Life & Light blog final part

All good things come to an end – some pretty unpleasant ones as well.

I experienced some pretty strange emotions leaving Wadebridge for the penultimate stage, the 30-odd miles from there to Redruth. Generally a bit of fear (given that my bike was showing distinct signs of giving up), something that was only enhanced by the occurrence of my second puncture of the trip, the use of my last spare inner tube and the realization that my new (£90) rear wheel had also developed a bit of a wobble (which to be fair the bloke in the bike shop said it probably would under the weight and before it was trued-in properly) – would I actually make it to LE or disappear in an explosion of cogs, gears, spokes and random metal parts?

I cycled more delicately (which must be a sight for spectators…), trying to avoid the least disruption in the road and keep my bike in one piece. I reached Redruth at about one and had a couple of the obligatory Cornish pasties, which were really very tasty and very welcome by that point. Redruth is a strange place where the central shopping pedestrian area is built on a very steep hill, which must make the weekly shopping an interesting experience; I didn’t feel like staying too long anyway, given that I could feel the imminent end of the trip pulling at me.

I’d also been in contact with Bindee, who was coming down in the car to pick me up; they’d left Leicester at 7.30 in the morning and promptly run straight into a major accident on the A46, which caused them to take 1.5 hours to move 3 miles and meant that they were way behind schedule. It also meant that they’d probably reach LE about the same time I did.

The accusatory tone in Bindee’s voice made it quite clear that she held me personally responsible for the accident – I could feel some major retaliatory shopping coming on….

I just had the sensation of slowing down as I got to Penzance, although realistically I don’t think I was going any more slowly, it was just that the final miles crept by like the minutes on a watched clock; that and the final nasty surprise, which was that after the pleasant cruise down the lido towards the seafront outside Penzance, the A30 to Land’s End suddenly twitches upwards in a series of nasty twists and turns and generally random upwardnesses that had me (once again) cursing and swearing as I moved over the coastal headlands.

The last five miles was a bit of an anti-climax after that and as I began (at last) to run out of land, Bindee swept past me in the car, my step-son Jo shouting at me out of the window as they went by. It was a beautiful day and the final trundle was down towards a gleaming, flat sea, something I understand is quite rare at Land’s End.

It was probably appropriate that trip like this should end with this strange otherworldliness, only a few people at the hotel at Land’s End and a strange feeling of emptiness. As I chatted with Bindee about home I could already feel the business of the day-to-day pouring back into my head and I realised that it had been quite empty of almost everything except how the bike was doing, how my body felt and the occasional sensation of wonder at the more spectacular bits of the UK I’d seen.

Maybe that’s what I’ll miss most, the abandonment of responsibility and its replacement with nothing but where I was going next, getting food and drink, and where I’d stay that night.

I certainly won’t miss the fact that everyone and their mum seems to have done this trip before me and can’t wait to tell me how they did it faster, older or in a more physically demanding way than I did. One woman at Land’s End who congratulated me couldn’t wait to tell me how she’d walked the bloody trip and took three months to do it.

Any minute now my mad friend Mark’ll ring me and tell me how he did it doing one-fingered press-ups the whole way.

Can’t even feel heroic in peace these days, without some super-pensioner coming along and making you feel inadequate…….