DAY ONE: JUDGEMENT DAY

DAILY DISTANCE: 54.71 kms
TOTAL DISTANCE: 54.71 kms
  

After a year of talking about it, but no organisation or training (on my part, that is) whatsoever, our time was finally here. But first, the key players: there are four of us riding: myself, Uncle Jim, Uncle Alan and Dan, Jim and Alan’s friend from way back (who has organised the route but I haven’t actually met yet!) I call Jim and Alan my uncles because it’s easier that way. They’re actually my second-cousins-once-removed or something but our families are close and their kids I see as cousins... Clear as mud?

After a large and elaborate brunch made by my surrogate English mother, Irene (Jim’s wife), we set off at 11:45am, approximately 12 minutes after the rain started. It would follow us all the way to our destination. At the sight of the lovely, but large, Pennine Mountains, I was told that "at the local cricket grounds they say that if you can't see these mountains, it's raining, but if you CAN see the mountains, then it's about to rain...!" This is England after all.

We were seen off by Ken and Edith, Irene and Jim’s parents, Penny, Alan’s wife, and Cousin Andy, Jim and Irene’s son. We rode for just over an hour before the strength of the wind and angle of the rain got the better of us, and we found shelter under a highway overpass for a quick drink and for Jim to call Irene to request four whistles. He’d had an idea: if one of the four ever zoomed off in front, a whistle could be easily used to announce to them that a stop was required, or a turn was approaching. This was apparently instigated by him seeing me “zoom off” a few times in the first hour – little did he know that far from being supremely fit and ahead of the game, actually I was doing as the lone Aussie should ...  trying to keep warm in the freezing English rain!

Another 40 minutes later we had climbed to what Alan believes may be the highest point of our whole trip (although my brain knew that it was impossible, my legs told me that we must have be higher than Everest...!). Of course the good part of this was that we had to then descend that same ‘hill’ – a huge descent past many hikers and a few other riders. Unfortunately the wet, slippery and narrow road meant I had to be much more careful than I would have been usually, but I still managed to hit my top speed of the day, 56.4km/hr.

At the bottom waiting for us was the lovely town of Castleton where we stopped for a coffee, and it was here that Alan pondered the vast road that lies ahead of us: “If you did a survey of every person in here looking at us and asked them where they think we’re headed, not a single sole would guess that the answer would be ‘Istanbul!’”. Our last stop of the day was at Ladybower, where we indulged in Irene’s magical flapjack. She had packed four pieces, forgetting that Dan is yet to join us. Jim and Alan shared the fourth after Parri declined. Tonight over dinner, however, the real truth came out: actually, I would have loved a share in Dan’s piece, but was merely being polite. I cursed them all the way up the next hill! And wasn’t it a hill! Probably smaller than that earlier described, but with my shocked legs now entirely jelly, it felt like mission impossible.

We arrived in Sheffield at four in the afternoon, just 5 minutes before Irene who, bless her, had driven our panniers to Sheffield (I think the locals among us had planned ahead since they knew what the Pennine Mountains had in store for us!). We stayed at Jim’s brothers house and Peter and Christine were more than welcoming. Tonight we went for dinner in the local pub. Cream of mushroom soup and a Giant Yorkshire Pudding that I thought would be appropriate given our stay in Yorkshire – only to be told that actually the pub we frequented was across the border in Derbyshire, hmmm...

So that was that. Thankfully rather uneventful, but Day 1 has been checked off the list...