From End to End - over £3,000 raised to reduce carbon emissions

So I rode a bicycle from Land's End to John o'Groats between mid-July and mid-August 2007 because I wanted to and also to raise money to reduce carbon emissions.
Thanks to everyone who preferred to sponsor the trip for this mighty cause rather than wring their hands in despair. May the wind not be in your face, the rain not run down your neck, and the sun not burn your skin. Sponsorship as of 16 October 2007: £3,213 (92 sponsors).
The trip blog appears below, most recent posting first (i.e. start at the bottom and work up!).

Where the money has gone

The money raised will help to cut the carbon emissions of the organisation that I worked for and admire – British Quakers. If you’re not a Quaker (nor am I), then please take my word for it that they are worthy recipients of the money.

Simple, contemporary, radical: Quakers were instrumental in setting up Greenpeace, Oxfam, Amnesty, Campaign Against Arms Trade and others, and were also pioneers in the abolition of the slave trade. They've never made oats (that's true). Find out more about Quakers.

The money will help to buy a glamourous new combined heat and power boiler for the Quaker central office, Friends House - these boilers are ecologically responsible, shiny and horribly expensive. Yes, it's a bit boring but it will cut carbon emissions. Find out more about CHP boilers (oh go on!).

29 July 2007

The beautiful obese curmudgeon awaits

Saturday was another very blowy day. When I left Hawes I headed west, straight into the raging wind. I turned north to Kirkby Stephen and from there crossed the A66 and climbed up into the Northern Pennines area of outstanding natural beauty. Outstanding natural beauty - a wonderful phrase. I kept repeating it to myself as I rode along, savouring each word. It was strange seeing the road sign because it's not often that the word 'beauty' occurs in anything official, be it politics, the law, or any level of the civil service. It's as if those institutions don't know how to relate to beauty, which is reason enough to be wary of them, for it means that they are relatively divorced from the way we experience life. The language of policymaking is usually cold, almost inhuman. At work, for example, we have to be careful about how we use the word 'peace' with officials, because civil servants only talk about 'security', which is a far narrower and flimsier term - if a state has nuclear weapons, or a citizen carries a handgun, they might feel secure, but it isn't peace. That security without peace is unsustainable is usually lost on a civil servant whose job is to communicate in easily manageable categories and think about just one corner of the picture. It's not their fault as much as the culture they work in. In Stratford, the council are about to chop down 30 or so mature trees in the riverside gardens and plant some new, young ones in a different arrangement. Perhaps to officials in the council, the trees are municipal decorations, not living things of intrinsic worth, not outstandingly beautiful things, even: when beauty isn't part of the language, it's not part of policy either. And yet officialdom is at least capable of recognising areas of outstanding natural beauty, so it's not all bad news - I'm just having a mental wander off the point.
Climbing into the north Pennines felt like I was leaving all of England's homely landscape behind, for above the A66 the country becomes rougher and more remote. When I swung north-east towards Middleton, it was my first chance since Somerset to feel the wind at my back. I felt like the ethereal hands of angels were gently pushing me along to the theme tune from Ski Sunday. It didn't last long: at Middleton, I turned north-west which was like landing in mud. Don't know where all the angels went because now the wind was like someone's hand in my face for the next 24 miles. From Middleton, the road climbs steadily nearly 2,000ft in about 12 miles, which is not as hard as it sounds on a calm day but the wind slowed me to 7 or 8 mph. I stopped at High Force to look at the waterfall. 'It's a waterfall,' is all I can think to say of it, but do go if you want to. I met a cycling girl there who'd ridden from Paris to Lands End to John o'Groats to where we were, and was on her way back to Paris. 'Zere eez so much poziteev energie,' she said. From there I resumed the climb while the angels took her and her partner away with the wind in the other direction. Near the top of the hill the wind was like having 20 hairdressers holding hairdryers at your head while sitting in a ship's engine room. At this point it started to rain heavily - the vindictive work of aggrieved gods, I'm sure of it - and I thought my glasses were going to smash to pieces with the force of the raindrops [ridiculous exaggeration]. But I whispered a few sweet nothings into Raquel's ears and she got us through the wet. Eventually, the road started down, although the wind (have I mentioned it?) was so strong that I had to pedal just to go downhill to Alston, which seemed a run-down, unloved sort of place. Leaving it, the wind died down and I rediscovered route 68, which directed me along an old railway track at a place called Slaggyford, which name is suggestive of a certain type of uncivilised lady, although I ain't seen none while I was there. The track went on for miles and included the huge Lambley Viaduct, which crossed the South Tyne high above the forest valley - a beautiful sight in the evening sunshine and a long way down to the river, I tried not to fall over the side. Eventually the track took me almost as far as the campsite gate, just short of Haltwhistle. The camp wardens boiled a kettle for my ginger tea bag and gave me a midge coil to keep the wee creatures at a distance, gnashing their sawlike teeth.
Today (Sunday) was a fine day with the same strong westerly wind. I crossed Hadrian's Wall, which was built in 1960 to defend Scotland from the Conservative Party. Actually it's a bit older than that and no-one is sure why it was built, although there's evidence that it was fortified against possible raids from both north and south. It's basically a very long fortress with integral milecastles in which to garrison soldiers. It was certainly a way for the Romans as the occupying power to control the movements of the indigenous people, which leads me to wonder if the wall was resented as much as the one in Israel-Palestine. You can find lots of religious imagery along the walls that we would associate with India nowadays, including a well-preserved temple to Mithra, an ancient Indic god of light, which is still symbolised in India today with the swastika (meaning light). Hitler coopted the same imagery to frame his fixation with purity. At one point in the wall you can see where a Roman once etched the same symbol, although I've never seen it myself. Hadrian's wall has all the hallmarks of the tyrannical 'bright idea' that plagues politics - the brainwave of some Roman imperial advisor that no-one could fault although everyone thought it was nuts. I imagine some overfed, pudgy finger on a map of the empire, it's owner saying, 'Just build a wall there - it's only an inch across.'
From there I had a hilly ride through the Borders, often through eerie, silent conifer plantations and not seeing any traffic or people for miles - a taste of things to come. Tonight I'm camping in Jedburgh.
I've ridden 745 miles now and the Scottish landscape sits massively impassively before me like an obese curmudgeon, albeit an exotically beautiful one, if you can imagine that.
It's getting much colder, too: I'm having to wear my clothes to bed.

2 comments:

Philip Austin said...

Hi David (and Raquel)

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand. ...

Read, sung and danced to at the closing ceilidh at the Quaker summer gathering in Stirling last week. Hope it works for you.

in peace Philip

Anonymous said...

Thanks to the Friend with your picture on the front telling us of your adventure, it's been great fun reading your blog (doing the virtual ride without wind in my hair or getting wet). Your achievement is magnificent, I hope to raise some sponsorship for you for this very worthy cause.
Enjoy the north.

Peace,
Linda(Mid Wales)