The Great North Road - 18/19th May 2019

The advertisement for this ride advised

"This ride will be for you if you like: bridges, canals, cooling towers, mostly flat roads and lots of pretty churches. This ride may not be for you if you don't like: village hall controls, the occasional A-road stretch but mostly quiet lanes, Yorkshire, and bridges. There are a lot of bridges."

That was me sold, oh and the 0.5% climbing rate, I liked the sound of that novelty.

I took the Friday off work and trained it down, though I was cutting it fine only having 5 minutes on the platform at Leuchars. On arrival in Darlington for once the LNER staff were operating like clockwork and my bike was handed out of the van as soon as I got to the door.

I'd remembered a brick train sculpture (by David Mach fae Methil) that we once stopped at on a family holiday, though I don't know why we were there as it's not on the A1(M) but on the other side of the ring road.

The Brick Train, Morton Park Darlington
"David Mach at his finest" - Tipper

I rode out to see it again before heading for my hotel and went for a wander, I had been advised to go to the Café in the Indoor Market and get a "Darlo Savoury", sadly the Café was shut by the time I arrived so that will have to wait for another visit.

After tea I stood in my hotel room looking at the darkening sky and noting that it was only 9pm, I hadn't really thought about allowing for the difference in daylight this far south, I'm used to seeing a light sky close on 11pm now, and I remembered that in France in August it'll be dark even earlier, remembering the time I went for a wander up the Simplon Pass from my hotel in Brig and discovered it got dark at 8pm in August.
The great advantage of living in Scotland, particularly the North is the amount of light you get in Summer, the disadvantage of course is that Winter is the opposite and I've spent some amount of time riding in the dark to get my RRTYs, darkness does not bother me much, but it's nice to have some daylight!

I had a particularly poor nights sleep, early starts do this to me. The worry of possibly sleeping in results in me waking regularly to check, at one point I woke up 20 minutes after the previous check.  When you're about to ride for up to 27 hours this isn't ideal!
I wheeled out the hotel just before 5am and took the road to the hall where the start was, hall campers were still snoring away, phone alarms occasionally chirping their wakeup calls to those who had chosen the floor as their place of rest.  A decent breakfast selection was available though I'd scoffed some breakfast pastries from my bag so I stuck with a cup of tea or three.

Drafting Neil up the hill

I picked a spot next to the fast Borders group of Russell, Michael and Neil at the start and rolled out in a large group with them, I was keeping pace to begin with and Neil is a decent height for punching a hole in the air that I can draft something to remember for the future.  The road was rising gently and my gravitational disadvantage wasn't showing face so early, but the time soon came for the road to increase in gradient and slowly but surely the group I was in disappeared off into the distance, the long open straights letting me see the gap clearly growing until they were out of view.

At Romaldkirk I stopped to get the dedication of the village hall for the info control and a couple of other riders caught at this point. I'd been suffering from an annoying click on the climb and took the time to identify that the spring on my right pedal was restricted somehow and so the cleat wasn't held in properly resulting in the clicks.
Problem identified I cracked on down the hill to get to the camper van control at Caldwell which I'd get to through Barnard Castle, we stopped here on the Brandt and Slape, and is the turn point on "Over the Hill and Back" which is my next ride so I took it as a chance to do some recceing.

Cake was laid on at the campervan and I was able to have a proper fiddle with the pedal which seemed to free it up enough as I didn't hear the clicking again.  As I set off one of the controllers joked that it's "all downhill from here" I say joked but it pretty much was.  Having reached the summit of 340m just before Barnard castle the route would never again rise above 100m and even then only once on the way to the Humber Bridge would it top 50m, the rest of the route well below that.

View down into a valley

Up on the moor there was vast swathes of rolling farm land, the odd pretty village and view down into a valley; as I plunged down the hill the farmland became flatter and the world busier, the road beside the A1(M) is boring but fast, the duck into Catterick where human runners had taken the place of the equine on the race track brought a welcome distraction from the monotony of the long straight road.

Then the route at last took me away from the motorway and along the Swale towards Topcliffe. Dean was waiting on the edge of the village with his camera to photo riders arriving, and the first village hall control of the day was in the villages one way system requiring a lap to be carried out.  Only a handful of riders were present and I wondered how far ahead the others were as I loaded up on sweets and as I sat eating my Beans on Toast I was surprised to see Michael and Neil arrive! "Where's Russel?" I asked them, "He ditched us", ah, "Erm how did I pass you"...

The criss-cross nature of the route highlighted a limitation of the Garmin Routing algorithm and they'd followed the line to Ripon before cutting across country, my Wahoo was fine with that but had skipped over the tour of the one way system, something to remember!

Morris Men

The route crossed again at Boroughbridge, I was with two riders who got a bit confused by the track (Garmins again) and as I shot over the bridge on my own I spotted men in white waving hankies dancing in front of the pub, I thought this was just something the Beano writers had made up for a laugh.  Yorkshire was now changing, from the quaint villages of the North things were getting industrial, groups of cooling towers on different bearings stood out from the vast flatness, but only one set were manufacturing clouds. Drax is the last in active service and even then only sitting waiting as backup for when Nuclear and Renewables can't meet demand.

Ferrybridge Coal Power Station

Somewhere near Wetherby another rider appeared from the wrong direction at a junction, both of his Garmin's were playing up in different ways, one had failed completely and the other didn't want to find the route. Thankfully he was local so could mostly ride to the controls on knowledge but here there were route options so we rode together chatting for a bit.
We passed a sign for Sherburn in Elmett, the end of the Arrow extension, I remembered grabbing the chocolate eclairs from tesco and scoffing them, I thought I may do similar in Askern where we were heading.

On the roll into Askern Neil and Michael caught me and we stayed together to the shop; plenty of other riders were propped against the wall of the Co-Op and I leant my bike against a pillar hoping it'd stay.

I'd been trying out a new feeding plan, I always carry gels as back up but rarely use them, I also tend to carry long life waffles or other cakes, I decided to try eating as such:
x25km - Gel
x50km - Waffull
x75km - Gel
x00km - Proper eat

I could do this as the controls on the ride were well spaced and it seemed to be working, but faced with a lot of food options I grabbed an armful, so I was evidently pretty hungry.
A Rollover Hotdog, Coronation Chicken Sandwich, Millionaires Shortbread, Pain Au Chocolat and a bottle of Cherry Coke to fill me up along with water to top up my bottles.

I returned to my bike to find some water oddly pooled on the Carradice and around the rear wheel, assuming some gadgie had kicked up a fuss while I was in the shop I checked it over, however the culprit turned out to be another rider, while hanging onto his bottle of water he saw my bike moving from it's perch and made a lunge to catch it before it fell and in the process lost some of the bottle's contents, thankfull for this I sat down to eat my excessive spread of food.

Express to the north

Back on the road and it's flat, very flat.  101m of rise and fall in 40km.  With some riders in sight as I leave the village I think I may catch them only to be halted by the flashing lights of a level crossing.  Stops like this always feel like forever, the lights blinking away but no train, and then in seconds it's past, the crack east coast express bound for Edinburgh.

A couple of riders caught me just before Belton and we had been warned at a previous control that it wasn't too easy to find the petrol station, it turned out to only be visible after crossing the junction as it was well shrouded by trees, though it was also marked on the GPS route I had loaded up, I nearly discounted that as a routing error.
I knew that with my eating pattern the 300km mark would not be near enough the Skelton control so I got some sweet treats in my bag for that and carried on without eating it was too soon.

Gunness Bridge

I start to recognise the roads, it's still boringly flat but I know it from the Arrow route; the bridge over the Trent at Gunness confirms it; Scunthorpe, I'm northward bound.  Somehow this peninsula manages to differ from not only the rest of Lincolnshire but South Yorkshire too, it's hilly!!!

Out of Flixborough a 4% teases me into the hills, a drop to a lake, then another climb this time 5% to Winterton before dropping again to near sea level at a bridge on a dirt track.  I could see what was coming ahead, a proper hill that looked just like the ones at home!
1.6km up, average gradient 8% maximum 12%, I was enjoying this; comparing it to the Coach Road and Logie brae in the Fife "Alps".  I've never been so happy to meet a hill like this.

Bridge

Bridge

I exaggerate of course, but the comparisons and the climbing were a welcome interlude from the flatness.  Oddly however there were no grand views, from the Fife hills you can often see the estuaries, whether Tay, Eden or Forth, their bridges in sight; but the Humber was nowhere to be seen, up the summit it was just fields!?

I once travelled to Hull to watch Dundee United play a friendly against Hull City AFC, when the East Coast train reached Doncaster the train manager announced that we should change there for Hull, so I did. When I got on the Hull Train I was greeted with "Welcome to 'Ull Trains, this train is for 'Atfield, 'Essel and 'Ull", I must say the 'Umber bridge looked quite impressive from the train, I couldn't find a decent view point from the route on the bike and I didn't want the extra distance of the viewpoint so I'm afraid I don't have a particularly good photo to show.

Best photo I managed of the Humber Bridge

I stopped on the bridge, just after the 250km mark for a Wafull even though I knew there was food at a control the other side of the bridge. I was sticking to the plan and it seemed to be working.
I rolled off the bridge and into "Humber Bridge Country Park" where the cycle paths returned me to roads that looked like they should be busy with their slip roads and roundabouts but were all but deserted.

Welton

At Welton the Rev. Graeme, an active audaxer was running the control in his church hall, ably assisted by locals and the not so local Dave Crampton who had travelled down from Fife to assist.
A 3 bean soup that was closer to a thick broth or stew in consistency (a welcome state) was dispatched along with some biscuits before I set off into the evening light.

It was very flat again, South Cave, North Cave, South Cliffe, North Cliff, names I associate with hilly places!  I reached the 300km mark at Elvington and ate the sweets from the bag as the light began to fade.

Soon I was in York with two riders just ahead of me, they got through the lights in front of one of the city gates but I'm stopped by them.  Another wait that feelt like forever but I get the novelty of riding through Walmagate where the bike lane runs through while other traffic has to go round and under a suspiciously insecure archway, the route takes a touristic weaving through the centre making use of cycle paths with their standard dodging of pedestrians, I make a couple of errors but find where I'm going thanks to the outline mapping on the Wahoo.



Dean's brought us right past the Minster, I've been coming to York since I was getting on buses for Free as a child and I've never not seen scaffolding on it. Maybe I will see it without before I'm getting on buses for free again as an OAP?

York Minster, someday I will see it without Scaffolding

Back out into countryside the darkness has now enveloped the flatness, I can see little further than my bubble of light; wet roads in places standing water makes it difficult to see where I'm going and I end up using my battery light as an auxilliary for extra brightness.

I know these lanes are taking me to Aldwark Toll Bridge; I was here before during the Viking Rally many years ago in the navigators seat of John Wood's SAAB 96, a former Traffic Police officer who having taken retirement, one day saw an advert for experienced drivers, looking to top up his police pension he applied for the job and got it.  It was commented to him that this was a rather unorthodox route to becoming a bus driver!  SAABs were never narrow cars even in the 1960s but we travelled those lanes positioned as if John was driving his 60 seater National Express coach and with the driving standards expected of a traffic polis.
Sadly that day was the end of my navigating, the combination of my sinus problems and a migraine ended my interest and a few years later John sadly passed.

In the darkness the bridge clattered beneath my wheels, a car sat at the other side waiting for something engine and lights on but I didn't see a toll keeper or anyone else around to say hi to.
Pressing on in my bubble of light, at a steady speed, there were no morris men at Boroughbridge now, just darkness and people walking to or from the pub.

A welcome sight in the dark

Andy lay down to stretch his back and nodded off

348km close enough to 350km, an AUK Control sign sits in front of a 4x4 outside the Reading Room, I'd assumed this would be a library but it's a small hall with kitchen. A handful of others are here, I take a few seconds to decide what I want from the menu options and opt for Beans on Toast again and a plate of cake.  A rider lies down on the floor to stretch his back and falls asleep, it's not quite midnight.

Dragon Breath in my light

60km to go, 18 hours on the clock, the 20 hours I'd thought I might manage has crept out of reach but it doesn't matter a jot. The route isn't flat either, a stiff climb out of Ripon and lumping to the A1(M) at Leeming Bar, only a brief run along beside the motorway this time, even at this time of night it's busy. The only landmarks the brightly lit signs.
The last gel gets consumed as I pass the services at Leeming Bar, the 400km feed is the delayed 350km Wafful (due to the control).  Somewhere in the darkness I stop for a piss and I spot that my breath creates clouds of steam in the air; the 20hr mark ticks over as I do this.  Less than 20km to go, I realize I can beat 21hrs if I try.

And I start trying, past the race track at Dalton on Tees and into Croft itself, I've only been here once, a rather forgettable race weekend other than getting to travel in a Porsche Boxster and Rowan Atkinson unfortunately stuffing his mega rare Zagato bodied Aston Martin into the tyres just when I wasn't looking.


A car starts to overtake, window down "Late Shift ay!", "huh what, oh aye", I talk to the driver for a bit this is the most unusual on the go cycling chat I've ever had, he's also into long distance stuff though of the sportive kind, having done the Mallorca 312 and Fred Whitton.
Eventually he cracks on and I get back into the swing of trying to break 21 hours.
I've not looked at the profile, I don't dare I just push on, asking my heart to find as much as it's going to give after 400km, asking for more speed up hill, it finds it, I average 25kmh on the last 7km.

As I get closer to Darlington an audaxy looking rider passes going the other way, must be going home, must be an ECE.  Another rider appears ahead of me, red rag to bull time, two targets now, pass him and break 21 hours.
I pass him on the road but ultimately he enters the hall just ahead of me, the faff time of putting on my cleat covers that for me but of course it doesn't matter there is no finish order.
I'm 13 minutes ahead of the 21 hour mark on my clock, not bad.

Dean dishes out food to finishers

It's not even 3am and my train isn't until 1230, other riders are sitting around with a similar situation.  The menu includes toad in the hole so I go for that, cake and tea lots of tea.

Aiden is sleeping on chairs behind the stage when I get my bag of stuff so I can get comfortable for whiling the hours away; riders arrive in small groups or alone, some retreat to cars and vans to sleep, some ride home, others sleep in the hall making do with whatever that have to make a bed from.
I stay up, I'm not actually sleepy right now so I may as well socialize.

Busy brevet stamping station as the VC167 group arrive

Despite the long hours until the last rider arrives time passes reasonably quickly, random chatter, making tea (I don't do coffee...) and then some level of assisting with the packing up.
I ride to the station with Ange and Andy U where more tea and bike chat uses up the time until their trains, Andy nearly missing his!
For the last hour I'm waiting at the station alone, I get lunch from pumpkin and then on the train the holder of the aisle seat's reservation is in my window seat; I rambled so incoherently that I'm not sure I understood what I said but he seemed to twig.  I put my travel pillow on and the next I knew I was in Newcastle, then next I'm hurtling through East Lothian. I stay awake from Edinburgh to Leuchars, the announcement that "The Next Stop's Kirkcaldy" has me trying to remember the poem but I've never been very good at absolute recall of words.
But thar's nae queer like smell ither, the Lino works lang shut doon and ma nase is nae so guid an aw, but efter Kircaddy is Leuchars an it's time tae tak ma stuff doon the train.
As we pulled into Leuchars the Scotrail dispatcher (ticket clerk and generally every job there) was running down the platform to get my bike out the van for me.

Controller, Early Finisher being Sociable and a later finisher

The ride home from Leuchars wasn't quick, and within minutes of getting home I was asleep, waking for tea and then work on Monday morning. A rather good weekend all in all.