Thoughts of a newbie cycle tourer - from 2023.

Last year I rode my Brompton from Warrington, across to Hull and then up to Scarborough, where I joined my Association of Lightweight Camping (ALC) friends. That was 200 miles and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This time I had another ALC meet to attend, this time it was the “Birthday Meet” in Watlington, Oxfordshire. Having cycled to Scarborough I thought I should cycle to Watlington this time. Watlington being kind of on the way to Land’s End I then decided to continue down there after the meet, a 500 mile trip.

At the Watlington meet a couple of my ALC friends asked me to write an article about my trip. Although I protested that many people have written about such tours they said that it would be different coming from a cycle touring “newbie”, perhaps I should say an old newbie!

For me this trip was not about the places I travelled through, they are incidental, it is about the people I met, amazing conversations and observing British life as I rode (very slowly) through the country.

Throughout the journey I used the wonderful www.cycle.travel.com website created solely by Richard Fairhurst. This took me on cycle paths, canal tow paths, bridleways, etc. and I only spent 5 miles on busy roads. It enabled me to access a kind of secret road network and made the trip so much more enjoyable AND safer!

I had no intention of rushing, I tootled along doing between 30 and 40 miles a day and sometimes stayed in one place for two nights. As you might imagine from the map, you get to see an amazing cross section of British life, good, bad, ugly and beautiful!

The Bike

On my first trip I used my trusty Brompton H6R (six speed) and although it did well some of the gravelly and off-road bits were a bit challenging, especially when you have the loaded 30 litre “Borough” bag on the front and a 60 litre backpack on the rear. So before this trip I bought myself a used Dawes Galaxy flat bar tourer on eBay for £290.

The gears are 3 x 8 (Mega Range with a 30T) and I also added:

Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tourer tyres (zero punctures on the trip)

Three bottle cages. One on the underside of the frame was able to take my one litre Trangia fuel bottle.

Blackburn front rack.

Carradice panniers and a seat bag

The frame is 22in and probably a touch small for me but for £290 I could make do, and a stem extension was all I needed!

The bike did well and I only had these issues:

The Blackburn front rack lost two of its bolts which was an easy fix. I believe they are prone to shaking bolts loose.

By about 400 miles I had to have the disc pads replaced, completely worn out by all the hills along the way.

At the same time the right hand pedal started to wear out, you could visibly rock it up and down on its spindle, so I had a set of Deity flats fitted. Not cheap but excellent!

As a newbie I have learned a lot about touring bikes in the last few months. As many of you will know you can pay anything upwards of £1200 for a good tourer, but I’ve also come across people who have just modified a cheap, second-hand, mountain bike and travelled huge distances without any big problems. As I will explain later, the problem in the UK is not which bike to ride but the non-cycle friendly railways and also the theft/damage issues.

Camping Gear

I have three choices of tent for such a trip but opted to use my Lightwave S10 shown below. This is a single skin tent which uses special material that evaporates condensation from within the tent. However, this doesn’t work well when it rains a lot or if it freezes. I took this tent because it only weighs 1.6kg, including the footprint and the green colour is good for wild camping. It’s also quick and easy to erect and take down.

Although it generally worked well this tent was subsequently sold on eBay. The reason that I sold it is due to the condensation and “leaking” issues are just too much for me to accept!

Apart from my Trangia and other, usual, stuff, I also used my Alpkit “Cloud Cover” summer quilt as my Enlightened Equipment winter quilt is far too warm in summer. It worked well, although on a couple of nights I had to wear an extra layer to keep warm. I find a quilt is much more comfortable than a sleeping bag although you can fasten them around you to work like a bag if you wish.

People

As many of you will know, I enjoy a good conversation. Billionaires, royalty, even Lord Tebbit, many years ago, have all been my “victims”, I give no thought to their position in society, they are just people, as we are. So probably the greatest pleasure on a bicycle tour, for me, is the opportunity for conversations along the way. Being on a bicycle, with straight bars (upright position, facing people), travelling slowly, multiplies the opportunities to talk to people. Of course I can’t talk to everyone along the way, but I’m open to having a chat and often I instigate the conversations. I had MANY conversations during my three week trip, mostly unremarkable small talk but no less pleasurable. However, there were a few conversations of note, which I will try to give you a flavour of here.

The French lady and her son.

At the first camp site I stayed on, in Staffordshire, I had a brief chat with these two. He was about 12 years old and they were sharing a small tent, their bikes were cheap Decathlon ones, with simple racks on the back. Nevertheless, they had already cycled from Portsmouth to Staffordshire and were going on to Edinburgh or Glasgow, they hadn’t decided yet. Then they were planning to travel back to Portsmouth by train, before getting a ferry back to France. Imagine the experience that the boy will get from such a trip, not to mention the improvement in his English! I really admired the lady for taking her son on such a trip. It also proves, again, that you don’t need to spend a lot of money to enjoy a cycle tour!

The Bangladeshi Restaurant Owner (Birmingham)

I stayed one night at my friend’s place in Birmingham and I went out for an “Indian” meal, soon I was chatting with the owner. This gentleman had been studying architecture at a UK university when his father suddenly died. This, unsurprisingly, had a major effect on him and he had dropped out of university. Later he decided to get into the restaurant business, in which his father had also worked. We discussed how to improve his business but, more interestingly, we talked about what makes people happy. We agreed that one of the ways that you can make yourself happy is by helping other people.

Side Note: Some years ago I took an online course, “A Life of Happiness and Fulfilment”, taught by an Indian professor of marketing:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness

People talk glibly about happiness and “being happy” but few people really understand the subject.

The Pastor

In Devon I stayed on a site which was mostly motorhomes and caravans. However, apart from myself, there was one other bike tourer. This gentleman had grown up behind the iron curtain, as it was before 1989, but was now working as a pastor in the UK. The weather was wet and windy, so having met each other earlier we ended up in the site reception “hut” and had a wonderful conversation that lasted about three hours. Over three hours we discussed many topics and his own story was certainly fascinating. However, I felt that the most interesting part of the conversation was our general agreement on some society issues and how it relates to camping. My “O” level English can’t possibly do it justice but it goes something like this:

Many (most?) people think that having a bigger house, with a wall or fence around it (a kind of castle) will make them “happy” (that topic again!) but perversely the opposite is true. Living in a community with lots of opportunity for relationships with other people is one of the key ingredients for happiness. On a campsite we have all seen the huge motorhomes, caravans and tents that people use, possibly they are trying to recreate their “castle” when they are on holiday. There is no doubt that more human interaction makes us happier but these “structures” all work against that as people tend to shut themselves away, often for the entire time they are on holiday. Conversely, travelling by bicycle and necessarily using a small tent greatly increases the chance to meet people, have conversations, cook together or whatever, i.e. the essential parts of being a human being. I’m quite sure that if research was done people using small tents and bicycles, who interacted (not just saying hello!) with other people, would be found to be happier than those people living in their huge structures with much less contact with the people around them!

This conversation neatly leads onto my Land’s End experience….

Land’s End

Of course I was delighted to get to Land’s End after riding a bicycle with all my camping gear for 500 miles. However, I also felt a bit sad and lonely, let me explain. Land’s End is a kind of mini Blackpool, with various amusements, fast food and, worst of all, people paying £12 each to have a “personalised” picture taken next to a Land’s End signpost. I was there for about 45 minutes, during which time I didn’t see a single cyclist. Nobody spoke to me and, rather like being a small tent on a modern campsite, I felt that I was the “odd” one! Being the odd one doesn’t bother me, it’s often better to be the odd one than not, but I felt sorry for the other people there, is that what they think life is about?

Afterwards I went to the nearby Camping and Caravan Club site at Sennen, where I spent three days resting, walking by the sea and “chilling”! For those three days my oddity was further confirmed as I was the only small tent on the site for the entire stay! During that time we had a storm, with strong winds of 50-60mph, several large frame tents were destroyed, perhaps they were not properly tied down.

Premier Inn, Penzance.

I stayed here the night before I got the train home as it is just by the railway station and I didn’t feel that I wanted to waste time packing up a tent etc.

I must say that as a cyclist the experience was excellent, I was made to feel very welcome and could take my bike up to the room without any questions asked. As it happened, that was a big contrast to my train journey home!

The Train Journey

Never wanting to waste money I had booked my journey home a few months earlier using “split ticketing”. That had meant a three step journey and the bike reservations proved to be rather a challenge! Basically I had to have the Trainline website open with my potential tickets in front of me whilst I called them to make the cycle reservations, it wasn’t possible to do it online. The nice lady was very helpful but could only get bike reservations for the first and last stage, the middle stage was with Cross Country Trains and they only release bike reservations a few weeks before the travel time. Anyway, I eventually got them all.

The first step was from Penzance to Truro, a short journey so I thought I might get away with just standing with my bike, fully loaded, in the bike rack area. The train manager lady came through and soon told me that I would have to unload the bike and put it into the rack. Not wishing to be thrown off before I had started I attempted to oblige. I’m tall and quite fit but lifting a steel frame Dawes into a vertical position is not easy! However, I soon found out that the front wheel would not actually fit into the hanger! I decided to just stand there, panniers off, and hope that I would not be confronted and that proved to be the case, she walked past several times without comment. Travelling on trains is known to be a huge issue to cyclists, probably she’s already had too many arguments with cyclists in the past to be bothered. The story was pretty much the same all the way home and I mostly stood with my bike and panniers from Penzance to Warrington!

Conclusions

Good:

A real sense of achievement to ride a bike such a distance. This was only my second bicycle tour after my recent Scarborough trip.

A great way to get to know the UK, warts and all.

Wonderful opportunities to meet people along the way.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I enjoyed stopping and eating blackberries along the way!

Bad:

Travelling with a “big” bike is a hassle compared with using a Brompton. As well as the aforementioned train problems I always had to worry about the bike getting stolen. It didn’t get stolen but someone decided to gouge my Brooks saddle while it was locked up outside the reception on Devizes Camping and Caravan Club site.

My next adventure might be to or from John O’Groats but I haven’t decided yet. Whatever, I will certainly do more bike touring, there’s a lot more people to talk to yet 🙂