The Road to York

This post comes to you direct from the interior of York Minster, accompanied by the beautiful sound of the pipe organ playing for the morning service.  Spoilers - I made it to York!

Yesterday was a reasonably relaxed and lovely day. I set out from Doncaster at the relatively late hour of nine o' clock and the whole journey to York was a reasonably flat one. It was also cold and drizzly and very rural, so although I took a stretches-and-harmonica break at the side of the A19 after twelve miles, it wasn't until I reached Selby at the 22 mile mark that I managed to find a hot drink and a bathroom. It was still quite cold and I was in no rush, so I put a tuna baguette in my face for good measure before striking out on the final fifteen miles.

I didn't even look at my directions after leaving Selby. I found myself on the Trans-Pennine trail with York clearly signposted, so I just followed the signs for another hour, and then came into the city along the River Ouse. (Pronounced River Ooze, haha, that tickles me for some reason.)

I arrived with half an hour to spare before I could check in at my hostel, so I treated myself to a nice hot cuppa at the cycle cafe near Micklegate Bar, and spent the rest of the day chilling out and planning my activities for the next three days in York. After that, on Saturday, I have one last day of cycling to do as I head out to the east coast to see Moira - another fifty miles. I'll update again when I get there to let you know how that went!

YORK YORK YORK >:D

The Road to Doncaster

Just a quick update as today went very much to plan (in spite of swype thinking the title of this post should be The Road to Disaster!).

It was a long morning at 33 miles and pretty hilly, so it was quite hard work. I stopped for a cheese and bacon turnover at the visitors' centre in Sherwood Forest (eek! :D) and also took a stroll to see the Major Oak while I was there. On the way I saw a little robin perched on the fence and it flew away before I could take a picture, which was a great shame as I could have captioned it "Robin of Sherwood Forest" and it would have been excellent. Le sigh.

Lunch was relatively short as I only had seventeen miles to do this afternoon so I didn't bother charging the battery back up fully. The most eventful point of the afternoon was when my left pannier spontaneously fell off the bike and bounced into the gutter while I was coming up the A60. No damage done though, and the clips are still in perfect condition, so I can only assume it was operater error and I somehow didn't clip it on right when I was leaving Worksop.

Now I'm hanging out in a Doncaster back bedroom on another couchsurfing arrangement. So far I have not surfed any actual couches, both my hosts have had a spare bedroom with a single bed so I am winning at life really. I've done my duty as a good houseguest by washing up the dishes from dinner - next time I couchsurf I'm going to carry rubber gloves with me. My host's fairy liquid is a lovely apple orchard flavour and in a couple of hours my fingers are going to be itching like the dickens and I am going to have Regrets.

Tomorrow I'm going to award myself a lie in and not start out until half past eight or so. It's only thirty-some miles to York from here so no need to rush. :)

The Road into Nottingham

Whew. That went SO much better than the morning!

The sun was already beginning to sink down the western half of the sky when I got going, and everything was blue and gold. Flo spent much of the evening's journey in glitch mode, although she did come back out of it for five to ten minutes at a few points. But I got used to jumping off and resetting the battery whenever she fainted, and all was well. Encouragingly, it doesn't seem as though her condition is deteriorating at all - I was afraid the intervals between her fainting spells would start to get shorter and shorter, but that didn't happen.

The sun was close to setting when I reached the southern outskirts of Derby. A  crowd of some six or seven semi-pubescent boys on bikes gathered around me as I was updating you all on my progress, gawking at my combo of pastel cycle helmet, hi-viz jacket, wang shorts, Frozen leggings, and muddy hiking boots. I was busy tweeting and texting so I ignored them at first, and after a minute or so the biggest one (who was taller and broader than me) puffed himself up like a pigeon, stepped forward and asked me what the fuck was up with my outfit. I replied pleasantly that sheer awesomeness was up with my outfit, and asked him what the fuck was up with his face. His mates all laughed and jeered "Sick burn!" at him. He did angrily call me a cunt, but it didn't quite sting the way it might have if he hadn't been so red about the ears, and when I cycled off I began to pretty smug about myself - as soon as I'd satisfied myself they weren't following me, that is.

The Derby cycle routes were a sheer joy. My favourite part of the trip was sailing up the east side of the city on Cycle Route 6 by the light of the setting sun, belting out Ramblin Rover for the benefit of the pigeons and squirrels. Cycling north at the end of summer is a little like accelerating through time - autumn has already begun in Derby, and a few of the trees were solidly yellow. At the northeastern corner of Derby I turned onto the River Derwent cyclepath and began chasing my shadow towards Nottingham. The sun was setting, and midges and rabbits were everywhere.

In Breaston, which marked the end of stage five, I only stopped long enough to let folks know I was alright. Dusk had descended, my lights were on, and there were still more rural cyclepaths ahead before I reached Nottingham. I didn't want to do them in the dark if I could avoid it. So I pressed on, and reached the canal path that began at the southwestern edge of Nottingham as the last light was fading. It was broad, well-maintained and set aside from the water's edge by a narrow grass verge, so I judged it safe enough to traverse in the near-dark, and got through it without mishap. And then my instructions told me to turn right and cross the railway tracks, and to my right stood a great iron footbridge over the railway, with a steep double flight of steps and no ramp.

Reader, I cussed that bridge very loudly.

I had to remove Florence's bags and battery; she is so heavy with them I can barely lift her back end off the ground, let alone carry her up a flight of steps. By the time we were down the other side and reassembled, it was properly night time. Then came a short cycle through a forrested footpath, and a winding track up the side of a meadow that was thoroughly overgrown with stinging nettles. But then: road, blessed road; and city lights in the distance, and only another five and a half miles to go.

The roads were quiet, and I put googlemaps on in my pocket and let it tell me where to go, and fifteen minutes later we arrived at Gordon's house and there was soup and cheese and tea and I wasn't dead and everything was excellent.

It's a day off today, and then I'm striking out for Doncaster in the morning. Only another eighty miles to York, woopwoop!

The Road Through Birmingham

I'm having trouble remembering as far back as this time yesterday, because my brain is seriously fried from a spectacularly awful morning. But give me a moment, and I will try...

Ah yes. It was mostly fine heading out after lunch, although stage 4/6 was super hilly - 515ft of elevation difference overall and it just kept going up and down and up and down and then there was a HUUUUGE uphill where I looked at it and went D: and then whacked the power up to full and let Florence deal with it. #cheating

My favourite thing about Birmingham was the roving packs of Canada geese hanging out on the (superbly maintained) towpaths.  They did not budge an inch to get out of my way, but they all turned their heads and hissed at me as I carefully wove between them, all too aware that my ankles were in easy pecking distance.

I had a lovely time with my first couchsurfing host, who made me dinner and offered me a bubble bath and didn't mind at all when I fell into bed at 9pm.  Winning.

Today was grey and wet to begin with, but the good news was, even though I was facing an elevation difference of 450ft, I was already at the top end and almost everything would be downhill and flat. I was looking forward to a long but relatively easy morning. Ha. Hahahaha.

It was largely rural canal towpaths, so yeah, it was flat alright. Flat and wet and muddy and bumpy, with a clear and present danger of me skidding right into the canal if I didn't go slowly and carefully the whole way.  I had to do about half my usual speed. There was more than ten miles of it.  And just as I came off to go through Lichfield on the roads, Florence's control panel blanked out and her motor died away.  That was fifteen miles ago and I've had to keep getting off and resetting the battery every mile or so since then.

After Lichfield it was back on another rural towpath again, and another wet muddy stripe to traverse. I had to stop and scrape out the mudguards and clean off the chain because I could feel the extra drag it was all creating on the back wheel.  There was a glorious couple of miles where the canal ran parallel to the A38, so I rode up the inexplicable pavement on the edge of the dual carriageway instead, but then they parted ways and I had to get back on the towpath. It very quickly narrowed to a squelchy ribbon through the grass, and googlemaps chirped continue for four and a half miles from my pocket, and I stopped and stared and then bellowed "FUCK THIS" at the universe in general.  I turned Florence around, and found a longer and hillier route by road for the rest of my journey to Burton.

If I have to look at one more mud stripe towpath ever again in my life, I think I am gong to start screaming, and maybe I will just never stop.  They are without a doubt the single WORST recommendation Google has ever given me.

I'm supposed to be on another towpath out of Burton when I head out again, but to hell with that; I've already plotted a new route by road. It will be a mile longer and more hilly, but it will probably still be faster, and it will definitely be less stressful. I've resigned myself to not reaching Nottingham until nine o' clock at best; I can't skimp on Florence's charging time so I'm stuck here til five.

I already feel as exhausted as I did in the last ten miles of yesterday, and I still have another thirty to go.

I think I'm going to sleep well tonight.

The Road Through Cheltenham

When I left Alveston yesterday lunchtime, I quickly became confused.  My route instructions said to cross over the railway tracks and take the fifth turning on the right. I passed under a railway bridge and started counting, but I wasn't sure what counted as a turning and what didn't, and then I lost track. I stopped at a decently-sized right turn and wondered if it was the right one, but I was in the middle of the sticks and there was no name sign for the road so I couldn't tell. I fished out my phone and pulled up googlemaps, and my phone was like "Oh did you want mobile data? LOL."  So I decided to cycle on a little way and see if I could find a road with the right name sign, and if I didn't then I'd come back and try this road.

When I put my foot back to the pedal and glanced down at the electric control panel, it had gone dark. Huh, I thought, I didn't turn off the panel when I stopped, did I?  I pressed the 'on' button. Nothing happened.

Oh god, I thought. Oh god, the electrics have died again. Oh please, not now, no no no no no...

I jumped off Flo and turned the battery off.  I slid it out, blew into its sockets for good measure (hey, it worked with Megadrive cartridges), slid it back in, turned it on. Pressed the 'on' button on the control panel.

It lit up.  It was all I could do to keep from cackling "IT'S ALIIIIIIVE" at the top of my voice.  But then half the lights went dead again, and her low battery warning light began blinking.  I had only just charged her back to full power not fifteen minutes before. This simply wasn't possible.

There followed an awful thirty minute montage of me picking turnings without being sure if I was going the wrong way, while Florence steadily insisted to me that her power was about to fail. I hoped it was just a sensor error and that she would get me all the way to Cheltenham with her warning light blinking away, but then it happened - in the middle of cycling along, the control panel went dark and the battery went dead. I reset the battery again - the battery lights were consistently saying it was full of charge. And this time, the control panel lit right back up to full power, and I offered thanks to the heavens. But half a mile later, it suddenly dropped back down to that blinking warning light, and the motor began fading in and out of operation in fits and starts. It whirred for two seconds, stopped for a second; whirred for three seconds, stopped for a second. A mile later it cut out altogether, and the panel went dark again. Under my breath, I said a great many unrepeatable things, and considered whether to turn around. I could make it back to Bristol on leg power if I had to. I could not make it to York on leg power.

But I found that, so long as I kept resetting the battery when the power cut out, she would keep going, in that start-stop temperamental fashion. And if I turned back now, I would be wasting all the money I'd spent on beds for the night, and I'd have to shell out for an expensive last minute train ticket to visit Moira, and everything would be sadness because I couldn't do my cycle trip. So I decided to press ahead. If the electrics died altogether, then I would see where I was and figure out what I needed to do. But if it was just going to be like this all the way then so be it; I was not turning back if there was any way of avoiding it.

So we went through a start-stop-reset routine for the next three miles or so, me gritting my teeth and wincing, always afraid that maybe this was the time when she wouldn't come back online at all. And then all of a sudden, she jumped back up from that one blinking light to three out of four lights, and the motor began running consistently again. I hardly dared to breathe every time I looked down to check the power supply, but it wasn't dipping. A mile later, she reconsidered her position, and went right back up to four lights.

She behaved perfectly well all the rest of the way to Cheltenham, which was another twenty miles.  The only troubles we had after that were with the towpath, which in several parts was just a puddly mud streak running alongside the canal into Gloucester. Florence fishtailed pretty badly at one point, and for a hideous second I thought we were both going in the drink. We slowed right down after that - better to get to Cheltenham several hours late than risk going for a swim. At Gloucester Docks I stopped to stretch my back, and to scrape endless reams of filth out of Florence's rear mudguard with a tyre lever.

I hadn't been able to find anyone to couchsurf with in Cheltenham or Gloucester so I'd ended up booking a spare bedroom through Air BnB. The room was lovely, I went to bed early and then was up at half past five this morning, forcing breakfast into my face and getting back on the road. Florence has been on her best behaviour all morning, thank goodness; no sign of any further power troubles so far. *touches ALL the wood*

So: I have achieved Alcester!  I am sitting in a delightful coffee shop with a chai latte and a vanilla pastry inside me.  Flo's battery is slurping up charge.  Around one o' clock I shall Lunch here, and then I'll be off again. Birmingham hhhhoooo!

The Road out of Bristol

First update!  Reasonably short as everything is going smoothly so far, so there's not much to tell.  I've just enjoyed a banging steak and mushroom pie in the Mariner's Arms in Berkeley.  Florence's battery is nearly full again - the 22 miles we traversed this morning only depleted her power to 50% ish, even though a lot of that was uphill getting out of Bristol. *shakes fist at Gloucester Rd*

I came off the A38 at Thornbury (ah, fond memories of doing my ACCA exams as I whipped past the leisure centre) and since then it's all been charming country roads with no markings and only cows and horses for company.  I got caught in a brief shower just past Oldbury Naite, but it was no great shakes. Legs are holding up fine, good work legs! Although the space between my shoulderblades is feeling a tad grumpy.

Almost time to be on my way again. Another 26 miles to cover before bed, although mostly flat so they will feel much easier than this morning's beginning. Away with us!

Northward Bound

Hello humans.  I'm at it again.  Come sit down close to me and let me tell you about my next big adventure.

It's a beautiful September evening out there.  Everything still feels like summer, but we can expect the first hints of autumn to begin appearing soon.  The early mornings are already just that tiniest bit cooler.  And tomorrow morning, in the cool early sunshine of summer's end, Florence and I will be setting out for York.

It's a two hundred and fifty mile trip, so we won't get there until next Tuesday.  We have our overnight stops all planned out, our bags are packed, and we are so, so excited I can't even tell you.  The grin on my face has to be seen to be believed.

We'll be taking long lunchbreaks in pubs for the benefit of Flo's battery, so I'll be updating this blog at lunchtimes.  So check back for possible tales of unfortunate breakdowns, critical navigational errors and general panic!

To end tonight's prologue, I'll leave you with this little reminder that my personal Disney princess avatar is...

Catch you on tomorrow's lunchbreak!

The Road to Bristol

By some manner of miracle, I was not overly sore when I woke up on Easter Monday. I was pretty tired in spite of a good night's sleep, but that could not be helped: we had places to be, Flo and I. So I packed my things and we set off.

Wending my way through the residential streets of Yeovil, I learned a valuable lesson about navigating through a town or city on a bike. The most direct route as shown by googlemaps will certainly be the fastest if you're familiar with the terrain, but it's actually a massive faff when you're navigating it for the first time. I should have gone by main roads and sucked up the extra 0.2 of a mile; it would have been SO much faster than stopping every hundred yards to check my paper directions for my next turning, and then taking the wrong turning anyway, and then getting confused and having to whip out my phone and check googlemaps and double back...  Well, I'll know better when I'm planning my route for the next trip!  This is why I'm doing this after all, to iron out kinks like this before heading to America to do it for realsies.  Kink the first: successfully flattened!

Once I achieved escape velocity from Yeovil, everything was much easier. Country roads, blue skies and sunshine were the order of the morning. In Castle Cary I broke out my Easter egg and cycled along one-handed, steadily munching chocolate with the other hand. The hill coming into Shepton Mallet was a killer, but then it was breaktime o' clock, and I spent a cheerful hour or more in Costa Coffee, catching up with a friend. The sun reached its zenith, and I slathered on sunscreen. It was a far cry from the cloudy drizzle of the Friday and Saturday.

If I thought the hill into Shepton was unpleasant, it was nothing compared to the hill on the way out again. It went on FOREVER. But then it was a beautiful ride across flat high ground, and after that, a gentle winding downhill to Chewton Mendip, with butterflies fluttering all around. I stopped shortly after at a lake by an ice cream van, and then I was on the home stretch. The view of Bristol as I approached from Felton was spectacular; I came round a corner halfway up a hill and suddenly the city buildings were glittering in the sunshine, nestled between the distant hills, with the deep blue reservoirs spread out all before. I've never seen Bristol from that angle before. It was beautiful.

Twenty minutes later I hit the sofa like a sack of potatoes and couldn't summon the energy to move again for another half hour.

SUCCESS  >:D

The Road to Yeovil

That. That was a journey and a half.

For the thirty eight miles from Salisbury to Sherborne, everything went fine. Sure, my phone was less well charged than I'd like - having to share sockets in the hostel meant I'd had to prioritise my bike battery, so I'd started out on only 48% phone power - but I had my paper route instructions with me, the sun was shining, the lambs were frolicking in the fields, and all was well.

I was getting tired by that 38 mile mark, though. I'd wanted to stop halfway for lunch, but I forgot to fill my thermos flask this morning, and without a hot drink my hardtack was inedible. Around one o' clock I passed a pub that was serving Sunday lunch in a little village just outside Shaftesbury, but it was £11, and I figured I'd wait till I was in Shaftesbury proper and just grab a Subway or something. Alas, my route did not take me into Shaftesbury proper. I ended up buying a ham sandwich at a petrol station in Milborne Port at half past two, and wolfing it down on the side of the road.

I found somewhere to sit for ten minutes after that, and burned some of my remaining phone battery on looking at Facebook. It was okay; I was nearly at Sherborne now and there were only another eight miles to go. When the battery dipped below 20%, I lost mobile data, and I started feeling cold to boot, so I got back on the road. It wasn't worth taking a proper break, I was nearly there.

As I came out the other side of Sherborne, Florence's battery warning light began to flash. I noted it, but I wasn't too concerned. I was pretty sure she could still get me there. But I wasn't sure if I was leaving Sherborne on the right road, and I couldn't check googlemaps without my mobile data. The signposts for Yeovil all pointed to the A30, and I knew I wasn't supposed to take the A30, so I ignored them and kept going.

Pretty soon I found myself facing a long uphill stretch. I looked at Florence's blinking light. If this was the wrong way, it was going to cost me more in battery power than I could afford. I fished out my phone and started rifling through the settings, looking for a way to turn off the Low Battery Mode that was keeping me from using my mobile data.

By the time I found it and gained access to googlemaps, my phone was on 13% battery.

But it was okay. I was on the wrong road, but I hadn't strayed far, and if I just kept going ahead to the north, took the next left, and then turned left again before I reached the A30, then I'd be back on the route of my paper instructions and everything would be fine. I hurriedly switched off my phone, stood up on my pedals and had at the hill. Florence did not pass out on me, and I enjoyed the compensation of an equally long downhill on the other side.

Just as I was starting to be concerned that I'd somehow missed my turning, a left turn finally presented itself and led me up and down another hill. I glanced anxiously at the battery light, but Florence was still holding out. A while after that hill I reached a crossroads, and stopped. I felt uneasy. I could still see no sign of the A30, and I didn't remember seeing a crossroads on googlemaps. But here one was, complete with quaint wooden signpost painted white. The sign for Yeovil was pointing back the way I'd come.

Out came the phone again. I loaded googlemaps and stared at it in confusion. (Twelve percent.) I turned it this way and that. I scrolled southwards to find Sherborne behind me, but it wasn't there. I scrolled northwards to try and find the A30 ahead of me (eleven percent), and just as I gave up, Sherborne slid down into the top of my screen.

I regarded it in utter bafflement. I traced the route I'd taken out of Sherborne and located the spot where I'd last checked googlemaps, when I was looking up at that long hill. (Ten percent.) And then all at once I saw what I'd done. I'd seen that I just needed to "continue along" the road running north, but I hadn't checked my own position. I'd been on the wrong side of the road, facing south. And I'd just kept going.

I looked back over my shoulder with a sense of impending horror. My rear horizon was the hill I'd just come down. The other, longer hill lay behind it. My final eight miles had just become twelve. I looked down at Florence, and she blinked her little red light at me lazily, as much as if to say that her impending power failure was going to be my problem, not hers.

I switched my phone off quickly before it could drop to nine percent. I looked at the hill again, and swore aloud. But there was nothing for it but to turn Florence about and start back towards that hill, and up it, and over it.

I took to turning off her battery at every opportunity. Any time the road was downhill or level, I let Florence rest and I used my leg power. My legs had already done forty miles, and they were tired. We moved slower and slower with every mile, Florence still graciously assisting with the uphill stretches.

I passed a sign to Yeovil that read 3 miles, and kept going. A mile later - Yeovil, 3 miles. Had I entered the Twilight Zone? Was this the Zeno's Paradox of cycle routes? We went down, down, down into a gully, then up, up, up the other side. It was ridiculously steep. Round a corner, and up. Round another corner, and up. I stood up on the pedals with my legs burning, trying to provide the majority of the power myself, extolling Florence's virtues between my teeth all the while. And still her little motor whirred on and her little red light went blink-blink-blink. Surely she could not last much longer.

I turned onto Yeovil Road, which became Sandhurst road and ran gently uphill for a stretch. And right at the crest of that hill, the little blinking light went out, and the whirring died away into silence. I patted her handlebars - It's okay. You did good, kid. I knew I must be quite close now, and I just hoped there wasn't much more uphill for me to deal with. Florence was now incredibly heavy and sluggish, and my legs were exhausted. I didn't want to taste the bitter defeat of having to get off and push.

There was a T-junction just ahead. I pulled over at the kerb, meaning to check my written directions, but then a street sign almost opposite caught my eye: Forest Hill. My heart leapt. I knew Forest Hill. The house I was heading to was on a road adjoining it. My destination was less than two minutes away, and it was all downhill from here.

My eyes may have misted over slightly as I patted Florence's handlebars again. She'd done it. She'd kept it together in the face of my human ineptitude. She'd bravely carried us all the way to the top of the final rise, and then fainted dead away from exhaustion. I'm going to have to buy her something nice to express my gratitude when we get back to Bristol. Some handlebar streamers perhaps, or a nice tall flag.

I'm too tired to write anything else now. Tomorrow's journey will be almost as far as today's and I fear I'll be starting out at the kind of disadvantage where everything hurts before I'm even on the bike. I'm to bed; goodnargle.

The Road to Salisbury

It's half past five in the evening, I'm in a warm and comfortable hostel, and I'm about ready to eat something and turn in for the night. It's been a good day, and boy am I tired!

I learned to tighten my brake levers this morning, when I noticed one of them was getting loose and wobbly. It necessitated unhitching the brake cable and resetting it afterwards, so as a bonus I also learned how to adjust my brake cables. And all before breakfast!

I got on the road about ten and made it to Stonehenge about half past twelve. It was cold and windy on Salisbury Plain and I was glad I'd packed my warmest woolly pully. I went to see the stones of course, and looked around the visitors' centre, including the 360 degree surround cinematic of the stones through the ages and in different weather conditions. It was pretty excellent!

From there it was only another hour to Salisbury. I can definitely do a longer journey than this in a day, and so can Florence; her battery is still at 50% charge. I could have conceivably done Melksham to Salisbury in the morning, stopped for lunch, and then gone ahead and done Salisbury to Yeovil in the afternoon.

Today's lesson is, I am better at this than I realised! I guess I can increase the amount of distance I cover each day when I cycle up to York. I can probably do it in three days instead of four! Yeah, I'm gonna get into googlemaps and figure that out.

Riiiight after dinner. *tummygrowl*

The Road to Melksham

Good evening, humans of the internet! I'm pleased to report that day one of being on the road was a success.

The first unexpected challenge was: trying to get on the bike. (Stop laughing.) Florence is a bit too big for me really, so I usually mount her by leaning her to the left (towards me), swinging my right leg over the back wheel, and plunking myself onto the saddle while pushing off with my left foot and starting to pedal with my right. I'm so well-practiced in that manoeuvre, I do it effortlessly now, without thinking about it. When I tried it this morning, Florence's front wheel left the ground as her back end nose-dived sideways, and I only just managed to catch her before she hit the deck. Heaving her back upright was a struggle, too. With the battery and two packed-full panniers all hugging the back wheel, she's achieved a monstrously uneven weight distribution. I tried again, being more careful, but it just wasn't possible to hold her by the handlebars at an angle with all that weight at her back end. I had to roll her into the gutter and mount her from the kerb.

I could really feel the extra weight when I cornered at the bottom of the street; it presented as a barely-controlled and somewhat alarming wobble just behind me. It felt like Florence was gestating a whole new bicycle in her arse. But by the time we were putting Bedminster behind us, my sense of balance was getting the measure of the situation. The corner-wobbles became less dramatic, and then disappeared altogether. And the weight didn't seem to slow me down any - thanks to a combination of my hard-won Amazon thighs and the battery being back in action, we were making a smooth and easy ten miles an hour or so on the flat. And she could do faster, easily - but I have to keep the battery on its lowest power setting for such long journeys, else it will run flat before I get where I'm going.

The rest of the journey was reasonably uneventful. I know the route to Melksham - my dad lives here - so there was no navigational work to do, only thirty miles of straight riding in pleasantly cool and occasionally drizzly weather. Tomorrow will be forty miles, and more of a navigational challenge. I have driven from Melksham to Salisbury by car before, once. It was many years ago, and I was trying to get to Yeovil, and it all went a bit wrong. Hopefully I'll have better luck tomorrow...

The Backstory

Last July, I bought myself an electric bike to get about on, so I wouldn't have to catch buses anymore. I named her Florence and you can see pictures of her here, courtesy of her creator. I've been riding her to work and back ever since - it's seven miles each way and gently uphill in the morning, but that doesn't matter when your steel friend is doing all the work. We did that seven miles in about forty minutes.

I don't recall exactly when the idea hit me, but as soon as it did, I knew it for what it was. It was The Next Big Thing, like my year in Canada had been. I'm going to go to the US Midwest and retrace the journeys of Laura Ingalls Wilder on an electric bike, visiting all the historic sites along the way. It's going to be a few thousand miles, and it's going to take me a few months to do it all.

I got into Little House on the Prairie through the show. I caught it a couple of times on Channel 4 on days when I was home from school sick, back in the nineties. The first I ever saw of it was a snippet that I now recognise as being from The Wolves in season four. I liked the look of that girl in the treehouse in her no-nonsense dark green dress and pigtails; she looked like exactly the kind of girl I would want for a best friend. But it looked like a pretty old show, not very fast-paced, and when I found a much-loved cartoon on another channel I flicked over. Probably several months later, I caught the latter half of the episode where little "Kerry" (to my English ears) fell down the well, and I was glued to the screen for a solid half hour, but I didn't realise the show was a series - I assumed the part I'd seen before with Laura in the treehouse must have been near the beginning of "the movie".

Ten years ago, season one came out on DVD in the UK. I was an adult by then, and I spotted it in HMV, recognised the characters from "that cool movie I'd seen once" and gave it a google. I realised it had been a TV show all along, and I found out the show was loosely based on a series of children's books written by Laura herself about her childhood in the 1800s. I'd enjoyed my history A-level and this idea of the personal historical narrative of a young girl from days gone by really got my attention. I bought season one, watched it through in a week, and requested a complete box set of the books from my parents for Christmas. I devoured them all in less than a month. I've re-read them several times since, and continued to buy the DVDs up to season five. (There were nine seasons all told, but in my opinion the show jumped the shark after season four and I couldn't bring myself to keep going after season six, which I watched on YouTube back in the day when you still could.)

When I noticed IMDb being a thing in 2008 or so, I got onto the Little House message boards and started comparing thoughts and opinions with other fans. (Shout out to bill3 and danagolightly! This here piemakergirl remembers you both fondly :3) Some of the other fans were very knowledgeable and I learned a lot. It turned out that some of the early storylines in the show, ones that I assumed were complete fiction, were actually based on real events of the Ingalls family's life that Laura hadn't included in her books. That was when I started googling to find out about the real Laura. I wanted to know how much had been left out of her novels, and how much of the content she had fictionalised. I wanted to know the real story.

I found out Laura had first written an autobiography of her childhood as a single volume for adults called Pioneer Girl, which she had kept completely faithful to the truth as she remembered it, but the manuscript had been rejected by publishers.  She then reworked the story of her childhood into the now famous fictionalised series for children.  I discovered that a microfilm copy of her original Pioneer Girl manuscript resided at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library in Iowa, and I emailed them to ask if it was possible to get some kind of copy sent to me (I was willing to pay), but nobody replied.

Last summer, I found out about the Pioneer Girl project and became unreasonably excited.  My pre-ordered copy of Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography arrived just before Christmas, but I'd already started planning my trip long before then.

I'm not sure quite when this passing interest exploded into a full-blown obsession, but apparently it has happened.

So I figured, I'm going to need to prepare for this.  I can't just jet over to the States and jump on a bike and start zooming around in the middle of the Midwestern nowhere, with no available support network, on the assumption that everything will work out fine.  I need to set a time scale for building up to this, and start training - not even so much in terms of physical endurance (I mean, see "electric bike", right) but more in terms of knowing that I've thought of everything I need in terms of food and water and clothes and storage space, or in terms of bike repair skills, or of places to stay.  I need to be confident I have everything covered before I actually go.

I need to do a series of increasingly challenging trial runs.

I'm setting the big trip for the summer of 2017.  That gives me two years to make ready and to save up for what it will cost me, and it's also the year of Laura Ingalls Wilder's 150th birthday, which feels appropriate.  Some of the historical sites might have special celebrations going on that year, and it would be excellent to get to see them.

So next summer in 2016, I'm going to do as long a cycle trip as I can manage within my holiday allowance for work, on this side of the Atlantic, to really prepare myself.  It'll be two or three weeks, and I'll cycle to either Scotland or Germany, I haven't decided yet.

This year, I have two shorter trips planned.  Towards the end of the summer, I'm going to cycle from my home city of Bristol up to a friend's house in Yorkshire.  I reckon it will take me about five days, cycling by day and couchsurfing or hostelling by night.  And for my very first trip, as a low-risk starter project in case there's any kind of problem I've not forseen, I'm going to stay close to home.  I'm going to cycle around the Westcountry for four days, from Bristol to Melksham to Salisbury to Yeovil and back to Bristol again.  It'll be 32-42 miles per day, and I'm setting off in about two hours.

In preparation, I took my battery off my bike for Lent.  I've been cycling my fourteen mile return commute under actual legpower for the past six weeks, and although it was horrendous at first, my thighs are like twin rocks now.  I am ready for this.  The battery goes back on today, on low power only because it's a long trip, and it's going to be about 50/50 battery power and thigh power.  I think I can I think I can I think I can.

This is what this blog is about.  I'll be writing about my daily adventures in the evenings, when I've reached my destination for the night and plugged my phone into a power supply.  I have googlemaps in my pocket, I've baked hardtack for the journey and I'm ready to roll.

Catch you in the evening!