TAN HILL 200 21.07.2013 CAPITULATION AND COINCIDENCE
This ride is a very hilly loop of the northern dales, taking riders from Padiham, near Burnley over the Nick Of Pendle, Tatham Fell via Cross Of Greet, Buttertubs and West Stonesdale to Tan Hill before returning via Arkengarthdale and over Harkerside Moor and Kidstones to Gargrave and back to Padiham. I've done it twice before and was really looking forward to it. My climbing was going well and I was buoyed up by my successful assault on Wainstalls above Oxenhope towards the end of a 200 the weekend before. I rode out the twenty miles from home near Rochdale, setting off into a fret as the weeks of sunny weather began to break. However, it was still warm enough and the forecast promised better weather in the afternoon, so I was hopeful of getting pictures on the way round.
In the middle of Todmorden I was surprised to see a beautiful ginger deer as it panicked its way across the main road in front of Morrisons and into the bushes on the hillside behind. I was delighted but should have realised it might be an omen: the last time I had seen an “urban” deer had been in Ripponden on my way to the Red Rose Ride from Halifax – and that had been a pretty hard day out.
I felt fine as I pulled into the car park in Padiham that serves as the départ and was soon talking to old friends Graeme McCulloch, Bob Bialek, Cecil Ilsley, Sean Townley and Ade Hughes. Organiser Andy Corless came up for a chat and to hand me my card and I made the acquaintance of the redoubtable climber Billy Weir, who was up from London. It was going to be a great day and I hung on to this thought for about two hundred yards, as I choked on the smoke from Ade's tyres as he beamed himself into the distance.
This ride starts uphill but the first test is not for at least half a kilometre, when it steepens towards a hamlet known as Cavaliers. I knew I was in trouble already. One minute, Cecil and I were talking, the next, he was disappearing into the distance. This is only the first of twenty chevrons on this ride and people were soaring away from me as if I was actually rolling backwards down the hill. What was going on? It seemed that my legs were made of lead, no power getting to them.
My mood was further lowered by having to climb Nick Of Pendle on the small chain-ring. Now, I know it has four distinct chevrons (one of them a double) in a couple of kilometres but I would normally get up this on the middle chain-ring and had done so only a couple of weeks previously. My breathing was fine, it was just the legs as I ground up to the notch in the hillside, where Andy was waiting with his camera. I said that I was feeling rough as I passed and Andy encouraged me by lying that I wasn't far behind.
I rolled down past the skiing club, towards Clitheroe, resting my legs and hoping I'd soon feel better. I'd never felt like this at any stage during a ride, even a six-hundred. I was already looking for reasons as I kept turning the cranks over so as not to fall off. Was it the run of poor nights? But I did a 600 and one of the hilliest 400s under similar conditions of sleep loss. Is something wrong with my heart? But I'm not getting breathless at all. Earlier in the week I'd had a wisdom tooth out; a brief, painless procedure but one that had involved seven or eight injections resulting in a face still swollen on the day of the ride. Perhaps the anaesthetic was to blame?
From Clitheroe I took the by-now familiar road north to Waddington and passed the famous cyclists' café, the Country Kitchen Café. Waddington is a beautiful village with a fine church and almost as many pubs as inhabitants. Looking down at my computer, I noticed I was only just ahead of the necessary average speed and there was still the climb of Waddington Fell to do before dropping down to the first control at Slaidburn. It was a real chore to haul myself past the now forlorn Moorcock, past the quarry to the final summit before coasting down towards Newton (another charming village), and on to Slaidburn. Turning right in front of the Hark To Bounty and its wooden sign for Settle, redolent of the early days of motoring, I reached the control on the village green at the Riverbank Tearooms. There were still riders leaving and Cecil was sitting at one of the tables but a look at the list told me I was already a quarter of an hour behind everyone – and that's a quarter of an hour in only twenty-four kilometres.
I got a glass of milk and a piece of carrot cake, only to find that the cake had been cut with the garlic knife. The portents were piling up. Nevertheless, I told Andy I would carry on in the hope of improvement and he gave me a cheery wave as he passed me in the car on the way to Tan Hill, the next control.
With slow riding and a longer than usual stop at Slaidburn, I was by now averaging only 13kph, which was a long way off the 15kph minimum demanded by this ride. It was hard to see where I could make this up: there are certainly lots of good descents on this route but first I'd have to reach them, slipping behind the clock all the time. It was depressing to be thinking like this after only a couple of hours cycling but the rest had made no difference. Every little rise loomed like a Matterhorn. I tried to enjoy my surroundings. From Slaidburn, the route is almost immediately into wilderness as it follows an ancient pass between Lumb Hill and Croasdale Fells on the west and Crutchenber and Catlow Fells on the east of the Hodder valley. It's a favourite place and almost deserted at this time of day. The road twists upwards between heathery spurs and beckons or taunts with the climb visible for most of its length. I had the rough location of each chevron marked on my route sheet but every little rise had me thinking I'd reached one only for a calculation to disabuse me.
Tired though I was, I'd imagined the climb would have required more effort than it seemed to as I reached the summit at Cross Of Greet, now only a stone base which used to mark the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire at about 1400 feet. The damp conditions meant that the usually stunning view across to the peaks in the east was disappointing, though still mightily impressive. Stopping to take another picture, I realised I was wrong in an earlier narration, when I had written about seeing all the Three Peaks from Cross of Greet. You can't quite, though you can further down.
I dropped down the rolling road across the four miles of Lancashire towards High Bentham, wondering why the scene wasn't unfolding as I expected. It was because I was looking for things that are actually on the Bowland Knotts crossing over to the east! Obviously, more than my legs was in trouble!
Crossing the current border, I trudged through High Bentham where I had to squeeze past the start of a road-running race. I was riding so slowly that I was anxious I'd be caught by the runners. I know I would have caught me easily in my running days. At the crossroads with the A65 near Ingleton, I took a picture of the Mason's Arms, which is a landmark on so many northern rides.
Winching myself out of Ingleton, I wondered whether or not I should return and join the A65 at the Masons and ride down into Settle for a train home. But Andy had mentioned being at Ribblehead to take pictures, so I could see him there and let him know I was abandoning. And I might feel better by then. As it developed, I was definitely no better and came to the conclusion that I'd no chance of completing the ride inside the time limit. I'd managed to get up everything, including the ride's only double chevron and I'd managed to get back to 14.3kph (randonneur limit) but there was so much hard riding to come that it could have taken me 15 hours (or more) to complete the ride – and then I'd got to ride 20 miles home. I tried to fool myself by saying that the nagging easterly wind would only be a factor once more on the ride and that would be on the downhill stretch from Tan Hill to Reeth, where it wouldn't count. And it would blow me back from Gargrave to the finish.
But the clincher was that I wasn't not enjoying it at all. A mixture of anxiety (had I got a heart problem?) and the sheer effort required to keep making headway had stripped all the pleasure from the scenery. I made another desperate attempt to appreciate my surroundings; the geraniums were as lovely as always and the harebells were ringing in the verges. The shape of Ingleborough and the great stretches of limestone scar on the flanks of Whernside were as magnificent as ever but they didn't lift my spirits.
I couldn't face another twelve miles into the wind along the road to Hawes. The generally well ridden streams of motorbikes passing drove me crazy. I made my decision: to forego the hoped-for views of Arkengarthdale to ensure that I have future opportunities. I don't want anyone saying “He died doing what he loved.” The significant part of that sentiment is “He died”. This all sounds very dramatic but I really was anxious about this very sudden loss of form. I decided to stop while I could still think straight about my options. Ribblehead is on a railway line.
I rolled past the pub at Ribblehead and down to where all the cars are parked on the roadside in view of the impressive viaduct. I cycled on for a few hundred yards looking for Andy but he'd presumably left ages before. I turned back and briefly rode along the road to Horton in Ribblesdale, thinking to get a train from there, when I remembered I had passed a sign before the pub for the Ribblehead station. I climbed up the dusty track to the platform and found that it would be over two hours before a train would arrive to take me back to Leeds. But it's hard to imagine a nicer place to be stranded. From the platform there was a great view of Ingleborough and Park and Simon Fells.
The station buildings (Midland Railway “small station”) had a couple of rooms dedicated to the history of the railway and included a working train-set! They also provided tea and coffee and I had my sandwiches with me. I had a fascinating talk with a volunteer who came over on the bus from Morecambe every weekend. It turned out we both went to Newcastle University, are both from Teesside, he from Darlington and I from Stockton; as he pointed out, two towns connected by the most famous railway of all. Even odder is the fact that he taught at the school in Morecambe where my wife and I both did observation during our teaching courses.
I had a walk down to the pub to try and contact Andy to tell him I had abandoned but had no luck. In the end I called from home to let him know. But I did have a very nice encounter with a little puppy who was anxious to be everyone's friend.
The coincidences continued on the train to Leeds. At Settle (or was it Skipton?), a rider got on with his bike and we got talking. He was Alan Luxton, whose wife organised the London-Edinburgh London Ride in 2009. Its successor would start only a week after our meeting. Alan knows many of the riders from West Yorkshire that I do and we had an interesting talk about rides and bike set-ups. It was also on the train to Leeds that I realised how I could have tried to continue as far as Tan Hill in the hope of recovering some form and if I'd needed to bale out I could have rolled west to Kirkby Stephen to catch a train from there. The fact that I didn't think of this is another indicator that I was right to stop at Ribblehead.
At Leeds, I changed trains for the Manchester line. As I got out at Smithy Bridge, near Rochdale, I wondered how I would be on the bike. I'd felt fine before the start at Padiham and felt fine waiting at Ribblehead and felt fine on the trains. As it turned out I felt fine for the two mile ride home and the legs worked normally. However, once I was in the house, I struggled to sort my stuff out and have a bath and so on.
So, it's all a bit of a puzzle. Was it the effect of the dental procedure? Bad beer on the Friday night (I had three pints , which is pretty much my intake for a year)? Lack of sleep (three or four nights with an average of only four or five hours each)? Or coming down with something? Or a combination of all? As I write this, two days later, I am definitely unwell to some degree; my back aches and I have a tendency to fall asleep whenever I am stationary. It sounds like an infection. I suspect my heart is fine, although I haven't had it checked; I don't get breathless and, although the beat seemed irregular on the Sunday evening, it seems to have settled down now. I'll probably get it checked anyway.
Whatever the physical causes, the mental fall-out is interesting to me, too. It is only a cycle ride. The roads will still be there when I recover. Why did I feel I'd failed because I'd had the common sense to retire after only 60 kilometres? As I said to my wife, “Before I did Audax, I'd have been really happy just to have been out on my bike for the day in whatever surroundings. Now I've just done 60 miles (with the ride out) and I feel depressed!” She said, “It could be because you are an idiot.” And she's right. Do I need the carrot of 4.5 climbing points to do these roads? Is Audax actually getting in the way of my cycling enjoyment? The answer to this last question is obviously “no” because Audax has given me so much and pointed out so many routes to try. But I think doing the route for the sake of it, which I intend to do when I am well and can find the time, would be an important step in getting things in proportion. The hills are mine; they don't belong to Audax! And of course, there is a distinction between depression and the disappointment I felt (and still feel) at not having all the experiences of this wonderful route coursing through my head again.
But I think part of the depression comes with the physical state. Everyone is different but for me to stop after 60 kilometres is almost a definition of being unwell and the only necessary response is to stop mithering about philosophy and physiology and get better. And in any case, I had managed the day in the true Audax spirit: I had given it a shot, met some fascinating people and then got home without relying on anyone else. So, a success of sorts!
