Thumbs For Hire

Have you ever had an overwhelming compulsion to see what life would be like if you were much fitter, more wholesome and exceptionally motivated? No, me neither.

But the weekend before last Nick and I made the somewhat surprising move of cycling to Southend. Yes, we decided that it would be a great idea to load ourselves up like sherpas and wobble our way east until we hit the sea.

Captain Tangerine and his Lieutenant Satsuma prepare for launch

Of course, we lost our map. We had barely got through Walthamstow before we were lost. We ended up going on a 7 mile detour that was 100% up hill. We nearly threw ourselves under a car in Pitsea. But there were good times too. I mean, god, we saw a dog in a horizontal canine wheelchair. Now that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day (unless you’re Rolf Harris).

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Nick and I live in Hackney, East London. So, it is – as the Googlemap flies – a mere 35.1 miles to Leigh-on-Sea from our house. We cycle everywhere in London. We have our own hips and can walk up two flights of stairs to our flat without going faint (well, usually), so how hard could it really be?

Well, actually quite hard.

Perhaps drinking half a bottle of Prosecco the night before wasn’t such a good idea. And perhaps writing down instructions from the internet at 2am wasn’t too clever either. And there is an argument that I could have taken a slightly more avid interest in our route – the day before I was still muttering vaguely about ‘just following the train or something’ – but hey, I had bought a very thick pair of socks and a £30 tent from Argos. I’m sure people trek the Appalachians with less.

waist down, ballet. waist up, bin man.

So, we set off at dawn. Well, at 11am. We had a tent, two sleeping bags, three changes of underwear (lord knows what I was expecting), three bottles of water, more high-vis clothing than Railtrack, a page torn out of Nick’s road Atlas to Britain and (in my case) a stomach full of porridge.

Goodness me, but doesn’t London just go on and on? We cycled along the canal, along highway and byway, through suburb and subway and we were still in the Metropolis a good two hours later. (Let me say now, cycling along the canals in London is lovely. On a sunny day, when the cyclists and pedestrians have taken a long enough break from shouting at each other for you to weave your way through, they are little pockets of waterside tranquillity.)

By the time we had finally left the capital I was starting to have slight doubts about the “4 and a half hour” claim on the website where we found this route. I may have a grasp of maths like chickens have a grasp of yoga but even I could see that things were going to take a little longer than expected. Unperturbed, we cycled on. Nick quickly. Me not quite so quickly. Not quite so quickly at all. In fact, there were times when Nick was so far ahead that he became a mere orange speck on my horizon, like the lost member of a high-visibility flea circus.

That's the Park Lane Classic in the background. The bike of kings.

The south-east part of England is mercifully flat. But somehow, between our lost map, my total ignorance about where the hell we were going and some incoherent street names, we managed to find ourselves sweating, panting and stumbling up the biggest hill in all of Essex somewhere around Landgon. We had been cycling for over 5 hours and I was having the sort of fervent hallucinations about a pub lunch usually reserved for 18 year old soldiers getting shot at in the trenches.

I can honestly say I have never been so glad to see a Harvester in my entire life as I was at the top of that hill. And I have also never felt so out of place at a bar, surrounded as I was by incredibly groomed, rich-looking families, in my sagging green socks, £1 leggings and extra large high-vis vest. We spent the next half an hour munching on chips, watching dogs trip over their own legs and admiring our stamina, totally ignorant of the fact that Basildon and it’s unquantifiable network of one way systems was up ahead.

Between them, Basildon, Pitsea and the hilarious little prick that had turned all the signs the wrong way round, nearly finished us off. But thanks to the help of a very kind fellow cyclist (we now are proud owners of an open invitation to the sinking Canvey Island any time we like) we eventually found ourselves in Hadleigh as the sun began to set. With time running out (we had organised to camp in Hadleigh Country Park, which officially closed at 7pm) we forwent dinner and headed straight to the sharpest incline we could find on which to pitch our little tent.

tent + slope = school boy error

Okay, so that may be a little overdramatic. But there was no denying the fact that we had chosen something of a gradient as Nick and I slid down our groundsheet in our sleeping bags like children on a helter-skelter. I must have woken up at least 17 times that night, curled up in a gravity-induced ball at the bottom of our tent, only to have to wriggle myself back up the slope, using my elbows as makeshift ice picks.

But, when I woke up the next day, in the early morning sunshine, with nothing but hills, trees and a rather startled looking dog walker around me I was very pleased I had made the effort. When an hour later, I finished off an enormous fry up by the sea, my contentment was almost vomit-inducing.

So, that was the Tour de Face. One lost map, two wheels, three changes of underwear and 55 miles.

That's the sea, just past my spokes