www.dadswell.co.uk Mostly cycling records, mostly on three wheels
Five Go on Wild Trip North -
as Enid Blyton would have said.
It was one of those ideas that I'd picked up
several years back. And then Marina Bloom said, "yeah, I'm up for that".
So in went the schedules, and we waited for a southerly wind.
The plan was to set off from London on the tandem
tricycle, call in at York, push on to Edinburgh, and then turn back to
the south again. If it all
worked out, we could set five new RRA records.
With the schedules in place, we then waited for
suitable weather. Marina
rode the Sussex CA 12 hour on 12th August, and declared herself to be
ready for the "Edinburgh trip" any time after the 18th.
And the weather charts looked good for the 21st.
At 0530 we set off from my home in High Wycombe,
collected Frank Cubis from Greenford, and made our way towards the
centre of London for the start, scheduled for 0630.
Frank was our Observer for the first section, with Mike Bloom in
charge of driving and feeding.
The start is just south of Smithfield market, which
hadn't been a problem in previous years.
However, it was heaving with white vans as we drove in, and we
were finally parked with less than 10 minutes to go.
Frank dashed off to the start, to tell the timekeeper that we had
arrived, and might be late.
We were indeed late, and Albert Ayton eventually despatched us at 0632.
Our first concern was getting past the market.
Luckily, we avoided any collisions and made our escape towards
Islington. We saw a fair
amount of traffic and waited patiently for a few junctions to clear.
Once along Archway Road, we reached our first checkpoint five
minutes down on our schedule.
A little later, we were again delayed at "Tally Ho", and our
arrival at the Hadley Highstone saw our deficit at seven minutes.
Undeterred, we pressed on through Potters Bar and Hatfield to the
next check near Welwyn, where we were still stuck at seven minutes down.
(photos by Brian Edrupt)
The records we were going for were actually
standards set a few years ago by the Road Records Association.
When they started to recognise Tandem Tricycle rides done by
“mixed” crews, they determined standards that had to be beaten in order
to warrant record certificates being awarded.
These standards were based on any existing records for other
types of cycle. The
standard for “London to York”, our first objective, was a fairly mild 11
hours for the 204 miles.
Our schedule was to get to York in 9 hours 30 minutes.
We made our way over Digswell Hill to Old Welwyn,
and onto the road to Hitchin.
Marina was unhappy that there didn’t seem to be much in the way
of wind, and what was there didn’t seem to be very helpful.
I was sure that things would develop favourably, and tried to
reassure her that we were still in the early part of the ride, and that
we weren’t in trouble. When
we were past Biggleswade, we joined the A1 with a reduced deficit of
five minutes.
It was obvious that this would soon be wiped out,
as our speed was soon far in excess of that scheduled for.
Then we hit the traffic queues at Buckden.
We probably created a bit of a delay in the contra-flow section,
but it was only a few miles before Alconbury, where we were level with
the schedule.
There then followed a slightly tiresome section
comprising old-A1 and detours.
Unfortunately, there is a section of A1(M) beside Peterborough,
and the non-motorway route uses roads that add at least four miles.
We shadowed the new road for a while, and then set off towards
Peterborough, before eventually making our way back to our friend the
Great North Road. Once
returned to the trunk road, we were happier, but progress was not as
smart as it had been before.
However, the cartographically inclined amongst you will spot that
a pure south wind would be less than optimal when you’re making your way
past Stamford, and so I actually found our difficulty slightly
reassuring.
At the Stamford check, we were still level with
schedule. But things soon
got quicker. We were
through 100 miles in 4hours 30 mins, which meant that the second 50
miles had taken 10 fewer minutes than the first.
With the wind directly behind us, we hit the Grantham check with
an exciting 10 minute cushion.
Onwards past Newark we were still making fine
progress. Hedley Stennett
joined the team in the car at this stage.
He was with us for the rest of the ride, both Observing and
Timing.
At the next checkpoint, Markham Moor, we were 22
minutes ahead of the plan.
I was a bit concerned that we might be trying too hard, considering the
whole of the ride ahead of us.
However, a quick check established that neither of us felt that
we were trying particularly hard, so we continued as before.
Another dozen miles, and we hit the A1(M) at Blyth.
So we turned off to Bawtry, and were in the last 50 miles of the
trip to York. At Bawtry we
were 28 minutes up.
Along the almost deserted roads through Finningley,
Hatfield Woodhouse (where we were kept waiting by a quite unexpected
flow of cars) and Thorne, we managed to squeeze another two minutes out
of the schedule by Selby.
At this point, the following car went ahead to be
sure of Hedley being in place to time us at the York terminal point.
This is not an ideal arrangement, as it left us vulnerable if we
had had problems. However,
I had made tremendous efforts to get a timekeeper in York, without
success.
We were still riding swiftly when we passed the 200
mile point in 8 hours 43mins.
We were soon making our way into York, hoping for a smooth run
through the centre.
Fortunately, this was how things turned out, as there was only one point
where we had to come to a halt.
We even managed the final right turn without trauma, courtesy of
convenient traffic lights.
This last corner involves a dismount, a push, and a remount (to avoid a
lengthy roundabout).
Extraordinarily, it was as if the traffic was being held up just to
allow our manoeuvre.
We then arrived at the Museum Garden Gates for
Hedley to clock us with a time of 8 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds.
Inside the standard by over 2 hours, which is fine.
We then waited a few seconds for Hedley to
authorise us to continue on the second phase of our journey.
Within five minutes, we were out of the city and thinking about
Edinburgh.
Having made a bit of an effort to get to York
before 9 hours (because Marina had wanted to!), we could now sit back a
little, as the rest of the journey was more of an endurance exercise
than anything else. We had
3 hours to cover 35 miles to beat the 12 hour standard, so that was no
problem. The standard for
London to Edinburgh is 22 hours 30 minutes, so we had 13 hours 30 mins
left on that one. The most
challenging target was the York to Edinburgh standard of 10 hours 45
minutes. If we had started
“fresh” at York, then this would be no problem at all, but we had
already been out there for 204 miles.
Could we do it? I
was fairly confident, but there was only one way to find out .....
We maintained a 30 minute advantage past Easingwold
to Thirsk, and on to Northallerton.
Level Crossing gates then caused us to stop for a short period –
which we took as a chance for a natural break.
Revitalised, we were 34 minutes up at Darlington.
That’s the last of the really flat stuff, and we
started to use the gears a bit more as we progressed towards Durham.
We had covered just over 265 miles when the 12 hours was used up
– by chance just after a long fast descent!
The earliest signs of tiredness were on show as I
made a mess of using the short cut at Chester-le-Street, but we got
there eventually. Shortly,
we could see the “Angel of the North” as we rejoined the A1 at Birtley.
I had remembered the Newcastle bypass as a very
sharp descent followed soon by an awful climb.
This time the fast bit wasn’t particularly wild, but the climb
seemed much less traumatic than expected.
It could easily be that the wind was still assisting us up the
hill. One way or the
other, we still had more than 30 minutes in hand over the schedule.
The schedule for arrival at Edinburgh had been
almost arbitrarily decided.
However, it now had some real significance, as it could be used to
measure whether or not we could beat the standard for York to Edinburgh.
I worked out that if we were to achieve that objective, then we
could afford to be just over one minute down when we reached Edinburgh.
Just prior to the 300 mile point, we stopped near
Morpeth to change clothes, and put extra layers on.
We also fitted lights to the tandem as it would soon be getting
dark. At the next
checkpoint, we were just under 20 minutes ahead of schedule.
We were soon onto the A697, a road which I had
never travelled on before.
We were to use it for nearly 70 miles across to the A68 junction just
south of Soutra.
John Leiper joined the ride at this point, to do
the driving through the night.
Mike Bloom could then get some rest, having done all the driving
up to that point. Hedley
was still the Observer.
There are a few hefty valleys on the way to Wooler,
and sometimes we could see several miles of climbing ahead of us.
We managed, but it didn’t seem very fast.
At Wooler, we were 19 minutes up, and the story was
similar at Coldstream. The
picture for this whole section was a seemingly endless sequence of short
drags, each one taking us slightly higher than the last one.
Then we would hand it back in one short sharp descent, only to
restart the cycle again.
At Greenlaw, we had slipped to 15 minutes, but the
nightmare section was the next one, where we arrived at the A68 just 4
minutes to the good.
So we had 22 miles left, and 1 hour 22 minutes.
We had a major climb in front of us, and we’d got 372 miles on
the clock. And it was the
middle of the night. I
didn’t think we had a
chance, and approached the hill with a view to just “getting it over
with”. It was a slow, hard
climb, but the second part of it was much easier than I’d remembered,
and we were soon on our way down again.
There’s no doubt that we were going fast, but the
climbing had been agonizing.
So it was with some caution that I accepted Hedley’s message that
we should still try a “sprint” for the York – Edinburgh record.
Fortunately, there is a lot of downhill through Pathhead to
Dalkeith, and we were quite optimistic as we crossed the Edinburgh Ring
Road.
The key question was that of exactly how far we had
to go. I decided on five
miles, and determined that we could get there in time.
No sooner had I done this, than we passed a sign saying six miles
to the centre.
However, we couldn’t really waste time worrying
about that sort of thing.
We were just going flat out, watching out for roadsigns and traffic.
There wasn’t much of either!
Eventually, we reached the left and right turns
which put us into the final straight.
We had 2 minutes 45 seconds left, but I couldn’t remember how far
we had to go!
We thundered along, particularly over the cobbles,
and suddenly we were on North Bridge, and there was Jeff Hunter waiting
for us at the Finish. As we
coasted over the line (and made an immediate right turn), I looked at my
watch. We had made it, by
40 seconds. Overall we had
covered the 396 miles to Edinburgh in 19 hours 40 minutes 40 seconds,
having left York 10 hours 44 minutes 20 seconds earlier.
As we started our homeward trip along the A1, I
couldn’t believe our luck.
So many things had worked well in the previous few miles.
We hadn’t had to stop at any junctions, and there hadn’t been any
drunks in the road. We had
previously been warned that we were visiting during the Festival period,
and that pubs were open until 2am.
It was 2:10 am when we finished!
Within a couple of miles, the following car was
driven past, and we were soon sitting beside the road with hot drinks in
hand. This was the point
that I first met John Leiper, who had been driving my car for the
previous 100 miles. I also
spoke to Jeff Hunter, our local timekeeper.
In the days leading up to the attempt, I had been
told that cycling was banned on the Edinburgh City Bypass.
I couldn’t see how this affected me, as our route didn’t use the
City Bypass.
As we were now about to leave the city and set off
along the A1, I was pleased to hear things confirmed that “the A1 will
be fine”. So we rode off,
following signs marked “A1 Berwick upon Tweed”.
Can’t go wrong.
Within a couple of miles, we were on the dual
carriageway, looking forward to a dull but simple ride out to the east.
And then we saw the signs saying that cycling was banned in half
a mile, and that prohibited traffic must leave at the next exit.
What do you do?
A quick check with Hedley, and we set off along the alternative
route. This took us into
Musselburgh, then along the old A1 through Tranent and then to
Haddington. [So how come we
were told that the A1 was okay?
It seems that the old A1 was thought to be still signed as A1,
and we were expected to follow those signs.]
After Haddington, we stopped for a coffee (and a
look at the map). We
plodded along past Dunbar and the checkpoint at Cove before stopping
again.
We tried to get 10 minutes sleep, but I don’t think
that either of us dropped off, due to Mike making an amazing amount of
noise rearranging the contents of the boot!
By this time, the mileage was over 430, we had
about 90 minutes left, and we were starting to see some daylight on the
North Sea. Then I changed
gear, and the chain became jammed.
Unfortunately, we tried to pedal it out again.
That method is either an instant success, or a disaster.
We had to stop.
We all had a go at removing it, getting hands covered in dirt in
the process. Eventually I
fixed the problem by loosening each of the chainwheel bolts, to allow
the chain to be lifted out.
After 10 minutes of struggling, we were on our way again.
The picture was now a little less rosy.
We had just over an hour remaining, and a mileage of 435.
I decided to concentrate on reaching 445 (which would have been
30 miles in excess of the minimum standard set).
This whole section was very pleasant, with pleasing
terrain and well made roads. Add
that to the view of a calm North Sea, and this could almost become a
recommendation that tourists should use the A1.
I’m sure you could do worse.
When 445 miles was reached, I looked at my watch, expecting to
find about 10 minutes left.
Actually, we had 25 minutes remaining, so we now aimed for 450, which
would be my originally scheduled distance.
We managed 450 miles with 4 minutes remaining,
allowing us to nip smartly across the English border before collapsing
in a heap about a mile short of Berwick.
Before long we were in the car travelling to
Bowsden, the home of John and Joyce Leiper.
Some weeks back, they had offered us the chance to drop in for a
shower and breakfast before our long trip south.
It was an offer which was much appreciated, although I didn’t
actually get any breakfast.
When we made our way inside, I laid myself down on
the carpet. I vaguely
remember hearing Marina make her way upstairs to have a bath.
I vaguely remember her return, and everybody leaving the room to
have some breakfast. And I
remember people walking back in, saying “he’s still laying on the
floor”.
Eventually, I got up and managed to take a shower.
I then had another lie down – this time on a bed.
As you will gather, I wasn’t really up for doing much – I’m
surprised that I didn’t pass out in the shower.
We left at about 10 am, with Mike Bloom having his
second 350 mile drive ahead of him, on consecutive days.
Unsurprisingly, we made several stops.
Fuel and food near Newcastle, sleep at Scotch Corner, drop Hedley
off at Newark, and then food again at the Ram Jam Inn.
We reached High Wycombe at 8pm, and Marina & Mike
got back to Crawley just after dark.
Obviously we were all very tired, but still delighted to have
accomplished the feat of five RRA records in one ride.
Earlier in the year, Marina had finished a record
attempt and immediately asked “When’s the next one?”.
I didn’t hear her say that after the finish this time, but I’m
sure she’ll be in touch soon.
Ralph
August 2001