Off Yer Bike!

By Derek Clarke

‘A great read … salty language and wandering cycling-led anecdotage’ - Cycling Plus

‘… hilarious quirks of human behaviour … a fine piece’ - Pen Press

‘A genuine laugh out loud book . . . keenly observed humorous tales following the author and his partner around Britain with cycle, tent and a thirst’- Sky Bums

‘… an enjoyable dip in, dip out travelogue …’ - Shropshire Star

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781471634444

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Off Yer Bike!

OFF YER BIKE!

(The Ramblings of an Après Cyclist)

by

Derek Clarke

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book is a record of snatched days, lost weekends, welcome Bank Holidays and footloose vacations – all spent on the byways of Britain. For the best part of thirty years, when Friday came, I loaded the car with bicycle and tent and set a course for the back of the beyond – I worried not where. It became a way of life and I cherished it.

Back then, cycling wasn’t cool. Camping? It faired no better. And despite the advent of mountain biking and so-called glamping, cycle touring and stripped-down tenting are still regarded as pursuits for the penniless, the pitiful and the peculiar. But I’ll defend them – in these helter-skelter, me-me days – as two of the few ways by which one can experience the countryside at first hand and, if you care to, mix with locals and fellow travellers alike.

Over the years, I’ve cycle-tramped the slow lanes of Britain from Appledore to Teviothead and from Abersoch to Lowestoft. I’ve been up in the mountains of Wales and down on the fens of East Anglia. I’ve been on the moors of Yorkshire and beside the beaches of Dorset. I have been blue-fingered and I have been baked. I have been drenched and I have been blown sideways.

And wherever I have roamed, I’ve taken pen and notebook with me to record my experiences. I’ve scribbled as and when the opportunity arose: in country pubs, by village ponds, on packhorse bridges, at remote crossroads, near church spires, way up on hilltops and in many other inconvenient but satisfying places.

I’ve used these scribbles to produce the book-cum-diary you have in your hands. While I have embellished here and there, it’s all rooted in the real goings-on of my vagabond existence. Like my wanderings, I’ve written Off Yer Bike! with little planning or premeditation. It simply describes the characters, incidents and places that I came across along the way, in the best way I can and with tongue firmly in cheek.

For all that, I hope you get as much pleasure from reading the words that follow as I did from writing them. But beware, this book mainly covers the early years – there may be more to come.

Special thanks go to Jen, who came with me on all my travels.

1. SPRING

A Welsh beginning

Cambrian Mountains,

Late March 1998

We must be masochists. Despite all those cushy options out there, we choose the Cambrian Mountains for our first outing of spring. Consult any map you fancy and the brown blur of contours will tell you this is mountain country with a vengeance. Take the Ordnance Survey. It’s as if a playgroup has been left alone with finger paints and joyfully daubed fingers and thumbs all over a large sheet of paper – the packed whorls barely leave a white space. What’s more, a Cambrian spring usually limps in towards the end of June. But what the hell. We cram the car with tent and cycles and head west.

Come with us to wild Wales on a chill March day. A harsh breeze stirs the sweet-smelling moorland grasses as we grind to a halt – knackered and sodden – atop some upland pass or other that it’s taken Jen and me the best part of the morning to cycle-slog our way up. What a picture: towering mountain ranges, deeply wooded hillsides, rolling barren moors, secluded river valleys and – in the far distance – a glistening fall. And there, a thousand feet below, our only companion – a hunched fisherman casting his line into the lake for a never-ending, last try.

We’ve hardly returned to the saddle when – without warning – our mountain road goes suicidal on us: it freefalls to the valley floor. Resistance is pointless and in a flash the morning’s work is undone. One second we’re looking out longingly to a wiggle of valley road in the far distance, the next a fourth hairpin (or is it a fifth?) catapults us onto it. It’s an ear-popping, handlebar-gripping, brake-blasting dash that has my unddies creeping up my arse cleft in an act of downright cowardice.

So at last a flat(ish) road – that’s flat(ish) in Welsh topography, a bit of a bastard in English. And for every inch of the narrow valley, the poor thing has to scrap: with some menacing peaks to the one side and with a roaring river to the other. The road is barely winning, for scree spills down onto it from the acute slopes or else it swings in a little too close to the river and bits of tarmac are lost to the fast-flowing current. It is a wild, half-lost and perfect world, and we have it to ourselves.

Well near perfect, because we also have rain – wave upon wave of fat, wind-driven Welsh rain. It gets everywhere. Even worse, massed ranks of mountain-wise ewes have claimed the only shelter in these highlands (the odd clump of rowan) and I’m convinced they wouldn’t budge for a posse of well-hung, good-looking and Viagra-popping rams.

After much huffing and cursing, we reach a village. Not much of a village really; barely more than a huddle of stone-built cottages. Yet it has a pub – a whitewashed one with a mossy slate roof and a welcome sign for walkers: No! You can’t eat your packed lunch in here – now bugger off. We could hardly pass it by.

So this is where the entire hill people of mid-Wales spend their Sunday lunchtimes. It’s heaving. What a mix they are too. I make out a few couples in chapel best, hotfoot from the fire and brimstone; a group of potting shed truants, hiding in the snug in case their other halves should come looking; several recovering Saturday night overdone-its, nursing flat pints; a games room full of raucous pool-shooting lads, well pleased that their Sunday footie fixture has been called off; and an assortment of shabby shepherds, slumped pensively over their hands of dominoes. And don’t they roll about in fits as soon as we step inside. Somewhat rude I think. There again we are a sight with our cheeks puckered like dollops of damson jam and our wet-through clothes dripping puddles onto the quarry tiled floor.

We skulk over with our beers to a pew next to a blazing log fire. Strange: someone’s left a grubby fleece jacket on the seat – covered in hairs it is too. I sweep it to one side with my arm.

‘MEE-RRROWWWALL’ ... spit ... shriek ... scratch ... swish.

My big mistake: it’s the pub’s well-upholstered tom and he’s scratching, biting and clawing me to within an inch of surgery. We flee to a less favoured seat, where Jen tries her best to staunch my wounds with a couple of beer mats. From this sanctuary, I tell the moggy that I don’t give a toss about sitting in front of the fire anyway and that I rather hope the fatherless pussy’s gonads wither away in the fecking heat (though they aren’t my precise words you’ll understand). The tom isn’t worried – he simply lifts a back leg and begins to lick his sixpence, in a smug sort of way.

‘Take no notice, mon,’ pipes up a domino-playing codger. ‘You’re the third bugger he’s had today. The miserable flea-bag’s had us all in his time.’ A mexican wave of sympathetic nods goes round the bar.

I nod too. And as I do, a drop of blood trickles down my nose and plops into my pint, followed by another and another and another. I look up to see the eyes of the silent pub on me. Instinctively I know what I must do. I smile at Jen for what could be the last time, reach for my beer and lift it up to toast the bar – ‘Iechyd da’ I shout, inwardly thanking my north Walian mum for my few bits of Welsh. I neck the pint in one, slam the empty glass back on the table, and wipe the blood and gore from my lips with the back of my pus-oozing hand. The bar remains silent – it waits to see if I’ll bring it back up.

I don’t.

‘IECHYD DA!’ rejoins the ecstatic gathering to a man and woman, as one of the elders hobbles over and slaps my back. When the chorus falls away, the domino players draw us into their idle chat, as if it’s just reward for enduring their savage rite of passage with such commendable valour. Soon we’re grumbling about the price of sheep, protesting at the Brummies getting all the Welsh water, discussing how to tickle trout, having a go at the rules of ‘them’ Brussels wallahs, cussing the Forestry Commission for no end of things, and musing over the English settlers buying holiday cottages and always wanting to fit real oak beams – ‘which we can provide at a price, see’ says a gnarled old farmer with a toothless grin.

‘Mind,’ says the wagon driver. ‘We’re getting our own back on the English with the water, isn’t it?’

The other domino players nod and grin.

‘See, there’s a stream that drops down from the mountain just up the valley from here – sheep used to drink from it. Anyway, the owner, Taryn, has gone and put up a pump house and uses some old farm buildings as a bottling plant. Funny that, isn’t it? A few years ago it was only fit for knackered hill sheep and now van loads of the tack go off to England every week.’

‘Aye and you don’t really know what’s in this so-called natural tack,’ says the old farmer. ‘I mean, it may contain some good stuff, but there used to be a fair bit of lead working up that mountain once upon a time.’

‘Aye, nasty bugs in it an’ all, I reckon,’ says a shepherd. ‘If I remember right, it were Huw’s sheep that drank from the stream and his flock had a few outbreaks of scrapie in his time.’

‘What about all that sheep scab he had, mind?’ pipes up another shepherd.

‘Them ewes were always suffering with the foot-rot too,’ says yet another.

‘Didn’t they suspect the pox at one point?’ adds one of the potting shed truants.

‘Not to worry, not to worry,’ the wagon driver muses. ‘It’s sure to be good enough for those English. Besides, what they don’t know about can’t harm them, so they say.’

‘Teach the buggers a lesson or two,’ shouts over the landlord, ushering a walker and his half-eaten sandwich to the door.

‘I’ll drink to that,’ concludes the wagon driver.

‘Here, here,’ everyone responds. And a collective ‘IECHYD DA, TWLLT DIN POB SAIS!’ resounds throughout the bar, as everyone raises their glass to the ceiling.

We carry on for another couple of happy hours in the pub, desperately trying to memorise the unpronounceable names of un-findable places – where ‘you must call in if you’re passing, isn’t it’. Then our blood brothers begin to slip away one by one into the dark Cambrian Mountains. It’s time for us to leave too. And so we step outside into the perpetual rain. We set off down the valley and reach our campsite after a dire, knackering struggle. Though it’s barely mid-evening, we scramble into our sleeping bags and fall into a long, deep sleep.

• • •   • • •   • • •

Saving face

Yorkshire Dales,

Late March 1989

On a surprisingly warm spring day, we took an energetic ride over High Ash Head Moor and down into Nidderdale. The silent river-hugging lane passed through the hamlets of Lofthouse and Ramsgill and along Gouthwaite Reservoir to the small town of Pateley Bridge. The town’s chief feature is its tight, plunging high street. It’s a friendly chief feature if you’re plunging but not if you’re going t’other way – which we were.

As usual, we surrendered without a fight and took to shanks’ pony. As usual too, whenever someone or something went past, I’d instantly stoop over my bike and feign mechanical catastrophe, simply to save face. This time though, my yorkshire pud was cooked. Halfway up the hill, an athletic chap – into his sixties – slipped past on a shabby touring bike, then stopped and dismounted. He was blowing slightly and a touch of sweat adorned his forehead; otherwise, he seemed as cool as a mountain goat.

‘Summat up, pal?’ he queried.

‘Oh, er, yes. It’s, er, the um ... gear lever. Er, the bolt’s come loose and it keeps slipping into top gear – if it wasn’t, I’d be up this piddly hill backwards.’

‘Tha’ll need a spanner, pal,’ he advised, and he began to rummage in his battered saddlebag.

Oh Lord, please don’t let him find a ...

‘You’re in luck, pal,’ he exclaimed, plucking out a spanner. ‘Let me see what Ah can do ... ’

‘Oh, I’ll do that,’ I hastily responded, adeptly snatching the tool from his grasp. ‘I know the right tension.’

I bent down and pretended to tighten the bolt (which was already as fast as an Italian defence) – I even stuck out my tongue for extra effect. I handed back the spanner, ‘There, that’s fixed it.’ I then nervously glanced up at the unforgiving incline that disappeared into a dot in the distance. I blurted out: ‘Still, I think I’ll push the bike to the top – just in case it goes again.’

‘That’s all right pal, I’ve lost my rhythm now anyway – I’ll walk with you.’

Phew – a result at last.

I was about to say to our new companion that we should have used our mountain bikes, what with all these hills about, when: ‘Ah always stop for fellow touring cyclists. Mind, Ah wouldn’t have stopped to help if tha were a mountain biker. Oh, nah! Ah tek great delight in overtaking those tossers wi’ their fancy gear an’ machines.’

This took me aback at first, but since he seemed a thoroughly obstinate man, I smiled agreement. And so – as we continued up the incline side by side – I nodded fickly in response to his flow of anti-mountain biker jibes:

‘ ... poseurs in Oakley shades ... ’

I nodded and anxiously checked to see mine were in my pocket and not hung round my neck.

‘ ... southern softies ... ’

I nodded and accepted the need to move up north when the opportunity presented itself.

‘ ... gaudy gear ... ’

I nodded and congratulated myself on popping my flashy Lycra top in the wash this morning.

‘ ... bum-bags? … the ruddy great Nancies ... ’

I nodded and prayed mine wasn’t poking out from beneath my jacket.

‘ ... pah, cycle helmets ... ’

Ah, I honestly agree with you on that score, chum. I nodded, vigorously.

At last we reached the brow of the hill and bade farewell to our stubborn friend; he clicked into gear and sped away with some relish – no doubt determined to burn off some contemptible, unsuspecting mountain bikers.

• • •   • • •   • • •

Man’s best friend?

Scottish Borders,

Late March 1994

We’ve met many dogs along the way and most have shown themselves to be thoroughly anti-cyclist. I’m not sure why. As far as I know, neither we – nor other cyclists for that matter – do them the slightest harm. So it must be an innate reflex that makes our canine chums chase our back wheels and snap at our shapely ankles. Why haven’t the makers of dog toys realised the potential this offers? After all, they make rubber slippers, plastic postmen and synthetic bones – all sniffed at once or twice, then slung into a box under the kitchen sink. Now a toy cyclist complete with whirring wheels and gyrating legs would send any mutt ape-shit and keep them deliriously happy for days on end.

Remote hill country poses the most canine threat for us cyclists. The plot usually unfolds like this. Hilly lane leads to ramshackle farm. Ramshackle farm has several sheepdogs. Several sheepdogs have one dominant male. Dominant male must assert dominance through bravery. Brave dog springs out and attacks passing cyclist. Passing cyclist and brave sheepdog crash to the deck and oncoming cattle wagon mangles them.

But we’ve come to realise that it needn’t end in such a way. Being highly trained mutts, sheepdogs will usually defer to us human beings – even cyclists. So, if you’ve the courage to dismount, stand your ground and shout a few stern commands, all that frenzied barking, snarling and tail rattling will soften in seconds to a whimper, a paw-shake and a roll over.

What wouldn’t we have given for one of those honourable sheepdog foes today? You see, we were pottering around the Scottish Borders – taking to the myriad of lanes that dance delightfully between hill and burn – when we realised that the locals were rather fond of keeping what we can only describe as a mutant form of terrier: the potent buggers were squat, square-jawed and had balls like coconuts. Compared with sheepdogs, these charmers were untutored misanthropes, who owed sole allegiance to their masters – and ‘bollocks’ to all other human form they seemed to snarl.

It felt as if every isolated cottage (though outwardly respectable with lace curtains and trim gardens) was guarded by one of these thugs. As soon as the blighter got our scent, he’d begin his incessant howling, fly over a picket fence like a Tasmanian devil on heat and speed after us with fangs extended. We weren’t inclined to dismount and try to faze one of these barbarians – oh no, he’d have buried a couple of our limbs under a row of pansies in a trice. No – it was a case of pedalling for dear life and praying to each and every God for the strength to outpace the fecker.

For a while, our flight for life tactic had worked – but eventually we had to run out of lives. I was cycling way ahead of Jen when I passed a colour-washed cottage. And there, on the newly clipped lawn, was a nicely honed specimen – happily gnawing on the metal base of a washing line post. His body twitched slightly as he whiffed my scent, then his muscles surged into compulsive spasms as he sensed a tasty ‘meals on wheels’ was coming his way. Poor Jen approached as an innocent to the slaughter. I would have warned her, honest I would, but between trying to remember the ending of the Lord’s Prayer