Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country (20 page)

‘Come on, Tony, you can do it,’ I mumbled.

I made it to the first open door of the train, just as the guard blew his whistle. I squared the bike up to the entrance and attempted to lift it onto the train with my one free hand. But the bike didn’t shift an inch. I tried again. Nothing. Were the wheels caught somewhere? I looked. No visible problem. The guard blew his whistle again. I heaved at the bike again and almost managed to get the front wheel onto the train, but I lost my balance and nearly fell.

I realised that I simply wasn’t strong enough to lift this bike with one hand, and I couldn’t spare the other, because Titch would have surely dropped out of the bottom of my coat. And it wouldn’t be a platform she would fall onto now, but onto the railway tracks below, to be crushed by a departing train. It occurred to me that killing Titch in such a manner this early on would not only be disappointing, but probably wouldn’t greatly assist the fundraising process either.

So this was it. I had made it to the train on time, but I couldn’t get onto it. I watched in horror as the doors closed before me.

‘Shit!’ I cried. ‘I don’t believe it!’

Then, as if a prayer had been answered, I saw a boot appear at the bottom of the doors, preserving a chink of light onto the train. I could make out a long-haired young guy the other side of the doors.

‘Hang on!’ he said. ‘Let me help.’

He proceeded to force the doors open using a Samson-like strength, and he leapt onto the platform and lifted the bike onto the train. Titch and I jumped on behind him, just as the doors forced themselves closed behind us.

I was now face to face with a twenty-year-old guy, who smiled a far less creepy smile than I’d managed in the lift moments before.

‘It would have been a shame to have missed a train when you were so close,’ he said, as we pulled out of the station.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Thank you so, so much. You’ve really saved us!’

The young guy, presumably a little puzzled as to why I’d used ‘us’ instead of ‘me’, proceeded to help me secure the bike next to his surfboard. Happily, I’d arrived at the carriage in the train where there was provision for bulky items.

‘Are you going to surf?’ I asked.

‘I am. North Devon is magic for surfing.’

Suddenly I felt less crazy to be taking on my coast-to-coast cycle at this time of year. Surely it wasn’t as crazy as wading into the sea in mid-December in pursuit of large waves.

‘Thanks again,’ I said.

‘No problem. Are you going to Barnstaple?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, in that case, I’ll help you off at the other end.’

Wow, I thought, what a nice bloke.

Now I was faced with a new dilemma. Where to sit? Fortunately, the train wasn’t too crowded, but it was more than half-full, meaning there was nowhere to sit where I wouldn’t be adjacent to somebody.

A quick glance around me suggested that the train appeared to be full of those people who put their bags down on the seats next to them, as if to say: ‘If you sit here, you bastard, you ruin my life.’

Given that I needed to open my coat and attend to Titch, I realised that sitting directly next to somebody might cause alarm. Had I been in a more playful and mischievous mood, I could have marched my way up the train and sat myself next to the Macedonian couple (another theory had formed), but I was far too sweaty, stressed and exhausted to consider such a thing. The obvious place to sit was next to my surfing saviour, but his seat was quite a long way down the carriage, and placing myself next to him would have seemed creepy and overfamiliar. Besides, I didn’t want to chat on this journey. I wanted to get Titch settled and then rest. I still had a long cycle ahead of me tonight.

Then I noticed a little hinged, drop-down seat close to the bike and surfboard that was ideal. It would enable me to stay close to the precariously balanced bike and attend to my mini companion. I pulled the seat down and sat on it. Comfortable it was not, but boy, was I grateful to be on it.

Finally, I was able to open my coat and see what had happened with Titch. Just as I had suspected, she had crawled completely out of her sling, and was nestled at the bottom of the coat, having only been held in place by my supporting arm and the cord ties on the anorak bottom. Strangely, she seemed a lot calmer now. Perhaps because she was able to see what was going on, and I was able to cuddle and stroke her with both hands, and support her fully.

Titch was happy now, and our ninety-minute train journey looked set to be a peaceful one. Fortunately my seating position afforded me a reasonable amount of privacy, meaning that only an elderly couple could really see me, and they were showing no interest. That changed when I attempted to lift Titch back into the sling. Although she seemed quite sleepy now, she still made a gentle, grunting noise as I lifted her and started to manoeuvre her back into her sling. The couple looked up, and saw that I was holding a baby pig. I looked at them, and they immediately looked away. It was as if they had admonished themselves for being so interested in someone else. How rude, they must have thought. I’d half-expected them to smile, and come over to have a look, but no, they looked away, and as far as I can recall, they never looked my way again for the whole journey. Well, why would they? Nothing unusual about a man and a pig on a train.

With Titch comfortably back in place, and more tightly secured this time, I leant my head back against the glass behind me and closed my eyes. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but the shenanigans on the station platform and the general stress of pig travel must have taken it out of me, because I fell fast asleep.

I awoke to the sound of the guard announcing our imminent arrival at Barnstaple. Ah, the magic of sleep. It can give you the impression that you’ve mastered time travel. Simply go to sleep in one place and then wake in another. No such luxury for the rest of my trip, however. Falling asleep whilst cycling is most certainly a health risk, and I owed it to Titch not to indulge.

My surfing hero helped me off the train, and I thanked him profusely again.

‘Have a great time surfing!’ I added.

‘I will.’

I bet he did, too.

***

It was 15.30. It was not raining. There was some wind, but it was not excessive, and I figured that conditions were pretty good for the first leg of my journey. Technically, of course, this next cycle was not part of the coast-to-coast adventure – this was me getting to the starting point. In years gone by, there would have been a train to Ilfracombe. In fact, as late as the summer of ’69,
1
you could take a train from Exeter to Ilfracombe. Alas, the station closed in 1970, mainly because everyone was now driving around in cars. That was what you
did
. No one really knew how much it was polluting the atmosphere, and adverts on TV and billboards persuaded us that the car we drove signalled to the rest of the world how much of a success we were. We pretty much all bought into it, me included, and hundreds of wonderful railway stations became shops, cafes, pubs or private homes. Ah, progress.

A single-track railway link between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe had opened in 1874 and it had been so popular that they’d enlarged it to a double track between 1889–91, even though this had meant demolishing and rebuilding most of the stations along the way, and widening tunnels. Nothing was too much for those pioneering Victorians. Much of the old line had now been converted to cycle tracks and I was going to be using it for a lot of my journey. Not tonight, though. Circumstances having forced me onto the later train from Exeter, I was now running out of daylight for the fifteen-mile cycle ahead. The cycle tracks would not be lit and I wanted to avoid any fate that could be reported thus by local newspapers:

COMEDIAN PLUNGES TO DEATH
BUT IS SURVIVED BY PIG

The hastiest of glances at the map (the morning had been such a rush) had suggested to me that I should take the A361, and I was simply hoping that it was a reasonably ‘bike-friendly’ route.

I gathered myself outside the station. Titch was nice and secure and was sleeping, having been rocked by the gentle motion of the train. The station appeared to be on the outskirts of the town, and I found myself looking ahead to a big, ugly supermarket car park, brimming with the vehicles that had done so much damage to the railway network. The vehicles with which I was reluctantly now going to share the roads.

‘Well, here we go, Titch,’ I said, to a sleeping pig, ‘let’s see how we get on with this.’

I pushed the bike forward and swung my leg over the saddle. A move I can remember doing so much in my youth. I was struck by just how little clearance I was now achieving with my swinging leg. The leg was clearing the bar, like a high jumper’s, but with little to spare. I would have to watch that when I became tired. We were now cycling. After just a few revolutions of the wheel, the electric motor kicked in, and I was receiving some much welcome assistance.

All went smoothly as I followed the signposts, and soon I was on a nice, wide cycle track heading over the bridge on the River Taw,
2
a vast modern construction built in 2007 to reduce congestion in Barnstaple town centre. It now afforded me the twin benefits of a speedy exit from the town and splendid views across the Taw estuary.

It was the other side of the bridge that the problems began. The road opened out into a rather cycle-unfriendly dual carriageway, and just as I entered this stretch, Titch began wriggling and squeaking. This time she meant business. I sensed I should stop immediately, such were the vigorous contortions she was now achieving within my coat. I pulled over at what appeared to be the entrance to an industrial estate, and I lifted Titch out – just before she would have simply fallen out – and set her on a convenient grass verge. Within seconds, the reason for her noisy protestations was apparent, and she launched into a long, and presumably deeply satisfying, wee. I opened my pannier at the rear and foraged around for the Defra approved disinfectant.

It was probably a quite needless precaution and I couldn’t imagine how anyone was going to check up on me, but I wanted to do things by the rule book. The foot-and-mouth disease outbreak of May 2001 had paralysed Devon’s farming industry. More than three million animals had been slaughtered and burning pyres had become a symbol of the disease. The cost was about £8 billion to the UK livestock industry. So there was another headline I was eager to avoid, one that would be more likely to reach the nationals:

COMEDIAN TORN TO SHREDS
BY ANGRY FARMERS

AS HE AND PIG CAUSE NEW
FOOT-AND-MOUTH OUTBREAK

I diligently sprayed the land on which Titch trod, as she contentedly had a brief investigation of her immediate surroundings, happily snorting and foraging with her nose. I gave her a piece of carrot that she seemed to enjoy thoroughly. Had we been doing the sensible thing, and making this trip in July rather than December, then we could have stopped for an hour at this point, basking in the sun and allowing Titch some valuable R and R. But the clock was ticking, and I was eager to avoid as much cycling in the dark as possible.

‘Come on, Titch,’ I said, after just a five-minute break. ‘On we go.’

To my surprise, Titch allowed me to pick her up and pop her back in her sling with no protest at all. Her owner had been spot-on when he’d called her the most good-natured of creatures.

‘You’re a good girl,’ I said, as I remounted my bike.

I really did need Titch on her best behaviour for this next section – for the safety of both of us. This was an extremely busy stretch of road, and drivers seemed to enjoy flooring the accelerator and testing their cars’ capacity for speed.

In retrospect, I never should have taken the A361
3
from Barnstaple to Ilfracombe, and I would advise any cyclist against it.

This road contained some sections that were busy dual carriageway, and others that were narrow enough to make passing a cyclist a difficult manoeuvre, and likely to make impatient drivers take risks. It had its fair share of long and tiring hills, too, ending with a prolonged and steep descent into Ilfracombe that would severely test the brake pads of any two-wheeled device.

Titch had behaved angelically for about ninety minutes, but it turned out that she was just waiting. She was waiting for the most inappropriate moment to become restless and make life difficult for me. Night had fallen. Rain had started to fall. The wind had certainly increased in strength. Just outside Ilfracombe, I stopped to phone and ask directions from the owner of the hotel where we were staying tonight. This was a mistake. The gentle motion of my body whilst cycling had eased Titch into her gentle slumber, and now this break in that methodical routine had caused her to wake up. This new state of consciousness clearly reminded her where she was, and that she currently didn’t want to be there at all.

All this wouldn’t have mattered, had we been in a place where we could stop. We weren’t. Titch, with disastrous timing, had chosen to express a strong desire for freedom just as I was freewheeling down the long, steep hill into Ilfracombe, on a stretch of road where cars sped by extremely close to us, and where, ideally, both hands should remain firmly on the brakes. However, I needed one hand free to prevent Titch from escaping and dropping down onto the road. With each wriggle from Titch, the bike wobbled precariously. I became seriously concerned. This was dangerous. If we lost control here, the consequences could be very serious. However, I couldn’t stop. The hill was just too steep for only one set of brakes to bring the bike to a halt. If only I had both hands free, but I just couldn’t risk dropping Titch. The new headline didn’t bear thinking about: