Trans Pennine Trail 2011

Friday 1st July to Sunday 3rd July

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Moving to Heaton Chapel in the autumn of 2009 gave me the freedom to buy a bike later that year, and to my delight I discovered that our house was not far from the Trans Pennine Trail.  There followed a voyage of discovery as a I traced the TPT eastwards, eventually reaching Tintwistle on the edge of Peak District, and westwards through Chorlton and Sale to Altrincham.  Taking Phil Davenport along some of these routes seemed to unlock the adventurer in him.  He consequently proclaimed a desire to traverse the entire width of the TPT, which connected Southport in the North West with Hornsea in the North East.

After Doylie and I completed an energy-sapping Manchester to Blackpool ride, the three of us, with better preparation, tackled the similarly-distanced Manchester 100km loop starting from Wythenshawe and heading down through Cheshire and back.  This, unfortunately, whetted his appetite rather than dampening his enthusiasm.  The only other hope, as we moved into 2011, was that he would simply forget, the passage of time diluting his crazy passion to conquer an endurance test.  But no.  There was, it seemed, no escape.

Phil soon put the organisational wheels in motion, phoning B&Bs across the route and investigating train journeys.  We both ordered the TPT maps to help us on our way.  Phil drafted in his IT colleague, Gary "Gaz" Mercer, who had to buy a bike just for the occasion, as well as Andrew "Barge" or "Argy Bargy" Bargery and Tom "Lands End to John O'Groats" Davies.  I convinced Doylie to come along too, to make six.  Phil, Gaz, Doylie and I chose The Christie as the charity of choice (it was a waste not to try to raise money for this event, and the Christie is a local, worthwhile cause), setting up a Just Giving website, while Andy collected for a Leukemia charity.  Tom's other half was busy fund-raising for his chosen cause that weekend.

We had a brief get-together to decide some of the details, although a pre-TPT bonding trip to the pub never transpired.  One key decision was which way we were going to travel.  Southport to Hornsea would mean a long trip back after finishing, but was rumoured to be with the wind.  Hornsea to Southport offered a chance for our families to meet us at the finish, but it did mean a bit of a trek to the start.

Phil investigated B&B's across the Pennines and eventually settled on two places more or less evenly distributed across the North.  Cue lots of jokes about whether we had double or twin rooms.  Given that I had no idea what equipment might be needed, I circulated a list of possible kit to take with us.  We would have no support drivers so had to lug everything with us ourselves.  As I discovered on the day before the TPT, this meant having to make some sacrifices to fit it all in.  One item I had omitted, and which Tom was adamant should be included, was Sudacrem, an antiseptic cream with lubricant qualities.  Cue lots of jokes about application of said cream.  Doylie, it was fair to say, was getting a bit worried at this juncture, having never met three of this crowd, and having all these emails sent to his work email account.

Doylie and I kept up a fairly rigorous training schedule, which was justified by the fact that we were the least fit of the sextet.  This included a brief but very bumpy, sheep-ridden trip over a hill with my brother (with me crashing down the ridiculously steep, rocky descent semi-deliberately into bushes) accompanied by a morale-sapping, 30-mile jaunt into the hills of Broadbottom, Hadfield and Tintwistle the next day, encountering a loose seat (me), a loose chain (Doylie) and a flat tyre (me), plus high winds, heavy rain and hailstones.  We followed this up in later weeks with a 50-mile, 5-hour trip to Warrington and back in relentless pouring rain (foolishly leaving coats behind - our hands and arms refused to function on our return) and a 60-mile session including 48 miles to Chester, just about squeezing onto a train for the way back.  Gaz, I learnt, had spent the odd hour cycling round, whilst Phil's cycling training was distracted by the Great Manchester Run, and his preparation turned out to be the odd 6-mile ride into work (and back).

The Sunday before the event, Phil issued a rallying cry to the troops: "This time next week it'll all be over.  At the moment we are just men, in 7 days we will become ADVENTURERS.  Plenty of pasta this week, and early nights.  No sex from Wednesday night, yeah even you Gaz.  'One for all and all for one'.  Repeat after me - 'YES WE CAN... YES WE CAN'."

Doylie and I headed over to Hornsea by train and minibus on the Thursday night, munching on pasties (closest thing we could get to pasta), for what was a surprisingly pleasant journey.  We didn't fancy the early start on the Friday morning, so we had booked into the Sandhurst Guest House, our first of three B&B's for the weekend.

Day 1

In the morning, we had a quality fry-up and chatted to a guy who had completed the journey from Southport the previous night (and was cycling to Doncaster that day).  He reassured us that the course was dry.

We had some time to kill while waiting for the boys to arrive - not as long as I thought it might be when Phil pretended he had not been let on the train, the prankster.  It was a glorious morning.

We sat, and we waited, watching the world go by.  Some guy who had cycled past twice noted out loud "you're just sat, sitting".  I defended ourselves: "We're still waiting for the others!".

Eventually I got bored and decided to go and dip a hand in the sea as a symbolic gesture to represent starting at the coast.

Maybe we could just spend a day by the seaside instead.

They turned up a little before 10.30am, and we asked a local elderly gentleman to take a photo of the intrepid explorers.  Left to right: me, Doylie, Andy, Gaz, Phil, Tom.  The guy even left some room for a mystery seventh person on the right, or maybe he was showing some of the scenery in the background.  To be fair, the TPT pillar is in the centre of the picture.

I tried to get a shot of the full Trans Pennine Trail lamppost thing but Andy insisted on sticking his bum in the air in the name of stretching.

Never mind that it was already mid-morning - Phil was determined to go the whole hog and take his bike down to the water's edge.  No-one joined him.

And so we set off.  The first 15 miles or so involved heading south-west to Hull along the Hornsea Railway Path, which was straight and fairly gentle off-road terrain.  That didn't stop Tom crashing off his bike after less than 15 minutes of riding.  It was a fairly innocuous fall as he lost grip and teetered over while slaloming through one of these gates.  I was right behind him and was tempted to take a photo straight away, but I chose instead to pick up his bike for him.  This is a photo of just after that event.  It turned out to be the only crash of the event, although there were some close calls, not least when I slammed on to try to pick up a dropped water bottle.

More soon...

Right, so Hornsea to Hull was fairly plain sailing, with lots of fields surrounding us.  Like this one.

As we reached less lugubrious surroundings, I tested out my photography whilst riding.  We'd been going for just over an hour here - Phil's confidence had increased to the stage where he was riding one-handed.  Because he could.

We then got to the outskirts of Hull to discover that the TPT signs were a bit patchier, and the TPT maps we had ordered were quite far zoomed out and not very helpful in showing exactly where we were and where we should go.  I somehow found myself at the front of the pack as we shuffled uncertainly through Hull city centre, dodging buses and pedestrians.  At one point, there was a ridiculous sequence of red lights one after another, although it did give us chance for a rest.  We'd managed 17 miles in one hour 45 minutes, which was reasonable if not stellar pace, so the rests weren't entirely needed.  Besides, we had some place to be.

We got a bit lost between Hull and Hessle, finding the locals to be lacking in teeth, sense and useful directions.  We nearly headed back whence we'd come at one point, but Phil smelt something funny and we did an about turn, discovering an alternate cut-through route as we back-tracked.  We came to a main road and spotted a sandwich shop, Peppers, which was just as well since it was lunchtime (we had a loose plan to stop every two hours).  Andy and I ordered some of the widest sandwiches I have ever seen: triple-decker chicken & bacon club sandwiches which required jaw dislocation to consume.  There's nothing like chronic indigestion to set off on our next session with.

Doylie the engineer did his first bit of handiwork, straightening Gaz's seat which had previously been tilting him forward (I won't tell you the physical consequences of this previously unfavourable position - sufficed to say that Gaz wouldn't leave 'em alone).  Before we set off, we decided to double check our route by asking directions - Phil did the honours.

We zipped off over a bridge and then on the long, straight road to Hessle.  Before long, we made it to our first tourist attraction of the weekend, the Humber Bridge.  We had chosen to take the straighter route by Humber along busier roads than the northern "family route".

Doylie wasn't that impressed, though.  Seen better, he thought.

Gaz and Andy cruised in behind.  Tom, lapping up the tarmac (not literally), had been setting a good pace on his road bike, a pace I was happy to slip-stream.

We head along the Humber for a fair while, a path which hosted many flies, which were unfortunately attracted to us (and, in particular, Andy's fluorescent yellow top.  Still, they provided an opportunity for an energy-boosting snack or two (hundred).  An hour later and we left any sort of civilisation as we knew it, going through places we'd never heard of nor will hear of again such as Melton, Welton, Elloughton and Ellerker.  In Melton, we got a little bit off-course when we got excited going down a cycle path hill and missed the turn off under a road bridge.  When we got to the roundabout at the end, there were cycle paths in every direction, confounding us.

Luckily, we bumped into a couple of cyclists who pointed out the way back to where we needed to be.  Intrigued as to our charity ride, they cited the Lands End to John O'Groats journey as the ultimate bike ride.  This was meat and drink to Tom, who of course piped up about his escapades doing exactly that.  Thankfully, they did not stop for the entire tale.  They would have given us our first stranger donation (as in money from a stranger rather than lending us a random person), but they had no cash, and unfortunately I forgot to tell them about the website.  D'oh!

No photos of that particular escapade, but here's Doylie in his Christie's T-shirt, which would get somewhat of an airing throughout the tour.

Here is an indication of just how isolated we had become, as we swooped along country lane after country lane.  Phil had upgraded to riding none-handed now; no need for that (cf, Alan Partridge in The Day Today).

Some of the tracks we traversed had a surreal edge.  Where ARE we?  We had been going for about 4 hours at this point, probably having covered about 35 miles or so.

My insistence on taking photos seemed to make Andy take evasive action, and Gaz too if he's not careful.

They seemed to get bored and wanted to leave me behind, sniff.  Still we could see no other people, or buildings, or vehicles, or ANYTHING! 

A house!  I only just saw this (I think someone had to point it out to me) and I had to loop back to take a photo.  Couldn't miss an opportunity like this, could I?  The sign says "Wits End", and Tigger, Goofy and Winnie the Pooh were keeping a generic teddy bear company.  At this point, short of food and drink, we were desperate for a shop of some kind, but we passed through village after village, hamlet after hamlet, whatever is smaller than a hamlet after whatever is smaller than a hamlet (I think it's probably just called a house, but I can't be bothered looking it up).  But no bloody shops!  What do they do, grow their own?  (Whilst plotting our route some months later, I found this place on Googlemaps - it's at the corner of Blacktoft Lane and Sparrowcroft Lane, if you're interested - although the selection of stuffed toys is different on the street view.)

At one point, we saw a TPT sign for the reverse journey, but not for the way we were going.  I had a hunch and asked Phil to stop to check the map, but the other four continued unabated.  For the well-informed, we had just come through Yokefleet and were heading north to Gilberdyke (which, enticing name or not, was not where we needed to be), rather than west to Laxton.  And the base of the T-junction we had slipped past was the road to Laxton.  Unfortunately, the stray quartet had managed to end up about half a mile or so down the road before figuring something was up.  Even though I spoke to Doylie on the phone (twice) and I was adamant that they had gone the wrong way, they were still reluctant to double back.  But double back they did and we were - well not quite soon but eventually - on our way.

Finally, the magical village of Howden had what we wanted.  A Co-op!  Which was new enough, it turns out, not to be on Google Maps yet (it's just a building site at the time of writing).  But anywhere that did refreshments of any kind would have done.  Phil was just happy to have somewhere to sit down that wasn't a bike seat, as we were over five hours into our cycling day (and having been going for nearly three hours without a proper break).  We'd travelled nearly 47 miles by this point - hopefully no more than 20 miles or so to go (in fact, it was 18).

As is usual for one of our pit-stops, it was time to get the map out to plot our next path, in this case the path to the Royal Oak in Hirst Courtney.  For alcohol, tea and bed, in that order.  Possibly with more alcohol slotted in between tea and bed.

More later.

I evidently took too many photos on Day 1 to align it to Page 1.  So time for a second page.