Riding2Recovery: All around the ragged edges

All around the ragged edges

By Graeme Willgress

Published at Smashwords by Graeme Willgress 2013

Copyright: 2013 Graeme Willgress

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person please buy an additional copy for each recipient by returning to smashwords.com and making an additional purchase. Doing so will help the author keep cycling and fundraising into the future.

Acknowledgements:

This book and my journeys wouldn't be the same without the help and support of the following people, so I'd just like to say thanks to them. Michele Reed Taborn, your patience and editing have made the book legible. Your support throughout the trip made it possible. The cover and new look logo are the work of Mark Kidson. Thanks also to Jonathon Cox for the original artwork on the logo that adorns my Facebook page and my first book’s cover.

To all my sponsors: Alasdair and Shelagh Scadding at MSG bikes, who built 'Fly' at considerable expense and continue to contribute time and support to the project. Thanks to both Sarah Gowans at Buffera for the excellent clothing and headwear of Team Buff UK and to Dave Taylor at Schwalbe UK. Both believed in me from day one and continuing to support my riding. To Endura, who subsidised much of my clothing, Eydon Kettles for the storm kettle, Brainchild Graphics for all my vinyl artwork on both rides, Map Marketing for the wall maps that people followed. Thanks also to SealSkinz for keeping my hands and feet warm and dry. Thank you to David Job at Orchard Cafe, Yarde. This was the venue where I have begun and finished both journeys to date.

Finally, thanks to everybody who has lent support in any way, whether it's a donation, a cup of tea, a bacon sandwich, or by sharing your personal experiences with me during my journeys.

Table of contents:

Preface

Chapter one: Childhood and bicycles

Chapter two: Second time around

Chapter three: Down to earth with a bump

Chapter four: Writing and riding

Chapter five: On the road again

Chapter six: Sunshine and setbacks

Chapter seven: Cork to Kenmare

Chapter 8: Ring of Kerry and Dingle

Chapter 9: County Clare and Galway

Chapter 10: County Mayo to Donegal

Chapter 11: Donegal at last

Chapter 12: Out of Ireland

Chapter 13: Outer Hebrides and north

Chapter 14: Weathering the storm

Chapter15: The northern isles

Postscript

Sponsors and equipment

Preface

Cycling is something that has woven its way through my life like a gossamer thread. I’d never thought about it previously, but it’s one of the few things that I can remember all the way back to early childhood. It’s also something I have leaned on previously in order to cope with emotional trauma. There are big gaps when it disappeared, the last one twenty years, but it always comes to the fore again at some point.

No matter how I looked at the past, there was always something deep inside me that kept me going. The moments that I felt suicidal were fleeting, but on reflection I found a strand that’s diametrically opposed to the desperate tale outlined in the first chapter of my previous book. It’s a strand that helped me through, and it involved a bicycle. I created a separate personality, a fantasy person who could take the punches. He never actually did the job he was created for, but in my mind he protected the damaged Graeme from the world. I created worlds for this person to exist in, not thinking about how the real Graeme could thrive and grow once set aside in this way.

In short, I actually became something I wasn’t. I strangled myself and stopped myself having any chance of coming to terms with the past. Some people escape by reading about adventures. I escaped by having them, as a separate person from the one writing this. Cycling was one of the few things I did where I was at one with myself. There were plenty of cycling adventures that were filled with joy. Perhaps that’s why I’ve returned to it now.

My own fantasy existence would always catch up with me. Damaged Graeme would fight his way to the surface, bringing terrible emotional instability, sensations that were all but unbearable, and traumas that had never been dealt with. He wanted to heal, to find some closure, and I wouldn’t let him. Six years ago he broke through the barriers, kicking and screaming, and I had to take notice.

The islands of success I created weren’t sustainable, were often traumatic, and would crumble and collapse in front of me as I watched on helplessly. I’d then find some way to build another island, only to watch the process repeat itself. My life now involves adventures from a different perspective, that of Damaged Graeme as I call him. It’s more connected and real and therefore more sustainable.

As I write this, I feel as though I’m talking about somebody I know and not myself. I have no explanation for this other than the partial diagnosis for borderline personality disorder. It’s what has made it hard for me to understand my own achievements. It was never the grown-up who achieved, it was the child, and the child was hidden along with the traumas he could find no way to let go of.

He is the real Graeme and I like him. He writes and is creative and sensitive. He cares about the world and the people in it. He has nothing to prove to anybody but is still to some degree separate from the world.

Chapter1: Childhood and bicycles.

My first memories are of a tricycle. It was red, and I used to scoot it around whilst standing on the back, on the wide pavements around our house in Eastern Avenue, Peterborough. They’re simple memories, and that is how cycling has remained to me. I can remember the moment in my life when I was presented with my first bicycle. It was blue with silver mudguards. I’m pretty sure it was second hand, and I remember the training wheels attached to it.

I must have ridden it lots before the day arrived when those stabilising wheels came off. I stood watching as my father removed them. The avenue where we lived was wide and straight, lined with poplar trees. It was the perfect place to learn to cycle. You don’t need those anymore, Mike, were my father’s words. He always called me Mike, never Graeme. I was asked, much later in life, whether I thought he ever acknowledged Graeme. Mike was his youngest child the one with all his hopes and dreams pinned on. I’d answer to the name, as if it were mine, right up until he died in 2008.

The wheels were removed and I remember getting on the bike and simply riding off up the pavement from the house. I came unstuck turning around and fell; but unperturbed, I climbed back on and rode back to where he waited. He picked me up, full of praise, and I giggled as only a four year old can.

From that moment onwards I had an independence that I’d never let go of. I’d cycle for hours around the block of houses made up of Eastern Avenue and the road that ran parallel to it. I initially went with my big sister, Linda, and she would ride proudly on her Raleigh lady’s bike with its 3 speed Sturmey Archer hub and dynamo lights. I remember being at home when it was delivered before Christmas, shiny and sparkling in the sun. Sworn to secrecy, I think I managed not to spoil the surprise.

My sister and I were close in those early years. We moved from Peterborough to Blisworth, in Northamptonshire, to a house belonging to Plessey, the electronics company that my father was working for. I was about 5 years old and it marked the beginning of the feelings of separation I’ve felt ever since. When we lived in Peterborough, extended family was all around us. I’d stay at my grandmother’s house a few streets away along with my cousins. We’d make camps in the garden using tables and chairs and go into the town with Uncle Doug, where I’d get to see the animals at the market.

It was an idyllic time and came to an abrupt end when we moved. Those early relationships were effectively gone as my father’s workload took over and we rarely found time to go back and see family. I made friends and gradually settled into school in the village. My brother was at the top end of the school, being four years older than me. This was separated from the lower school so I rarely saw him at all other than at home.

We’d only been there for around a year and a half before moving again. My father was striving to gain a foothold in the burgeoning market where people were beginning to purchase their own houses. Shortly before our second move in two years, my sister and I decided to ride to Weedon from Blisworth on our bicycles. My small blue bike had been replaced with a new bigger, red one the previous Christmas. It was brand new, and I still remember seeing it on Christmas morning when I entered the lounge. It had square section frame tubes and a dropped crossbar, and I loved it from the moment I set eyes on it.

It was a good ride, over twenty kilometres each way. My sister had made sandwiches and we had other treats to keep us going. I can’t remember much of the journey, but she’d planned it so that we avoided busy roads. Dropping down to the River Nene from Flore, there used to be a wooden bridge. We stopped and played Pooh sticks from the bridge before cycling through the tunnel under the canal, under the railway bridge, and down into the main village. We sat on the grass by the new house we would shortly move into, and ate our sandwiches.

The journey home was broken by going to some friends of mum and dad. They owned a haulage business and had a large detached house in Gayton. They also had donkeys, and replete with drink and cake, we were allowed to go and see them. Returning home that evening, it seemed okay that we were going to move to Weedon. I had no idea of the events that would play out in the twelve years I would spend there.

Our adventure had sparked something inside me. I loved to cycle from that day onwards. Like most children of that generation, our bicycles were our freedom, and living in a village meant that I could go and explore around the area in relative safety. My parents never wanted to go far from home on my father’s days off, and the new house would mean they had a large overgrown garden to sculpt, landscape, and tame. My entertainment was to go out with friends and that’s just what I did. Occasionally, I would ask when we were going to see Nan and Aunty Beryl, mum’s youngest sister. It was rarely met with any interest and I began to learn that I was pretty much alone regarding family.

My brother was now at secondary school and my sister at the local grammar school. They were growing up fast and fought like cat and dog when they were in the same room. My brother was a typical big brother at that point, knocking seven bells out of me at every opportunity. I simply wasn’t big enough to retaliate. Of course that would all change as we grew up, but by the time we moved into Farthingdale, the name my parents gave the house, I felt lost and alone. I was eight years old, had now lived in three houses and must have wondered what would happen next.

I made new friends, settled in and began to explore the place I lived. I was waiting, though, and from the age of eight until the age of eleven, I was biding time until I would meet my friends from Blisworth again. I used my bike to sneak off without asking, sometimes returning to Blisworth in the hope of meeting my old friends.

I was already fiercely independent and would take off around the lanes whenever I felt like a change. I didn’t mind where I went. I would go out with one of dad’s maps and just ride somewhere. One of the pluses of living on the Nothamptonshire uplands at that time was that every village had a hand operated water pump. The hill top villages had aquifers below the sandstone on which they were built. You could get an iron-rich drink for free, wherever you went. Sadly, as more and more nitrates and other poisons were used to intensify farming yields, these would be capped, only the pumps remaining as a memorial to better days.

We’d been in Weedon just a few months when my kidneys failed. It was just before the beginning of the summer holidays. It put paid to any plans that mum and dad might have had. After six weeks I came home from the hospital, but my life had changed forever. I wasn’t allowed to go out, I couldn’t cycle and I was terrified that the long scar on my stomach would just split open of its own accord. I’d scratch at it and pick at it, I wanted it to disappear. It ended up getting infected which meant more drugs and cosseting. I just wanted to get back to normal so I could be myself again. The saving grace was that my Nan came to stay to take care of us whilst mum and dad worked.

I was volatile and angry. I felt different, like part of me had been stolen. I’d blow up at the slightest annoyance, with little tolerance for others. When my sister locked me in the conservatory, I punched the window out with my fist.

Returning to school after the holidays, I didn’t adjust well. I was exhausted from the summer, found concentration difficult, and simply didn’t want to be there. I did do my cycling proficiency test and began to pedal again. In time I readjusted and settled down to something like a normal childhood.

Once Cliff, my brother, discovered motorbikes, cars, beer and girls, I bought his racing bike from him. It was also blue, with short sports mudguards, road wheels and tyres, drop bars, centre-pull brakes and a beautiful lugged frame.

We were closer than ever before. He patiently showed me how to maintain it and keep it looking top-dollar. I fitted a rack to the bike, and my father bought me a map book for my birthday. It covered the whole of the British Isles at three miles to one inch. Showing campsites and youth hostels as well as all the minor roads, it was to become my travelling companion. During the winter months, I would look through it almost daily. Certain areas drew me like a magnet, the ones that were shaded dark brown.

These were the UK’s upland areas, and there were lots of mountains and passes. I don’t know why I was so drawn to them, but I’d imagine being there, something that wasn’t easy because I had never been to any of them, well not since I learned to walk. Where were the nearest? What routes could I take to them? My father had taught me to read a map, and I was now reaping the benefits.

It was understood that I could go away to youth hostels once I got to the age of fourteen, something that was quite unusual at the time. I could now ride to the Northampton shops and drool over expensive racing bikes. Already running long distances, I’d ride for hours around the lanes. I had no idea of touring with equipment, just an idea to go places and explore. I rode the bike because I couldn’t travel any other way, but I undoubtedly enjoyed the physical effort and reward from doing it.

It was Christmas 1975, just before my 16th birthday. I walked into the lounge to come face to face with a racing cycle. It was a Carlton Corsa, just like my friend’s. I could hardly believe my eyes and was soon working up an appetite for Christmas dinner by riding around the lanes where I lived.

On my birthday, I received a small kit bag, a water bottle, and some mudguards to complete the touring cycle. It was my ticket to ride. All I had to do was save enough money to buy a rack strong enough to take a bag. The time had come for me to begin to expand my horizons. Perhaps I was planning my escape from home. Despite these generous presents, life had become difficult over the last two years.

The arguments, all instigated by my father, had seen my sister flee to the other side of the world, and had thrown my brother into a terrible, deep and painful crisis. I could do nothing to influence any of this. I kept seeing Cliff, despite my father saying I was better off without him. Cliff and I grew close, and I spent more and more time visiting him, worried sick about his plight and relaying news to my frantic mother.

Shortly after that, my friend Steve was killed on his motorcycle. I woke with a start that night shortly before an ambulance arrived at the scene just 100 metres from our house. I arose the next morning to the news that he was dead. I felt numb, unable to feel anything at all. The day before, we’d sat on a bench laughing and joking. He had slapped me in the chest and we’d both fallen off the back of the bench on which we were perched, giggling like school children. A few short months later another friend, Neville, was also in a motorcycle accident.

He survived, goodness knows how. The doctors gave him no chance. He had other ideas. He ignored all the warnings about not surviving or never being able to get out of bed. I cycled to see him every day I was free for around eighteen months as he went through some kind of rehabilitation. In the end he got fed up with hospitals and discharged himself.

Neville’s father oversaw the old barracks in Weedon, built against possible Napoleonic invasion, now an MOD storage depot. Nev would wheel his wheelchair alongside the canal that ran through the barracks and attempt to stand up. This usually meant falling straight on his face. He did this every night we went out, and we’d watch through holes in the gates. After months and months, he stood up and didn’t fall. We said nothing. Down at the pub, he got out of his chair and propped himself up at the pool table. Everybody was amazed. He later started several successful businesses and has undergone many operations to gradually help improve things. His is the most moving and incredible story. His leg was all but torn right off in the accident. He had no hip or hip joint to speak of. His own will power brought him back to life.

I needed to live and laugh. I planned and executed three cycle tours that summer. Never having been away on a bicycle, I didn’t really know what to expect. My friend Nick and I were keen to ride, and soon found ourselves heading for the Malvern hills, where we had booked into a youth hostel for a couple of nights. My kit bag was small and only allowed a minimum of equipment to be carried. You don’t need much, other than a few tools, a map, waterproofs, and a change of clothes.

Neither of us had any bespoke cycle wear. I had an ancient cape, a proper oilskin that belonged to my father, and the rest was done on a wing and a prayer. I don’t have strong memories of the trip which was just three days long. I do remember walking up onto the Malvern Hills one morning. As we approached, they appeared across the Vale of Evesham like huge teeth sticking out of the ground. Incongruous to their surroundings, they look much bigger than they really are; such is the contrast between them and the surrounding flatlands. The Vale of Evesham was full of fruit trees bearing a large variety of apples. We supplemented out meagre coffers by helping ourselves as and when we could.

The stay in the youth hostel was uneventful. I remember thinking that all the rules and regulations that went with staying in one of these would probably limit how much I used them. I’ve never liked dormitories, or having to hang around in order to be allocated a job in the morning. I felt restricted by them, not at all how I wanted to feel when on holiday. I expect it was more to do with the figures of authority that tended to manage them in those days. For me it was too much like being at home.

Walking along the ridge top, it seemed that we could see almost to the end of the earth. It was bright and sunny and I couldn’t think of anywhere that I’d rather be at that moment. Hills and mountains would become a major source of soul food for me in later life. I’d hiked up a few mountains and hills in the Yorkshire Dales and Lake District with my scout troop. I always felt free from my troubled mind when I did this. The Malvern Hills were no different, they are just smaller and still provided that bird’s eye view of the world that made my heart leap.

We set off again that afternoon. I had no idea where we were going. Nick had some relatives in the Cotswolds, an area I knew from childhood camping trips. We headed to their house and were made very welcome. Food, warmth, and camp beds saw us comfortable overnight, and in the morning we took the long road home.

It had whet my appetite and it wasn’t long before a second three day trip beckoned me away. This one was completed with my school friend Paul, known to all as Mutley because his surname was Mutton. Riding out to his house in Rothersthorpe, a much more relaxed place than my own, I found him strapping his bag onto the back of the bike. We headed for Dunstable and the youth hostel there. Riding the main roads all the way, we made it in a morning. Close to our destination I got a puncture, and as I stood on the street corner mending it, Paul disappeared saying he wouldn’t be long. On his return he produced a cake box full of cream donuts which we ate as if we hadn’t eaten for days.

We suffered the youth hostel in Dunstable and spent some time walking on Dunstable Down, another high point from which to observe the world. Returning home we wanted to do something bigger than a couple of nights. My parents were planning a camping trip to Norfolk, something they hadn’t done in a long time. It didn’t take any persuasion to convince them that Paul and I could join them for a week after riding to Norfolk on our cycles.

I called my Aunty Beryl in Peterborough, and by the time the phone was down we had a place to stay the first night. The second night was booked in Hunstanton youth hostel, from where we could head for Burgh Castle, Great Yarmouth, the area where I stayed with Katy last year on my round Britain ride.

We must have been fit. I remember that we didn’t leave until after lunch for the eighty kilometre ride to my auntie's. We got our heads down and took it in turns to lead. Paul and I cycled the same way, preferring to cover a good distance between stops. There was no need to talk. We just cruised along, enjoying the increasingly flat scenery.

My aunt welcomed us with open arms. She’s a gregarious person, extremely sociable, and all of the traits that seemed squashed in my mother were bubbling over in her for all to see. Perhaps that’s why my father was reluctant to visit. After tea she left for work. My uncle was working nights, leaving Paul and me in the company of my cousin Jo and her boyfriend Gary. We sat and talked, and I remember being mesmerised by the music playing. It was the first time I’d heard Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and it both excited and haunted me. I had never heard anything like it, nor had I heard anything that seemed so appropriate to how I felt at that time. The lyrics bounced around in my head for the rest of the trip.

I have two memories of the second day. Firstly, it was incredibly windy and we both struggled to ride into it. With only five gears to choose from, it became extremely hard work. We just repeated yesterday's pattern of swapping leads as we went, both knowing the other’s pain.

Secondly, I can’t remember where it happened but I remember Paul was leading as a car passed me towing a caravan. As he pulled out, the caravan hit my arm hard. The force was enough to throw me from my bike into the ditch at the side of the road. Meanwhile, Paul kept pedalling until he looked around and found me nowhere to be seen. Riding back along the busy road, he found me sat down holding my arm to my chest. The caravan had hit me square on the elbow; the driver hadn’t even noticed. My elbow was swollen and I had trouble moving my fingers. Given that we were most of the way to where we were going, I got back on and rode single-handed to Hunstanton.

For once I was very glad to see a youth hostel. We signed in and I got somebody to look at the elbow. It was bruised and possibly fractured, but I didn’t even think about going to the hospital. I bandaged it up and off we went for fish and chips. It was just another war wound, and neither of us wanted to dwell on how bad it could have been. My bike was fine so it must be okay, was our attitude at that age.

The following day we headed for Burgh Castle in Norfolk. It was another day of strong head winds and the coast road we travelled along was extremely busy. Cars and caravans seemed to pass too close, and I was all too aware of what could happen. Despite the coastal scenery, neither of us enjoyed the ride. It felt like we couldn’t do anything but watch out for the next idiot who might cause a premature death.

Arriving was blissful. My arm wouldn’t even bend now and had suffered from a whole day’s riding with little rest. Mum came to the rescue. She made an ice pack and placed it on my elbow and soon found tea and cakes for us, making it a pleasant end to the day. Paul and I had our own tent space and spent the next few days swimming in the sea, which I’m convinced helped the healing. Gradually, my elbow improved and in what seemed like no time at all, we were riding again.

We rode down to the cathedral city of Ely with another stopover in the youth hostel and a beautiful cathedral that we looked around before pushing home in one long day. We were both