Mucky Wet Roads

For some time now I have been doing a bit of work for a local business - just one day a week, but it gets me out of the house. The trouble is that the local business isn’t that local, it’s 17 miles away. That may seem nearby, but in my van, it’s a 34 mile round trip and that’s an expensive litre of petrol. And I earn so little that using the van to get to work is really rather uneconomic, so I have been thinking all winter that when the weather allowed, I ought to try cycling to work.  After all, it’s only 17 miles each way, how bad could it be?

Yesterday, I did it - and it turned out to be the hardest commute I have ever done! Thirty four miles plus a few extra due to choosing a different route by bike than I would by car - and during my morning journey at least, there were also a few extra hills due to a rather poor route choice. Not that it was flat on my return journey!

When I came to Bishops Castle, I was conscious that my mileage dropped. This was because hilly rides are so much harder than flattish ones and my ride to ‘work’ couldn’t have been much more hilly. Seventeen miles took me almost two hours, in an up and down, up and down, up and down sort of way. I’m a terrible hill-climber on a bike at the best of times and I had constant hills to contend with - the muddy, slippery roads didn’t help. They just made for skidding whenever I tried to put the power down.

Those mucky, wet and slippery roads look utterly grim from a car window. But from a bike, the compensations for my hard-riding came in bucket-loads. Dodging the mud and the debris made for a close involvement with the landscape, and the budding trees moved by slowly enough for their buds to be evident. Birds, whose biological clocks pay no heed to the rain, sang from every wire; the warm smell from steaming cattle in the fields drifted over to my nostrils on the breeze. The daffodils are nearly out, the snowdrops are everywhere. You need to stop the car and get out to see those, but from a bike, they bombard you at every turn.

I’m not sure whether I will ride both ways to work again, it was perhaps a bit too hard and a bit too time consuming. But I will try to find a way of incorporating my bike into at least a part of my journey because cycle commuting, as I’ve written before, is a very special way of adding quality of life to a normal working day. Once, it was just four miles each way and I did it every day - it became a part of my personality which I valued. For all its difficulty yesterday, when I got back from work, I felt I’d truly come home.

Purposeful Rides

Riding with a purpose is good for me.  Specifically, riding to get somewhere - a particular destination - provides me with many rewards.  A target to motivate me, an achievement to savour, new, previously undiscovered roads, and the delights of the ride: all these things enthuse me.  Mine may be small achievements but they make me feel good about myself. 

Paul musters his riders

My husband ran one of his mountain bike events this last weekend, based at Talybont on Usk, just south of Brecon in South Wales.  On similar trips in the past I discovered bit by bit that mountain biking wasn’t for me.  Time after time as I watched those around me have terrific fun on tricky descents I simultaneously came face to face with what seemed to be my inadequacies, as I saw those same descents as downright dangerous.  I allowed myself to get down about it, feeling like a failure.

But that’s not a fair reflection.  Each of us has strengths and weaknesses.  We can’t all be good at everything and we would be foolish to forget that.  For me, trying to be an effective mountain biker was never going to work and beating myself up about it is as pointless as it is self-destructive. 

Cycle touring, in even the broadest sense, is where my cycling heart lies.  To get from one place to another under my own steam feels good and it has a purpose for me which seems to fit my personal philosophy.  Two weeks cycling through Scotland, panniers loaded with all we need, is cycle touring.  But so too is a one-direction ride starting in one place and finishing somewhere else, carrying only the days’ requirements.  Riding a circuit, starting and finishing at home, doesn’t quite have that sense of purpose - though obviously it can also be great fun. 

So I rode from our home to Talybont, my husband taking a bag for me in the van before he met up with his group for a mountain bike circuit.  For the remainder of the weekend, I provided van-based support for his tour. 

My husband also does challenge rides; his recent rides have finished in Corwen and Bala.  So I have ridden to Corwen and Bala to meet him at the finishes.  His needs are met, my needs are met, we both feel we’ve accomplished something and we both finish smiling. 

Now I’m looking for every opportunity for purposeful rides.  They are challenges to fit my size and they give me a buzz I need. 

Pen y Fan