WHOO HOO!

Hello everyone..... yes its me... really it is me this time. I'm sorry not to have been on before now, but as soon as I had the chance I fell asleep and kept on sleeping. My brain has been a bit mushed and my toes are only just returning from the land of numb to the land of feeling...
So what a blast? huh!! Yes.. I can honestly say that that was the hardest thing I have ever done. But I have now had the chance to find out what it's like to be an ultra-endurance cyclist. And before the dream fades... IT'S BLOODY AWESOME!!!!!

I have cycled to Edinburgh and back in 5 days and had about 10 hours sleep in total... how MAD is that! I have slept in a bus shelter, battled hills in the dark, suffered two punctures, a crash (not serious!), and spent time cycling with some amazing people.... Andrew, Joel, Mel, Sian and Fernandez. Its really great to know that you are not the only nutcase at the party!

The last section was pure joy as I sped through the lanes in the dark, taking corners at break neck speed It was without doubt the most EXHILARATING and trippy thing that’s happened to me in years..... thanks to my three spiritual cycling buddies who rode with me on that dark night! Olly Vivien Catherine

I suddenly realised that I had missed a thank you out.... my bike! My beautiful Condor bike. Which leads to a big thank you to Glen for listening to my thoughts and helping me to put it together, lights and all... and building me the most superb wheels. The sound of that Hope freewheel in the night? Amazing..
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But... I want to say thank you to all of you. The messages of encouragement and support were OVERWHELMING. Trust me... when your facing the wall and things look dark... a few bright words on Facebook were enough to get it back on track. I couldn't have done it quite so well without you all. so THANK YOU!

Now to Charlie.... my amazing wonderful, talented and entertaining Dierecteur Sportif. I love you to bits... and you make me laugh! You are so clever at bringing all the narrative to this ride... and it looks like i was the last person to get to follow it! So thank you Charles XXX
So what’s next then huh..?? hahahhahhaha we shall see! but for now its more sleep and more food.

GREAT EASTON

Sheila checked in at the last control point at Great Easton at around 2.20 am and will set out shortly on the final leg - 30 miles through Essex to the finishing line at Loughton.
Before she gets there, Sheila will be cycling over Toot Hill, where there have been numerous sightings of The Beast of Ongar, a black cat-like creature that has haunted this part of Essex since the 1980s.

An investigation by experts on a BBC1 wildlife series in 1998 concluded that the cat is probably a shy European lynx with black colouring and its rights to remain in Essex, post-Brexit, are therefore as yet unknown. According to the BBC, experts have estimated there may be more than 100 wild cats - mainly leopards and pumas - roaming the British countryside but although sightings of anomalous big cats (“ABCs”) have snowballed since the 1980s, investigators are still searching for irrefutable proof such as bodies (alive or dead) or unambiguous photos or films.
According to The Guardian, the absence of "proof" is odd because of the “huge scale of the phenomenon”. It is estimated that up to 7,000 people a year see panther-like (black) or puma-like (brown) ABCs at large in the UK and “more Britons have now seen a big cat than have ever seen a pig”.
As she is cycling in the dark down the A113 (where many of the sightings have occurred), Sheila will be reassured that local police say that there have been no reported sightings of The Beast since August 2015…
This is our final post. We’re off to Loughton now and, although we shall do our best to bring news from the Big Finish, the next time you see a Face Book post from Sheila, it may even be from Sheila…
SHE DID IT!

WHITTLESFORD

At around 11 pm, Sheila passed through Whittlesford, to the south of Cambridge, and is now making her way towards Duxford, Saffron Walden and the final control point at Great Easton.
Whittlesford is 837 miles from the start and 55 miles from the finish.
Sheila’s estimated time of arrival at her current speed is quite close to her deadline – but she is probably conserving energy for a final push and will make up some time as she pedals through Essex.
In the meantime, here is a little night music by former Cambridge residents, Pink Floyd, which was written by the late Syd Barrett who may have been as mad as a hatter – but even he was never quite mad enough to try and ride his bike to Edinburgh and back in 116 hours…

SLEPE

Sheila reached St Ives at 7.25 pm. She has now cycled 818 miles... and has another 74 to ride.
St Ives was formerly known as Slepe until the body of one St Ivo was found in a field nearby in around 1,000 AD. Saint Ivo was, apparently, a 7th Century Persian bishop who died of damp whilst living as a hermit in the fenlands of Huntingdonshire. 300 years later, a stone coffin was ploughed up in a local field but it was only when an angel came to a peasant in a dream that the body was identified as St Ivo. When the body was duly re-buried at nearby Ramsey Abbey, a holy well sprung up, bringing much wealth to the abbey and a few miracles.
The 45 mile route from St Ives to the next control point at Great Easton will pass through the university town of Cambridge.
There are at least 30 bridges over the River Cam, including the intriguing “Mathematical Bridge” outside Queen’s. Originally built in 1749, the bridge has had to be re-built several times as it was once believed that the bridge was designed and built by none other than Sir Isaac Newton - without the use of nuts or bolts. At various times, either students or fellows of the University have - according to Wikipedia (so it must be true) - attempted to take the bridge apart and put it back together but, unable to work out how to hold the structure together, had to re-build it with nuts and bolts.
As it turns out, nuts and bolts were always integral to the original design and Sir Isaac can’t have built it as, although he was very clever, by 1749 he had been dead for more than 20 years.

SPALDING

At almost exactly 2 pm, Sheila arrived at Spalding... She's digging deep into her reserves of stamina and covered the last leg from Horncastle at roughly 19 kph.
If she can keep up that pace, she will be home before we have had time to make the bed, do the washing up and walk the dog.
According to Travel About Britain, Spalding “is a warm and charming Georgian town in the Lincolnshire Fens. The town stands astride the banks of the River Welland, in an area of reclaimed marshland. It is here that bulb growers and market gardeners raise outstanding crops in the legendary rich fertile soil. During springtime, the surrounding area is carpeted with a glorious blaze of colour from hyacinths to daffodils and tulips - comparable with the bulb fields of Holland”.
The town was well known for its annual Spalding Flower Parade, started in 1959 and designed to celebrate the region's vast tulip production. In its heyday, people flocked to see the flower-festooned floats which attracted crowds up more than 100,000. Sadly, attendance had fallen to fewer than 40,000 by the time of the last parade in 2013.
We don’t have any photographs of tulips in Spalding. Here are some buttercups in Kent instead.
Sheila has now ridden 780 miles and the next 38 miles will take her from Spalding to the control point at St Ives, on the outskirts of Huntingdon. She has 112 miles to go…

HORNCASTLE

The 52-mile route through Lincolnshire from Louth to Spalding takes Sheila through the town of Horncastle, a small market town where five of the “Ten Best Things to Do in Horncastle” on Trip Advisor are visiting antiques shops.
Horncastle sits at the confluence of the River Bain and the River Ware and is prone to flooding. Some locals believed that flooding always follows the installation of a new vicar: changes of vicar in 1919 and 1959 caused major floods in 1920 and 1960 and a change of vicar in 1980 caused four major floods between 1981 and 1984; this theory was largely disproved in 1999, however, when there was a new vicar but no flooding and again in 2007 and 2012 when there was much flooding but no new vicar. So now they know.
Sheila reached Horncastle at 10.45 am and from here, she is 151 miles from the finish…

SOUTH TO LOUTH

After riding through night, Sheila arrived in Louth at around 6.20 am – and is hanging around for only an hour before heading off to the next control point at Spalding.
She won’t have seen much of it in the dark but 16 miles before Louth, Sheila passed through Caistor, where one of Jesus’ lesser-known apostles was (allegedly) martyred by the Romans during a flying visit to Britain in 61 AD. “Simon called Zelotes” was one of the Twelve Apostles and, according to The Catholic Encyclopaedia, could have been the cousin of Jesus or even a son of Joseph from a previous marriage.
Whatever his pedigree, Simon’s problem was that he arrived in Britain right in the middle of Boudicca’s revolt. Boudicca was justifiably irritated that, on the death of her husband, she had been flogged and her daughters had been raped by the Romans. Gathering together an army of 100,000 similarly disaffected tribespeople, Boudicca had already burned down London, Colchester and St Albans by the time Simon The Apostle breezed into the Roman camp at Caistor and started preaching a banned religion to the bewildered Roman troops.
Not surprisingly, it all ended rather badly for poor St Simon. Some accounts suggest that Simon was crucified in the traditional way and others say that he was sawn in half but, either way, provoking the Romans during The Iceni’s viscous rebellion was probably not a good idea and it is small wonder that he came to a sticky end.
To get to Louth, Sheila had ridden 728 miles. The finishing line in Loughton is now only 164 miles away and she has a little under 24 hours to get there if is she is going to complete the course within the deadline.
Ordinarily, Sheila would gobble up 164 miles in very little time but she has had very little sleep, is very, very tired and the weather today in Lincolnshire could be challenging - with south westerly headwinds gusting at up to 22 mph…

BACK TO POCKLINGTON

Sheila arrived at Pocklington at around 9.40 pm, having completed 668 miles of her 892 round journey to Edinburgh and back. After mending a puncture at the top of a mountain in the middle of a rainy night, she had very little sleep last night and is intending to rest here for a couple of hours and grab another couple of hours down the road at Louth.
Pocklington is a good place for a nap. It is a sleepy market town whose wealth was originally built on the wool trade and, later, as the centre of sugar beet farms supplying the chocolate factories in York.
Pocklington is dominated by its church, All Saint’s, known locally as “The Cathedral of The Wolds” and it is also last resting place of The Flying Man of Pocklington.
According to The Borthwick Institute at York University, “On April 10th 1733, a man leapt from the top of the steeple of Pocklington parish church. He was Thomas Pelling, the Flying Man. A rope had been attached to the top of the tower, with the end wound into a windlass near to the Star Inn on Market Street. Straps had been inserted into iron rings on the rope and wrapped around his chest and one leg, leaving his arms and one leg free for balance. He was wearing a set of wings designed to make him look like a bat”.
Unfortunately for the bat-like Pelling, the rope became slack “mid-flight” and his frantic gesticulations for the windlass to be tightened were misunderstood and it was loosened instead, causing Pelling to lose his balance and dash his brains out on the east end of the chancel.
With a degree of the pragmatism for which Yorkshire is justly famous, Pelling was buried where he lay but is commemorated to this day at Pocklington’s annual Flying Man Festival.
Sadly, Sheila will not be able to take part in this year’s festival as it took place in early May but we think she would have enjoyed watching the main event, which is when local children are allowed to throw their teddy bears off the church roof…

THIRSK AGAIN

Sheila arrived back in "Darrowby" at around 4.20 pm. She has now cycled over 627 miles (1,008 km!!) and has a measly 266 miles to ride...
From the road out of Thirsk, Sheila will have a perfect view of The Kilburn White Horse, a hill figure, cut into the side of Hill Bank in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. Said to be the largest hill figure in England (on Wikipedia - so, yes, it must be true), the White Horse is 318 feet wide and 220 feet tall, covering an area of 1.6 acres.
Built in 1857 by laying white limestone chips over the underlying sandstone rock, the Horse is visible from a great distance and once, when there was a clear day, it is said that the Horse could be seen 28 miles away in Leeds.
There are, apparently, some 60 hill figures dotted around Britain, 57 of which are in the south of England. Of the other three, two are (cut into granite) in Scotland and the other is The Kilburn White Horse, which came in at Number 4 in the Daily Telegraph’s list of The Top Ten British hill figures.
It is thought that many ancient hill figures have been lost but, of those surviving, possibly the best known is the White Horse of Uffington, which is also the oldest (Iron Age) and the longest (374 feet). The most recent, of course, is the White Horse at Cheriton, by the Channel Tunnel and the largest is The Whipsnade White Lion at 483 feet – installed in the 1930s as an advert for Whipsnade Zoo.
The next control point is at Pocklington, in 42 miles when Sheila will have completed 668 miles and will be 224 miles from the end of her journey.

BARNARD CASTLE: THE RETURN

Despite the lack of sleep, Sheila has put in an amazing effort and arrived at Barnard Castle at around 11.15 am after re-crossing Yad Moss. She has now completed 586 miles and has 306 to go.
From Barnard Castle, Sheila more or less re-traces her steps, slipping through the gap between the North Yorkshire Moors and the Yorkshire Dales via Scotch Corner and Northallerton. The next control point is at Thirsk.
Sheila will happily avoid the motorway service station Scotch Corner which may be one of the most dismal places in England - although our view may be a little biased by bad experiences whilst “hitch-hiking” in the early 1980s when we always seemed to get stuck there for hours on end and it was always raining.
“Hitch-hiking” has virtually died out now but, for those too young to remember, it used to be an economical form of transport whereby people - mainly impoverished students - moved from one place to another by accepting lifts from complete strangers in the hope that none of them would turn out to be sexual predators or serial killers. (We were once picked by the police whilst stuck on Bodmin Moor – but that, perhaps, is a story for another day…).
According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), Scotch Corner is most famous for featuring in the lyrics to Jethro Tull’s “Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die”:
"So the old Rocker gets out his bike
to make a ton before he takes his leave.
Up on the A1 by Scotch Corner
just like it used to be".
None of us has probably heard this for donkey’s years. So here it is.

BRAMPTON

Sheila arrived in Brampton at 3 am after a difficult ride through the rain-swept and wind-lashed hills, where she suffered an inconvenient puncture and lost much time. After sleeping for only 90 minutes, she set off at 5.45 am for the next staging post at Barnard Castle, which is 52 miles away – and on the other side of Yad Moss and the North Pennines.
To complete the course within the deadline, Sheila must be back in Loughton by 5.55 am on Friday morning – and she still has 358 miles to ride. We’ll be doing the maths later in the day but Sheila will be very glad to reach the flat fens of Lincolnshire this afternoon where she may be able to put in some speedy sections to make up time lost in the hills of Cumbria and Scotland.
With a little more time on her side, Sheila may have been tempted to make a short detour from the recommended route and visit family graves at St Michael’s Church at Brough. It is also the final resting place of ex-Ferrari motor-racing ace Cliff Allinson.
Allinson raced in Formula One between 1958 and 1961, driving for Lotus and Ferrari. Allinson had a serious accident in Monaco in 1960 when his Ferrari hit some straw bales and Allinson was thrown into the air, sustaining a broken left arm, rib fractures, facial cuts and a concussion. The photograph of the airborne Cliff Allinson has become one of the best-known images of 1960s Grand Prix racing.
Allinson was forced to retire from motor sport in 1961 after another accident, this time whilst driving a Lotus at the Belgian Grand Prix. This time, Allinson broke both knees and fractured his pelvis, walking with a limp for the rest of his life.
In his retirement, Allinson ran a garage in Brough and also drove the local school bus. Sheila is one of an elite group of people who can claim to have been driven to school every day by an ex-Formula One driver.
When she arrives at Barnard Castle, Sheila will have completed 586 miles, with 306 to go.

ESKDALEMUIR

We think Sheila may have reached Eskdalemuir - but to be honest, we're guessing as we lost contact half an hour ago...
From here, it is downhill (almost) all the way to Brampton, where Sheila will grab a couple of hours’ sleep.
South of Eskdalemuir, the D709 ends at Langholm, home of the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, and known colloquially as the "Muckle Toun". Langholm was the birthplace of Thomas Telford and is also the ancestral home of the Armstrong Clan.
Astronaut Neil Armstrong apparently took a swatch of the clan’s tartan with him on 21 July 1969 when he went for his short walk on the moon and, on visiting the town in 1972, was made the first Freeman of The Burgh.
As far as we are aware, seven times winner of the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong, has never visited the town and there are no plans to make the lying, cheating bastard a Freeman of The Burgh.
Sheila has asked us to thank everyone who has been posting messages on this page. Although she is unable to respond, she is reading through them avidly at her feed stops and getting much pleasure and encouragement from all the kind words.
Eight miles from Langholm, Sheila will arrive back at the English border with 372 miles of hard pedalling to do before she completes the course…

INNERLEITHEN

Sheila arrived at Innerleithen at around 6.25 pm and with 468 miles under her belt, she has 424 miles to ride before she reaches the finishing line. It is 31 miles from Innerleithen to the next control point at Eskdalemuir.
Eskdalemuir is, apparently, famous for two things. First, it is home to Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery, the largest Buddhist Temple in western Europe where both Leonard Cohen and David Bowie were students in 1969. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), Bowie almost became a monk but, instead, became a singer and had hits with “The Laughing Gnome”, "The Little Drummer Boy" and other songs.
Secondly, Eskdalemuir is the location of Eskdalemuir Observatory which, founded in 1908, has one of the longest climatological records in Britain. Wikipedia reports that “the data shows Eskdalemuir to be a very wet, often cloudy place”. We think that this may be a very accurate observation but wonder whether 109 years of uninterrupted weather data was actually needed to reach this conclusion. Scotland – wet and cloudy? Who knew?
One mile out of Eskdalemuir, Sheila will have completed her 500th mile.

EDINBURGH

At 2:23 pm, Sheila arrived at Gracemount School in Edinburgh. Since 9 am on Sunday, Sheila has cycled 441 miles – that’s 710 kilometres and is on course to complete the journey within the allocated time… Congratulations, Sheila. We think you are magnificent.
Sheila will probably not stop very long in Edinburgh and will quickly find her way to National Cycle Route Number 1 which she will follow for much of the way to Innerleithen, through the Moorfoot Hills. Cycling Scotland describe it as “a pleasant and mixed on/off road route with a strenuous uphill push to breach the defences of the Moorfoot Hills” and adds that “a sense of humour is an asset for this section” – but they don’t explain the joke…
It is only 27 miles to the next control point and Sheila will soon reach the spa town of Innerleithen, at the confluence of the River Leith and the River Tweed. If she has time, Sheila might want to stop briefly at The Cheese Well, where it is customary for travellers to leave an offering of cheesy comestibles (or money) for the fairies to ensure a trouble-free passage across the moor.
From Innerleithen, fairies permitting, Sheila has 424 miles yet to ride.

MOFFAT

Sheila rode into Moffat at around 9.10 am.
It is “only” 49 miles from Moffat to Edinburgh, the problem being that most of it is over hills and some of them are quite steep. Sheila has now ridden 393 miles and, along the way, climbed nearly 12,500 feet. Over the next 49 miles, she will have to climb another 2,400 feet and some of it is at a gradient of over 7%.
Almost straight outside Moffat is the Devil’s Beef Tub, “one of the south of Scotland’s most striking landmarks”. Sir Walter Scott described the Beef Tub in one of his novels: “It looks as if four hills were laying their heads together, to shut out daylight from the dark hollow space between them. A damned deep, black, blackguard-looking abyss of a hole it is.”
The landmark’s unusual name is derived from its use as the hiding place for cattle stolen by the notorious Border Reivers, otherwise known as the Johnstone clan, who were commonly referred to by their enemies as ‘devils’.
William Wallace is reputed to have used the concealed hollows of the Devil’s Beef Tub for covert gatherings ahead of his first attack against the English in 1297 before he was hung, drawn and quartered for seeking a second once-in-every-lifetime referendum.
The ascent over the Devil’s Beef Tub has been listed by The Guardian as one of the Top Ten cycle climbs in Britain. This is what they had to say:
“What's remarkable about this climb is its unnerving ability to stick to virtually the same gradient from base to summit, all 10km of it. You will hardly notice the rise at first: pick your gear and begin to wind through countless gentle bends. The road sways left and right, never changing direction, just meandering onwards and upwards. At the junction with the B719 there's the only real change in the slope, a levelling up to a pair of bends, right and then left. Through these and up ahead the beautiful hills line the horizon, rolling, effortlessly morphing into one another and as soft and smooth as giant green pillows. The equally smooth road continues to snake along, continuously climbing, steeper round the side of the hill overlooking the Beef Tub, then gradually evaporating to level and finish”.
Good luck with "the giant green pillows”, Sheila. After the summit, it is more or less a flat run into Edinburgh and then you can turn around and start making your way home!

GRETNA GREEN

Sheila is on her way to Scotland after a few hours sleep at Brampton.
Shortly after crossing the border, Sheila will pass Quintinshill railway junction outside Gretna Green which, on 22 May 1915, was the scene of a tragic accident when a troop train transporting one of the Territorial Battalions of The Royal Scots to Gallipoli collided with a stationary local train and, minutes later, was struck by the London-Edinburgh Express.
The gas-lit wooden carriages of the troop train caught fire. 210 soldiers were killed and another 224 were injured, making it the worst railway disaster in British history.
Sadly, more than 620 Royal Scots died at Gallipoli, including 100 survivors of the Quintinshill disaster.
The weather in Edinburgh today will be bright or sunny intervals and showers, locally heavy and thundery especially in the afternoon. It will be feeling quite warm this afternoon with sunny spells and a southwesterly breeze. Sheila has 100 miles to ride before she gets there.