Read Which way now? on hi.co

Read Hills like sleeping dogs on hi.co

A friend’s restaurant has been booked for July since the middle of last year. The sodden fields round here have begun to sprout camp site signs. There are suddenly lots of invites to like Facebook pages about art and bikes, and the 100 day Yorkshire Festival has been launched in that cycling Mecca, the Trinity Centre Leeds.

Google Yorkshire, festival and cycling and you get ….. Harewood House, cheekily draped like this site in yellow and black, sporting a Tour countdown and … a hefty price list. So, it is time to dust off this small, proudly unfunded and non-commercial bit of fun celebrating the amazing fact that the Tour is going past the end of the road, where you can watch it for free.

So how did the peloton spend the winter?

Always up for trying new fitness regimes we had a go at interval training.

Shane spent the interval delivering the Humber Mouth Literature Festival, while Steve said a long goodbye to some troublesome wisdom teeth.

Now we are back in the saddle, or back round the table planning this Spring’s trip. As many ride the route of the tour, we will again be following our own personal geographies in the other direction, a new door to door route from a new door, because Shane is moving house.

And we will be blogging on things we never got round to talking about last time: the etiquette of nods and hellos, new free bikes in Spain, the marking of maps, and how there now seem to be more cyclists with beards.

Yesterday I cycled into Leeds to meet publisher Ian Daley. We had such a good time I left my bike overnight in the Evans Cycles operated Cyclepoint at the train station. You can see where it says that just to the left of the bike, Operated by Evans Cycles.

Today I went back in mentally prepared for a wet and windy ride home. As I pushed my bike away, saying what a wonderful thing Cyclepoint was, I noticed my back wheel jamming in the brake blocks. Somehow during its time stored on the rack, the rim had got slightly bent, not badly, but enough to rule out riding towpaths.

I asked the Evans Cycles mechanic in the Cyclepoint workshop if he might be able to fix it.

‘Not before Tuesday, it’ll be fourteen quid plus any spokes.’

‘I need to ride home.’

‘You could try the shop.’

So I tried the Evans Cycles shop on Station approach.

‘Wednesday, we’re booked up solid ’til then.’

‘I need to cycle home.’

‘There’s nothing we can do.’

I asked whose responsibility the Evans Cycles operated Cyclepoint was.

‘It’s nothing to do with us, we just have a workshop in there, it’s run by Network Rail.’

That well known fixer of bikes, Network Rail.

At no time did any Evans staff come out from behind their tills and look at my wheel. So I took the train, past my stop to Ilkley and wheeled my bike into JD Cycles.

‘Whip it upstairs to the workshop. Shall I carry it for you?’

‘I’m fine.

‘Sure?’

I carried my hybrid up and one of the JD Cycles mechanics stopped what he was doing, hoiked my bike onto the stand, rolled the pedals, assessed the wobble, pinched the brake blocks, had the wheel off and clamped in a bench tool. Ten minutes and a new spoke later he said.

‘There, I’ve got you back on the road, tell them downstairs that’s a tenner.’

I went back downstairs and paid more. I was grateful so bought a little bag for under my saddle. Simon, who used to be my neighbour, left his till and fitted the straps for me.

So next time you are thinking how convenient Evans Cycles is on your way to or from work, don’t pop in and buy something, wait until the weekend and go to your local indie where you are treated not as an irritating interruption to the smooth running of their store, but as a fellow cyclist, mid-journey, who needs getting back on the road.

Landscapes we moved through:
Fields so vast they are no longer fields but the landscape itself.
The only thing moving for flat open field miles is a caterpillar-tracked tractor followed by dust. How come these fields don’t just blow away?
Do RAF fast jets not practice low-level anymore? Not a single plane, just a high slow helicopter.
Pesticide in the air/mouth like spits of rain.

Fields again. Hedges. Corners. Trees.
Unconvincing hawks hanging from sticks surrounded by crows.
Scarecrows: not suits stuffed with straw, but sticks in modern dress, breakdancing in the wind.
French tree lined road.

Almost the whole of this stage, power generation keeps moving along the horizon, power stations and their smoke, wind turbines with their sexy/menacing curved blades.

Waterways:
All grass and shining mud banks (we race cows on the opposite bank)
The Dutch River flowing upstream
Goole: a marina then docks, loading plant, industrial bits and pieces lying around waiting, cranes and silos in Dutch shapes, The Vermuyden Hotel.  Shane says: I like this, it smells like Hull. A little later he says, I have strength left in my legs but not in my arse.

Power and farming give way to warehouses and ‘units': mysteries: Croda International, Jablite, Image Data Group and what it says on the tin: New Holland Agriculture, BuyOnline dot com. Paradise Hot Tubs.

The wide Humber with added Trent it’s usual chocolate colour.
Grass path, sheep, driftwood with added car, boat, driftboat, driftcar. A signpost for ships (or sheep).
The mud marina.
The sea path ends, eroded away where a rubbish tip meets a strip of mud and stones. We are forced inland.

For a short time we cycle along the path beside the A63. After miles and miles without seeing a vehicle we stand in the Shell station stunned by the violence of cars and lorries shooting past, their shockwaves whipping the garage canopy uprights.

There was a point where the Humber Bridge tower on the south bank seemed closer than the one this side.  As you get closer to the bridge, the harder it is to see.  Only the road overhead, the towers lost in the trees of posh gardens.  Like the locals are covering it up, slightly ashamed of their landmark.

The landscape has become Shane’s childhood.  Broomfleet where his signalman grandfather lived and is buried. The Humber Bridge from which his uncle jumped. The Hessle road where he was brought up and where his Dad lives now, the flat where Shane first lived with Claire.

We first see the thousand cyclists gathered outside a pub in North Ferriby. Then as we hit Hull and the Hessle Road they swarm all around us in their blue and white striped charity shirts, we forget our tired legs and pick up our pace to match theirs and because we know where we are going often forge ahead, they catch us again, and before we know it Shane and I arrive in the centre of Hull the odd balls amidst someone else’s peloton, then we peel off, just the two of us again, riding side by side up Beverley Road, Hull’s Champs Elysees.

See Stage 2 Photos on Flickr

Pitstop in Leeds: Shane swaps racing saddle for a wide red sprung saddle made for vicars and bikes with baskets.

Taking the wrong track and being trapped by a confluence of waterways, until a cyclist appears from nowhere and we see the (No Cycling) path and take it.

Things you get following water: power stations, herons, sewage farms (or as they are now called Sludge Conditioning Plants), therapy walkers, little modern lock gate towers like Holland, some very ugly boats (who would paint a boat black?), abandoned boats, bramble covered tractors, the back gate of industry, joggers, a much more varied bunch of cyclists than you ever see on the road.

Is there a word for seaman/womanship when it happens inland?

Luck with the weather, except wind on the last eight miles when we left the paths for the road.

A hotel full of single men, not salesmen, industry, pints, meals with chips, Geordies, Scousers trying to make conversation about Abu Dhabi, Qatar, but happier stare/eating as Dortmund hold their lead against Madrid alongside the two stare/eating cyclists, pints, meals with chips, red wine. (When I look out into the car park in the morning all their cars and vans have gone.)

Stage One Photos at Flickr