It’s 108.7 miles from Hull to Wigan. I just checked the AA route guide.
Back in 1978 my friend Bri (Briyyy) cycled this route aged 14. He wanted to dance at Wigan Casino. We all did, but he was the first one out of the gang to make it. The night before he left we robbed George’s van and filled Bri’s panniers with sixty Mars Bars to sustain him on his journey. He took a one man tent which he strapped to the crossbar of his Raleigh Racer and off he went. If memory serves me well, I think it took him two days, staying overnight in a field somewhere on the outskirts of Huddersfield. I wanted to go with him but didn’t have the nerve. A couple of days later he came back to school, proud and beaming with a handful of polaroids of him dancing across the parquet floor as proof of his triumph.
I did finally get to Wigan Casino a year or so later but arrived on a train with a group of other kids and with 70’s school leavers’ wages in our pockets. When I first started talking about Le Jaunt with Steve this memory came immediately to mind and how approaching fifty (I will be fifty when we set of on April 30th ) I still will not surpass Bri’s achievement of going it alone aged 14. I will raise a glass though, on the first evening stop-over. Not in a tent in a field but in a warm B&B, “Here’s to BRI the spotty kid who got there first.”
