Day-3: Ardnamurchan

Two days ago the forecast for today was sleet. As I ate breakfast this morning the weather changed from sun to rain to sun and back to rain again. As I set off it was drizzling. After a few miles I reached Loch Sunart, and the sun was shining again. It stayed that way for most of the day.

The planned highlight of the day was to reach Ardnamurchan lighthouse, at the most westerly point of mainland Britain, but the unexpected highlight was spending ten minutes watching an eagle swirling over the road near Loch Mudle.

At the end of the day, the second ferry of the trip brought me to Tobermory, ready for a day on Mull tomorrow.

Day-2: Moidart

From Fort William I followed the road along the south side of Loch Eil to Glenfinnan (the site, in chronological order, where Bonnie Prince Charlie's supporters gathered for the '45 rebellion, an outstanding concrete viaduct, and a filming location for Harry Potter). Then further west to Glenuig and south past Loch Moidart.

The rain threatened on and off for most of the day, but it stayed away for all but the last ten minutes. As far as I can make out nobody around here has much faith in the official forecast, and certainly nobody I asked was prepared to commit their own opinion on what to expect. The general view seems to be that anything to do with the weather is pretty much unpredictable.

Having started off flat, the roads gradually got more hilly, which could be viewed as a thoughtful way of breaking me in slowly. By the end of the day I was travelling at a pace that allowed me to fully savour the dramatic landscapes. Or to put it another way, I was getting off and pushing up hills quite a lot. Of course if I hadn't packed for the different weather possibilities the bike would weigh less.

So if they fixed the weather and the hills it would be just like home?

Not exactly.

On the whole, even the most minor roads have good surfaces. There is very little traffic, and drivers are friendly and cooperative. If they reach a passing place first, they will wait for you. If you wait for them, they wave to say thank you. I ride past people in gardens who call out good morning, and expect a reply. On top of which there are constantly changing views of lochs, the sea, and distant mountains.

Day-1: Beam me up

The first stage of my cycling trip this year was taking the Caledonian Sleeper from Euston to Fort William.

I had decided to ride the thirty-odd miles from home to Euston, and opted for the simplest route - which pretty much involves a straight line through Ealing and Shepherds Bush, then down Bayswater Road and Euston Road. Having allowed spare time for virtually every conceivable contingency I arrived at Euston far too early.

They split the sleeper at some point in the middle of the night, so bicycles have to be carefully stowed and labelled. I didn't like the idea of ending up in Fort William with the bike in Aberdeen. Perhaps it was worrying about that, perhaps it was the haggis, or perhaps it was the movement of the train, but I had a restless night, and got up at about 6:00 as we were leaving Glasgow. So I spent three hours watching the scenery glide by and become more dramatic as we worked north.

We arrived at Fort William on schedule. The passenger ferry to Camusnagaul leaves a few hundred yards outside the station. From there I was in another world.

It's the Scotrail equivalent of teleportation.

At one point I was pedalling madly to avoid buses and taxis in Euston Road. Then I had a few hours restless sleep. Then I was gliding along a single-track road where my own tyres were making more noise than anything except the waves lapping on the shore of the loch.

It's all a bit disorientating (in a nice way). How it will feel on re-entry doesn't bear thinking about. So I won't.

Parliament and how it works

In preparation for tomorrow's trip, I needed to go and get my pannier bags out of the loft. While I was looking for them I came across an old set of "The Children's Encyclopedia" that used to belong to my father. I started browsing through it (like you do) and came across an article called "Parliament, and how it works". I can't see when this was published, but it must have been in the 1920's. Here are some extracts that might prove useful in light of current events. I've scanned the whole piece, and stuck it here.

In all countries and in all ages men have been glad to submit to the rule of the best of their kind. The savage tribe found in some wise and doughty warrior a commander who could lead them in war and guide them in peace. Still today, in the most advanced civilisations, men instinctively look for leadership, and it is rarely that in time of trial a nation fails to find some man of distinction who seems to the great majority to embody the nation's spirit. As the cricket club finds its captain, so the tribe or nation finds its chieftain.


Members of  Parliament receive £400 a year, which enables poor men to sit in the house of commons.... 
A member of parliament who does his work thoroughly has a busy and exhausting time.... In practice some members work very hard and others very little; but forty-eight hours in a day would not be enough to get through all the work a member finds waiting for him.


The King's Government is a body of Members of Parliament chosen by the Prime minister, who is chosen by the King because he is the representative of the majority of the people who cast their votes. The Prime Minister is thus an exceedingly important man, and his powers are enormous.... It is impossible to exaggerate the degree of responsibility which rests on him, and all his waking hours are filled with anxieties.


I never did find the pannier bags. My wife uncovered them eventually, in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Real men don't read instructions

My old bike had schrader valves, and the new bike has presta valves. I've known this for the last few weeks, without really thinking about it. Tomorrow though, I'm setting off on a week's cycling trip, and it occurred to me that I had never tried to pump up a tyre with a presta valve. Sod's law says that a puncture always happens at the worst possible time, and I thought it would be better to have a trial run in the back garden, on a dry afternoon, rather than on a remote road in the dark and rain.

I already knew that I would have to release the little lock nut on the valve, and I knew that my floor pump has a dual head that fits both types of valve. So far so good - all that worked fine. Then I tried using the little frame pump that I take with me on the bike, and discovered that the head only fitted a schrader valve.

I've been riding around for weeks carrying a pump that doesn't fit, which is pretty dumb. Not only dumb, but arrogant as well. I tend to suffer from the attitude that real men don't need the instructions. Like lifeboats on the Titanic, instructions are intended for women and children first. So when I fitted the pump to the bike I had just unwrapped it, bolted it on and thrown the packaging away without looking at it.

Thank goodness for the internet. The solution is far from obvious, but eventually I found the answer. It turns out that if you unscrew the head of the pump, you can squeeze out a rubber plug, and remove a little plastic gizmo that sits underneath it. You then flip both the other way round, and reassemble it all.

To much relief it now works fine. I hope I don't get a puncture next week, but if I do I will be able to ignore how dumb I can be, and congratulate myself on my foresight. Particularly if it happens in the cold and dark and wet.

Nether Winchenden

When I started chasing down famous churches that I could reach on the bike it seemed unrealistic to try and reach more than a dozen. I did that many in the first year. In the second year I reached another dozen, plus one I'd missed - to bring the running total to 25. This year I planned to reach another 15 and take the total to 40. Today I completed this year's list.

St Nicholas, in Nether Winchenden was the destination.

There's part of me that wants to organise things so that I end each of these tranches on some kind of climax, with a particularly impressive destination, some unexpected revelation, or deep insight in to the human condition.

That would be over-engineering it all though. There is nothing dramatic I can see about Nether Winchenden. I quite like the name of the village, the box pews in the church are very pleasant, and they were offering cream teas in the village for Bank Holiday Monday. But in reality the distinctive thing about the visit was seeing a nice old country church in a pleasant village.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to sample the cream teas, but I enjoyed 20 minutes sitting in the churchyard, eating my sandwich, and listening to the birds.

I reckon that's how things should be.

It wasn't an ideal day for a ride. We have had a lot of weather for this time of year, with a mix of sunny periods, scattered showers, and a couple of hail storms. There was a strong blustery head wind all the way out, which was a bit of a pain, but it helped move me along on the way back.

So the only dramatic revelation I can offer is that I seem to have discovered quite an effective scheme for getting myself out exploring on the bike. Rather than trying to invent a new system, I suspect I'll just continue along the same lines for bit longer.

The map of the first 40 is here

April roundup

At the end of April, four months into the year, I had covered 1,232 miles out of an annual goal of 3,759 miles. Give or take a mile or two, that's a third of my goal in a third of the year. I've ridden further in the first four months of this year than I did in the first four months of last year, or the year before. I'm more or less back on track.

My Eddington number currently stands at 44 and is slowly creeping up. It would be nice to have seen more progress by now, but looking over the longer term I particularly need to concentrate on longer rides, and I'm pleased with the progress I'm making on rides of more than 60 miles.

I've only got one famous church left to visit on my list for this year. That's ahead of where I expected to be by his stage. The only concern in that area is whether I should have set myself a more ambitious goal. It looks as though I might be able to reach another 11 before the end of this year and take the tally all the way up to 50.

In summary it was a pretty flaky start to the year, but things have picked up over the last month. The risk is that I get knocked back by a hot summer or wet autumn. The trick, I suppose, is to build up a buffer by sustaining the pace that I set in April for a little bit longer.