There Are Very Few Places...
Updated: 2 days ago
Sofa to 250km in one hit, seemed like a reasonable plan.
If you've read my previous post from this year's Great British Escapades 2026, you'll know I've not exactly done a lot this year, and so have very few stories.
This particular story is me trying to force myself back on the bike. Sometime around early August, here's what I wrote from gathering my voices together notes back then...
4am wake up
Actually that's a lie.
4:20am wake-up
I just can't wake up at the moment and the first and possibly secondary 4:10 back-up alarms were both greeted with auto-rapid-hand motion to press the sleep button.
Cup of coffee, and cup of tea through indecision.
I know I want Coffee but I can't not have a brew when I wake up. So I make both while also forcing down 70kg of Porridge with milk and syrup, and a banana.
The Bike all prepped and ready to go, because yesterday I was eager.
5am
Sitting on the patio with a vape in my hand, staring at a single apple connected the smallest tree branch just hanging there, suspended waiting for gravity to become all too much. I've been keeping an eye on this for months. I enjoy the birds visiting the bird-bath for moment, and try not to flinch so they don't scatter. But they all look at me directly and convince me to fill it up with water. I do as I'm told.
Regular visitor Steve the Squirrel does the job for me and snaps me out of my urges to go back to bed where it’s quiet (There may be one or many Steves, A whole steve of squirrels, we just don’t know).
He appears along the fencing, and starts stealing the nuts from the feeder. He gives me a solid glance as I try and grab a photo, and I take that as the cue to get off my arse and get moving.
It’s been like that all year. Winter, and spring have come and gone, and even glorious sunny morning is rarely enough. But I have a word with myself and grab my checklist and get myself up and ready.
On the road bike. But decide to wear a light MTB t-shirt to keep things casual. It's a bloody heat wave, and I haven't ridden a bike for about 2 months now since GBE.
I'm not thinking about aero gains right now.
Hydration vest of water, and two bottles of carb mix. Food, headphones… good to go.
I've done this route back to Yorkshire many times, it's pretty flat, pretty dull really, but you get a lot of pedalling done. I leave the house and head for the first of two trains. 2 Trains… "training".
6am
Train from South Morden, to Farringdon, to Bedford and then cycling 250km to Snaith in Humberside.
Empty platform at South Mordor, Not an Orc in sight. Empty Train, bike secured with those velcro straps that no longer Velcro (is that a verb?)... I immediately need to pee. It's now a race between leaving that station and next before the doors open... before the bikes security is at risk.
Dunno how my bladder works, but this happens 3 times between leaving South Morden and Bedford.
I switch trains at Farringdon - The velcro done velcroed this time. It was one of those posher trains they have now.
I’m faced with the inevitable journey to Yorkshire. Searching for that state of mind where I don’t have to be anybody in particular for a bit, and I’m on my own with only the bike. That familiar arrangement where I pedal and it seems to sort things out for me and I become easier, calmer, better. There are very few places that allow my head to wander and wonder a little about nothing much important and make the gravity a little easier.
Sometimes things are too big to expect a bike to help you process. When you need to process what feels un-processable and you’re on your own with your own noisy noggin’, trying to stay logical, practical, useful. Being on a bike this year has been torture. All those closed off doors would fly open and all the noise would flood in. So the place I would ordinarily find peace, had become the worst place I could be.
Cycling isn’t therapy, not really, I’ve had therapy. You don’t accidentally work through your issues while eating a kilo of Haribo. They’re right there waiting when the sugar crash kicks in.
Third and final bladder interruption before I get off this train.
7:30 - Bedford
Off the train. and on the road. I get on my way, through the back roads.
It's already too hot. Not particularly looking forward to being exposed to this heat and sun in the flat lands between here and Lincolnshire, and on to Humberside. Gonna be tough. Nowhere to hide, and very little to report.
(I clearly had a positive mindset from the off!!)
Podcasts are quickly dismissed for playlists after I stop at a Mcdonalds about 50km in, 200km left, and grab some breakfast.
I tend to know where to stop on this route. Knowing there is about 70km of bugger all at some point, so the hydration vest was logical plan at this stage.
Dunno what time it is from this point onward (maybe that’s a good sign?) …Let's see.
Either way my timestamp heading structure for this story has already gone to shit. I press on.
I seem to have accidentally joined a bike race in St Neots.
Think it was a time trial. I’m overtaken by someone going very with a determined aerodynamic posture, and they appear to be trying to eat their handlebars, number pinned on looking very "against the clock".
A funny luck from a volunteering marshall trying to tell me what direction I should be going to go in at the roundabout, as I passed her one handed with a vape in my hand, and a super-sized yellow-bellie haribo snake hanging out my chops.
St Neots seems posh. Sounds it anyway... Posher sounding that my destination of Snaith anyway.
Well it does until you reach the incredibly posh sounding 'Offord Darcy'.
That's D... (no apostrophe) ... Arcy.
Offord Darcy, Offord Cluny and Kings Ripton, Deeping St James. Where the names all start to sound like euphamisms.
Did I just see a sign that said 'Up the Ramsey ↑'... Surely not. Yikes.
I did not. I passed another sign that said 'Upward and the Ramseys'. Not a euphemism but certainly a solid band name.
The Ramseys is a really long straight road along flat land. Countless signs however saying road closed and diversion, and constant signs saying to turn around. Hydration vest water tastes like washing up liquid... Excellent news.
People in their driveways and gardens looked at me knowingly. Do they know I aren't getting through?... I have no way of knowing without being sociable.
It would be mortifying to have to ride back past them all. So I press on, shrugging like the care-free brave brave boy that I am.
It was fine. Just 10km of worrying for nothing.
My enthusiasm melts away.
Note: my voice notes to myself from here became far less clear and very specific.
I was beginning to wish I'd driven with the family at this point. My dog Lily was certainly enjoying the aircon judging by the photos I was receiving from the fam.
It turns out two months off the bike followed by 34 degrees isn't an especially sophisticated training plan. Who knew? Being envious of a long drive up the M1 is not a good sign.
Those doors I was desperately trying to keep closed were starting to open again.
I knew what to do. I'm well practised at this now.
Eat.
Drink. Lock in.
Keep moving.
I couldn't eat.
The noise was too loud.
The doors were dissolving.
I wasn't thinking straight, and I couldn't eat.
Passed a Co-op.
I need water and food. This would have been logical.
Passed a chippy.
Something is definitely wrong.
I stop at the Petrol station.
Water.
Iced coffee.
Didn't buy food.
Couldn't even process what to buy.
Idiot.
Didn't even consider buying an ice cream.
Something was most definitely wrong.
I can't do this.
I took a detour to Grantham to get a train to Doncaster.
Which felt pathetic at the time. I'd lost my head.
I had an hour to kill so McDonald's happened again.
Large milkshake.
Large Fries.
Forced it down.
Too little - way too late.
I'm a bloody slug, a stupid shitting slug.
(Recorded that lovely singular voice note for myself... It's self talk my therapist would have to bring me up on, but it's good to know I still have lovely use of alliteration)
I began to think about why and how I could get around GBE, and not this simple training ride I've done countless times before. I had my goals, I was writing a story, I was thinking about moving the dot along. I was occupied. I had a job to do, and I was locked in (I was not locked in). This was the space I'd craved, and lots of it. There are very few places I get to have this space. But the stories and thoughts in my head were not at all joyful and now they were even worse given I was now also angry with myself.
I felt some deep shame getting on my third train of the day. “Training” didn’t feel like a throwaway quip anymore. My voice notes ended here...
I suppose we're usually better at writing about the rides we finish.
This wasn't one of those.
No finish line.
No heroic last 20km.
No dramatic mechanical.
I just got a train.
But I suppose I did get on the bike.
I noodled the remaining 30km from bleak old Doncaster.
Reality check logged. I’ll keep trying. If you'd like to see a brief video of the same journey from a year or two ago, but completed without issue. I made a reel. https://www.instagram.com/p/C7aJri0oZAu/ instagram https://www.instagram.com/iamkristianrobinson/
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