A rescue operation had ensued.

I’d gone down hard on my right shoulder in the Massif Central, the pompiers had taken me to hospital, my mother had flown out to carry my bags back for me. Fairly little sympathy, I noted. About time you got a girlfriend darling. My bike was in a barn half-way up some hill, had been for 12 long months, rusted up, I remember first laying eyes on the thing in the drizzle one morning, I was like aw maaaate. I’d gone out to reclaim this beloved hunk of metal and tarpaulin and there it was, just sitting there, that on some innocuous bend a year ago when I’d not been concentrating, had taken me down, panniers, dignity, collar bone and all.

I cycled it back to the scene of the crime.

Took a photo.

Can’t lie I was expecting something slightly more treacherous, my couz had emailed.

*

But then it had all gone to shit.

After a weird year as usual I figured my cycling would save me, I found my bike, fixed it up at a bike shop in Limoges, got on that old steel thing one rainy morning of June, the dignified Brooks saddle, moulded to my butt after so many kilometres, and waited for it to go to work. The late afternoon breeze, free-wheeling through the pines, the Perrier, the petits cafés, the crumbs from my croissant procured from a boulangerie round the corner, I had it all sussed out.

After three days I was like enough.

Knackered, my body in pieces, I’d had plans to discover the Alps and all I wanted was a Tesco Meal Deal and the toot n rumble of a double-decker bus. I remember quite seriously stopping my bike in the beating sun just after a bridge over the Dordogne, and being like Domingo look at me, what do you want. I tilted my head slightly abashed. I don’t know, you got me here. I’m just following you.

What was this thing inside me, insisting on cycling, insisting on punishing myself, that woke each morning and said get to it that pushed down on the pistons, that relentless motion from a machine of muscle and tendon I thought would save me, would always save me, if only I pedalled hard enough.

I was over it.

For a few days I’d had a sneaking suspicion all was not as it should be. I was forcing a smile, taking deep breaths in and saying ahhh… this is the life. Trying to whistle, and I never whistle. A sign by the side of the road in Périgord had boasted how… here we are happy, here we live well.

I’d taken the bait, decided what could be more wonderful than being out amidst the thrumming hum of summer tootling round a corner with a baguette strapped to my pannier. And still something gnawed at me. I stilled the voices, decided to hold myself up high.

The road leered back at me.

And so over that river, where two roads diverged, I took the one that said home. This trip was not the one I needed, the road leading to adventure would have to wait.

Like Russell Crowe in Gladiator galloping across Europe to get back to his wife and child and olive groves before the Romans torched them first, I gathered up my things, reorganised my trajectory, clipped into my pedals and heard myself say, wait for me I’m coming too. It wasn’t the fear of my family being slain, more my plants not being watered, but by that bridge I about-turned and said enough.

Enough of this running.

I got to work.

And so ensued 1,482km of French countryside, that day by day I took on, that killed me, the unending undulating Auvergne, the Massif Central, up and down and up again, rain, endless rain for four days, some wild nights of raw discomfort frozen in a tent, maxing out in Ibis Budget hotels, watery coffees, bad tan lines, a total wet blanket lack of enthusiasm.

Cycling is a bit shit.

Mario Cippolini the playboy Italian cyclist said once, the bicycle has a soul. If you can earn its love, it will give you emotions you never forget. I wouldn’t soon forget being soaked to the bone, core temperature of -10, taking a downhill through a forest at 4mph cos my brakes didn’t work, wary of the six inch scar down my shoulder, wobbling through turns like a biddy in an Aldi carpark.

It was miserable.

*

The problem with us is we don’t update, we repeat.

Kanye was on the money.

It is interesting, how we keep doing the familiar thinking we like it, because it has done its thing in the past, and don’t ask ourselves if it still does the trick. As if we don’t give ourselves license to change. The same takeaway joint, the same walk to the shop, the same early morning seeing in the dawn.

The Chinese talk about 7 year cycles. Where we renew completely. Apparently every twelve years cell regeneration means we are physically totally different humans. Do we examine what we do, or do we just repeat, in the vain hope we’ll get the same hit as before. I was chasing the two-wheeled dragon, was sure I’d go out lost and come back found, go out screwed and come back saved.

But what if Domingo was fine, what if he didn’t need saving.

*

I unenthusiastically did some sight-seeing. To Chenonceau over the Vienne river. Took a photo to prove my attendance, moped around the state rooms and to the long hall built across the river, and got back on my bike, this accursed machine that had got me here.

Why didn’t you just get a train, a mate asked. I have no idea, raw unadulterated stubbornness I answered. My love for cycling was partly to get lost, to leave threat behind. Alone on a mountain or in some densely-wooded valley I felt far from anybody. Nobody can find me here, was my thinking. But now on some hilltop in Limousin, I looked around and thought… what if nobody can find me here.

Another lonely evening I decided to walk pretentiously through the town of Tours and film my passage, probably to see who would notice.

No-one did.

*

So that was me, winding my way back home through France, appreciating very little of the wonderful, beautiful freedom I had in the palm of my hand I might never have again.

Sat by the river late one morning in Montluçon eating quite a nice but not quite nice enough sandwich, cold and wet and pissed, I felt the wind pick up and storm clouds converge. Looking to my left, a lady pushed a man in a wheelchair along the river path. I assumed it was her son, he had on an orange baseball cap and in his hand he shook a red hanky manically. The look on her face was one of such peace, such serenity, she wore a smile from time immemorial.

I watched them move down the riverside away from me towards the incoming rain. Where would they take cover I thought, they would be soaked, there was no shelter only the plane trees lining the bank overlooking the water. On she walked slowly and methodically into the eye of the storm, pushing her son, the red handkerchief moving frenetically in the wind.

My face cracked.

No part of my life was hard, not really. My legs hurt, my arse hurt, my shoulders hurt, my pride hurt, my being hurt. But I had it absolutely fine. I took cover under an entrance to some flats as the rain hurtled down and when I looked again they were gone.

*

Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves.

Italian Proverb

One morning, frown very far from upsidedown, I realised I was out of maps. I’d been concentrating so hard on my mood, it had slipped my mind completely. There I was just south of Normandy, in the middle of a field, totally lost.

This was it.

There I’d been, pinning my trajectory all too steadfastly on my destination, to get me home, and now I was free. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re the king of the world. The wise traveller, an old guy said once, has no fixed destination and is not intent on arriving. I measured the position of the sun, clocked a vague idea that I was heading north, and set off. All that is gold does not glitter, read Tolkien’s poem, not all those who wander are lost.

I felt a happiness surge through me.

An hour and twelve minutes later I realised that the sun set in the west, that I had cycled 20 kilometres in the wrong direction and I thought fuck this. Had a hissyfit, got to the nearest town, picked up a map and redirected. Close run thing, that happiness.

Not all who wander are lost.

But one idiot might be.

I sprung for a photo essay of some water towers.

What the hell even is a photo essay.

*

At the very start in the train station of Limoges over a coffee, I’d heard that amazing The The tune. THIS IS THE DAY YOUR LIFE WILL SURELY CHANGE. Picking my way out of the town under a grey early light, I wondered if my life would change that day, as the song had said. I don’t think it did. But who knew what tomorrow might bring. I was doing okay I thought, did I need change after all. Today is the tomorrow you talked of yesterday. Maybe I was growing up.

For everything to remain the same everything must change.

Lampedusa, The Leopard

Alfie sent through a clip from Soul.

A fish swims up to an older fish and says, I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean. The ocean, says the older fish, that’s what you in right now. This, says the young fish? This is water.

What I want is the ocean.

Sometimes we don’t know what the hell we’re in, what intense process, even when it slaps us clean across the face. What kind of thing it is we’re going through, what purpose it is serving. Only later, when it reveals itself, when the kernel makes itself known, do things fit into place.

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.

Rilke

My bike trip was a shitshow.

I enjoyed hardly any of it. I thought I must be losing love for something I deemed most important to my life. Perhaps it would never do the trick again, perhaps I would have to find a new pastime. Or perhaps at that particular time of year, that month of June in 2024 the last thing I needed was to go cycling, I needed to be at home, attending to something. And the Universe had its strange way of informing me, through my bad mood. God writes straight with crooked lines.

You know the one thing that has a say in love.

Timing.

Maybe I loved it still, this bike of mine, it loved me back, I’d just botched the timing. I resolved to try again in September as the leaves were beginning to turn.

*

At long last, I reached the sea.

Not just me, but me and a brand new handlebar moustache.

Look it wasn’t superb, the adventure. But it also didn’t need to save me. I got more goods now. Something else to save me. Anyone with the freaking opportunity to cross a landmass on a bike should hit their knees and thank something, or someone. It is a glittering gift. Even if your arse aches and you shoulders feel like tin. There must be a heart beating there somewhere.

Biggup tha world.