DAY 3: Death, Broken Brakes, and Blind Luck
Hares the size of spaniels scattered as I sped along with a becalming breeze. I don't recall seeing so much wildlife in these hills as a youngster, especially of such freakish size, but then I'd never cycled them, nor had I ever really paid much attention. Trips here with my parents were made under duress, way before my appreciation for nature turned up. Indeed, being forced along probably prolonged its development.
I also didn't expect to ride over such a variety of roadkill. Of course, there were your usual rabbits, pheasants, grouse and squirrels, but I was surprised to see not one but two otters squashed flat, and a live stoat at one point, darting into the hedgerow. As far as I knew, these latter two species were endangered, so I felt lucky to see them. Well, the stoat at least. But this isn't the 'blind luck' of the title.
Sutton Bank is a scarp slope renowned for its long and perilous gradient, so much so it necessitates an emergency stopping lane at its base.
It is a main road, though, so to avoid traffic I traversed north along the high western edge of the North Yorkshire Moors before turning down a smaller country lane marked as a cycle route. From this elevation the Pennines rose majestically on the horizon, despite their twenty mile distance.
This quieter option was a narrow twisting descent that ticked all the right boxes for cycling nirvana. I was only a fraction of the way down the sweeping switchbacks, enjoying myself immensely with the splendid views and tremendous lack of pedalling, when my front brake suddenly faded. Not to worry, I thought, still got the back one. Unfortunately my momentum was so great the now beleaguered rear brake, in horrifying solidarity with the front, followed suit.
I'd been meaning to tighten them both up, but neither set were worn enough to be an issue, or so I'd thought. At least, they likely wouldn't have been without a trailer. The added weight was a dynamic I'd irreverently dismissed as trivial.
With brake levers furiously clamped to the handles I plummeted down the cliff, too apprehensive to attempt a controlled crash with the unfamiliar variable of the trailer now monumentally apparent. The turns forced me to bank into corners like a European finance minister, poignantly bookending the Clouseau-like limb-flailing on the straight drops. In desperation, I tried braking with my feet, Flintstones-style, seat nose jammed into my coccyx, boot soles protesting, but the velocity was simply too great. At one point I bore down on a panting lycra cyclist climbing the other way, and, at a loss for a suitably succinct explanation for my grim predicament I shrieked 'morning!' as I rocketed past, twin corkscrews of roaring bootsmoke dispersing in my wake.
I could see what was coming on the straights, but anything could be around the next blind bend, from a motor vehicle to an agitated man with no pants on chasing a plastic bag. I was destined to be either sieved into strawberry jam by a truck grill or facehugged by a flying bag of shit. By some august quirk of fate, however, on every turn the road ran clear, eliciting a grateful sob and a wonder at which previous kindness was so deserving of cosmic restraint.
And here's the thing: I was hard pressed to think of any. Little stuff, sure, but when was the last time I helped a friend out of a significant fix, or said 'yes' to an invitation? Once one says 'no' a couple of times, people stop asking for either. And why, in this moment of peril, was I speculating about such things? I shut the musing down to deal with more immediate matters, but promised myself further review in retrospect, if able.
The last long straight stretch culminated in a sharp right hander, which would've been the end of man and machine if not for the long, level driveway of a country estate carrying straight on, its gates gloriously, beautifully, fuckably ajar.
Quite taken with my good fortune, I shot up the drive and coasted to a stop, orgasming relief. I dismounted with a wobble and walked back to the road, knees shaking as the adrenaline subsided. Resting my charge against a roadside fence I broke out my shiny new toolkit and started fiddling with the calipers.
I'd purposely bought a bike with disc brakes, as I imagined their increased stopping power would better control the weight. Problem is, I had no idea how they work. Well, I did in principle, from working on cars, but bike brakes are a horse of a different colour. I undid a few Allen bolts, looked at them for a minute, then screwed them back in. There was one bit with a cable running through it, so I unscrewed that, gave it a bit of English and a few exploratory pulls on the brake lever. The caliper didn't close but the cable slid through. Aha, thought I, so that's what that does. I fastened it back up and traced the movement to an internal spring contraption, obviously designed to push the piston against the rotor. After several other such leaps of faith and additional investigative bumbling, I figured out the rudimentary operation but simply couldn't get them to work without grinding; the pads were too worn. Not wanting to damage the rotors, which I imagined would be an expensive fix, I loosened the brakes until they barely caught and continued on my way through some of the prettiest countryside I'd seen so far, longing for a bike shop, a valuable lesson sharply learned.
I figured there'd be one in Northallerton, the small administrative capital of North Yorkshire. I'd been here maybe once or twice as a kid, but certainly didn't recognize the place. I wanted to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones, too, so decided to hole up in a pub for a bit and, physically and figuratively, recharge the ol' batteries.
The beer was cold and cheap, the wifi strength so-so, but there was nowhere to plug in. I questioned the bartender about this. She said the company that owned the pub couldn't afford such freeloading, so didn't install sockets in the bar area. (I won't mention the name of the pub because I don't want to further damage a business so obviously struggling. Such a move would require a herculean lack of class and tact.) Taken aback, I mused out loud how much it might cost to recharge a mobile phone. It had to be fairly negligible. A penny, perhaps? Two? She shrugged. I Googled it.
The notoriously power hungry iPhone 5 costs about 50p to run for a year. Less than a penny a week, assuming one full charge a day. Less than a seventh of a penny per full charge.
'I'll give you 50p,' I generously offered, to abject refusal. 'A pound?'
'No.'
I think this idea that modern electronics cost a fortune to run (indeed, my father only turns his mobile on to make a call or text, citing expense as the mitigating factor) stems from the days when televisions needed bump starting, and once going would fart and jiggle like a steam tractor, rattling window panes and showering granny with ceiling plaster. But there really is no excuse for such ignorance nowadays. We all carry these marvellous devices that can instantaneously access pretty much the entire aggregate of current human knowledge, so if you don't fucking know something, look it up.
Rather than decamp and search for somewhere else, I got going. It was such a lovely day my annoyance dissipated as soon as I left the bustle of Northallerton, and that's when I remembered my brakes didn't work. But the land was flatter here, and with no breeze progress was swift, untaxing, and quite lovely in this lull between the highlands. I decided to carry on because fuck it. I crossed the A1 (major highway, not the steak sauce) at Leeming Services.
I didn't go into the restaurant and shopping area, but stopped at the petrol station for some sweets. My choices came to be my staple daylong fuel selection for all bike tours hence: Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles and Fruit Gums. Some cyclists swear by Jelly Babies, but they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Jelly Babies are my (and probably your) favourite candy, so much so I rip through a bag like an extinction event. Pastilles and Gums, however, are smaller and by their very nature challenge you to resist chewing, so every sucked sweet is a small success, and life is a game of inches.
Take note, lycra dildos.
I also bought a packet of chocolate digestives to have with coffee and a loaf of bread as a soup accompaniment since my sandwiches were sadly dwindling.
The overriding benefit of cycle touring is the ability to eat and drink anything you want, whenever you want, and calories can go fuck themselves. Burning up to 6,000 calories a day means you have to remind yourself constantly to eat. There's a reason professional cyclists are whipcord thin.
To break down what 6,000 calories looks like: that's twelve Big Macs. Twelve. Even the most starving gluttonous twat (me) only manages three.
Or one hundred eggs. One hundred. That's Cool Hand Luke times 2.5.
Fifteen bowls of pasta.
Thirty packets of oatmeal.
Twenty-two of those Southwestern Eggrolls from Chili's.
Twelve bags of chips from a proper British fish 'n' chip shop.
Four 3 piece meals from KFC.
Two and a half large Papa John's pizzas.
Or three cakes. Not cup cakes, folks; proper centrepiece cakes you eat slices of with coffee and ice cream. Hell, a half gallon tub of that only contains 2200 calories; I could eat almost three a day. Lawks.
I continued on through Bedale to arrive at the camping spot I'd planned via Google Maps Streetview, and it was shit. The woodland looked pleasant from the pictures, but they didn't tell me about the damp smelly peat or the outrageously vocal grouse, overconfident while out of season, and obviously agitated at a tent in their midst. I was woken too many times to count by feverishly squawking grouse enthusiastically gang raping this giant nylon interloper.
Oh, how I longed for a minigun.
I also didn't expect to ride over such a variety of roadkill. Of course, there were your usual rabbits, pheasants, grouse and squirrels, but I was surprised to see not one but two otters squashed flat, and a live stoat at one point, darting into the hedgerow. As far as I knew, these latter two species were endangered, so I felt lucky to see them. Well, the stoat at least. But this isn't the 'blind luck' of the title.
Sutton Bank is a scarp slope renowned for its long and perilous gradient, so much so it necessitates an emergency stopping lane at its base.
It is a main road, though, so to avoid traffic I traversed north along the high western edge of the North Yorkshire Moors before turning down a smaller country lane marked as a cycle route. From this elevation the Pennines rose majestically on the horizon, despite their twenty mile distance.
This quieter option was a narrow twisting descent that ticked all the right boxes for cycling nirvana. I was only a fraction of the way down the sweeping switchbacks, enjoying myself immensely with the splendid views and tremendous lack of pedalling, when my front brake suddenly faded. Not to worry, I thought, still got the back one. Unfortunately my momentum was so great the now beleaguered rear brake, in horrifying solidarity with the front, followed suit.
I'd been meaning to tighten them both up, but neither set were worn enough to be an issue, or so I'd thought. At least, they likely wouldn't have been without a trailer. The added weight was a dynamic I'd irreverently dismissed as trivial.
With brake levers furiously clamped to the handles I plummeted down the cliff, too apprehensive to attempt a controlled crash with the unfamiliar variable of the trailer now monumentally apparent. The turns forced me to bank into corners like a European finance minister, poignantly bookending the Clouseau-like limb-flailing on the straight drops. In desperation, I tried braking with my feet, Flintstones-style, seat nose jammed into my coccyx, boot soles protesting, but the velocity was simply too great. At one point I bore down on a panting lycra cyclist climbing the other way, and, at a loss for a suitably succinct explanation for my grim predicament I shrieked 'morning!' as I rocketed past, twin corkscrews of roaring bootsmoke dispersing in my wake.
I could see what was coming on the straights, but anything could be around the next blind bend, from a motor vehicle to an agitated man with no pants on chasing a plastic bag. I was destined to be either sieved into strawberry jam by a truck grill or facehugged by a flying bag of shit. By some august quirk of fate, however, on every turn the road ran clear, eliciting a grateful sob and a wonder at which previous kindness was so deserving of cosmic restraint.
And here's the thing: I was hard pressed to think of any. Little stuff, sure, but when was the last time I helped a friend out of a significant fix, or said 'yes' to an invitation? Once one says 'no' a couple of times, people stop asking for either. And why, in this moment of peril, was I speculating about such things? I shut the musing down to deal with more immediate matters, but promised myself further review in retrospect, if able.
The last long straight stretch culminated in a sharp right hander, which would've been the end of man and machine if not for the long, level driveway of a country estate carrying straight on, its gates gloriously, beautifully, fuckably ajar.
Quite taken with my good fortune, I shot up the drive and coasted to a stop, orgasming relief. I dismounted with a wobble and walked back to the road, knees shaking as the adrenaline subsided. Resting my charge against a roadside fence I broke out my shiny new toolkit and started fiddling with the calipers.
I'd purposely bought a bike with disc brakes, as I imagined their increased stopping power would better control the weight. Problem is, I had no idea how they work. Well, I did in principle, from working on cars, but bike brakes are a horse of a different colour. I undid a few Allen bolts, looked at them for a minute, then screwed them back in. There was one bit with a cable running through it, so I unscrewed that, gave it a bit of English and a few exploratory pulls on the brake lever. The caliper didn't close but the cable slid through. Aha, thought I, so that's what that does. I fastened it back up and traced the movement to an internal spring contraption, obviously designed to push the piston against the rotor. After several other such leaps of faith and additional investigative bumbling, I figured out the rudimentary operation but simply couldn't get them to work without grinding; the pads were too worn. Not wanting to damage the rotors, which I imagined would be an expensive fix, I loosened the brakes until they barely caught and continued on my way through some of the prettiest countryside I'd seen so far, longing for a bike shop, a valuable lesson sharply learned.
I figured there'd be one in Northallerton, the small administrative capital of North Yorkshire. I'd been here maybe once or twice as a kid, but certainly didn't recognize the place. I wanted to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones, too, so decided to hole up in a pub for a bit and, physically and figuratively, recharge the ol' batteries.
The beer was cold and cheap, the wifi strength so-so, but there was nowhere to plug in. I questioned the bartender about this. She said the company that owned the pub couldn't afford such freeloading, so didn't install sockets in the bar area. (I won't mention the name of the pub because I don't want to further damage a business so obviously struggling. Such a move would require a herculean lack of class and tact.) Taken aback, I mused out loud how much it might cost to recharge a mobile phone. It had to be fairly negligible. A penny, perhaps? Two? She shrugged. I Googled it.
The notoriously power hungry iPhone 5 costs about 50p to run for a year. Less than a penny a week, assuming one full charge a day. Less than a seventh of a penny per full charge.
'I'll give you 50p,' I generously offered, to abject refusal. 'A pound?'
'No.'
The Durham Ox
157 High Street
Northallerton
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire
DL7 8JX
UK
UK
I think this idea that modern electronics cost a fortune to run (indeed, my father only turns his mobile on to make a call or text, citing expense as the mitigating factor) stems from the days when televisions needed bump starting, and once going would fart and jiggle like a steam tractor, rattling window panes and showering granny with ceiling plaster. But there really is no excuse for such ignorance nowadays. We all carry these marvellous devices that can instantaneously access pretty much the entire aggregate of current human knowledge, so if you don't fucking know something, look it up.
Rather than decamp and search for somewhere else, I got going. It was such a lovely day my annoyance dissipated as soon as I left the bustle of Northallerton, and that's when I remembered my brakes didn't work. But the land was flatter here, and with no breeze progress was swift, untaxing, and quite lovely in this lull between the highlands. I decided to carry on because fuck it. I crossed the A1 (major highway, not the steak sauce) at Leeming Services.
I didn't go into the restaurant and shopping area, but stopped at the petrol station for some sweets. My choices came to be my staple daylong fuel selection for all bike tours hence: Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles and Fruit Gums. Some cyclists swear by Jelly Babies, but they don't know what the hell they're talking about. Jelly Babies are my (and probably your) favourite candy, so much so I rip through a bag like an extinction event. Pastilles and Gums, however, are smaller and by their very nature challenge you to resist chewing, so every sucked sweet is a small success, and life is a game of inches.
Take note, lycra dildos.
I also bought a packet of chocolate digestives to have with coffee and a loaf of bread as a soup accompaniment since my sandwiches were sadly dwindling.
The overriding benefit of cycle touring is the ability to eat and drink anything you want, whenever you want, and calories can go fuck themselves. Burning up to 6,000 calories a day means you have to remind yourself constantly to eat. There's a reason professional cyclists are whipcord thin.
To break down what 6,000 calories looks like: that's twelve Big Macs. Twelve. Even the most starving gluttonous twat (me) only manages three.
Or one hundred eggs. One hundred. That's Cool Hand Luke times 2.5.
Fifteen bowls of pasta.
Thirty packets of oatmeal.
Twenty-two of those Southwestern Eggrolls from Chili's.
Twelve bags of chips from a proper British fish 'n' chip shop.
Four 3 piece meals from KFC.
Two and a half large Papa John's pizzas.
Or three cakes. Not cup cakes, folks; proper centrepiece cakes you eat slices of with coffee and ice cream. Hell, a half gallon tub of that only contains 2200 calories; I could eat almost three a day. Lawks.
I continued on through Bedale to arrive at the camping spot I'd planned via Google Maps Streetview, and it was shit. The woodland looked pleasant from the pictures, but they didn't tell me about the damp smelly peat or the outrageously vocal grouse, overconfident while out of season, and obviously agitated at a tent in their midst. I was woken too many times to count by feverishly squawking grouse enthusiastically gang raping this giant nylon interloper.
Oh, how I longed for a minigun.
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