lands end or bust
Largely bust as it turned out
It’s ‘summer’ 2017, and I take a week off to fight my way into a screaming, soaking headwind all the way down the west country’s Atlantic north coast from Bristol to Lands End. This account essentially taken from scribbled notes en route, punctuated with the odd photo. Few, in truth, were taken. Soggy countryside all looks much the same, and I’d little time for anything else. But into every life a little sun must shine…
The rain that missed you
Is there any sweeter sound than the rain that missed you? Lying here on the bed in my airbnb with the window open, listening to the rain teeming down outside. This could have hit me anytime today, but it held off till half an hour after I got here. I’ve a few battle scars from this morning’s drizzle, and brief torrential, but basically I got off very light, especially given the forecasts, which were, let’s say, less than encouraging.
So, second evening away. I’ve really fallen on my feet this time. Staying at Apple Farm, with Miles & Josie, and a cat called Walter (a big soft tart) and another (more suspicious) whose name I’ve yet to learn. It’s down in dingly dell…all low ceilings and wood beams and stone-flagged floors. And objets everywhere you look. From where I lie I can see a Gaugin on each wall, framed photo of a boat on a lake, a still from Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, a wall clock bearing the legend: St Etiennes (round the top) and CHOCOLAT (at the bottom. There’s a patchwork owl on the wardrobe, along with a candlestick and numerous other things (all nice) and a bookshelf stuffed with books (The Hobbit, Wolf Hall) and DVDs (Fargo). On the door to my left is the head of a duck. A cheerful looking duck; he regards me with a benign expression.
In a couple of minutes I will put some shoes on and head up the road. I’m told that within a mile or so I will find the local pub, where I will be able to get a nice bit of home cooking for under a tenner. Sounds like a result to me, particularly after last night’s greasy-burger (£13.95, but it did have a stick thru it) at a bland corporate pub in Cheddar. It was tasty enough I suppose, but greasy and soulless. Let’s hope tonight comes up with something better…
Pint of the oyster, please…and could I order a steak & ale pie?
Um….can you hang on a minute?
Mary appears: grey-haired, unkempt, vaguely manic. I’d been told by Miles and Josie, my Airbnb hosts, that Mary could be relied on for good home-cooking type cooking. Nothing fancy. Suits me. But now here’s Mary and she’s ‘Well, I don’t know where you’ll eat it’. ‘I’ll eat anywhere’. ‘Well I don’t let people eat at the bar, and all the tables are booked.’ Fortunately the girl behind the bar said That table’s only booked from eight o’ clock. So Mary relented. And I sat down at the little table. And 20 minutes later out comes this steaming mound of food. And I mean mound. Loads of meat, heaps of potatoes, veges in a side dish. And absolutely delicious it was! Best steak & ale pie I’ve ever tasted. Just wonderful. The beer was great too.
Big Google is Directing You
Go back a couple of days and…nothing much to say about the journey here. Near-empty train, quick journey, dumped in Bristol. Google Maps, route to Cheddar. Google comes up with three possibles, one highlighted. This, as becomes clear, is the one Google thinks I ought to take. But I’ve already decided I don’t want to take that one, I wants to take *that* one. So I switch to my preferred route. And off I go. And all goes well for four or five miles, when I start to get the feeling things aren’t quite right. Seems to be directing me back the way I’ve come. So I get out the phone and go to the maps screen, and bugger me, the route I’ve highlighted is no longer selected. No, Google has decided its route is better, and is taking me back to Bristol Temple Meads so I can get on it. After a bit of cursing and swearing, I reselect my route, and set off again. And all seems to be well, until….Yup. It’s done it again! My route has disappeared, Google’s preferred option is back again. By the time I’ve escaped from that nonsense it’s probably added six or seven miles to my travels. Thanks Google.
Anyway, an uneventful journey, and I get to Cheddar Youth hostel with no problems.
Not much to say about Cheddar. Have a brief chat with one of my room mates, a guy perhaps 10 years younger than me, who’s also cycling. Then out to the Bath Arms for what proves to be a pretty average burger and chips (Hey, it had a stick through the bun – what more do you want?) The chips were nice. Not sure it was worth £13.95, but there you go.
Similarly charmless and functional full English this morning at the hostel (I always wonder whether food’s quite at its peak when it’s been on hotplates for an hour and a half) then off in a light English drizzle. Again, a fair bit of fucking around with google, tho I have to say it do find you a very nice route. I followed Cycle Route 3 for nearly the entire journey, and it was lovely, pretty much all the way. Long sections along the canal. At one point the tow path turned into two tracks, a tyres width and a wheelbase apart, on which the grass had recently been cut, and much of it left to lie on the tracks. Combined with the rain, this made for a slightly nerve-wracking progress, and indeed only a couple of minutes after thinking I don’t like this much, my front wheel lost it & I pitched off into a big patch of nettles. I’m throbbing as I type.
Anyway, all’s well etc, and right now all could hardly be better. Miles & Josie could hardly be more delightful hosts, my bed is comfortable, I’m tired as a rock, and ready for a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow I head off for the coast. Elmscott something or other. With luck I’ll get there mid-afternoon and get to have a swim in the sea. (Having said which, I’ve just heard the weather forecast for tomorrow ain’t all that, so…we shall see. Kay sera, mate, kay sera…
Jesus what a day! 63 of the hardest miles I’ve ever endured.
The day started so well. Miles had asked me the evening before, what do you want for breakfast? Are you a cereal and toast man or would you like the full English? Well, a full English would be great, I said, but don’t make one for me unless you’re having one. Bowl of porridge and a cup of coffee works for me … set me up for the day.
So I come down in the morning, and Miles places a big bowl of porridge in front of me, along with milk, honey and a plunger jug of coffee. Very nice. I’ve no sooner finished the porridge than Miles sticks full English in front of me, complete with bantam egg on toast. (On expressing an interest, Josie goes out and gets, and introduces me to, the bantam. Sweet! A chicken, but a very little chicken, with sort of feathered legs.) The egg on toast comes with sausage, bacon, fried tomatoes and fried new potatoes. Lovely!
A visit from the p***ture fairy
Then it all started to go a bit pear-shaped. No more than a mile on my way and I feel a softening in the back. Yup. Puncture. Terrific. And it’s just starting to rain. Super. So, most often I can fix a puncture by finding the shard, then popping the tyre. Nope, no shard. That means I have to take the wheel off. 50% of the time that means the front wheel, which is easier. Nope, back wheel. Almost always, by the time you’ve got the tube and inflated it, you can pass it slowly pat your ear until you hear a faint hiss. Only maybe one time in 20 do you get a puncture that demands you take off the back wheel, remove the tube, and then submerge it in water to find the hole. That’s the puncture I’ve got today. In the rain.
With the help of a convenient puddle, I find the hole, fix the puncture, and get going again. and spend the rest of the day straining against a savage headwind, that hit me pretty much relentlessly all the way. A few patches I’m protected by trees, but for most of the day there’s no protection at all. And there are hills. Many, many hills. Endless grindings up, then cautious heavy-braking downs, on account of the narrow twisty roads, covered with mud and cow shit and patches of gravel and big potholes. So, seriously hard work all day, slogging up the inclines, and not even any fun going down the other side.
Not much good to say about it really. The countryside was mostly nice but unremarkable. There were several stretches of unavoidable A39, which were really quite scary. Not much fun grinding up a one mile incline in first gear while trucks and beemers hurtle past at 80, a metre away. Really, quite hard to think of much positive to say about today. I suppose I must have accumulated some moral fibre somewhere along the way…
There was one bonus. I arrived quite late at the hostel, and my roommate asked me if I’d like to share his dinner. That’s very kind, I said, but I’m sure I can get food here. No. Really? Yeah. There’s no food here. But really, you’re very welcome to share mine, I’ve got plenty. So that was nice, and saved me from an evening of porridge, which is basically my reserve food, for emergencies (as well as breakfasts of course). Oh, one thing – I forgot to mention the wildlife. Today I saw a hawk hovering, hovering, hovering, and then wham, down for what I’m sure was a kill, though the hedges were too high to see. And yesterday my path was crossed by a squirrel, a rabbit, and three deer. Riding down a narrow country lane and suddenly a deer pops out of the impenetrable hedge on the left, tip trip trips across the road, and is swiftly followed by another, and another. They appear out of one impenetrable hedge, cross the road, and disappear into another impenetrable hedge. All in five seconds. Magic.
So, Tintagel tomorrow. As best I remember, that’s just 40 odd miles down the coast, so even if the weather’s dodgy, it shouldn’t be anything like today. Which is just as well. Because V tells me all this wind is related to the hurricane over in America, and there’s worse on the way…
Triffic.
The wind, the wind...
The ‘worse’ arrived. 28mph winds – full in my face – and plenty of rain toboot. Only 34 miles today, thank god, but even then it took me from about 10.00 to just past 4 to do them. Grinding, heavy work, every foot of the way. Many long hills. Rain coming in in sheets. But above all, that bloody wind. God almighty, I said to the hostel lady here, ‘It’s the first time in all my years of cycling I’ve found myself having to pedal, quite hard, to go downhill.
And apparently, yet again, ‘there’s worse to come’. Tomorrow is forecast to see the wind up from 28mph to 50. And tomorrow, according to the schedule, I have 50 miles to cover. If it really is going to be 50mph, I honestly don’t think I can physically do it. I’m playing it by ear, but right now it’s looking like I may have to hole up here for a couple of days, give up on Lands End altogether, and either intercept my train en route, or get a train from Bodmin down to Penzance to catch it. We’ll see. But right now it’s all going a bit pear-shaped.
I’m ok with it. As I said to Bernard, who’s turned up here with his wife, Geraldine, ‘This is the weather I really should have got in Scotland, by rights, but it was great there. Some you win, some you lose.
Got some lovely photos today. The hostel is on a stunning bit of the coast, and we were treated to a cracking sunset. And earlier, at the top of the cliff, I came across the church – very atmospheric under the glowering sky.
One thing that got me today was the slack work of the sign people. You pass a sign saying Crankholme 4, then you spend five minutes struggling up a long incline in the face of a blistering gale, and come to the next sign, which reads Crankholme 4. Waaaaah! All that suffering, all that toil, and I’ve got precisely nowhere. *sob*
Can’t think of anything to add right now, and TBH I’m just too damn tired, so that’ll have to do. Sunday evening, 8.30 at Tintagel Hostel, signing off.
Well, after all that angst, what an anti-climax! And to think I was thinking about cutting and running, or completely changing my plans. In the event it turned out the distance wasn’t 50 miles but 34. Which I was pretty sure was doable, even if it was howling a gale. So I went for it and…had one of the easiest days yet. A mostly pretty benign route, no rain, and wind that was gusty and strong for sure, but at least wasn’t relentlessly blowing into my teeth all the way. Sometimes it was, but quite a lot of the time it was coming broadside, or even following. So, still a tiring ride, but no trouble at all.
Google maps continues to throw the odd curved ball. I got a nice pic of Bude Harbour which I shouldn’t have got, because Google sent me off round the harbour’s edge before announcing ‘in 50 yards, you will arrive at your destination’. Eh? Later on, when I was only a couple of miles from Perranporth, it decided I needed to go down a track. Ok. So down I go. And the track gets narrower and narrower, until I’m going down a pretty steep slope, brushed on both sides by nettles, the path by this time no more than 10 inches across, and strewn with rubble, until eventually it spits me out back onto the B road it took me off 5 minutes ago. Eh?
On the whole, tho’ it’s been a boon. It found me a terrific route today, I thought I’d be on the A39 for most of the day (roads get a bit thin on the ground in this part of the country), but in the event it took me along succession of lovely wooded paths and farm tracks, whose hedges helped a lot in keeping me out of the wind.
That out of season syndrome
Perranporth, where I’ve fetched up, is a strange mix. The Hostel could hardly be better located – up on the cliffs, with a commanding view out over the stunning, vast, beach. The beach is similarly staggering – really enormous, a vast sweep of sand with endless breakers rolling in. Not surprisingly it’s become a surfers’ hangout. Which at least partly explains why the town itself is such a let-down.
I went down earlier, in search of a pint (having not had one for a few days) but I just couldn’t find an even half-decent looking pub. The whole place has that forlorn out-of-season look about it; all tacky little souvenir shops and rank fish & chip places, with fat locals coming in and out with carrier bags of dinner. It all feels more than a bit sad, and I turned tail and hiked back up the hill, when it turned out that the only even possible place – a Weatherspoon’s – promised only Doom Bar and similar dishwater.
The hostel’s a bit strange. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s almost entirely full of foreign women – mostly German, but a couple of French girls too. And right now I’m sitting out in the lounge with half a dozen of them, while back in my dorm, the only three guys I’ve seen have been lying on their beds talking for an hour or more. Like I say, nothing wrong with it…it’s just a bit strange.
Anyway, I’m mostly relieved to have got away so completely unscathed from what threatened to be a pretty challenging day. Now for a quiet evening in, with what’s left of Jack London’s People of the Abyss (now there’s a fun read) and a glass or three of brutal Aussie Rioja. Signing off…
St Just made it
Well, and here we are. St Just. Just up the road from Lands End where, I hear, they’ve cordoned off the famous x miles to New York Paris Moscow sign, so if you want to be photographed next to it, you have to pay to be allowed in.
Staying the night with Jenny’s cousin Jane & hubby Paul, along with their son & daughter – Milo and Ruth, and Spot the dog, who isn’t their dog, but stays with them sometimes because her owner goes away for weeks at a time on work.
It rained. It started off so promisingly, and around lunchtime I thought to myself ‘I might actually get away with one rainless day on this trip’ but it was not to be. Late afternoon a very light drizzle started, nothing to worry about, and then when I was about three miles from here the heavens opened and I sheltered under a hedge watching the rain coming in in sheets. It’s been a soggy holiday.
Google did me proud yet again, finding a lovely route that involved what I’m sure was the bare minimum of A roads. I was probably on big, fast roads for no more than five miles of the day – the rest all on little windy roads, farm tracks, and public footpaths. A lot of it my old friend National Cycle Path 3.
Again, it also threw a couple of curve balls, including taking me down a tangled path so narrow that when I chanced upon a team of local workmen slashing it back with chainsaws it was all a bit ‘Dr Livingstone I presume’. At another point, I turned a curve of another such path to hear: ‘use the public footpath’, finding myself looking up at just that, over a railway. Two flights of stairs up, across, and two down. With a fully laden bike. Bonkers. I do half-remember reading a reference to it being a beta version somewhere.
Overall I have to say google maps has been a tremendous boon, taking me on far more interesting routes and to far more picture skew places than I would ever have found left to me own devices and paper maps. And it does take a lot of stress out of the whole thing…that reassuring voice telling you to turn right in 50 yards, and the confirmation appearing on screen. The most amazing thing is the way if you go off course, your blue triangle strays off the prescribed blue route within literally a matter off yards. Within ten yards you’re left in no doubt that you’ve gone wrong, and prompted to do a u-ey and get back on track. However did we cope without it? For all its quirks and foibles.
the last supper
Lovely meal with the family tonight. The kids are charming. Both just started secondary school, but seem totally unfazed by the whole thing (tho’ I’m told they’ve gone from a tiny village junior school to a 1300 student secondary. Milo practises his juggling in the kitchen with Indian clubs – very impressively. Both of them are massively into sports, and much of the conversation revolved around the difficulties of avoiding clashes between football, table tennis, trampolining, and etcs. Top munch, including dall and rice and aubergines grilled then marinaded in garliced salted yoghurt. Delicious. And lots of chopped coriander to sprinkle, along with small slices of green chilli. Just sprinkle them on your food as seasoning. Lovely stuff. The two bottles of cote de rhone I brought went down lickety spit – wish I’d brought more.
So, conclusions from Cornwall? It’s been a slightly odd one, really, not least on account of the weather, which has inevitably dominated quite a lot. I haven’t had a chance to follow plan A – arrive mid-afternoon with plenty of time to go for a swim, walk and look around the district and all that. In truth, I haven’t done a great deal beyond cycle and the basics. Generally I’ve arrived places quite a lot later than I would have expected – 5ish rather than a little after lunch – and generally tired and or wet to an extent that made me pretty loath to do anything much beyond sit tight, drink tea and get ready for the evening.
I’ve certainly enjoyed it though, and would have no regrets or reservations about doing the same again. You just have to accept that in this country, sometimes the weather will smile on you, sometimes it’ll be a challenge.
And I’ve met lots of lovely people, from Miles & Josie & Jane and Paul down to the old feller this morning who told me I should be racing on this hill ”…if you was going the other way of course”. Driving has been, almost without exception, exemplary. Many people have gone out of their way to an absurd extent to make allowances for me – holding back in passing bays for a minute while I struggle up a hill, when in truth they could have squeezed past without causing any real problems. I can’t recall one incident of bullying or fuck you driving the whole week.
Making an effort, the only people I can think of in the entire week who’ve rubbed me up the wrong way were those two blokes in the dorm that first night in Cheddar. And even they weren’t ‘bad’. Not rude or hostile or unpleasant. Just a bit neanderthal, and bereft of the kid of cheerful fellow-feeling you expect from fellow hostellers. If that’s the worst you can complain of after six days on the road, it can’t be all bad.
In truth it’s been an enjoyable week, but not a terribly memorable one. I can’t see it staying in the memory the way Scotland has. This journal speaks for itself – it’s probably half the length of the one I did in Scotland, if that. I just find myself struggling to find anything to write about. No ferries, no music, no night-time marathons; just wake up, cycle, eat, bed, repeat. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t make for the most riveting read.
Home James...
Quite a vigorous morning, I’ve had. First off, a full on walk with Jane and Spot the dog – one and a half decidedly brisk hours up hill, down dale, and generally round and about. Absolutely lovely scenery, dotted with many ruins of old tin mines. Jane says this area used to be incredibly prosperous, back in the day, but now “…the levels of deprivation are just unimaginable if you come from London. Ruth goes to school with children whose parents literally can’t afford to buy them shoes.” It has to be said, behind the lovely picturesque bits, which is most of the countryside, you do stumble across tired, drab housing estates, mostly distinctly ghost-townish, and as you cycle thru’ the grey streets, you do wonder how these people survive…what they do…how they live. Govt money one way or another, presumably, but the air of decline and deprivation is palpable.
After my walk I took a ride down to Land’s End. The timing was a bit tight, the more so after I discovered on setting off that I’d picked up yet another puncture. Then shortly after setting off, Google Maps again led me down an unbelievably narrow rock-strewn bramble-clad ‘path’, half way down which I lost my nerve and turned back, deciding that given the time and the train to catch, it would have to be tarmac or nothing. I reprogrammed for car, and set off again.
In the event it was fine. A & B roads, but nothing too fierce, and the driving, as ever, exemplary. I got down to LE in good time, finding the promised excrescence at the end, which I avoided by walking round the paths, and looked out at the end. Really quite impressive, in truth. I took a couple of photos which seem to have simply Not Come Out. Which is kind of odd…but not that big a deal..
Back to Jane’s, cup of tea, off to the recommended caff – the Dog & Rabbit – which took quite a bit of finding, and turned out to be closed. So I got a pasty from the butchers, which proved to be absolutely delicious, and packed with food.
Then off to Penzance. For once I had the wind at my back, which I guess is the main reason I arrived an hour early. (I’d aimed to leave 30 mins slack, in case of punctures, but with the help of the wind I fair flew along. Spent half an hour on the front, basting myself in the first real full-on sunshine I’ve seen all week, before heading to the station to catch The Slow Train home.
