Great British Escapades 2026

The Canterbury Vicinity on a Thursday Evening

Where optimism gathers briefly before being dissolved by gradients.

I'm back.

Which honestly suggests I've learned very little.

Last year I arrived prepared. Lean. Focused. I had a plan. I had training in my legs. I had a goal.

This year I arrived with a kilo of yellow bellies, a vape, and the cardiovascular system of a forgotten accordion.

Training didn't happen. Every time I thought: I should probably ride my bike, life replied: No. Then stress arrived. Then anxiety. Then vaping appeared one evening like a temporary solution that accidentally signed a tenancy agreement.

The strange thing about vaping is how quickly it becomes part of your identity. Phone. Wallet. Keys. Blueberry ice lung machine. In that order.

I drove to the park and ride. Rode the few kilometres to the start. Already questioning everything.

I'm stood among actual athletes again. One bloke has calves that look medically significant. Another is discussing tyre pressure with the seriousness of a hostage negotiation.

I nod along like I too have opinions about rolling resistance.

I do not.

Kevin says a few words at the briefing. I catch: safety, something about fjords. The rest is drowned out by my own internal monologue.

"I've just struggled to tie wrap a number on my bike in front of Ollie Beresford. What am I doing here with Ollie Beresford? I shouldn't be here in this condition... Listen to Kevin and stop thinking about all the athletes you just vaped in front of."

My bike immediately develops a noise. Not a mechanical one. More emotional. Like it's sighing.

My number is 19, like Gascoigne in Italia ‘90. He ended up in tears…

We're off.

Night One. Canterbury to Checkpoint One.

km 0 → 195. Departed: Thursday evening. Arrived: 06:28. Condition: negotiable.

I start slow and let everybody in group 1 go. Not through choice.

The first climb arrived earlier than I remember. This is probably not true. Hills don't generally relocate.

Not long before the first message from my wife arrives:

"Are you in a wood... with Darren?"

The tracker in my hydration vest, bless it, has not refreshed, and on her phone it looks like Darren and I are deep in a forest together having a lovely time. I stop, move the tracker somewhere more defensible, and say nothing.

It's starting to get very dark. Good dark. The sort of dark where every gatepost becomes "A Man."

The lanes thin out and the trees start to look like they have ideas.

What is it with the hills that your bike computer doesn't register as a hill? You're blowing out your arse, your lungs are staging industrial action, and the screen just... sits there. Green profile. 2% gradient. I scroll through, checking. Not even a mild shrug.

I guess part of that is if you haven't trained, all hills are hills. All of them. Every single one. A slight incline in a Tesco car park would get me now. The interesting thing about not training is that your body informs you immediately. No easing in. No gentle transition. Straight to: Absolutely not.

Last year I was holding back. Pacing myself. Conserving. This year I gave everything I had from the start, which - given that I had arrived with nothing - was a concerning equation.

I stop at the Shell petrol station to buy water. See Jo briefly. Fill my hydration bladder with carb mix and electrolyte. Then, for reasons I cannot explain and will not attempt to, tip most of it on the floor. Start again.

On to Rochester. My mate Paul calls it bandit country. I never linger.

McDonald's. Stuart appears from nowhere, dumps a bag of ice on the table, and is gone. Did I imagine this? I think this happened. Stuart is real, I know that much. I'm beginning to think this event attracts men who exist in a quantum state.

Fries. Back on the bike.

Pitch black. Peaceful, mostly. The occasional tree that's doing too much.

Cycling through the night always feels slightly illegal. Villages asleep. Windows dark. Foxes watching from hedges. Your whole world shrinks down to: breathing, lights, snacks, and whether your body is currently making weird sounds.

Mine is. Not encouraging ones.

Earlier while riding, Yorick asked what the biggest animal we have over here is. I said: probably a dog. I could tell this wasn't what he was hoping for, but off the leash Labradors with opinions is about as deadly as it gets.

But it stayed with me. Out here, at this hour, on these lanes. The rustles of a decisive owl or a squirrel with intent. The hedgerow shapes. Your brain starts filling in the gaps. It's not like we have a Bigfoot. Didn't stop me looking for it though.

Mitch Hedberg said it: Bigfoot is blurry - it's not the photographer's fault. He's right. The photos aren't bad. Bigfoot is just fundamentally out of focus. I respect that. Some of us just are.

Anyway… back to it.

Before the Gatton section - North Downs, sometime around the hours when nothing good has ever happened - a man in a campervan is parked up with a couple of extra cars around him. He leans out and asks why there are so many mountain bikes about at this time of night. Is it because there are fewer dog walkers?

I don't know why he's there. I don't know what the other cars are doing. It would be a long wait for a sunrise, if that's the plan.

His private plate ended in DOG.

There were no dogs.

I'm not saying anything. I'm just noting it. That's all. Move on.

Yorick. The answer is DOG.

The water fountain at the school doesn't work. I've also already tipped the carb mix and electrolyte into the last cup's worth of water in my drinks bladder. It will be a dry ten kilometres to Box Hill, where the tap is.

I thought about something Rob Auton said. That if I am 65% water, does that mean I am only 35% me? Or am I the cordial of me?

I was, at this point, very much the cordial. Concentrated. Mostly sugar. Barely diluted. Not what anyone ordered.

Box Hill. The tap. Water. Tom and Lesley were there already. I copied Lesley and brushed my teeth at a public water fountain at dawn.

I have been to Box Hill hundreds of times. Never brushed my teeth there. But I was minty fresh, I had water, and was good to go.

Up Ranmore and across to the sands of St Martha's Church. Niel appears through the sand and trees with a camera and a slightly religious energy. I was going to stop for a vape at this point, but in front of Coach Niel it'd be a bit like the vicar stepping outside of service to do a scratchcard.

I think something appropriately solemn as I keep pushing on to CP1.

Sausage sarnie. Coffee. A sit down.

The Interior. km 195 → 335.

Also known as: admin miles, the long reckoning.

Last year I called this section admin miles. Haslemere, through to the South Downs. Dull, slow, necessary. Slightly purgatorial.

That was too kind.

I don't know what to call it now. The Interior. The Long Reckoning. That Bit In The Middle Where You Eat A Meatball Sub And Have A Word With Yourself. Because that's what I did. Sat down somewhere with a Subway bag and had a quiet but firm internal meeting after a bit of a cry.

And I thought about my mum. The last six months. The possibility that she might be watching a little dot on a map, moving slowly through the south of England, occasionally stopping for meatball subs. The possibility that that was enough. That keeping the dot moving was enough.

I kept moving.

The South Downs. Graffham. The Heat.

Walk the ups. Ride the downs. Don't ask questions.

An actual heatwave. Not a British one. An actual one. The kind where the air is doing something structural to you.

Graffham up to the South Downs is a bastard on a normal day. Today it is a bastard in a way that feels personal.

I break it up by walking to a chosen tree. Then a chosen stump. Then a chosen branch. Then a thing that might be a branch, hard to tell in this heat. Between each one: a drink, a Haribo, a vape. Quietly. Without ceremony. The vape offers nothing except the brief sensation of having made a decision, and I will take that.

I talk myself through it. Out loud. Must have sounded like I was mid-breakdown to anyone nearby.

But there is no one nearby. No other bugger is walking up this in thirty-degree heat. Except the other participants - the other like-minded individuals who have also, through their own unique sequence of events, ended up here, pushing a bike up a hill, talking to themselves, sweating through their helmets. There should be a word for these people. There isn't. There should be.

There's a point during long events where your normal personality dissolves. You stop thinking about work. Deadlines. Messages. The future. Your entire existence becomes: reach next tree. Strangely calming. Like being reduced to your factory settings. Or a dumb phone.

The South Downs Way itself: walk the ups, ride the downs, stop at the water taps, don't ask any further questions.

I spent a good stretch with Martyn L. We stopped at a food van for a dirty burger, because they didn't have any chips. He then pulled over for a sunset sleep somewhere further along. I pressed on to Newhaven.

As I went, I began to see things on the trail ahead. Animals. Shapes. Shifting mounds at the edge of my light.

Badgers, I thought. Like last year.

They were horse poo. All of them. Every last one.

No badgers were seen.

The cows were very kind to me this year. Present. Supportive. Grounded.

The sheep watched me pass with their usual expression, like a woollen magistrate. I know what they think. I've always known. They don't hide it. One looked at me like it knew things.

You don't belong here wheezy, go home.

Judgy little pricks.

Newhaven Premier Inn. km 335. About 10pm.

20 nuggets. 2 quarter pounders. Fries. Milkshake. 4 litres of chocolate milk. 3 cups of tea. Shower. Sleep.

Another screenshot from my wife.

She is texting with her sister. Both watching the dots.

"Why is he in the river?"

"I bet he's fallen in the river."

I had not fallen in the river. The tracker had done something. I chose not to investigate.

Some things are better left unexplained.

There is a Sainsbury's and a McDonald's. I go to both.

Sainsbury's: fruit, breakfast things, a significant amount of chocolate milk. I asked the assistant if they had plug adapters for phone cables. She walked me to them, asking "you been cycling on the downs?" Joking, I asked if they sold bib shorts.

She took me to the baby clothes.

I did not explain. I bought the chocolate milk and left.

McDonald's: 20 nuggets, two quarter pounders, fries, a milkshake, four litres of chocolate milk, three cups of tea.

Endurance nutrition is fascinating because eventually it just becomes: what food can still emotionally reach you.

Shower. Stretch. Set alarm for 2am. Passed out immediately.

Woke up at 4am. Whoops.

Checkpoint Two and Beyond. km 485. 17:36.

150km to go. Back on the admin miles.

The sun was already up. Not dramatically - just quietly, efficiently up. Like it hadn't waited. Last year that sunrise got me. I had a cry. The sheep nodded. We reached an understanding.

This year the sheep didn't nod, and the cows didn’t budge. They knew I'd slept in.

But the downs were still doing their thing. Ridable ascents, rapid descents, my favourite stretch of the whole route. The kind of section where your legs remember what they came for, even if the rest of you is still negotiating.I rode through cow shit on a descent going full gas and was briefly pebble-dashed by it. I did not slow down. I did mind. It was bloody disgusting.

Handy wipes activated.

CP2 at 06:39. Clocked it, as my daughter would say, with the little hand gesture.

I press on. Cuckoo Trail, Waitrose. Pastry. Iced coffee. Painkillers.

Then straight up into that kingdom of bungalows. Not a gentle incline to live on, a serious one. Imagine forgetting the milk.

Who signed this off?

Niel found me again at Bewl Lake. This time on his e-bike. A few moments later he rapidly overtakes me with ease on an uphill while shouting come on, keep up. I laughed politely, but for just brief second, I hate him with the intensity of a Shakespearean uncle.

I was eagerly heading for St Michael's. Fish and chips. I have learned from my mistakes. Last year I only got chips. I have thought about that quite a lot.

The descent before it was a gauntlet. Squirrels. Ten of them, scattered across the line like they'd been briefed. I went down the hill shouting SQUIRRELS and only one of them tested my nerve. That's a reasonable strike rate in the circumstances.

Fish and chips. Obtained. Consumed. The universe, briefly, in order.

A genius move: I took my hydration bladder and put four Calippos in it with water. Cold. Sustained. Perfect. I was not going to repeat last year's Calippo incident. Some lessons you only need once.

20-30km to go and everything seemed determined to slow me down. Dogs. Dog walkers. Delivery vans attempting ambitious three-point turns. Then a horse.

I came round a blind corner, obnoxious freehub buzzing away. Too late. The horse was not happy. The rider looked nervous. The horse looked nervous. I looked nervous. Nobody was enjoying this.

The horse started pacing about. Please don't launch this woman into a tree.

Eventually things calmed down. I apologised to the rider. And, just to be safe, the horse.

To my surprise she said: "Don't worry. He's in a bad mood today. All his mates are out in the field, and he's had to come on a ride."

Fair play mate.

I'd just spent three days feeling exactly the same.

The final stretch: cruising. Not fast but moving. Another squirrel on a descent chose to run down the hill with me before eventually veering off. I braked hard. Shouted MAKE YOUR CHOICE, SQUIRREL! Much to the amusement of a bloke doing his hedges.

This is what the event does. It makes everything strange enough to be funny and hard enough to be real.

The Finish.

Kevin and Niel at the end. Legends.

A little slower than last year. Considerably harder than last year. All the more finished for it.

Over to Floc Brewery Tap. Pizza. Cold beer. The Turn Crew. People who also just did something difficult for no clear reason other than that they did.

I took a moment and thought about the dot on the map.

Still moving for a while. Now stopped.

All photos by Niel Copeland Instgram: @nielcopeland

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