Today was the Tour of Britain 2016 in Cumbria, with a route taking in many of the places affected by the winter floods. Presumably a stage was already allocated to Cumbria before the floods (given the geography, we've got to be odds-on favourites every year to have a stage), but perhaps the details were planned out later. My plan was to see it in two places, Carlisle and Ambleside, and if I got to Ambleside in good time for 13:00, to help out on the Struggle. Not helped by a tyre blowout last night, my ETA was 13:05.
Driving into Carlisle and suddenly seeing team buses outside Tullie House and Radio Cumbria suddenly makes it feel real. I've seen them in Paris and London, but not on my everyday streets. I've seen a mountain stage of the Vuelta in the Sierra Nevada, I've seen finishes in Paris, London and Ipswich, but this is the first time I've seen a stage start.
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| Team buses at Radio Cumbria! |
I used to be an armchair cycling nerd, keeping performance spreadsheets for Tour positions. I watched through most of the drug years then switched off when the disqualifications simply became too much and the races became a farce. I missed the rise of British cycling and the fall of Lance Armstrong.
Now I don't recognise most of the riders - some of the names are familiar from the Tour de France, some of the teams have been around in one form or another for years, but I don't recognise the faces - so I can be interested in the process of signing on and shuttling between team bus and cars and the public space without knowing who they all are. Yes Cav and Wiggo did pass me at almost touching distance and no, I didn't photograph, or touch, them. Here they are in Paris 2012 instead:
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| Team Sky, Paris 2012 | Team Sky, Paris 2012 |
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| TdF Publicity Caravan | TdF Publicity Caravan |
Met my colleagues on the millennium bridge over Castle Way to watch the neutralised race pass under us in both directions. The leadout club riders from Border City Wheelers and Watchtree have already peeled off, probably at the Crescent, and there's no 20km, 160 vehicle-long caravane publicitaire sadly - so it's a lot of motorcycle outriders (many happy to wave at the crowds), a commissaires's car, the peloton and then a long, long string of race cars and one ambulance. (And in Ambleside, an ice-cream van.)
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| Commissaires and outriders | Peloton |
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| Peloton | Team cars |
And then off to drive down the motorway to Kendal and then Ambleside to avoid road closures. All the team buses have been directed down Warwick Road and I'm shortly in front of the Team Wiggins motorhomes. (Motorhomes. Not buses.)
I pass Penrith before the riders do, as they've gone for a slow schedule. They'll go past my old house, just like the Milk Race used to every two years when we were kids. Then it was a routine and I don't remember a sense of occasion like we have today... but I was young and it wasn't a sport that was followed in our household then (football, rugby, cricket...). A near-neighbour who was a local character is interviewed on Radio Cumbria - still is a local character, 35 years on.
The Wiggo motorhomes reappear in my rearview mirror going up Shap, and I find myself between trucks and vans, allowing them to overtake before ignoring their instructions and turning off at junction 39. I continue to 38. My mum worked in Tebay, and I used to get the National Express coaches to drop me off at the truck stop here so I could get a lift home rather than going through to Carlisle.
I've never been on the A685 before, let alone driven it. Like Stuart Maconie in August's Cumbria Life, the Howgills just here are the definitive sight of home for me. Ten years or more ago, the carpenter was doing his degree dissertation about landscape and memory, collecting data online from friends and their friends, about favourite landscapes. Mine was always this point where the Howgills and Shap Fell (now the extended National Parks) come together over the Lune gorge south of Tebay, blowing kisses over the motorway and railway, because then I knew I was home, whether I got off at Tebay, Penrith or Carlisle. The carpenter, bringing me back for good this summer, knew exactly when to welcome me home.
I made good time on the motorway, but I can't see making it to Ambleside in time for my volunteering slot - but I'm having a great day anyway, and enjoying driving an unfamiliar route. After I pass through Kendal in the opposite direction to that the riders will be taking later, I remember why I haven't driven round here before: here's the roundabout where I failed my first driving test, my only test in Cumbria. When I finally passed, I would drive up from Brighton for a few years, but barely moved the car once it was parked outside my parents' house. The last few weeks, driving roads both familiar and new to me, has been more fun than I expected. The only road numbers I knew before were M6, A6, A66 (and I've lived on two of those) - now I'm learning the full set of A59Xs and more.
I get to the university campus in Ambleside at 12:59, and park up at 13:05. I'm impressed at the accuracy of my ETA, but sorry to lose out on volunteering. Still, I can watch the big screen coverage and see the race as they enter the Struggle, so it's not all bad.
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| Breakaway before the Struggle | Cav leads the main group to the Struggle |
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| Speed |
Back home via the A591, familiar as far as the turning to St John's in the Vale, so although I have been on the stretch to Keswick (on a bus, I think), it's much less familiar. The cloud lifts and the light over Catbells drags my eyes away from the road. We are lucky to live here and I have never truly appreciated it before. I turned off to Applethwaite and took time out just to see the view. What I need to keep learning is to take time every day to go out - to the firth, to the fell; to the sea, to the river, to the lake - even when the weather is bad, just go out even for a few minutes. Ten minutes on the marsh last night (even though I fell into the mud and punctured the tyre) left me happier than I had been all day.
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| Central Fells from Applethwaite |
See the mountains and smile.
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