In the Pink

I began cycling regularly some twenty years ago. I took it up because a back injury forced me to stop running. But soon I became besotted and was riding through the Yorkshire Dales and Wolds in all weathers on my trusty Dawes Galaxy. I'd bought the bike secondhand some ten years previously and it took me up hill and down dale, enabling encounters with lovely places such as Thixendale, Filey, Rievaulx, Masham and Swaledale (amongst many others).

 

Then I moved to NI and began exploring the island by bike. Alongside many day rides with CTC Belfast, I did solo summer tours following the coastline in Donegal, Connaught, Munster and Leinster. Moving to South Down gave me lots of new roads to explore, through drumlins to the Mournes and Cooleys then across the Pale. It wasnt long before I had visited every county by bike.

 

I began to do tours overseas. At first I did solo tours to France, Spain and Italy. I flew with my bike in a padded bag and took a taxi to a nearby hotel where I stayed the first night, then I toured for some weeks on my bike, returning to the same hotel to collect my bags and fly home. These were great adventures, I enjoyed leaving all my normal stuff behind and relying on what I could pack in two panniers. I have particularly fond memories of my tours of Puglia, La Mancha and Castile.

 

Then I went further afield on organised CTC tours. Sri Lanka was my first, the tour took place a month after the Tsunami. I expected it to be cancelled, but we were persuaded to go by the Sri Lankan authorities. On the plane from London we were the only tourists, the rest were aid workers. We explored a fascinating and beautiful tropical island the size of Ireland. At the end of the tour we each bought a bike and donated it to a village that had been devastated. There was a touching handing over ceremony where we and the bikes were blessed. I returned determined to get involved in development work and within a few months I'd joined the Board of Concern Worldwide.

 

A series of overseas cycle tours followed - to Thailand, Laos, Southern China, Patagonia and Vietnam. There is something compelling about cycling in a developing country: you travel at the pace of the local people, stay at local guesthouses and eat at local restaurants. You feel more part of the culture. My most vivid memories: staying with a family in a Lao village, we ate and drank with them then slept on the floor of their stilt house; the striking traditional costumes in a village in the foothills of the Chinese Himalayas, people not dressed up for tourists but because it was market day.

 

All of this stopped when I became ill. Last summer I began cycling again tentatively. After a winter of hillwalking, I'm feeling much stronger and am now back on the bike again. Admittedly I'm a fair weather cyclist these days, it has to be 14 degrees before I'll get the bike out. Over time the Galaxy has been replaced by several others: an Audax (for day rides), a Sardar (for laden overseas tours) and a Bontrager (for supported overseas tours). But my trusty steed is still there in the garage, I'm not able to part from it.

 

And so to the Giro d'Italia, here for the next three days. I'll go and watch it for sure, I'm scouting out the hills near Armagh for a good vantage point. Professional cyclists go so fast on the flat that all you often see is a whirring blur of colour. In 1992 I saw an alpine stage of the Tour de France (the year that Miguel Indurain won), here you could make out individual riders as they sped by. I shall wear a healthy glow, shout and wave.