Not All Points North

Not All Points North

Caroline, who works in our Hathersage store, tells us about her experience of riding All Points North - a self-supported, ultra distance, endurance cycling event. This series of posts was originally published on Caroline's blog.

All Points North is an unsupported bicycle journey around the north of England. Participants have to plan and ride their own route between 10 given control locations, which can be visited in any order. I was fortunate enough to gain a place in the race, which was due to take place at the end of May, but unfortunately this was cancelled due to Covid. However, the organisers kindly gave us the opportunity to ride our planned routes in September instead, with no mass start, tracking or post-race party (gutted!) – hence the name “Not” All Points North. Although I’ve done some cycle touring and some long day rides before, this was my first real foray into multi-day ultra-distance racing. I’ve decided to write about my experience, partly so I have a permanent record of it, and partly to encourage others who might be thinking about doing something similar. I hope you enjoy it.

You can find a link to my Komoot route here and Instagram checkpoint updates here.

Day 1

Start: Sheaf Square, Sheffield train station, 9:37am.

I’d arrived home from a very tiring work trip to Devon on the Friday night, so rather than setting off from Sheffield at the crack of dawn on Saturday, I planned to have a decent night’s sleep and a fairly leisurely start. I didn’t sleep amazingly well and woke up early full of excitement and nervous anticipation. I faffed about for ages having breakfast, finishing packing, doing several “final wees” – leaving the house is definitely the hardest part! I finally rolled from home in Walkley down to the train station, snapped a few quick pictures of my bike, and then I was on my way.

I based my initial route north on a ride that Dad and I had done up to Wetherby on Easter Saturday 2019. You may remember that Easter 2019 was a gloriously sunny weekend, and Dad and I had spontaneously smashed out the ride with a southerly tailwind the whole way, so my aim was to channel those good vibes. Alas this time there was a stiff breeze from the north west (right in my face) and the sky was looking distinctly ominous. Indeed, the rain started somewhere between Castleford and Pontefract, so I stopped in a bus shelter to put my jacket on and got talking to an old lady waiting for a bus. She asked where I was going and for some reason I said “Wetherby”, which I suppose was true, but a far cry from the whole truth. “On your own? You’re very brave!” If only she’d known what I was actually doing! Her bus arrived and we waved at each other as it pulled off. As I pedalled off shortly afterwards I inwardly kicked myself for being too embarrassed and doubtful of myself to tell her the whole truth and vowed to channel some more self-belief. Just before Wetherby I passed Dicky, an old school friend, and Mark, a cycling friend, riding in the opposite direction. Neither knew what I was up to but I was very happy to see some faces I recognised, so both were greeted with some enthusiastic heckling. It felt good to be rolling on some familiar roads and I even got down on the tri bars on the A168 up to Boroughbridge. In fact, this was the first road I’d ever used tri bars on (testing them out the night before Wetherby Triathlon in May 2018, nothing like a bit of last minute race prep!) and I smiled to myself at the memory. From Boroughbridge it was west to Studley Royal, the first checkpoint.

Whilst I was taking the obligatory checkpoint photo I met Colin, the first other NotAPN participant I’d seen. I mentioned how sapping I’d found the headwind but he’d set off from Silloth so flown down through the Lakes and Dales with a tailwind! I couldn’t believe how many checkpoints he’d already ticked off when I’d been finding it so hard and I felt quite disheartened. Little did I know that our paths would cross again later in the trip when the tailwind would be mine and the headwind his! Rationally, I knew that I needed to ride my own ride and not worry about how fast other people were going, but that’s definitely a mindset that takes practice to get into, and one that’s harder to achieve when you’re tired and damp and moving more slowly than you’d like. Studley was busy with people enjoying their Saturday afternoons but I’d promised myself a coffee so I had a quick stop, used the loo and filled my water bottles from the fountain in the courtyard.

After Studley the hills came thick and fast. Living in Sheffield and working in Hathersage, I am quite accustomed to hills, but my last-minute decision to ride meant that I hadn’t spent much time training on a loaded bike and I felt very sluggish. Greenhow Hill out of Pateley Bridge was particularly evil (although the section of B6265 between Greenhow Hill and Grassington is definitely one to revisit, absolutely stunning!). The showers were also coming thick and fast at that point and I stopped a couple of times to shelter from the worst of them, once in a bus shelter and then under the verandah of a cricket pavilion. I felt frustrated that I was losing a lot of time to jacket hokey-cokey and cursed at having to take my jacket AND jersey off every time I needed a wee. Men have it so much easier! At least this sign in the cricket club toilets made me laugh:

I tried to minimise stopping time by eating every time I stopped. I’d cooked a pizza at home so along with a couple of Lidl croissants and bananas this did nicely for a late lunch.

I reached CP2 Arncliffe just after 7:30pm and bumped into Jim and Rachel who were doing the whole thing on gravel bikes. We exchanged a bit of complaining about the weather which made me feel better! I rolled on through Upper Wharfedale but was feeling quite worn out by the wind and rain so decided to stop for some hot food in the form of a pub tea. When I arrived, the pub (The Buck Inn, Buckden) had technically stopped serving food but the staff could not have been more helpful finding me a table and an incredible steak pie and gravy and filling my water bottles. It was quite a classy establishment and I felt rather conspicuous sitting there in wet lycra pressed up against the radiator while, around me, some very well-dressed diners were enjoying their Saturday evening. Pie demolished, it was time to head back out into the darkness and over Kidstones Pass (incidentally, this was the first categorised climb featured in stage 1 of the 2014 TDF when it came through Yorkshire). I quite enjoy riding in the dark and the climb was fine but unfortunately somewhere on the descent the aforementioned steak pie decided to make a reappearance and rapidly exited my stomach along with everything else I had eaten that day… not a roadside experience I would recommend. I carried on but after wading through an ankle-deep flood my enthusiasm was waning and I decided it was probably time to call it a night and start looking for somewhere to sleep. I settled on the disabled public toilet in Bainbridge, undoubtedly the grimiest place I have ever slept but hear me out because it actually had several features that I would describe as “luxury” for a bivvy spot: rain-proof, lockable space for me and Hermione (yes, my bike is named after a Harry Potter character), a sink, soap, hot hand dryer and (obviously) a toilet, which, given the gut issues, gave me some peace of mind should another digestive episode occur during the night. I felt a small stab of guilt about potentially blocking a disabled person’s toilet access but quickly quelled it by deciding that if anyone with a disability in this tiny village needed a wee between midnight and 5am they could knock on and I would gladly let them in.

Day 1 stats: 122.8 miles / 8338 ft elevation

Day 2

Start: Bainbridge public toilets, 5:51am.

After a few hours of broken sleep it was time for a quick croissant and banana before hitting the road. After Hawes my route went up and over Buttertubs and into Swaledale to CP3, Keld. I’d love to go back and ride this bit on a sunny day! After Buttertubs there’s another big hill which takes you down in to Kirkby Stephen. I’d ridden some of these roads with my husband Andy and our friends Sam and Amanda a few weeks beforehand, so that gave me a bit of familiarity and something nice to think about. I wasn’t in a great place physically or mentally at this point as I still felt depleted after the previous night’s gippy tummy, fed up with the rain and disheartened by how slowly I was moving. Looking back, the day started with a phenomenal amount of climbing, so no wonder I was moving slowly. But of course I couldn’t see that at the time. I tried to lure myself along with the promise of a coffee in Sedbergh. Alas (the worst timing!) just 4 miles from my promised coffee stop I had my first, and thankfully sole, puncture of the trip. If you know me personally you are likely to know that any kind of emotion, be it happy or sad, tends to escape via my eyes and a few tears of hangry frustration leaked out as my cold wet hands struggled first to open the valve on the new tube and then to get the last bit of the tyre back on the rim. My puncture-fixing efficiency won’t be winning me any prizes but I got there eventually! I finally got my coffee in Sedbergh and afterwards when I went to unlock my bike this was on the wall next to my bike:

A sign! Spurred on by the rock, I continued along some tiny back roads to Kendal. I’d probably have been more efficient on the main road as although there was very little car traffic, it was quite up and down and I kept having to squeeze into hedges for passing tractors! I did get to ride over this lovely bridge though:

Kendal itself was unremarkable. I stopped for lunch at Morrisons and spent a long time sitting on the tarmac by the bike racks willing my body to digest it properly. Just as I was about to leave I had a message from my friends Patrick and Alex saying they might try and meet me at Kirkstone Pass Inn (CP4) as they were on their way to a family holiday in Ambleside. I shared my location with them as I set off into yet another torrential downpour but tried not to get my hopes up and dwell on it too much in case the timings didn’t work out. I had a quick diversion to Wheelbase in Staveley to pick up another inner tube after the earlier puncture – possibly overkill as I still had one good one, but I wanted to set my mind at ease as I knew the later stretch from Silloth to Berwick was very empty. Just outside Windermere the sun finally came out and I stopped in a layby for a bit of pre-climb layer faff and who should roll up but Pat and Alex! I can’t describe how good it was to see some human faces that I recognised. Amazingly I didn’t cry! They offered me all kinds of food (I politely declined the cold soup…) but the best bit was when Pat got his bike out of the car to ride up the climb with me. This was totally unexpected and I thought I might actually explode with happiness.

I was really nervous about Kirkstone Pass, both the climb and the descent. When I was about 12 or 13, Dad did Helvellyn Triathlon and we drove round the bike course the day before the race (it goes up to KP Inn via the Struggle – not the route I was taking – and then drops down into Glenridding – the way I’d be going down). I vividly remember the descent being really steep and twisty and utterly terrifying. Obviously the mind of my non-cycling teenage self, from the flat Vale of York, had built it up into something way scarier than it was. Nonetheless I was so glad to have Pat with me on the climb. I rode in front to avoid any drafting gains and we stopped a couple of times to take in the views and for me to say “I don’t think I can do this Pat” and for him to say “You’re smashing it Caroline” which was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration but definitely appreciated – top marks for encouragement Pat! Finally the pub came into sight and we were joined at the top by Alex, Pat’s younger brother Will and Mary and Nathan (also from Sheffield). It was so surreal seeing so many people I knew after 2 days of solitude. We chatted for a bit but I knew it would be easy to waste loads of time chilling in the sun with my pals so I rolled off down the scary descent (which really wasn’t that bad!). It had actually been Helvellyn Triathlon that morning and it was a shame I hadn’t got to KP a bit earlier as they had a pro race this year which would have made quite good spectating. As luck would have it, there were still lots of haggard-looking non-pros hobbling around Glenridding so I stopped for an ice cream (English Lakes thunder and lightning – the best ice cream in the north west) and enjoyed a bit of people-watching whilst planning my next move.

Looking back, I can pinpoint that moment as the point when I started to feel more positive and believe that completing the whole ride might be achievable. I decided to try and get Silloth (CP5) ticked off by the end of the day. I knew there was one more big climb after Glenridding (Park Brow?) but after that it was fairly rolling and ultimately downhill to the sea. For the next few hours I just tried to keep moving and keep snacking and gradually the miles ticked by. Riding in the sun was a real boost and once I crossed the A66 at Troutbeck it was a relief to be on some slightly flatter terrain. I paused briefly in Caldbeck to text Andy with a progress update (signal was terrible in the Lakes) but apart from that, just kept moving. I could see the sun dropping lower in the sky and set myself the arbitrary goal of reaching Silloth by sunset. A big bank of cloud robbed me of a proper sunset but it was still lovely looking over the Solway Firth to Dumfries and Galloway with a bit of pink in the sky.

Silloth - but where's the lighthouse?

There it is!

I wouldn’t rush back to Silloth. I’m sure it’s got a certain charm on a busy sunny day but this was a Sunday night and it was a bit grim. It was also seriously lacking in tarmac, a fact I became more and more aware of as I rode up and down the front several times looking for the lighthouse, then the Co-Op, then the public toilets… flipping cobbles!

I had hoped to find a drinking water tap at the public toilets but unfortunately they were locked, so I looked out for a pub en route instead. Pubs make great bikepacking stopping places: for the price of a drink you can fill up your water bottles and use the loo, service is quick and efficient, there’s one in nearly every village, and they’re open late into the evening when shops are closed. Outside The Wheatsheaf in Abbeytown I spotted James, who was instantly recognisable as another NotAPN participant. I stopped for a chat and a Coke and discovered he was actually taking part in a challenge called “All PINTS North” – a pint at every checkpoint and several in between as well – a braver man than I!

Water acquired, I rode on for a couple more hours, heading north-east through Drumburgh and then on a very straight, flat road over the tidal Burgh Marsh. The moonrise was stunning but the tidal flood warning signs were a little disconcerting in the dark and I felt like my eyes were starting to play tricks on me, so thoughts turned to finding somewhere to grab a few hours’ sleep. After a quick scout on Google Maps I planned to try the next church, in Burgh by Sands, and see if it was unlocked and available for a weary traveller to take shelter. Unfortunately (probably due to Covid) it was locked, but by that point I was very ready to stop so unpacked my bivvy kit and bedded down against the southern face of the church, tucked nicely out of the wind. Interesting fact: I’ve since discovered that King Edward I of England (Longshanks) died on Burgh Marsh in 1307 whilst planning a battle against the Scots, and his body lay in the very church in whose graveyard I slept until it was moved to Westminster Abbey for burial! Thankfully no royal ghosts came to haunt me and I slept, on and off, for around 4 hours.

Day 2 stats: 131.6 miles / 9705 ft elevation

Running total: 254.4 miles / 18042 ft elevation

Day 3

Start: St Michael’s church, Burgh by Sands, 4:59am.

My alarm went off at 4:30am, just as some big drops of rain started landing on my bivvy bag. I quickly packed up and set off towards Carlisle. Before long the rain turned torrential, to the point where rivers were running down the roads. I paused briefly in a bus shelter to finish off a big pot of yoghurt for breakfast but otherwise just tried to keep moving. I had sussed out a café in Newcastleton that opened at 7:30 so my aim was to have a decent stop and refuel there. I must have paced this section to perfection because I arrived at 7:29! I managed to stomach a full cooked veggie breakfast featuring a wonderful new form of carbohydrate that confirmed I had arrived in Scotland: the tattie scone, basically a fried potato pancake. Amazing! I also made good use of the hand-drier in the ladies toilet to dry all my gear; unfortunately it only stayed on for about 5 seconds so there was a lot of wafting going on. I’m not sure what the staff thought I was doing in there but I had long since reached the point in the trip where I cared what anyone thought. All in all it was a very welcome stop on an otherwise empty stretch.

Today’s top tip: don’t sleep with chocolate in your back pocket

After Newcastleton I headed north through Hermitage, Denholm, Kelso and over to CP6, Berwick-upon-Tweed. Passing through Denholm, I exchanged a wave with Colin, the guy I’d met at Studley Royal, who had paused to eat a sausage roll in a bus stop on his way back to Silloth. As the rain petered out to a fine Scotch mist, I really started to enjoy myself. The route was undulating but not too hilly and I finally had a tailwind! The Scottish borders were very empty though, and I was starting to feel the lack of human company quite acutely. I waved at every car driver I saw (only about 10 in total), wished several sheep good morning and on some of the straighter, more boring sections of road, started to sing songs to myself (out loud). Anything with a hearty chorus hit the spot. Think “She’ll be coming round the mountain”, but with “pink pyjamas” replaced by “soggy bibshorts” and it was basically written for me! One of my favourites was “One man went to mow a meadow”, because counting the numbers down in the chorus is a good workout for a tired brain and also because it makes me think of my Granny, who used to think “Mowameadow” was a place. I got quite good at doing the countdown really quickly – if you ask me sometime I might give you a demonstration if I’m feeling generous! If I got the numbers in the wrong order I’d go back to the beginning and start again. For the record, it gets significantly harder to fit the numbers into the available syllables once you get past 10. It sounds a bit daft now but it was a good way to pass the time!

How I felt about the Scottish weather…

Berwick was busy with tourists and I got a bit flustered about not being able to answer the checkpoint question (which turned out to be a red herring!), riding up and down the same stretch of road several times looking for a house number before giving up and going to find a coffee in the most ridiculously hipster of all hipster coffee establishments ever. Think exposed brickwork and pipework, staff with massive beards and pointy brogues, big houseplants etc. But the coffee was decent and the toilets had a huge sink where I could wash my face and brush my teeth.

CP6 Berwick lighthouse

Looking a bit rough but so glad I packed a toothbrush!

As Berwick was the most northerly checkpoint, I knew the tailwind would be over as I turned south into a prevailing south-westerly. And it really was quite blowy. As I was unlocking my bike an old lady walked past me and said “Is it not a bit windy for driving?” (I think she meant riding) … unfortunately there wasn’t a lot I could do about it. I also had a major faff trying to get out of Berwick on the National Cycle Route 1, which is definitely more suited to the gravel/MTB end of the spectrum. I hadn’t spent as much time planning this section of route as I’d have liked and it was starting to come back and bite me in the bum. The trouble with route planning in coastal Northumberland is that you feel like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, either the busy A1 or the gravelly NC1. In the end I went for a bit of both. The biggest gravelly booboo occurred at Goswick, where I’d planned to cross the East Coast Main Line only to find the level crossing was now private and closed (thanks RideWithGPS!)! I decided the £1000 trespassing on the railway fine/risk of death wasn’t worth it and had to backtrack along a whole kilometre of gravel track before bumping along through the sand dunes for a bit and finally rejoining the tarmac at Beal. What a waste of time! Very frustrating, but I tried not to waste mental energy dwelling on it and cracked on.

Oh dear

I’d planned my route so I could stop at Mum and Dad’s house in Amble (although they were actually away for the weekend). If this had been an actual race, this wouldn’t have been allowed, and I still wasn’t sure how I felt about it, so I limited everything I did there to stuff I’d have been able to do at a decent bike shop or café. No shower and no nap. I had 2 cups of tea, a couple of bowls of Shreddies, charged my electrics (lights, Wahoo, phone) for a bit, pumped my tyres up and gave my bike and bottles a quick wash. There had been a lot of slurry on the back roads on the Silloth-Berwick leg and I was a bit concerned about my already compromised gut picking up a bug, so it felt good to wash my bottles in some hot soapy water. There’s definitely a mental boost that comes from riding a clean bike compared to a filthy one! I reckon my feet had been wet since Saturday lunchtime (over 48 hours ago) so I also chose this moment to remove my socks, shoes and shoe covers and assess the trench foot damage – you may want to scroll past the next image quickly if you’re of a delicate nature. An hour of drying out and a fresh pair of socks felt good. The sunset in Amble was stunning and I felt physically and mentally refreshed by having a decent stop in a familiar place.

I pressed on into the night, picking up some food at Morrisons in Amble (focaccia reduced to 5p anyone?!) and then the last croissant from Lidl bakery in Morpeth around 9:30pm – I wasn’t that hungry but Lidl was too good to pass up! I paused briefly in Ponteland to phone Andy from the comfort of a bus shelter. We’d exchanged WhatsApps but this was the first time we’d actually spoken since I set off, which was nice. I was feeling really strong and positive now, and felt that finishing was definitely within reach. My secret goal all along had been to finish in under 4 days but I had written that off when day 1 and 2 were so hard. But after some quick calculations I worked out that it might just still be doable if I put in a mega long day 3 and 4… I would need to put in 190 miles today to get to CP7 (Blanchland), leaving me with another 190 miles to get home tomorrow. Could I do it? I wasn’t sure, but I was going to have a decent stab at it!

I had tried to recce the Ponteland – Blanchland section of the route during Storm Dennis in February but unfortunately Dennis had proved a little too gusty for riding and Andy and I had ended up driving round the route instead. Nonetheless there were still bits that looked familiar, even in the dark, and I was treated to a lovely night sky with very little light pollution and another big orange moon. After crossing the River Tyne at Stocksfield it was pretty much uphill and into the wind all the way to the checkpoint, quite a slog but by now the bit was firmly between my teeth! At last the bright lights of Blanchland appeared in the distance and I arrived at the checkpoint at 01:19. I’d already decided to bivvy somewhere in the village as it lies in a little valley and it would be warmer there than up on the windy tops, and mentally I couldn’t think about going any further. In a weird case of déjà vu I ended up going for another spooky graveyard bivvy experience, this time round the back of Blanchland Abbey, which was founded as a priory in 1165 and is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument – let no one say I’m not cultured! Of course the culture didn’t even cross my mind at the time as I could think about only one thing- sleep!

Blanchland in the small hours

Spooky bivvy #2

Tap! Bivvy luxury!

Day 3 stats: 194.3 miles / 10620 ft elevation

Running total: 448.7 miles / 28662 ft elevation

Day 4

Start: Blanchland Abbey, 5:53am.

I was now firmly on plan “get round in 4 days” so only allowed myself 3 hours of sleep. I didn’t sleep too badly but woke up feeling stiff and sore. Obviously my body had been feeling tired over the last couple of days but this was the first time I had been in actual pain. I tried to put it to the back of my mind and set off, only to discover as soon as I tried to pedal that my knees just would not bend. This could be an issue! So I rode the first bit out of Blanchland out of the saddle, willing them to come back to life. It’s actually quite hard to ride with completely straight legs and I must have looked hilarious. As I warmed up, they did free up a little, but the pain was quite acute, so just outside Edmundbyers I stopped to take my 2 emergency paracetamol to take the edge off it. When I looked down at my legs, my quads, knees and ankles were really puffy. I actually folded the tops of my socks down to stop them digging into my calves. My left Achilles was also very sore and felt like it was pulling with every pedal stroke. When I touched it, I could feel a huge bump about twice its normal thickness.

I was worried. I had proved to myself that I was stronger than I thought but this felt like I was actually damaging my body. After feeling on top of the world the night before, I had now ricocheted to the other end of the spectrum and was seriously doubting my ability to ride home – not because I lacked the mental strength, but because I just couldn’t rely on my legs to actually do what they were supposed to. But I also figured that the longer I took, the longer I’d be dragging the pain out, so I tried to keep going and broke it down into tiny 5 mile blocks – baby steps!

Blanchland to Durham was scenic and the morning sky was beautiful but unfortunately I timed my arrival in Durham to perfectly coincide with rush hour. I’d planned my route to go right through the city centre thinking it would give me a good café opportunity but the whole place was gridlocked and the only place I could find open at 8:30am was a Cooplands opposite the bus interchange. I ordered a coffee and the lady serving me explained they had some kind of deal on where I could have a “sweet treat” with my coffee for an extra 50p or something. She rattled off the options but unfortunately this was too much information for my frazzled brain to process and for some bizarre reason I panicked and ordered a steak bake and 5 cheese straws. I don’t normally eat much red meat and I struggle to digest stuff that’s really fatty at the best of times, so I honestly have no idea what I was thinking! I plonked myself down on the pavement right outside, with commuters and school kids giving me funny looks as they streamed past, looked down at my puffy legs and my half-eaten pastry hoard and thoroughly questioned my sanity.

This seemed to set the tone for the next few hours as getting out of Durham was a right pain with traffic, roadworks and then a bridge closure on the road I was hoping to take. One post-industrial northern town started to look very much like another and every pedal stroke was painful. During a recce in March, I’d stopped at Sainsburys café in Sedgefield so I set that as my next target, with the aim of buying some more painkillers and cheering myself up with a proper café stop. Annoyingly I realised I must have dropped my lock somewhere in the dark the night before as I couldn’t find it anywhere. For the whole ride I’d tried to be really disciplined about putting things back in the same bags/pockets so they were easy to find. I improvised and tied my bike to the rack using my phone cable instead. Inside, I stocked up on paracetamol and ibuprofen and, absurdly, despite looking the roughest I have ever looked in my life, managed to get ID-ed by the checkout assistant. You only have to be 16! Sadly the café was closed (cheers Covid) but the nice lady at Customer Services took pity on me and let me use the loo. I resigned myself to one of those Tetrapak iced coffee things instead – today’s nutrition had reached an all-time low. I rang Mum from the car park and we tried to arrange a meeting for later in the day, possibly at Castle Howard, but I was struggling to get my head around timings and logistics and we left the options open. I distinctly remember Mum asking how far it was to Sheffield. “About 150 miles”, I said. “So you’re not going all the way tonight”. “Ummm…”!

I had dosed up on both varieties of painkiller at 2-hour intervals but I was still in a lot of pain. Somewhere on the edge of Stockton-on-Tees I sat down on the pavement and cried for the first time since that puncture on the morning of day 2. I was just so desperate to get home and for it to be over. The people in the north east are very friendly and several passers-by stopped to ask if I was ok, had I fallen off etc. I thanked them and said I was just having a rest! I tried to think of what else could possibly help my legs work better and my mind landed on Deep Heat as I recalled that damaged tendons often work better with a bit of heat rather than ice. I also thought the numbing effect and the action of massaging it in might help. I figured it was worth a shot, and if nothing else, it would make me smell better. A quick Google, a phone call to the next pharmacy in Yarm, 3 more miles of riding and the magic cream was mine! I sat on the floor (definitely a theme today!) and applied copious amounts. Rubbing the cream in had the effect of lifting 3 days’ worth of road dirt from my legs and rolling it into little dirt balls but obviously I didn’t care. As I was doing so, the pharmacist actually came outside to ask if I was ok – another kind stranger looking out for me.

I hobbled on, heading east through Hutton Rudby and stopping for a quick coffee and ice cream in Great Ayton before hitting the hills. I was now fuelled entirely by caffeine, painkillers and Deep Heat fumes. It was hot, and a mixture of sweat and suncream was pouring off my face. The North York Moors were absolutely beautiful, but brutal. So many percentage gradient signs! I would love to explore this area with fully working legs. I approached Rosedale from Fryupdale (what a name!) to the north and joined the Glaisdale Rigg road over the tops. Oh boy. A horrendous, never-ending 8mph slog into a howling gale. At one point I was convinced I could see the Angel of the North on the top of the moors. I think it was a shooting cabin. I clearly wasn’t quite thinking straight. Several false summits later, the stone cross of CP8 finally came into sight. It was so windy that I couldn’t get my bike to stay upright for the checkpoint photo.

CP8, Rosedale

When I had recce-d this bit of route in March I had vowed never to go up Rosedale Chimney on a loaded bike ever again, so this time I headed out of the valley to the southeast, through Cropton Forest, which was a much more enjoyable experience. From there down to Castle Howard (CP9) wasn’t too bad. Mum was waiting at Castle Howard armed with what now strikes me as a very random selection of food and drink including tea, Coke, a yoghurt, jam doughnut, croissant, grapes and a hard boiled egg. At the time it seemed like a perfectly normal meal, so I sat on the floor wrapped in a blanket, devoured most of it and stuffed the rest into my pockets for later. Mum has since confessed that she was absolutely ravenous thanks to me taking forever to get there and that she’d secretly hoped I wouldn’t eat everything in sight – sorry about that Mum! My legs were now so sore that I couldn’t get from sitting to standing normally so I had to roll onto all fours and then haul myself up. According to Mum I was physically broken but still remarkably cheerful!

Blanket, doughnut, Coke, sorted.

I left Castle Howard at 7:30pm with 80 miles left to do. In hindsight this was totally bonkers – I would normally consider 80 miles to be a decent day ride, not something to embark upon after an already long day as night was falling. But stopping for the night and carrying on the next day wasn’t even an option that crossed my mind. I was totally fixated on getting home and I simply couldn’t be bothered with another bivvy. I was determined that the next sleep I had would be in my own bed.

The next few hours were honestly the worst of the whole trip and I think my brain has blocked a lot of it out. I’d planned a nice flat route around the east side of York but the trouble with flat riding compared to hills is that there is no option to freewheel, and as my ruined legs struggled to turn the cranks, the miles seemed to tick by agonisingly slowly. Selby was a particularly low point: there seemed to be nothing there but boy racers, supermarkets that closed at 10pm (just before I arrived), and an overpowering, nauseating smell of animal feed that must have come from one of the factories I passed. Grim. In the absence of anywhere to purchase food I bought a pint of Coke from a grotty pub and tipped it into my water bottle. The only saving grace on this stretch was seeing the moon light up the chimneys of Drax power station – beautiful in an industrial sort of way.

Moon and Drax power station

After Selby I skirted round the northwest side of Doncaster, taking a mixture of roads and bridleways (I no longer cared about avoiding gravel), and crossing the A1 at Skellow. If I ever build a footbridge there is no way on earth it will feature steps. They very nearly finished me off. What’s wrong with a ramp?! From Selby back to Sheffield was the only time on the whole trip when I felt scared. I think it was a combination of extreme fatigue making me think irrationally, spotting a shady figure on the towpath, and two separate occasions when a rat ran across the road in front of me. I was convinced that if I stopped and slept, I would either get abducted or eaten by rats. Time seemed to take on a different dimension as I crawled along, and, after what seemed like an eternity, I eventually rolled into Sheffield at 03:48am. I had been on the go for almost 22 hours and was completely overwhelmed with a) relief that it was finally over and b) disbelief that I had actually finished! Andy was waiting for me at the station (what a hero!) and we took some pictures before heading home.

I did it!!!!!

Day 4 stats: 187.9 miles / 9846 ft elevation

Trip total: 636.6 miles / 38508 ft elevation / 3 days, 18 hours, 12 minutes