Freddie Mercury Never Cycled In Tameside

(or - The tyranny of two wheel travel...)

Strap in – we’re going on an adventure.

Eight months ago, Sarah and I bid a fond farewell to London, the place we’d both lived in longest. Suddenly, the time was right, so we boxed up all our things and plotted a course for The North, the land of our fathers. Well, my father.

All ‘our’ things, that is, apart from my bike. It was the only thing that wouldn’t fit in the van. So Bikey McBikeFace stayed down South until a few weeks ago, when I fetched it home with plans of a reinvigorated life spent on two wheels.

Since then, in The North, it’s rained almost incessantly and life has remained exclusively two-legged.

However, this morning, it was not raining. I’d slept well and was feeling fit and ready for a splendid day at the laptop, continuing to write my Crime Novel – Father’s Day.

A bestseller in waiting...

I had coffee, I had characters to kill and red herrings to plant, what man could wish for more?

Then Sarah messaged from some small festival going on in Scotland right now, and asked if I’d been out on the bike yet. She knew I hadn’t, because I would have mentioned it. But this is part of the cryptic love language she employs when she wants to pop an idea in my head without specifically mentioning it. She’s clever like that. It’s genius. It works.

‘I’ve not been out for a cycle yet!’ I thought, after the call, as if the idea had self-formed in my head rather than being delicately planted there by Sarah.

I put on a pair of ‘breathable’ trainers – to keep my feet cool, as I achieved King of The Mountains status in Tameside. If I’d owned a ‘yellow jersey’, believe me I’d have worn it.

That said, I’m not the sort of cyclist who wears ‘cycling gear’. In my mind, clothing that skin-tight is best reserved for the stage, maybe a revival of the musical, Cats? Because I believe there are certain aspects of certain anatomical areas that should remain the private domain of one’s self, and perhaps one other consenting adult, who knows what they’ve signed up for.

I got the bike from the brand new shed (a shed I built entirely on my own, might I add). I found the little computer thingy that tells me how fast I’m going and how far and all that, and I'm about ready.

About one minute from my front door is the Trans Pennine Trail – a coast to coast route of 215 miles. Not all of it is outside my house, obviously, just a bit of it. Specifically, a portion that used to be a small trainline. It’s a smooth-ish, tarmacked-ish ride, and I’ve been looking forward-ish to cycling it from the minute I arrived up here.

Helmet on. And. I’m. Away…

Ah, right, yes, as I said, it’s rained a lot recently. More than a lot, to be fair. Unbelievable amounts, actually. Every time I hear a hammer bang or a saw in use I imagine one of my neighbours has begun the very sensible project of building an Ark. So I shouldn’t be surprised that the Trans Pennie Trail is more of an aquatic assault course than I envisioned.

I swerve between puddles and mud – less because they’re a problem (I have mud guards, duh!) – but more because the bike is still in pristine condition after it had a little London service before bringing it home. And I rather like how it looks. Clean. I’m having a flashback to when some people, back in the day, would leave plastic on their new lounge furniture or on their car seats, to protect them from people, er, sitting on them. ‘Back in the day’ comfortable sitting was overrated. A little like riding a bike, where comfortable sitting has never, ever been a consideration. I rock buttock to buttock to even out the discomfort. I’m sure it’ll get better soon…

I call out ‘Morning!’ to everyone I pass. People smile, their dogs wave, their children wag. A cyclist in their 20s flashes me a stubbly grin - we are kindred spirits, brothers, if you will. Oh, this is going to be a wonderful use of an hour. I wonder why Sarah didn’t suggest it to me..?

I know that up ahead is a dead end, but a sign helpfully points me the right direction. Thanks sign, very helpful. Up a little slope, then a cheeky left, and I’m on both the Trans Pennine Trail and an ‘official’ cycle route. Two for the price of one. The route runs between two gorgeous fields.

Mm. I slow. This is not so much a ‘route’ as it’s a sliver of road from a historical war zone, transported waterlogged pot hole by waterlogged pot hole, all the way to Greater Manchester. It’s not what I’d been led to believe by that sign. Signs lie.

Anyway, it can’t go on like this forever. And it doesn’t. I reach dryish land and feel invigorated that I’ve negotiated such perils so early in my journey. I take a snap of the fields, either side of their shared moat.

Lovely

Then I selfie myself...

...even lovelier!

There are horses in a field. Horses in their stable. Horses being attended to by people who like that sort of thing. If we get into ‘Ark’ territory, I make a silent promise to myself that these fine beasts will make it to safety as the waters rise. The horses that is, not their jodhpur-wearing wranglers. Noah wasn’t exactly big on saving humans, was he? I don’t see why I should be any different. Looking at that blue sky though, it’s hard to believe we’re not midway through a drought.

I’m on the verge of whistling something irritatingly catchy, when I’m met by evidence this might already be Ark time. A muddy puddle across the whole track. It might be two inches, or two metres, deep, it's impossible to tell. Hang on, I’m on a bike, surely that gives me enough additional height to take a chance? So chance I do, and I pass through it with ease. I’m very proud of myself. I’m building character with every revolution of my pedas.

There are several more of these ponds, various sizes and depths, but I quickly develop a knack for guessing the precise propulsion required, without the need to pedal, and arrive at the other side unscathed each time.

However, if these first half dozen pools are big enough to contain small turbots, the next that presents itself is so big it could be home to a family of, slightly cramped, I grant you, Great Whites! The lake is maybe 25ft long, 12ft wide. This is supposed to be Manchester, not Atlantis! I scan for fins, and seeing none, take a deep breath - what do I have to lose? I’m not going back, that’s for sure.

I push off, as I have successfully done many times before…

Shit.

I realise my momentum is not sufficient and I’m going to have to pedal, or stop and fall over. At this precise moment the true depth of this ocean reveals itself and both my feet touch water. This is also the exact moment I remember my choice of footwear. Breathable. A second later both my feet are completely submerged.

Double shit.

Nothing for it – I cycle like a normal person might in the dry.

Instantly, the bottom six inches of both jeans legs are swilling with brown, stagnant, shark urine. With each wobble, each descent deeper into the mire, my imagination brings giant man-eating eyes to the surface of the water, all of them crazed, all of them hungry.

I emerge, what feels like a day later, like a dumped car being pulled from a crime scene lake.

Luckily, for my pride, it’s a good eight seconds before I pass someone. Having no idea how much of my predicament they’ve witnessed, I stare at the road ahead of me, not in the mood for ‘Morning!’ anyone anymore.

I squelch on, the laughter of sharks ringing in my ears, until I make it onto a proper road. The sort of road with cars and vans and drainage systems. I turn left onto it, determined not to be thwarted. I look ahead. Dear God - this ‘proper’ road rises away so steeply it might as well be disappearing into the clouds.

Carrying an extra pound or two of fetid filth in my socks, this is an even harder climb than I expected. I plunge down through the gears like a skyscraper lift in a predictable action film. In the lowest gear a single revolution of my pedals moves me little more than an inch. A mother pushing two offspring in a double buggy, with a third standing on a board thing at the back, has no trouble keeping up with me.

Considering the circumstances, I do what any middle-aged man would do, I feign receiving a message, so I have to stop. If I’d actually received a text, it would no doubt have said something along the lines of ‘Why didn’t you bring your asthma inhaler with you, idiot!?’ I stand by the side of the road waiting for my lungs to perform the job they’ve previously done without my involvement.

I can’t cycle any further up this mountain, no matter how much it does an impression of a gently rising hill for the mother of three. So, in a move more Antiques Roadshow than Die Hard, I get off my bike and walk it towards the next turn off. ‘Walk’ is an over-simplification, but I don’t think there’s a word for when your legs have turned to a cross between jelly and over-boiled spaghetti.

I arrive at the junction. I don’t care where it’s going, so long as it’s not ‘up’. Gratefully I remember the large metal water bottle I filled before setting off. Less that gratefully I find I’ve left it at home.

Triple shit.

The side street takes me through a quiet estate. Proper roads. Fairly flat. Excellent. Except I have no idea where I am.

I check an app for directions. I don’t want ‘quickest’ or ‘main roads’, I just want 'quiet'. Quiet suggests ‘easy’. I want easy. I ask, the app answers. A hundred yards later it wants me to head into a foreboding arch of trees. The app thinks this is a terrific ‘quiet’ idea. I’m not entirely sure. It looks like the sort of place people get murdered in.

I hear voices. Four ‘walkers’ emerge. They don’t look like they’ve been murdering or committing any crimes, or finding dead bodies, as walkers always seem to do. Maybe it’s because they don’t have a dog with them?

I carefully head into the trees.

One nano second later, I discover, like signs, apps lie. There are no puddles here, which is a relief. No sharks or horses or buggy pushers.

What there is, is mud! Copious amounts. Mud deep enough to wrestle in. I’m into it before I know what’s happening. Steering is non-existent. The slope down is steep. My brakes are clogged with sludge and next to useless. I squeeze them anyway, and hope for the best, like a man trying to get milk from a cow, without the faintest idea what he’s doing. I point the front wheel at grass. That has to be better, right?

No.

I come to halt, put my feet down into a bog. Images of bad guys in old Tarzan TV series flash through my head. Slowly sucked down into the earth to their deaths. There aren’t even any vines to cling to! I have to get out of there. If I don’t survive this who will Sarah drink coffee with when she returns?! I can’t abandon her like this.

My feet come free and muddily return to the pedals. I pedal. My back wheel spins in place, which scares the front wheel so much it tries to run away off to one side. The world slows down, I can tell what’s going to happen – I’m going to die on this forest path and be eaten by swamp weevils.

I can’t think of anything else to do, so I shout ‘No!’ at everything and nothing. It’s a pathetic sound that Tarzan would have been ashamed to make. And it changes nothing. Who knew that sliding out of control through mud can’t be halted by the power of voice alone?

I grab a tree. I stop sliding sideways, but I can feel the whole bike continuing to sink. Using powers and strength of character usually reserved for Mount Everest climbers and dragon slayers I use the tree to pull myself from the worst of it.

The next few minutes of travel are reminiscent of ‘sprint’ cyclists at the start of their races – barely moving, more a balancing act, than something that passes for ‘cycling’. Left, then right, then left then more left, LOOK OUT FOR THE BRANCH, then right – wherever the ground looks more solid, that’s where I aim for.

On more than one occasion, looks are deceiving. But perseverance pays off. Eventually I make it to something vaguely resembling a traditional path.

Mm, the path…

The path is almost Roman-like in appearance. Not because it’s straight, but because it was apparently built 2000 years ago and no one has done one iota of upkeep on it since. Weeds, nettles, rocks, bricks, Centurion’s helmets, ancient burial grounds, all dumped randomly in front of me. No bicycle was made for this.

Suddenly, there are tears. Not from me, but from the bike. A bike that has spent most of its life in London, lastly in Clapham. The poor thing came North expecting a similar life of straight roads, pocket dogs, endless joggers, smashed avocado and obscenely priced flat whites, not mountainous nightmares like this. I mutter encouraging platitudes, pat the handlebars supportively, what else can I do?

Halfway down the Roman path is a step. A serious, single, foot-high step. Caked in mud. Some might say, intentionally hidden. Camouflaged, if you will. There's no rhyme or reason for it. Just a twelve inch drop to certain catastrophe. I can’t imagine its purpose or what the hell they were thinking. No one could.

Certain death

Later, I knock on local doors. After the initial shunnings from within, and mutterings of 'unclean, unclean', I mention ‘the step’, at which point the residents, as one, fall to their knees tearfully begging me for answers. I have none. I go on my damp and mud-caked way. A hero unable to educate his people.

I hear noise. Civilisation? A factory. The sort of factory that requires a 10ft fence with spikes on top. And lots of trees hiding the insidious purpose that lies beyond. Initially, there are no signs advertising the purpose of the factory. No logo for a company seeking customers. But there’s the faint smell of something in the air. It takes me a moment, but I locate it in my memory – it is the smell of ‘wrongness’.

The factory of wrongness has large gas-filled cylinders and a variety of buildings. I glance in a window – there’s literally no one inside, just a poster in a pristine lab-like environment, declaring ‘I Can, and I Will’. Can what? Will what? Eat all my co-workers?!

I arrive at the front entrance. Finally, a sign. Richmond. Richmond? The sausage people? I was not expecting that.

Large metal gates are closing, people beyond them look at me with cold, dead, high fat content, eyes. Then another sign…

'Safety is a condition'. Like haemorrhoids?

So… 102 days since an accident ‘lost time’. Time travel? Also 102 days since there was a serious accident. What am I supposed to do with this knowledge? Is 102 days good? Should I be worried? Should I call someone? The last time I had a serious accident, was, thankfully, never - though it could have been about four minutes ago if I hadn’t seen that muddy Roman step.

Even though I take the photo surreptitiously, those same men are watching me, just out of shot, silent, unmoving - except when they occcasionally prick their skins with forks. These are men who see that sign every day, men who gaze at calendars and count days. Men who, maybe, wonder if next time, will it be them?

I have stumbled upon a sausage factory. There are CCTV cameras everywhere. Literally no one knows what goes into making a sausage, so not wanting to be an added ingredient, I hightail it away, under a bridge, and back onto a quiet road. Hurrah.

It doesn’t last long. Shortly I see the most dreadful of all signs, one that puts instant fear in me, even though it had never done so before setting out today. A sign, that in the past, on foot, has filled me with joy and knowledge that I will be OK. But on a bike: horror.

Public Footpath.

I’ve been on public footpaths most of my journey today. I haven’t the inner strength to face another. I’m only a mere man, Goddamnit.

I even don’t know what sort of ‘public’ they have around here. They must be amphibious and impervious to pain. They must have evolved with shock absorbers in their legs too. I don’t want to come across any of them. Shh - I see one of their cars parked by the side of the road - a road where there is literally nothing. Nothing. Anyone who parks by the side of a road where there is literally nothing is up to no good.

Another check of my phone. Ha, the public footpath is, joyfully, the wrong way. The correct route is a proper road, surrounded by proper houses...

Quadruple shit.

It’s all up hill! I can’t. I just can’t. I get off Bikey McBikeFace and walk. Apparently, I live somewhere not far from here. I have no idea where.

Walking gives me time to think. Walking a hill, compared to cycling it, is terribly easy. Cycling directionless in the countryside is not as pleasant as it sounds – it is torture and torment. Freddie Mercury would not have written that song if he'd cycled in Tameside.

Surely, there must be lists somewhere that give me easier journeys? I shall research before the next time. If there is a next time.

Now on truly dry ground, I can hear the squelch of each of my steps. I’m covered in mud. I check myself for leeches. I remember my Grandfather’s story of being lost in the jungles of Burma and using cigarettes on leeches. Evidently, just pulling a leech off might leave its mouth parts in you and no one wants mouth parts inside them. I have not yearned for a cigarette in almost 20 years, but in that moment, I feel decidedly naked without my trusty Zippo and a pack of Marlboros – the milder gold ones, not the reds - I’m not an animal.

Would you believe it, I’m suddenly back on the Trans Pennine Trail! Eh? There wasn’t even a sign, it just appeared. Hang on, I’m on a new stretch of it. I wonder where it goes. Then I see the turn off point again, where I left civilisation 40 minutes ago for a wet-footing, bone-shaking, horror show that began ‘between two fields’.

Seeing it again now, the sign, it occurs to me I never did see another sign for either the Trans Pennine Trail or a cycle route of any description after this one! Then it becomes clear – they expect all sensible cyclists to turn back, and those stupid enough not to, to perish.

The bastards.

At least I know where I am. Home isn’t far. I need to enjoy these last few minutes.

I cycle freely on the old railway line, through trees and greenery the like of which a London park or Common can only aspire to. There are people, people not covered in mud. Once more I halloo them, feeling the wind in my hair and the dribble of toxic waste in my shoes.

There’s an elderly man up ahead, hands behind his back, staring at the floor. I slow, but he seems happy enough, marvelling at this historical railway, no doubt. Good for him.

Ahead of me, I ding-ding a mum and dad with two kids, walking in twos, man and boy, woman and girl, old school. Hearing my bell, they happily move aside. By which I mean: they move aside. I’m pretty sure I can hear embittered teeth clenching. Clearly not locals.

The ease with which I now glide along the Trans Pennine Trail, the opposite way to which I started, is, I realise, because of a downward slope. I didn’t noticed it before. I’ve been almost freewheeling for the best part of a mile. I’ve not needed to use even a sliver of my incredible cycling strength or prowess. I’ve also cycled well past my turn off.

Quintuple shit!

I’ve arrived at the natural end of the old line. I have a choice between a ridiculous hump-back bridge one way, or the jungles of darkest Peru on the other.

Sextuple shit!

The only course of action is to turn back and face a mile and a half of unrelenting uphill-ness.

Septuple and Octuple shit!

And this, my friends, is when I turn my bike round and very nearly succumbed to tears. I cannot live here on this grass. I cannot call an Uber. I have no choice. I cycle back with all the joy of a man admiring the workmanship of the guillotine that’s about to end him.

The old chap I’d seen staring at the ground, is up ahead. I pass behind him this time. In his hands, hidden from me previously, is a stick. More of a stake. The kind of thing you might use on a camping trip. Whatever it is, it’s the sort of thing you wouldn’t expect to be pink, covered in elastic bands and half wrapped in bubble wrap. But it is. I want to stop, to make cheerful conversation, to ask this elderly gent what it is he’s carrying. And why. To fill his morning with cheer and neighbourliness.

Woah. Hang on, I know who he is. He’s probably a local serial killer, isn't he? Getting on in years, but still plying his trade, carrying his weapon of choice, each elastic band a reminder of those unlucky enough to cross his path? The pink isn't paint - those stains are impossible to shift! If those four walkers I saw earlier come out later they might get the prize of finding more of his handiwork. In fact, if I don't get a move on it might well be me.

And then the family of teeth clenchers. This time they see me head on. Face to face they observe barely a man riding barely a bike. I think I hear the kids laugh and their parents scold them – those less fortunate than us should be pitied rather than giggled at. Fair point.

Then I get home. Never have I been so happy to get home.

Insult to injury, though, I’ve hurt my lower back. Or possibly a high buttock. I don’t have one buttock higher than the other, but that’s where the discomfort is.

I take off my wet shoes and stand in the back garden in my wet socks.

Bike needs cleaning. I need cleaning. Back hurts. Pride in tatters.

I don’t want the muddy bike to go straight into my new shed. But the regulation grey clouds are rolling in and I can tell normal wet weather service will soon be resumed. Reluctantly, I put the bike away. I hit my head on the low roof and say words I can’t type here.

It’s at this point it sinks it – this was all Sarah's idea! Why would she do this to me..?

For those of you about to cycle, I salute you!