends later apparently. That was his initiation. He was always forgiving in nature!

I apologise for the pure self-indulgence of this post, but it was so much fun to return to somewhere after so long. I called in at the old house and was kindly shown around by the current owners. My parents had bought it as a wreck, returning it to habitability over the next 18 months, before having to move again with work. Not the original plan.

The house sits at the bottom end of the village opposite my old primary school. That hasn't changed either. Not much modernisation here.

At the bottom of the lane was a turning to the Dovecot that we remember playing around and I was told that I could climb from here back onto the main road to St Andrews via a little muddy track. Can't say I wasn't warned!



For a cyclist, hills are a challenge. Sometimes a grind and sometimes...when they're downhill for miles, just pure unrivalled exhiliration. So it was, cruising into town at just under 40 mph, I arrived in St Andrews. The seat of my daughters learning for the next 4 years. Halleluia!

Definitely coming back here.

www.justgiving.com/john-bakewell4alzheimers/

Glenrothes and Back Spasm

We crossed the Forth road bridge arriving at the Premiere Inn in time for a dinner. Since the evening before I had been suffering from a pretty darn painful back spasm. Something that comes from time to time, but this one was not going to let go any time soon.

Be that as it may, I wasn't going to let it stop me and headed out at 9pm bound for the village of Craigrothie. We lived there when I was about 4. It was my first school and just about the farthest back that I can clearly remember.

Anyway, I had to get there first. My attempt to download the area around Fife from Openstreetmap had clearly failed, so that I had nothing more than the most rudimentary base map to navigate with. It was windy and unlike Norfolk, either up or down, but never flat.

The map was good enough and despite the sometime considerable discomfort, I made the most of the tail wind that blew me up the inclines toward Cupar and Craigrothie.

Nothing had changed. The little village school was just as I remembered it. Our house of solid chiseled rock, as immovable as the hills that surrounded it. I checked in on the tiny burn, where we used tickle trout as youngsters. I can't imagine leaving my boys to go play in a stream at less than 5, but we were never in. I wonder that my mother knew where we were half the time. The school of hard knocks. No doubt where the groundwork for this adventure all began.

WInd or no wind, the return journey was pretty much all downhill and by the time I got back to the hotel, it was gone 11, but with another 30 miles in the bag. Not bad after driving all the way to Scotland with my brother on the back of a night shift.

2875 total

Pastures new

Yesterday I headed north by car to pick my daughter up from St Andrews in Fife. There's never much to say about long car journeys but I was delighted to meet Robert Butter here at the border.

Robert, from Holland, had just climbed to the Northumberland border with Scotland from the north and was then heading to Newcastle before taking a westerly course for the English Lakes. His bike setup reminded of my own Land's End to John O'Groats epic in 2010.
johnnygiant-lejog4samaritans.blogspot.com/

I had everything I needed to complete the 1300 mile route, including walking gear to scale the 3 Peaks on the way and the bike was as a consequence incredibly heavy. A far cry from the TCR? Maybe.

Anyway, safe journey Robert (the Bruce) Butter. No giving up. TO be fair, he didn't look like the kind of guy who was gonna do anything of the sort, but I couldn't resist regaling the story of the his near namesake, since this cahnce meeting on the borders of Scotland.

Robert if I confused the heck out of you, I apologise.( Look up Robert the Bruce and it will all be clear.)