Day one (imaginative title, eh)

so the first day's ride is over. I've fallen short of my distance by 50 miles but the going was really tough. The increased load on my bike from all the food water and clothes added alot of drag on the climb, plus the inclination of the hills was something I hadn't expected. I hit bad weather, and bad food at the border. The thing that had been creatively named a cheese burger was tough to force down, but i was hungry. standing in rain and a gale was beginning to depress me so I headed straight off.
Nothumberland had two distinct features, desolate steep hills and hundreds of scooters. The two are not related. The ferocity of the hills meant I felt like I was climbing to the top of the world at times. Even to push the bike up was a struggle. I carried on through Nothumberland where people live in isolated farming communities, mostly to do with sheep. Their dogs don't really know the difference between me and sheep as one tried to herd me into the pack on the journey. Dogs really dont like me.

I was beginning to struggle and it was getting really cold and windy. I knew that I had to finish the first day early so I needed to find a place to sleep. As time dragged on I was becoming more desparate to find a spot. Eventually I saw a sign for a camp site and chose to head towards it. 6 miles out of my way but what the hell. as luck would have it, 2 miles later I found a perfect field and chose that instead. I'm now overlooking the derwent reservior and it is beautiful in the sunset.

I must check front tyre in the morning, green goo is oozing out of the sides

As a side note I've seen 3 dead deer, 2 dead badgers, 2 dead rats, loads of dead pheasant an rabbits and one decapitated head from a barbie doll. Good night.

10 hours to go

This is going to be short because I have a lot of packing and preparing to do and I have a killer headache too. I'm almost prepared mentally, but I'm not sure I have enough pants for the entire journey, I'm looking forward to eating a couple bags of nuts, I have finally washed my red t-shirt, my headlight batteries are charging and I'm really thinking hard about printing out my insurance certificate but I'm also thinking about drinking the nice champagne that Catriona bought today.
Tomorrow I'll be on my way. Once I set off all this will mean nothing because I have just one thing to do. Get there.

Essential new toys for me, a boy.

With only a week until I head off I have to admit that I've been procrastinating a little dealing with the finer points of my trip. Last night I had another look at my route but really all I did was fiddle with way points without any real aim or outcome. I've been thinking about putting dried banana in a bag on my handlebars but I still haven't got round to getting the bag, or the dried banana. I'm even thinking of passing on my visit to the bike station in favour of sitting in the living room and playing Xbox. I think it's a protection mechanism, a way of allowing me to accept the reality of my decision to ride to Paris in the time I've given myself. If I weren't dreaming of killing zombies right now then I'd probably be insane with worry about the journey. I know in reality that I'll get all the little things completed in time and all will go swimmingly but it helps to try to play down the seriousness of the plans sometimes, it's necessary to have some distractions.

This morning I got up super early. I was woken up by Catriona handing me a bowl of cereal telling me that she'd poured the wrong type out. That was nice because I didn't have to get out of bed to eat, which no-one can complain about, but also it was handy because I needed to be at the post office really early to collect a package. After a quick ride to the sorting office and back I jumped into bed to unwrap the package because, if we're honest with ourselves, unwrapping your package in bed is where it should be done.

The package turned out to be my free loader, a solar powered charger. It was a happy moment as I'd been worried about running out of power for my phone and PDA on the trip.

When I got back from work later that day I had another surprise, a big blue polythene bag. I guessed that it must be my bivvy bag though I was a little surprised at the size. It was much larger than I thought it would be. As with all things that are wrapped I had to unwrap it quickly and messily. After the unwrapping it was very necessary to get into the bag. Oh man, that thing is great! It may be made for a giant but it is so comfy and cosy that I am actually looking forward to sleeping rough just to use it.

Well it's the evening now and after having unwrapped stuff, charged stuff, drunk cider and watched South Park I feel that I have had just the right amount of distraction. I'm going to finish off my bike maintenance tomorrow and by sunday I'll have all the songs together and a printout of the route. I'm really looking forward to going!

How to make things difficult

So yesterday morning it dawned on me that I had 11 days until I had to get on my bike and ride to Paris. Things have crept up on me quickly. Knowing from experience that pedalling takes a lot of energy and given the massive gaps in my training, I decided to 'mod' my bike. I had been in a bike shop earlier on in the month and had been talking about what I could realistically do to my bike to make it better. There were really only three choices; get a new, larger, chain set (the front cogs on the bike), make my wheels bigger or buy a new bike. The last option would cost a small fortune (I'm so broke that even the thought of buying a bike wilts my bank card) the second option isn't even possible but the first option, by some miracle, became a reality because I happened to be in the only shop in the UK that had a discontinued product that was exactly what I was looking for at a bargain basement price (don't ask me how I know this, lots of phone calls, web searches and a really lumpy malt shake were involved).

I had become the proud owner of a new Shimano chain set. I know the theory is that by increasing the size of the cogs I can pedal less and gain more speed (great!) and as a someone who has dedicated many years of his life to looking for an easier way to do something I could see great potential in this product. Only one thing stood in my way. I didn't know what I was doing. Not seeing this as a problem I enlisted the skills of the Internet to find me the answer. The Internet didn't let me down, it produced the bike station, a charity organisation where you can rent space and tools to help you maintain your bike as well as give you expert advice and a cup of tea, all for £3.00 an hour. Weyhey!

After finishing work yesterday I was itching to get to the bike station and start the job of upgrading it. I wasn't really sure where the place was so I figured that I'd use the GPS navigator I've attached to my bike (yes, I have TomTom on my bike, what can I say?) to help me find the way. I fired it up and started typing in the city to locate the building I was looking for.

"E...D...I...O, damn, fat finger syndrome, I'll start again, E...D...I... err what's that predictive answer coming up with? Looks like El something or other."

I couldn't quite see from the glare on the screen, it was a beautiful sunny day.

"E...D...I...N... now I'm sure this isn't right. It says El Rosario. Start again, concentrate, type the whole city in, the thing must have heard of Edinburgh. E...D...I...N...B...U...R...G...H. What does it spell? EL ROSARIO!"

I was stunned and confused. All I could find were weird Spanish sounding places that I'd never heard of. After going through all the settings I discovered that the PDA had conveniently deleted all the Western European maps and left me with the Canary Islands. Clearly I was going to have to do this the old fashioned way. Ride to where I thought the place might approximately be then cycle up and down the street, avoiding asking anyone local where it was, particularly any cyclists, (I am a man after all) until I happened upon the place by accident, which was exactly how it happened. I love it when a plan comes together.

Once there things had to look better. I was in a building with loads of other cyclists busily working on their bikes. It felt homely. I had a plan, sort of, I would strip my bike until I got stuck, then call for help. I took the bolts out of the cranks, then called for help. It had been a good 5 minutes of unassisted work. I was proud of myself. Unfortunately it was really busy and the guy's who worked there were unable to get to me very quickly, fortunately there was someone on hand who I thought would be highly qualified to help. There was a Dutch guy replacing his chain set was next to me. What more qualified person did I need? He was probably born on a bike. I asked his advice and he kindly gave me the tool I was looking for. It was a special extracting tool for removing the cranks. It looked simple enough to me, screw one bit on, screw another bit till the crank pops off, have a cup of tea.

Try as I might I could not get the dam thing to screw in, even after one of the assistants showed me how, then actually did it himself on one of the cranks. I turned to the Dutch guy again, he had been so helpful the first time.

"Could you help me do this? I seem to be genetically unable to screw this thing in or I seem to lack the special screwing skills needed for this type of job."

In that really cool and comedic accent that the Dutch have he said "sure, I'll put it in for you" and he did.

So the screw bit was in the hole, all I had to do was tighten it up, do the other bit and hey presto, crank removed and time for tea. I tightened it up, I started extraction and kerrrunch. I had stripped all the threads off the crank. The Dutch guy had cross threaded the tool, I hadn't checked it and now I was sweating bullets. I grabbed an assistant and he confirmed my worst fears. The crank was ruined and there was no easy way of removing it without causing extra damage to the bike. My only option was to use a pipe splitter and a mallet and thump off the crank. I was told this method was going to damage the frame and break the bottom bracket shoulder then asked did I want to do this. What could I say?

"Have you got another shoulder?" I queried. He told me he did and so I elected to whack the hell out of my bike.

Final damage:
one ruined chain set.
one damaged frame.
one smashed bottom bracket shoulder.
Me very sad indeed.

Time was running out, and so were my wits. There were thirty minutes left before the place closed and I had a very poorly bike. After a tense moment where we thought there was no replacement shoulder, one was found then I very quickly rebuilt it, with the help of a wild haired one eyed man and a lot of nervous energy. The bike still needs a new chain, possibly a new rear dérailleur, a new bottom bracket and some more work in the garage to correct loose brakes and cables and currently has excessive drag on the cranks when pedalling but apart from that it is fine.

Here's hoping that all goes well on Saturday when I take the bike back to the workshop. I guess as long as I'm really, really far away from it then what could go wrong?

As one light extinguished another was lit

Since preparing for Beltane this year it has come to light how my family has influenced me in my path. I discovered that many of my family members are followers of an earth faith or social based belief of one sort or another. My grandmother was a humanist and my first knowledge and experience of this was at her funeral, one of the most beautiful tributes to a person's life I had ever witnessed. My great aunt a member of a Celtic community has strong beliefs in the pagan calendar and my mother, a hippie at heart, has strong beliefs in natures power within us (interesting that it is all the women in my family that believe these things, in a matriarchal society one can truly see that love, sharing and nurturing are the fundamental reasons for existence, not war, power and oppression); however even with this background the preparation for this Beltane was particularly difficult for me.

My work commitments and money problems aside I also had to deal with the harsh reality of my Dad's illness. On the 1st of April I was given the news that my Dad's brain tumour was confirmed as terminal. After a two year battle ,where things had looked victorious, it was a shock to discover and hard to come to terms with. After visiting him I felt that although the inevitable would eventually come there was plenty of time left for us, though we lived hundreds of miles apart we could still enjoy each others company.

Two weeks after this I received news that my father was critical. Two weeks. I rushed to see him to find that he had deteriorated at an alarming rate. No longer was he the powerhouse of a man I knew as a child. Only through sheer determination could he manage to walk a mere couple of feet. His eyesight gone,and the left half of his body limp he was almost helpless. Yet his strength still shone through. He was determined to battle the rigours of his disease and approached his end with dignity, there was still a flame within him that burned brightly.

On April 30th, during the final walk through I received word from my mother that my dad was unlikely to make it through the night. I asked my mother to let me know when the moment had happened and she agreed to my request. At this point a strange calm came over me. I could think of only my father and Beltane. I wasn't sure how I would cope with the photography if my father passed away during the event; however I knew that he would want me to finish the job. He was the kind of person that showed dedication to what he believed in and I felt that it would be an honour to him to do the same.

At 10 pm, as the Nied fire was lit, my father passed away. The poetry of this is something that will stay with me forever. It's as though my fathers death, his return to mother earth, was part of the story of the seasons. As winter is ushered out, the energy and vitality of the coming summer begins to affect us, like a father, like a reincarnation of him, it will nurture and protect us and prepare us for the harshness of winter, our future as adults.

As I have processed the photos of that night I have recalled all the parenting that my father has given me and I realise that though he has passed away he lives on in my actions. It is because of his beliefs and his guidance that I am who I am. He lives on, in part, through me, and the people in his life that he has touched. It's an immortality we will all achieve, our only choice being how we are remembered, positively or negatively.

So, I want to thank the society, with their views on life as we know it, for providing me with the support I needed during this time. Without knowing it you have helped me through this difficult time, all of you.

I want to thank Photo point. As a group of shy, retiring photographers we find it hard to be openly emotional about things at the best of times, but even so, this year the group bonded tremendously, as can be seen in the photos of the night, and with this bond I was able to work within that unit during an emotionally rocky time.

Lastly I want to thank Catriona, my girlfriend, who with female intuition knew exactly how to support me and help me through this period of my life. Without you I would be nothing but a compass with no needle, you give me direction and purpose and I love you for it.

So I hope once you have read this that you can take something away from it. Look towards the future as a path carved by those from the past. How you walk that path is your choice and how you treat those that you meet on that path will determine their own journey too.

Feel free to pass this message on if you feel it touches you in any way. Light, no matter how dim will always help guide us.