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Travels on my nadgers
Jul. 23rd, 2007 10:10 amSomething I've been thinking of doing for quite come time is visiting the Eden Project, a set of gigantic greenhouses/biomes in deepest darkest Cornwall, where several acres of artificial rainforest have been created. I love rainforests, me. I'm very much of the idea that more rainforests and fewer people is a good place to start in the whole 'eco-friendly' malarkey (this is why I'm slowly but surely buying myself a nature reserve in Guyana) and going to see some struck me as a rather fun thing to do.
Looking at the Eden Project website, I saw they're very big on sustainable tranport and they give you £2 off your entry fee if you show up on a bike. Two pounds off, eh?, I thought to myself. I could do with some of that.
Further investigation found somewhere nice to stay in Bodmin, about 8-10 miles from Eden, a place to hire bikes in town, and that there's a marked cycle trail from Bodmin to Eden which the National Cycle Network rates as "Easy-medium."
Now if there's something I'm pretty sure I can do, it's things that are easy and, hey, just because I haven't been on an actual bicycle since 1987 it shouldn't matter because I've used the machines in the gym so there can't be too much difference, right?
Right?
Ah, Hubris.
So I booked everything and set off on Friday. Arriving at Paddington station for the 13:05 to Bodmin, I discovered that due to the flash floods, thunderstorms and rain covering the south of the country the trains weren't running but I could go back to Waterloo, get a train from there to Salisbury, then to Exeter and change there for Bodmin.
Finally arriving in Exeter at 8pm I discovered that despite all reassuarances to the contrary there were no trains to Bodmin that night. At all. Oh, and there weren't any back to London, either. Nor, the uncaring gum-chewing teenager manning the station assured me, was there any sort of replacement bus service being laid on by the rail company.
My normal calm equipose fraying oh-so-slightly by this time, I walked over the road and got a taxi.
Sixty miles, an hour and a hundred quid's worth of taxi ride later I got to Bodmin a mere five hours late. First Group shall be hearing from me.
Saturday dawned drizzly. I got up, hired my bike, and set off confidently expecting a biking time of about an hour, maybe slightly more. After all, I can do 10-15 mph for an hour on the cycle machine. Right?
I quickly learned several things:
1) Using a cycle machine and riding an actual bicycle bear no resenblance to each other whatsoever. None. Your legs going round in cicles on one offers no skill or muscle development which can be associated with the other. In any way.
2) Whoever ranks cycle routes for the National Cycle network people is a sadist of Biblical proportions. In what world is the trek from Bodmin to Eden 'Easy'? At all? Ever? When God took umbrage at the Israelites worshipping golden calves and condemned them to wander for forty years in the wilderness, he could have just given them bikes, pointed them at St Austell and told them to get pedalling. It would have been no more malicious. When someone tells me that a cycle route is 'Easy', I expect something like Norfolk, or maybe Holland. What I got was steep climbs and precipitous, spincter-clenching drops over 1-in-4 hills.
3) Whoever invented the bicycle seat was either a woman or a Frenchman looking to emasculate heroic British menfolk should our nations ever come to blows again. Every time you put your foot on the pedals, your entire body weight is transferred to a sharp point on the end of the seat directly beneath the testicles. Every single push of the pedals is at first a dull ache which quickly grows to gonad-grinding misery.
4) That Bodmin to Eden is 8-10 miles as the crow flies. On the winding, hilly, nadger-crushing, comically difficult cycle route it is considerably further than that.
So it was that, exhausted, thirsty, miserable and tender in the plums I arrived at Eden just over two and half hours after I set off. As I had to have the bike back by 5 in order to avoid losing my deposit, this meant I got to look around the tourist attraction which I'd travelled for more than thirteen hours and suffered scrotum-crushing hell for for a grand total of ten minutes before having to get back on my bike and set off back again.
From what I saw, it looked very impressive. I walked briskly through the biomes, shoving small children out of my way and kicking any pram which impeded my hurried transit into the piranha pool. They've probably got some impressive trees and some nice-looking eco stuff there.
Then I picked up my bike and set off back again, every push of the pedals further reducing my chances of ever being a father from 'unlikely' to 'infinitestimal'.
And then it started raining.
So how was your weekend?
Looking at the Eden Project website, I saw they're very big on sustainable tranport and they give you £2 off your entry fee if you show up on a bike. Two pounds off, eh?, I thought to myself. I could do with some of that.
Further investigation found somewhere nice to stay in Bodmin, about 8-10 miles from Eden, a place to hire bikes in town, and that there's a marked cycle trail from Bodmin to Eden which the National Cycle Network rates as "Easy-medium."
Now if there's something I'm pretty sure I can do, it's things that are easy and, hey, just because I haven't been on an actual bicycle since 1987 it shouldn't matter because I've used the machines in the gym so there can't be too much difference, right?
Right?
Ah, Hubris.
So I booked everything and set off on Friday. Arriving at Paddington station for the 13:05 to Bodmin, I discovered that due to the flash floods, thunderstorms and rain covering the south of the country the trains weren't running but I could go back to Waterloo, get a train from there to Salisbury, then to Exeter and change there for Bodmin.
Finally arriving in Exeter at 8pm I discovered that despite all reassuarances to the contrary there were no trains to Bodmin that night. At all. Oh, and there weren't any back to London, either. Nor, the uncaring gum-chewing teenager manning the station assured me, was there any sort of replacement bus service being laid on by the rail company.
My normal calm equipose fraying oh-so-slightly by this time, I walked over the road and got a taxi.
Sixty miles, an hour and a hundred quid's worth of taxi ride later I got to Bodmin a mere five hours late. First Group shall be hearing from me.
Saturday dawned drizzly. I got up, hired my bike, and set off confidently expecting a biking time of about an hour, maybe slightly more. After all, I can do 10-15 mph for an hour on the cycle machine. Right?
I quickly learned several things:
1) Using a cycle machine and riding an actual bicycle bear no resenblance to each other whatsoever. None. Your legs going round in cicles on one offers no skill or muscle development which can be associated with the other. In any way.
2) Whoever ranks cycle routes for the National Cycle network people is a sadist of Biblical proportions. In what world is the trek from Bodmin to Eden 'Easy'? At all? Ever? When God took umbrage at the Israelites worshipping golden calves and condemned them to wander for forty years in the wilderness, he could have just given them bikes, pointed them at St Austell and told them to get pedalling. It would have been no more malicious. When someone tells me that a cycle route is 'Easy', I expect something like Norfolk, or maybe Holland. What I got was steep climbs and precipitous, spincter-clenching drops over 1-in-4 hills.
3) Whoever invented the bicycle seat was either a woman or a Frenchman looking to emasculate heroic British menfolk should our nations ever come to blows again. Every time you put your foot on the pedals, your entire body weight is transferred to a sharp point on the end of the seat directly beneath the testicles. Every single push of the pedals is at first a dull ache which quickly grows to gonad-grinding misery.
4) That Bodmin to Eden is 8-10 miles as the crow flies. On the winding, hilly, nadger-crushing, comically difficult cycle route it is considerably further than that.
So it was that, exhausted, thirsty, miserable and tender in the plums I arrived at Eden just over two and half hours after I set off. As I had to have the bike back by 5 in order to avoid losing my deposit, this meant I got to look around the tourist attraction which I'd travelled for more than thirteen hours and suffered scrotum-crushing hell for for a grand total of ten minutes before having to get back on my bike and set off back again.
From what I saw, it looked very impressive. I walked briskly through the biomes, shoving small children out of my way and kicking any pram which impeded my hurried transit into the piranha pool. They've probably got some impressive trees and some nice-looking eco stuff there.
Then I picked up my bike and set off back again, every push of the pedals further reducing my chances of ever being a father from 'unlikely' to 'infinitestimal'.
And then it started raining.
So how was your weekend?
