monstershark

Today’s head music: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’ because my friend Nick told me he’s learning it on the ukelele so he can perform at a wedding, and ‘Private Life’ by Grace Jones because… i’ve no idea.

Another relatively music-free day. After a bike ride this morning I had to run a few errands. Over the last week or so i’ve resumed by CD ripping marathon as my collection makes its way inexorably and simultaneously into the loft and onto a networked hard drive. I’ve been spotting old favourites, forgotten curios and overlooked oddities as i’ve gone and I grabbed some of these on the way out the door.

As I drove I reacquainted myself with Jacob’s Mouse, first with their four track debut ‘No Fish Shop Parking’ and then with the first half of their last record ‘Rubber Ring’. Both bracing and fine. I found myself hearing them in counterpoint to the Field Music album and trying to draw comparisons. I think that those records which have dared to approach the mannered complexity of prog over the last few years have, in part, relied on advances in technology to make their records. To be fair, I know nothing of the way records are made, so perhaps this is balderdash, but they certainly sound more technological in their construction. Jacob’s Mouse, and a host of other bands, were trying to create complex, expressive music in the mid-Nineties, but with more traditional guitars, drums and voice. The results were often shot through with untrammelled creative energy and I think I like that better.

Nothing after that until about 30 minutes ago when I played the first three or four songs from ‘The Marble Downs’ by Trembling Bells & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. I like the album more and more. It really ought to be an overwrought mess, but somehow, perhaps because they choose to rock it up as much as they can, it’s undeniable fun.

And that’s it. On the downside, I didn’t listen to much music at all this week. I’ve explained a couple of the reasons for that. In general I think i’m listening to at least as much as this time last year, so perhaps this was just a slow week. On the upside, I never got around to pontificating on Sonos, streaming, ripping and how that’s affected the way I eat music. Think yourselves lucky.

Same time next year?

#musicdiary2012

I didn’t listen to any music today.

I heard some stuff indirectly on the television, but nothing I can recall.

The only head music I noted was ‘My Puppet Pal’ by Tiger which was stuck in my head as I was gardening.

#musicdiary2012

Whether i’m fighting against listening for listening’s sake and over-compensating in an attempt to be authentic, or not, my listening continues to dwindle.

Having briefly considered writing up by Devon Record Club choice at lunchtime, I had ‘Chips Ahoy’ by The Hold Steady purring around my head, so after 5 when most of my colleagues had gone home, I played ‘Boys and Girls in America’ on Spotify.

When I got home, from nowhere, ‘Circle of Sorrow’ by Various popped into my head, so as I got changed I listened to the first two track from their album ‘The World Is Gone’ on the laptop.

On my way downstairs something jazzy was playing on Radio 2.

I’s now 10pm, and I think that’s me done for the day.

#musicdiary2012

No music at all until 6.30pm. Then I listened to the Moonface album ‘Organ Music Not Vibraphone Like I’d Hoped’. It’s terrific, idiotic, smartass keyboard tweaking. I think i’m a little bit in love with Spencer Krug. He’s worryingly prolific and a reasonable proportion of his output is ridiculous in some way or other, but it’s all great. Whenever I listen to him I think he’s my favourite musician of the last 5 years. Oh, and the track ‘Shit-Hawk In the Snow’ is probably exactly what i’d make if I knew how to use music-making equipment. One chord played enthusiastically and percussively. Plus, this album has the best title ever.

And that’s it. No more music for me today.

One of the changes in my listening habits over the last few months has been the incursion of audiobooks. I have somewhere around 2-3 hours to myself each day, either in the car or walking the dog, and during this time I can listen to whatever I want. Last year, largely due to Devon Record Club, I partly replaced listening to Radio 4 in the car with catching up on albums, and my dog walks were never without headphones.

But music, unless I give it my full attention, leaves too much room for wandering contemplation, both internal and external. For reasons both labyrinthine and tedious, this is something I’ve been keen to avoid for the last few months. I’ve found that audiobooks help to to achieve this. Specifically, i’ve been listening to Stephen King books loaded up on my old iPod. They’re perfect. Enough going on to keep your attention (whatever the aural equivalent of a page-turner is) whilst not being stylistically so complex that it’s impossible to concentrate on them without driving off the road or walking into a hedge.

[I loved King as a teenager and now, coming back to some of his most recent books, it's weirdly gratifying to see that he's finally getting his due as the pre-eminent storyteller of his generation. So far removed from the schlockmeisters he used to be lumped in with. Plus, I'm a sucker for homey US of A yarns.]

So, in the car to and from work and a little around the house this evening, I listened to the last 2.5 hours of ‘Under The Dome’. It’s great.

Maybe music will come back into these spaces at some stage. I sort of hope so. But for now, someone else’s words are doing just the job I need.

#musicdiary2012

Not a huge amount of music today. Nothing at all passed my ears until around 6.30pm. If I have time at the weekend i’ll write a little something about how audiobooks have, perhaps temporarily, displaced music in the car and on my daily dog walks. I’m sure you’ll all look forward to that.

Got home from work and started cooking. Whilst doing so I played the first half of the Horseback compilation ‘The Gorgon Tongue: Impale Golden Horn/Forbidden Planet’, four big slices of what would, in olden times, have been called shoegaze. Although Horseback are bracketed with avant Black Metal outfits, and their earlier work fits this bill a little more comfortably, if you were to release these four gauzy, ambient guitar pieces as a long lost Slowdive EP then the only people who would call you out on that claim would be, well, Slowdive and Horseback. Possibly even Slowdive might believe it was them.

Next up, also on the Sonos, via Spotify, the new Death Grips album, ‘The Money Store’. Last year’s ‘Ex-Military’ mixtape was jolting but a little too blunt for my liking. On first listen this album proper is genuinely thrilling in parts. They may not know what they’re up to, but to me it sounds like they’re just banging musical rocks together to see what sparks fly, and fly they do. I’ll definitely go back.

Then whilst eating my tea, I watched ‘Fleetwood Mac: Don’t Stop’ the BBC Four documentary, on iPlayer. I have no affection for the band but the film was entertaining and, against all the odds, and the evidence here which points out explicitly how spiky they could all be, they seemed like nice people.

Finally I played ‘Spooky Action At A Distance’ by Lotus Plaza, again Spotify on Sonos. I phone my mum during the first song and finished talking to her during the last. What I heard in between wasn’t much, but it sounded okay. I guess I’d have to confess that the phrase ‘Pitchfork bait’ went through my head as the album kicked in, by which I meant woozy guitar shamble pop of possibly limited longevity but which sounds intriguingly opaque for now. Impossible to tell which of these records hide the hidden depths.

And that’s that. No head music of any insistence.

#musicdiary2012

No music this morning apart from ‘Jesse James’ by The Pogues which was playing incessantly on my cranial jukebox.

Then, around 12.30pm, I was scrolling through The Power of Independent Trucking having been led there by a twitter link to the piece on the remastering of the My Bloody Valentine albums and happened upon a post discussing the best of Guided By Voices and immediately ‘Gold Star for Robot Boy’ was in my head, followed, inevitably, by ‘Game of Pricks’. I played them both via Spotify and they stayed there all afternoon.

Nothing else until I made it home and played the new Animal Collective tracks, ‘Honeycomb’ and ‘Gotham’. The Domino newsletter had dropped at around 4.30pm. I hadn’t even realised the new Animal Collective stuff was ready for release. A pre-order of the 7″ came with an immediate download and it was this I played three times in a row when I got back. It’s predictably unpredictable, harking back to somewhere around ‘Feels’. ‘Honeycomb’ is wayward and bonkers, ‘Gotham’, a slow burner which wheedles its way into your head by the end of the first play.

At 7pm the other Devon Record Club members arrived. This evening’s listening comprised:

‘Bodhisattva Vow’ by The Beastie Boys (in our The Vinyl Curtain slot)
‘The John Allyn Smith Sails’ by Okkervil River
‘Boys and Girls in America’ by The Hold Steady
‘The Eight Legged Groove Machine’ by The Wonderstuff
‘Shabini’ by the Bhundu Boys
‘Skills to Pay the Bills’ by The Beastie Boys
‘Plumb’ by Field Music

All of which adds up to a good evening in my books.

As I put the rubbish out, I played ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel on the Sonos, having looked at the Best Of… album as I ripped more loft CDs yesterday. Sang along a little, then, when the second track rolled around, had heard enough.

#musicdiary2012

I’ll try to keep it brief this year. Stick to the facts.

We watched the season finale of ‘Homeland’ last night and then I sat about for half an hour afterwards tippy-tapping whilst Jo watched ‘The Voice’ on iPlayer. As midnight ticked by I had my headphones on and was listening to John Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’ via Spotify. I love the way jazz is woven through ‘Homeland’. It seemed an affectation at first but as Carrie’s character became more skittish and improvisational, it started to make more and more sense. The title sequence is one of the best of recent years and every week it makes me want to listen to more jazz. So I did.

Later on I tried to listen to ‘Provision’ by Scritti Politti an album recently retrieved from a loft box of Jo’s stuff. I’ve never really listened to them and this seemed like a good time to start. Sadly, the detritus of Jo’s university years has left the vinyl in need of a pressure wash, so I only got 30 seconds in before abandoning it. Switched to ‘Matinee’ by Sharkboy which I’d spotted on the shelf a few days ago and pulled out. Then commenced wandering about the house and largely missed it.

I spent most of the day sorting out stuff from our prodigious loft and all the while ripping CDs to our network storage drive. I the major change in my listening habits since last year has been due to the acquisition of a Sonos system. I’ll write more about what that’s done later in the week. As the laptop churned away I tried a touch more Coltrane but it seemed if not sacrilegious then at least a little unfair to play it on tinny laptop speakers. Then played half of the Braids album until their ‘we want to be Animal Collective’ pleading became overwhelming. I’m not sure i’ll go back. Switched to Portico Quartet which lasted until Jo decided she wanted to hear ‘Your Woman’ by White Town. I was ripping a box of her CDs.

Prompted by another box find I played the whole of ‘I Was The King I Really Was The King’ by Animals That Swim and then just let iTunes run, so also got their first album ‘Workshy’ and then into ‘Burst Apart’ by Antlers and half way through its predecessor ‘Hospice’.

Then, whilst making tea I listened to a pseudo-religious epic by the band I intend to play at tomorrow’s Devon Record Club and then the first five songs from ‘Let It Be’ by the Replacements both on the Sonos in the kitchen.

Finally, I wondered about that woozy song that closes ‘The Bridge’ on BBC4 and might check out who it’s by.

Today’s head music

‘Rich and Strange’ by Cud
‘Julia’ by Silver Sun
‘Still In Love With You’ by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds 

#musicdiary2012

I use a smartphone app called Endomondo to track my bike rides and, less often these days, my runs and walks. It’s a neat little service that uses your GPS position to record and publish your workouts, storing data to build up a record of your rides. You can see what I’ve been up to here.

When I first started using the app in 2010, I’d been riding my bike quite a lot and was interested to know to some degree of accuracy how far I was going, how much climbing I was doing (Endomondo’s not too good at this, as it happens), how fast I was travelling and to be able to see whether I was improving as I hoped.

Then I was invited to join a group of people, some of whom I knew, most of whom I didn’t, in a couple of ‘challenges’, wherein we would see who could complete the most miles each month, and also as a grand total for the year. I started the 2010 challenge in August, already some weeks and a few hundred miles behind the pack.

I am, in certain circumstances, quite a competitive person. If you’ve only met me at work or socially, this may come as news to you. If, however, you’ve ever disappointed me on the Ultimate field, or gainsaid me in a game of Scattergories, perhaps it won’t.

I found trailing behind the other riders unbearable even though, by and large, I didn’t know them other than through the app and it’s website, and any slight disgrace at not winning could be borne quietly and anonymously. I found myself riding more, and pushing on deeper into the Winter.

I also found myself beginning to spend my rides wondering what the others were doing. Were they riding right now? When I next logged on would their totals look the same as the too-many times I’d logged on to check and double-check my deficit before I set out? Was the gap closing or opening? I began to read their psychologies via their workout routines and associated comments, to develop a sense for when those around me on the list might go out riding and when they were likely to be dormant.

I won the 2010 challenge by a margin of 34 miles. To do this, I cycled 210 miles that December, including riding every day between Christmas and New Year. The chap who finished second hadn’t ridden for two months. I spent the whole period checking the site over and over knowing that one or two rides from him would put him beyond reach. I couldn’t believe he didn’t just hop on and knock off a few miles on New Year’s Eve to deliver his coup de grace. I certainly would have done. Wouldn’t everyone else? The sly satisfaction I took from working hard and winning from what had seemed an unlikely position was only slightly tempered by concern that it really shouldn’t have felt so important to me.

2011′s cycling had a different rhythm. Training for the Land’s End to John O’Groats ride meant I had to do the miles, but still, the ongoing monthly Endomondo challenges preoccupied me and kept me going. By May I decided not to enter for a couple of months, but still found myself unable to ignore how the other challengers were progressing and determined to ensure that I rode more miles than them.

Can too much motivation be a bad thing? Maybe, maybe not. I’ve certainly come to the conclusion that the wrong type of motivation can be damaging. When I started riding my road bike three or four years ago I quickly grew to love the freedom it gave me. Typically I’d head out early on a winter’s Sunday morning and pedal over the hills, through nearby villages that had previously existed only on signposts. The goofy kick I got from successfully picking my way between nearby places until I ended up at a far away place was what kept me riding and that, plus the surging endorphins, was what put the smile on my face when I finally made it home.

My friend Sandy, Iron Man contestant and British Military Fitness instructor, told me he knew exactly what I meant and said that a friend of his expressed the thrill of cycling with no particular place to go through the phrase “only a dog knows the feeling”. Thrashing up and down the beautiful Devon countryside was enough. Then I got challenged and that changed.

Without the ongoing string of challenges over the last 18 months, I would never have worked as hard as I have, would never have covered the miles I have, would never have been in the shape I am and, arguably, would never have had the strength and stamina to finish the End To End trip this Summer. But, with the exception of those 12 days in July and August, the words occupying my mind as I’ve ridden, have changed slowly from “wonder where this goes?” and “wow, well I never!” to “gotta get those miles” and “how will those rankings look?”. When I wasn’t riding I was anxious that I should be or, more accurately, that others might be.

I’ve got a huge amount from the Endomondo challenges. I’ve been on great rides, racked up loads of miles, kept my desire to win at least partly sated and got some genuine delight from the simple competition. But it’s changed cycling for me and, if I want to change it back, I need to stop.

I may look back in 12 months time and reflect on a slack year with half the miles, with a swelling middle-age spread to show for my lack of effort. I hope not. I’ll keep pushing myself to go farther and faster, but the intrinsic pleasure of exploring the countryside under my own power has to be enough to keep me going.

Time to ride away.

Finally, big thanks to all those Endomondo friends who joined the challenges, including Pete who I pipped in 2010 and especially Nick who did all the organising and who I found myself head-to-head with more than anyone else. Enjoy the year folks, and may the best rider win.

If you’re thinking of getting involved with Endomondo challenges, I’d recommend you give it a go. You’ll go farther and faster than you’ve ever gone before. Just make sure you keep your eyes on the road and look out for the right time to stop.

I wanted to collect some of my thoughts now the ride has finished, before the impressions and conclusions fade from memory. So here goes, one last time with feeling…

The ride was hard. Seems like an obvious statement, but I spent an inordinate amount of time in the saddle over those 1000+ miles gnawing away at precisely why it was difficult. We saw so many people over the course of the trip (more of them later) and most of them asked us similar things: ‘How has it been?’ (Answer: great, hard), ‘How’s your backside’ (Answer: unimpressed). However, one slightly more nuanced question we got, and one that helped me to figure out a few things, was ‘Has it been as you expected?’.

The truth is that, by the time we began, i’m not sure what I expected. We’d done enough riding in preparation to be reasonably sure that we could manage the 80-mile per day average trip. In fact, catching up with blogs and films made by previous End-to-Enders in the weeks before we left, mainly those who had hammered up the A-roads amongst the lorries, I’d started to feel a rather dangerous hubris when realising that for many of them the ride involved a shorter time-span and thus longer distances each day. 80 miles started to sound rather paltry, a breeze, only 15 miles farther than a regular 65 mile training round.

Stuck darkly to the flip-side of this vaguely smug sense of readiness was the certain knowledge that on Day Two, and then every subsequent morning, I’d be getting back on the bike for another day of riding. I had no idea how that would really feel or whether I would cope with it. The thought of lowering myself onto the saddle at the beginning of the second day and then the third was a looming milestone in the week before we left and during the whole of the first couple of days. Once I realised it wasn’t going to be that bad, that I wasn’t going to be rent in twain, I relaxed a little, and then the real challenge, the one I didn’t see coming, started.

I won’t rehash it. If you want more whining, read back over the last 12 days, but from the third day onwards I really started to question my own ability, my fitness and strength, even my right to be on the ride. Just because everyone we rode with went faster up hills than I did. Over the first half of the trip, possible reasons tumbled over and over like rocks in an eddy as I ground down the miles. Every time I found myself riding alone and doubts started to creep in as to whether we’d all gone the same way, I fought the urge to curse every single factor I could get a grip of: my bike; my fellow riders; the terrain; my nutrition and mostly; myself for not being up there with the rest of them. Riding 80 miles a day, you have a lot of time alone with your thoughts, and not a lot of fresh input. Colin warned us on Day Two that the third day would be the toughest mentally and that’s certainly where it started for me. Unfortunately it was Day Seven before I managed a resolution and turned the mental washing machine off for the rest of the trip.

I’d be very happy were some expert to trot along, look at my bike, and declare it a wonder that anyone could make the End-to-End trip on such a heavy, unsuitable contraption. Of course, the reason I couldn’t muster the courage to ask any of the several knowledgable bike-folk we had along the way was the fear that they woud be more likely to say, “Don’t know what you’re moaning about, this is as good as everyone else’s. You’re just a weed.”

I should offer a little balance here myself. I chose to do the ride on my long-suffering iron horse. Jo asked several times in the run up whether I should think about getting a new one for the trip and always the thought of leaving it behind after all the miles we’d done together seemed too much to contemplate. I should be fair also, my bike is a Marin Lucas Valley and I love riding it. We’ve been over the hills of Devon together and had very few crossed words. It’s never seemed as nippy as other bikes over the hills and, being technically illiterate, I had no idea whether this was a bike issue or a me issue. Having a quick scoot at some of the forums just now, there’s a suggestion that its 53/42/30 chainset is probably geared too high for hilly riding. It might go some way to explaining why on the steeper 10%+ hills, other bikes kept spinning whilst I had no option but to grind on in my ‘granny gear’.

It perhaps doesn’t explain why Rich, for instance, who joined us for half of Day Three on a 25-year old bike he’d picked up for a few quid, seemed to leave me behind too. As you’ll have noticed if you ploughed through the 12 days of my trip blog, I also concluded that a lot if not all of the others who joined us were just plain stronger cyclists than me.

I’ve always hoped that routinely riding a less-suitable bike around the country’s up-and-downest county would act as some sort of resistance training and I cling to the dream that one day I’ll finally board some super-sleek carbon thingy and find myself winning the Tour of Norfolk at a canter. Maybe one day.

That’s enough ill-informed bike talk. Mine got me there and I love it for that. I mention all this though as a possible warning to future riders. Know your bike, understand what it is and isn’t capable of and why, and then adjust to this. Otherwise you run the risk of churning through these possibilities over seemingly endless miles with no hope of resolving them whilst the stunning British countryside rolls by in the background.

Physically, things went pretty well. I was tired, but only accidentally fell asleep on the floor once, plus again in a dog’s bed the day after we finished. The bottom area was a constant concern for both of us as we knew that if something catastrophic happened down there it could finish the ride for us. The legs just got used to it and, by the last couple of days, even the intense lactic pain i’d felt after breaks had started to fade away. Late though it may have been, I was starting to become a cyclist whether I liked it or not.

I should also mention a couple of other unexpected physical side-effects, one welcome, one less-so. I get the odd dab of eczema during normal operating mode. Nothing likely to get me a wheel-on part in the Singing Detective, but enough to itch a little. I’m pretty sure it’s stress-related, but it’s nothing that I can’t clear up. After about four days on the ride it disappeared and didn’t come back until I finished and started thinking about more than just pedalling, eating and sleeping.

Secondly: weight. I had enjoyed daydreaming about the sylph-like figure I would be sporting on my return. No such luck. As far as I can tell, I haven’t lost a pound. Sure, some of those three course breakfasts and double evening meals have gone into building some new muscles on the front of my legs, but the rest seem to have gone straight into the old holding bays.

Our route was wonderful and that’s entirely down to Tom’s obsession with getting it right. We avoided busy A-roads until we were north of Edinburgh and in return we saw rural England and Scotland open up before us. 90% of our days were spent riding through countryside I would have been delighted to holiday or live in. Much of it, from the Somerset Levels, to the hills of Shropshire, through the Cumbrian Fells and the Scottish Highlands was staggering, and finding it by bike was incredibly rewarding.

Perhaps even more, we valued the people who were with us along the way, both in person and in spirit. Eleven people in all joined Rob, Tom and I to ride some part of the way and the miles passed more easily when catching up with friends or hearing about the local history and landscape. We also had great support from our families, who were there at the end of most days to take our minds off what we’d have to do the next morning, and what was happening down the back of our cycling shorts.

For me, the sentiment and cheerleading I got from distant friends also turned out to be incredibly important, surprisingly so in fact. For Tom and I the ride seemed to be happening in a bubble, more or less. We thought we could do it, as the days passed we began to know we could do it, and then it just became a case of getting into routine and getting it done, just the two of us. It became just the thing we were up to. However, the texts, tweets, emails and phonecalls, not to mention the donations, put the trip into a completely different context. I’m sure that it’s a journey that most reasonably fit people could undertake with some planning and preparation, but it still gave a major boost during the long days to hear our friends urging us on. They clearly considered it a remarkable undertaking, and reading their comments helped to remind me that perhaps, in some ways, it was.

This has gone on, so i’ll skip through the rest of the strange and wonderful memories pausing briefly to recall Karen accidentally insulting a restaurant in Sedbergh (‘How was your food?’ ‘Well, it wasn’t rubbish’), Tom and I striding into the public loos in Longridge, him declaring loudly ‘it’s okay, i’ve got a pot of vaseline’, the supremely helpful bike shop owners and the great cafes and cake-shops.

Instead I’ll pass on my second, final and most vital piece of advice, should you consider trying the ride yourself: Ride with a friend. I’ve already gone into how the ride can mess with your head and grind down your sense of self-worth if you let it. If you aren’t riding with someone who is supportive at every turn, who has been there every pedal-stroke of the way and who is committed to getting you both through, then you could find yourself in big trouble.

Take a close friend with you. Someone who’ll give you a lift when you’re struggling, someone you can be around without any effort, and someone you’ll be able to look back on the experience with for many years to come. Someone like Tom.

If this was an episode of the Wonder Years, this is the part where the voiceover would chime in and say, “And that’s when he realised that you can ride 1000 miles only to find that the things you need the most are right by your side.” However, it’s not, and Kevin Arnold only ever rode his bike round to Winnie’s, so he can get stuffed.

Finishing the ride, after perhaps the toughest day, was a great feeling without a downside. I had thought I might feel sad that this great undertaking was over and done, but no, it felt right and proper to be finishing, and to do so surrounded by the people who had supported us. The morning after I felt like I could get back on the bike and go again, but as the hours passed without pedalling I started to feel jet-lagged. Worst of all was getting back in a car. I felt sick with every speeding corner and disorientated and disgusted by how easily it pulled up every hill. Even though this time I wasn’t trailing behind, I think I’d still have preferred to be on my bike.

So, we made it. We made it all the way from one end of the country to the other under our own steam.

Today we managed just 82 miles, an average day when compared to the previous eleven, but there were times when it felt like an impossible undertaking.

It was a hard slog, almost from start to finish. I say almost, because the trundle down to Loch Fleet, where we saw 20 or so seals basking on the sandbanks, was very pleasant indeed. We stopped for ten minutes or so to watch the wildlife, and perhaps that’s where things started to get tough. We set out on the rest of the ride feeling that we’d essentially done it, and all that remained was a casual jaunt around the Scottish coast. We debated the psychological impact of such a lassez faire approach for much of the remaining 80 miles, Or perhaps the problems were due to the after effects of a very long previous day, coupled with a poor warm-down, poor food and inappropriate recovery measures (what sort of B&B leaves a complimentary decanter of whisky in your room anyway, for heaven’s sake?).

Whatever, Tom and I found the morning increasingly difficult to get through. I felt reasonably switched on mentally, but as the ride progressed, and knowing that we had at least one hill with a serious reputation to come, I found that my energy reserves were running at low to zero.

Both our progress and our energy levels were further hindered by Tom snapping a second spoke in two days flinging his bike about Contador-style on a climb out of Helmsdale. The look on his face as he dismounted suggested that he thought his bike was a goner, and so was his chance of completing the ride, just 50 miles from the finish.

Yesterday, as we were footling around in Highland Bicycles, Inverness, I picked up some spare spokes for each of us. The owner explained how to fit them and, concluding that we had neither the tools nor the know-how to do so, I bought them anyway, figuring that if we had them with us they would act as effective good luck charms against any spokes breaking for the remainder of the trip. If we hadn’t had them today, then Helmsdale could well have been as far as Tom made it.

So, after 45 minutes, we’d managed to replace the broken spoke, realising we could do so with tools I had with me the purpose of which had hitherto been mysteries. We’d also fixed the inner tube that Tom broke when replacing his wheel after fixing the spoke, sorted out the swollen tyre which was catching on the brakes after the inner tube had been replaced and then fixed the brakes which needed fiddling with to allow the wheel to go round at all. We’d also, just about, managed to keep Tom from throwing it all in the air, which seemed a reasonable response as things got worse and worse.

We set off cold and disheartened and it didn’t really look up for some time, The climb out of Berriedale was, at this stage in the ride, as tough as we’d been lead to expect and from that point on we were desperate to stop, eat and regroup. We ended up in Lybster at a cafe which had been opened by a lovely, kind woman from Bolton just two days prior. She cooked us pasta and Rob an improbably sized fish (“Your shark, Sir,” said her husband as he delivered it to table) and told us how rough we were looking. She particularly thought I should be carted off in and air ambulance, rather than getting back on my bike.

Leaving, we set out across country and things got easier. Two or three incongruously straight roads effectively cut the North-Eastern corner of Scotland and pushing along these, up a number of hills which stretched ahead like a grey ribbon and all of which Tom promised would be the last of the ride, allowed us to get some strength and rhythm back, and to contemplate the end of the trip without the incessant traffic and away, to a large extent, from the Northerly headwind that had been trying to force us backwards all day.

I’ll write more about the trip overall when I can, and perhaps include something about how it felt to finish, but we got there in the end, to find Jo, Karen and the Rainbows, with their banner stretched out across the wall at the beginning of the John O’Groats harbour, and also special guest appearances from Jo’s parents Mike and Shirley who had made a snap decision to drive all the way up to see us finish, and brought Marge to see us too. And a cake.

We were swept over the line by a wave of texts, tweets and phone calls, and again i’ll say more about that when I write up my thoughts about the trip, but right now i’d just like to say thanks to everyone who took the time to try to help us get over the line. You’d be amazed how much your messages helped, especially on a day when it seemed like we might not get there at all.

And now i’m going to bed.