My bike, pedalled by me to the top of the Galibier, September 2006

I have dreamed for years of the day when the Tour de France followed the same route that I took in September 2006, as I rode over the Telegraphe, Galibier, down the valley to Bourg D’Oisans and up the Alpe D’Huez. Today is that day.

Of course, there will be no comparison in terms of athleticism, guile, speed, crowds, helicopters, press vehicles and public excitement. However, the landscape and the effort of pushing oneself to the limit will resonate with me and remind me of an achievement of which I am still very proud.

is, at last, over. I failed to ride my 100k in March and am out, sitting in the back of the broom wagon, heading for an early shower. After 27 consecutive months, the sequence is broken and the game is up.

I did try: I put aside a day for it, fixed my punctured front wheel, set out with grim determination. But the wheel was not as well repaired as it should have been, I had a problem within a mile, turned back and, by the time it was resolved, the opportunity had gone.

Maybe this year, I shall just enjoy my riding, without setting myself targets. Maybe.

The grass is beginning to unbend. For months it has cowered in expectation of another smothering of snow, lying flat, playing dead, yellow. Now it is stretching, shaking itself down, sipping at weak pools of Spring sun and tumescing with chlorophyll. Snowdrops stand by in silent prayer; crocuses strike a buoyant happy clappy pose.

And what is stirring in me? A powerful urge to load up the bike with panniers and a tent and set off towards some distant destination.

It won’t happen this year; no chance, and that just makes the daydream more wistful.

There seems to be a reciprocal relationship between the rhythms of the body and the brain.

Riding a bicycle, even just for half an hour or so, but certainly over long distances, establishes a rhythm in the legs that seems to let the mind float freely.  Many riders will confirm this.  It is almost an analgesic to the normal anxieties and preoccupations that crowd the skull.  Some report the sensation, when out riding, of being barely able to remember long periods of thought nor the time passing.  Like dozing off mentally.  Others report the sense of being psychologically refreshed after a long ride, as though the thoughts that were made weightless during the ride have settled again in the right places, better places than before.

In return, a suffering body can be soothed by appropriate mental rhythms.  This requires a little more self-discipline, perhaps, but is particularly notable when climbing long mountain passes, where the effort involved and the unrelenting physical strain can frequently put your mind into an argument with itself about carrying on.   The terms of the argument are your common sense on one hand, telling you that it is futile and unpleasant to agree to the pain involved; and your pride on the other, telling you that it is heroic and prospectively rewarding to aim for the achievement of the summit.  This noisy argument in your head can easily demoralise your legs, literally weakening them.  It requires another voice to quell it and that voice is strongest when leading a meditative chant, a mantra, against over-thinking the exploit.  When I was climbing the Mont Ventoux, through the forests above Bedoin, where the road is appalingly steep and and the dark trees deprive you of a motivating view of your summit goal, I found myself forcing a mantra upon my brain, repeating the same phrase over and over again, musically, until my mind went numb and my legs were anaesthetised in turn.  That was a place of mental and physical trance, where time was again distorted and progress steady.

Neuroscience will be able to tell us what is going on here.  Until it does, I will rely on my intuition that these techniques are worth perfecting.

Somewhat late in my cycling obsession, I have been introduced to Eddington numbers.

Sir Arthur Eddington was an early 20th century cyclist and physicist who translated Einstein at a time when his work was still unknown to the English-speaking world. He went on to seek out further proofs and illustrations of the theory of relativity.

More importantly, he also adapted an asymptotic algorithmic measure of a scientist’s published merit into a much more useful device for boasting about your long distance cycling prowess:

Your Eddington number is the point where the number of miles you have cycled in a single day and the number of days on which you have achieved that distance are the same.

So, if you have managed to ride 40 miles on 40 occasions, your E number is 40.

Mine is 56

In kilometres, it is 80

I intend to improve it to 65 & 100 before my 50th birthday.

The obsession is fuelled!

Think China, think bicycles. Perhaps not for much longer. Already in the Eastern cities, as the rush for status accelerates, the density of bikes to cars and buses is dropping to European, if not US, levels of dilution. Even in Beijing, the clearance of the city centre for commerce, diplomacy and tourism has pushed local residents beyond the seventh ring road and too far away to commute by cycle. Instead they ride to the subway and heap their abandoned bikes there for the day, the old flowing dragon of city bikes now just a tangle of idle, motionless steel.

We can lament this and we can foresee the congestion, pollution, obesity, stress and depression that will follow but the Chinese will not have us tut at them for wanting to have the things that we now regret. We have no right to tell them what to do.

Inland, at Yangshuo, I managed to hire a bike for 3 quid and go for a ride first in the city traffic and then out into the countryside among the sugarloaf mountains and paddy fields. The rural ride was charming and seductive and I could have gone on for days just exploring the landscape. The city riding was a revelation as what looks to the coach passenger to be a system with no rules, turns out to be a highly orderly and surprisingly safe hierarchy of respect, risk taking and tolerant vigilism. I was soon nipping about the crowded streets, close to the action and taking in the sites from my favourite vantage point, the saddle.

The state of the bikes, on the other hand, was shameful. Soft tyres, rusted components, unoiled clodded chains. I was itching to treble the speed and comfort of my bike with a few rags, some mucoff and a pump. The tandems we hired to visit the city walls in Xian looked and rode as if they had been gemmied off a fairground roundabout. If something actually breaks on your bike in China, you will still find a man on a corner with a delivery bike full of tools and spares but there seems to be no scope for a tweak and polish service.

I would love to go back to China and cycle. I just hope that when I do, I am not the only one left pedalling on the roads!

My stolen bike

This was the bike I had when I was 15.  Hardly Eddy Merckx!  Three speed, Sturmey Archer, brown.  However, according to the late great Sheldon Brown, “For many years, in many parts of the world, the Raleigh “Sports” three-speed bicycle was considered the ultimate in human-powered transportation. These bicycles were not toys, and, despite the model name, they were not sporting equipment…they were serious vehicles. The men and women who built them, by and large, also rode them, as their primary means of transportation.”

As for mine, it got me over Salisbury Plain against the wind and up and down the Horseshoe Pass, both times fully laden with camping gear.

It was stolen in Dorset in 1978.  This year I have seen it two or three times chained to lamposts in Edinburgh.  It is obviously the same one; I don’t care how many were made.  Should I offer to buy it back?  Or would that would be weird?

An impulse buy

I found myself displaced to Hertfordshire for a few days, as my mother was in hospital there. I found that I had a lot of time on my hands and no bike. That got me thinking. I am really not one for impulse buys, but in the circumstances I needed a good ride to clear my head, so I went into St Albans and bought the above. Just like that, because they had it in stock and could set it up for me while I drank a coffee across the road.

During the purchase process, the guys in the shop suggested I should pitch up on the Sunday for the Verulam Wheelers’ Sunday club run. Still feeling impulsive, I agreed. I had a great time, rolling with the least aggressive of the groups that went out, happy to be relieved of any decisions about route choice and astonished at the attractiveness of the hidden lanes we were taken along. We stopped for tea and cakes at a woodland lodge out in the Chilterns and then rode back. At the end of the ride, the group leader remarked that I had been well within my comfort zone all day, which was true. The pleasure for me, however, had been the highly sociable welcome I received from the other riders and the feeling of being so agreeably connected to strangers by a common bond.

The purpose of the exercise had been to lift my slightly fragile morale.  The effect was beyond any expectation I could have had.