For some reason I only seem to cycle from Coast to Coast in the same years as major football tournaments. 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014. 2008 probably doesn't count because I gave that one up 10 miles from the coast.
Tomorrow I'm off to cycle Coast to Coast again, even though after the last one in 2012 I said never again.
My first Coast to Coast in 2006 was the official Sustrans Coast to Coast route from Whitehaven to Sunderland with Ruth and 2 other nurses. One of the nurses had a lifetime cycling history of about ten miles and the day before the ride she bought a bike from Aldi for about 50 pence, which seemed to have been built mostly out of an old anvil and a selection of soft cheeses. The brakes pretty much melted as soon as they were applied. Also, Ruth had such a heavy cold throughout that trip that she was riding round with cough medicine in her water bottle instead of water. All in all, it didn't go exactly to plan.
In 2008 and to celebrate my 40th birthday I devised an improvised Coast to Coast route based largely on the Sustrans Reivers Route. Going East to West from Alnmouth to Workington via Rothbury, Bellingham, Kielder and Carlisle. I gave that one up 10 miles from Workington, because after a series of punctures I made the terrible mistake of sitting down with a nice cup of tea in a cafe in Cockermouth, and that was it, my resolve was broken, I wasn't going any further. With hindsight, it may have been better to carry on rather than booking into the Travelodge in Cockermouth that night, especially after the thunderstorm Ruth and I got caught in whilst going out for a curry, which resulted in near hypothermia, and an attack of shivering so violent Ruth nearly smashed her own teeth out.
We battled on gamely for a while through a 3 course set Indian meal we'd ordered, but in the end, sat as we were in our soaking wet jeans, we had to forgo pudding just to get Ruth warm again under a duvet.
On my 40th birthday itself, we stayed in a wonderful B&B in Newcastleton just over the border into Scotland, but my mood was dampened somewhat by getting a text from my step daughter Becky just after I'd checked in telling me to 'Get the fuck home'. It seems she'd written it in anger just after having been head butted in the face by her brother in an argument over the remote control.
Another slight downer of that trip was that I started out unemployed, but during it I got given a job in a call centre. The phone call offering me the job came part way through the ride. With hindsight, I wish I'd dropped my phone in the river 10 minutes earlier. I think I already knew it would be a disaster.
The 2010 trip from Walney to Saltburn where we were trying to raise money for the Air Ambulance, but ended up calling out two land ambulances, and where there were some other episodes of riding into walls and falling into ditches was on the whole a great success, but I got myself a bit stressed over leading the ride. This ride and the near death experience (Redcar - Arnside - Redcar) that was the 2012 incarnation have been well documented elsewhere.
I suppose in their own way, although they were all supposed to be fun, all the above trips had their own particular stresses.
I used to say that our ride in 2010 was the most over-prepared and over-supported Coast to Coast in history, but that was before I found out about the Marie Curie ride I'm going on this week. Not only is there a support vehicle for this, there's a team of caterers following us around making all our meals for us. Literally all we have to do is pedal!
And that's exactly why I signed up for it. I am after all a lazy cyclist, and these days I don't want to do anything else but ride. Cycle tours I've done previously have involved far too much in the way of admin. As well as riding the bike, there's always a load of extra shit to do like reading maps, finding somewhere to have lunch and dinner, queuing up at the bar to order your food, keeping your water bottles topped up etc. Sometimes I get tired out on the road, physically and mentally. I don't want to have to think about a load of non-pedalling related stuff like whether I can find my accommodation, or whether the village pub will still be serving food when I get to the end of the day. It's supposed to be a holiday, not It's a Knockout.
What has any of this got to do with football, you may ask? Well, the first football World Cup I ever saw was in 1978. England weren't in it, and it didn't go too well for Scotland, but in the second round I fell in love in football terms with the team from Holland. As a 10 year old, seeing them lose in the final to Argentina was such a disappointment but they've been my second favourite team ever since. I'm only sorry I wasn't old enough to have seen them in 1974, when they looked even better. When they got to the final again in 2010, I thought the disappointments of the past were about to be put right, but instead things were about to go even more wrong.
They were so intimidated by the opposition that they forgot how to be Holland and became a negative and ugly parody of their former selves, kicking lumps out of anything that moved. The beauty that I remembered from the 70s that was periodically rekindled by players such as Van Basten, Rijkaard, Bergkamp and Seedorf was self-destructing before my eyes.
For a long time now I've been feeling a lot like Holland in the 2010 World Cup Final, although with a bit less kicking. I've lost my way too.
On and off I've been in a bad mood since around 2008, maybe even longer. Since then I've regularly been coming apart under various life pressures, and lapsing into spirals of negativity and faulty thinking. Often I've felt overwhelmed, and as if I've got scrambled eggs for brains.
Recently, I've been trying to operate according to something called the 40% rule. Instead of fouling up 100% of everything in my life by spreading myself too thin, I've been letting go of things, and just adding back the stuff I can deal with. If I can only do 40% of what I did before but do it properly, it's better to do that than to stumble half heartedly and miserably through a world of psychological treacle.
For a while (197 days to be precise), cycling was one of the things I decided to let go of. For too long it had become part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution. Instead of a relaxing and fun leisure activity, it had become just another stress, another pressure. It had turned into a 3 ring circus of bigger and bigger challenges, involving nearly getting trenchfoot, being blinded by rain, abandoning friends in barns, going round in enough layers to be Michelin Man but still being unable to stay warm etc. At times I wasn't even able to remove my own socks.
On reflection, although some of the rides I've been on in recent years have been undoubtedly just plain nuts, some of the problem was with me too. Like a child with an otherwise happy childhood who'd been force-fed sprouts every Sunday, for a long time all I could taste was the sprouts, and I was having trouble remembering the good bits.
Compared to times in the recent past, I'm under relatively little pressure now. I may have taken the 40% rule a bit too far, because now I've got no job, and a lot less home and family stresses to take care of. The lack of pressure has enabled me for now to put priority on improving my physical well being, and hopefully that will drag my mental well being along with it.
As for football, to many it's completely meaningless. A lot of people just don't get it. Or maybe they get it in a different way to me. For some maybe it's just an excuse to be part of a tribe, to drink beer, eat crisps and shout at the telly. But for me, like life in general, it's all about the narrative, about the stories that unfold.
Van Persie's header wasn't just a goal to me. It was also a reminder that sometimes, even if we've made a complete balls up of everything, and descended into ugliness and shown the worst of ourselves, if we wait long enough, we might get another chance, to remember who we really are. It won't change the past, but it will make us feel a hell of a lot better about the present.
At its best cycling used to give me a feeling of freedom and happiness. Sometimes things just click out on the road and whatever turmoil is going on in the rest of life, nothing else matters. For a long time I forgot about that part.
I'm hoping this Coast to Coast will be my own van Persie header. If the Dutch can find the best of themselves again after a period of ugliness, I'm hoping I can too.
Tomorrow I'm off to cycle Coast to Coast again, even though after the last one in 2012 I said never again.
My first Coast to Coast in 2006 was the official Sustrans Coast to Coast route from Whitehaven to Sunderland with Ruth and 2 other nurses. One of the nurses had a lifetime cycling history of about ten miles and the day before the ride she bought a bike from Aldi for about 50 pence, which seemed to have been built mostly out of an old anvil and a selection of soft cheeses. The brakes pretty much melted as soon as they were applied. Also, Ruth had such a heavy cold throughout that trip that she was riding round with cough medicine in her water bottle instead of water. All in all, it didn't go exactly to plan.
In 2008 and to celebrate my 40th birthday I devised an improvised Coast to Coast route based largely on the Sustrans Reivers Route. Going East to West from Alnmouth to Workington via Rothbury, Bellingham, Kielder and Carlisle. I gave that one up 10 miles from Workington, because after a series of punctures I made the terrible mistake of sitting down with a nice cup of tea in a cafe in Cockermouth, and that was it, my resolve was broken, I wasn't going any further. With hindsight, it may have been better to carry on rather than booking into the Travelodge in Cockermouth that night, especially after the thunderstorm Ruth and I got caught in whilst going out for a curry, which resulted in near hypothermia, and an attack of shivering so violent Ruth nearly smashed her own teeth out.
We battled on gamely for a while through a 3 course set Indian meal we'd ordered, but in the end, sat as we were in our soaking wet jeans, we had to forgo pudding just to get Ruth warm again under a duvet.
On my 40th birthday itself, we stayed in a wonderful B&B in Newcastleton just over the border into Scotland, but my mood was dampened somewhat by getting a text from my step daughter Becky just after I'd checked in telling me to 'Get the fuck home'. It seems she'd written it in anger just after having been head butted in the face by her brother in an argument over the remote control.
Another slight downer of that trip was that I started out unemployed, but during it I got given a job in a call centre. The phone call offering me the job came part way through the ride. With hindsight, I wish I'd dropped my phone in the river 10 minutes earlier. I think I already knew it would be a disaster.
The 2010 trip from Walney to Saltburn where we were trying to raise money for the Air Ambulance, but ended up calling out two land ambulances, and where there were some other episodes of riding into walls and falling into ditches was on the whole a great success, but I got myself a bit stressed over leading the ride. This ride and the near death experience (Redcar - Arnside - Redcar) that was the 2012 incarnation have been well documented elsewhere.
I suppose in their own way, although they were all supposed to be fun, all the above trips had their own particular stresses.
I used to say that our ride in 2010 was the most over-prepared and over-supported Coast to Coast in history, but that was before I found out about the Marie Curie ride I'm going on this week. Not only is there a support vehicle for this, there's a team of caterers following us around making all our meals for us. Literally all we have to do is pedal!
And that's exactly why I signed up for it. I am after all a lazy cyclist, and these days I don't want to do anything else but ride. Cycle tours I've done previously have involved far too much in the way of admin. As well as riding the bike, there's always a load of extra shit to do like reading maps, finding somewhere to have lunch and dinner, queuing up at the bar to order your food, keeping your water bottles topped up etc. Sometimes I get tired out on the road, physically and mentally. I don't want to have to think about a load of non-pedalling related stuff like whether I can find my accommodation, or whether the village pub will still be serving food when I get to the end of the day. It's supposed to be a holiday, not It's a Knockout.
What has any of this got to do with football, you may ask? Well, the first football World Cup I ever saw was in 1978. England weren't in it, and it didn't go too well for Scotland, but in the second round I fell in love in football terms with the team from Holland. As a 10 year old, seeing them lose in the final to Argentina was such a disappointment but they've been my second favourite team ever since. I'm only sorry I wasn't old enough to have seen them in 1974, when they looked even better. When they got to the final again in 2010, I thought the disappointments of the past were about to be put right, but instead things were about to go even more wrong.
They were so intimidated by the opposition that they forgot how to be Holland and became a negative and ugly parody of their former selves, kicking lumps out of anything that moved. The beauty that I remembered from the 70s that was periodically rekindled by players such as Van Basten, Rijkaard, Bergkamp and Seedorf was self-destructing before my eyes.
For a long time now I've been feeling a lot like Holland in the 2010 World Cup Final, although with a bit less kicking. I've lost my way too.
On and off I've been in a bad mood since around 2008, maybe even longer. Since then I've regularly been coming apart under various life pressures, and lapsing into spirals of negativity and faulty thinking. Often I've felt overwhelmed, and as if I've got scrambled eggs for brains.
Recently, I've been trying to operate according to something called the 40% rule. Instead of fouling up 100% of everything in my life by spreading myself too thin, I've been letting go of things, and just adding back the stuff I can deal with. If I can only do 40% of what I did before but do it properly, it's better to do that than to stumble half heartedly and miserably through a world of psychological treacle.
For a while (197 days to be precise), cycling was one of the things I decided to let go of. For too long it had become part of the problem, instead of being part of the solution. Instead of a relaxing and fun leisure activity, it had become just another stress, another pressure. It had turned into a 3 ring circus of bigger and bigger challenges, involving nearly getting trenchfoot, being blinded by rain, abandoning friends in barns, going round in enough layers to be Michelin Man but still being unable to stay warm etc. At times I wasn't even able to remove my own socks.
On reflection, although some of the rides I've been on in recent years have been undoubtedly just plain nuts, some of the problem was with me too. Like a child with an otherwise happy childhood who'd been force-fed sprouts every Sunday, for a long time all I could taste was the sprouts, and I was having trouble remembering the good bits.
Compared to times in the recent past, I'm under relatively little pressure now. I may have taken the 40% rule a bit too far, because now I've got no job, and a lot less home and family stresses to take care of. The lack of pressure has enabled me for now to put priority on improving my physical well being, and hopefully that will drag my mental well being along with it.
As for football, to many it's completely meaningless. A lot of people just don't get it. Or maybe they get it in a different way to me. For some maybe it's just an excuse to be part of a tribe, to drink beer, eat crisps and shout at the telly. But for me, like life in general, it's all about the narrative, about the stories that unfold.
Van Persie's header wasn't just a goal to me. It was also a reminder that sometimes, even if we've made a complete balls up of everything, and descended into ugliness and shown the worst of ourselves, if we wait long enough, we might get another chance, to remember who we really are. It won't change the past, but it will make us feel a hell of a lot better about the present.
At its best cycling used to give me a feeling of freedom and happiness. Sometimes things just click out on the road and whatever turmoil is going on in the rest of life, nothing else matters. For a long time I forgot about that part.
I'm hoping this Coast to Coast will be my own van Persie header. If the Dutch can find the best of themselves again after a period of ugliness, I'm hoping I can too.
Good luck with the ride and no spitting at Rudi Völler.....
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