Coast to Coast – the route – day three

This is the day that I have promised to the lads “Its all downhill, freewheel all day” and at 52 miles I’m hoping that is the case or I could be lynched when we reach the fabled North Pier at Sunderland – looking at this profile for the first time I can’t help but notice that the first 14 miles seem to be of a rather hilly nature, oh bugger.

But after that, it really is downhill all the way, freewheel all day lads, a fitting climax to the two and a half days of hard slog, beer, coffee and a slab of cake (have I mentioned cake before), there should be cake.

There’s nothing quite like a nice long downhill section on a bike, its free energy, nothing to do but sit there with the wind in your face as you gather speed and hope that there are no potholes waiting to pitch you over the handlebars.

I have two memories of memorable downhill sections from our old cycle touring days – on ended in disaster, one broke the land speed record for my bike.

We’d been cycling most of the day, five or six of us, when we came upon the very steep downhill, about a mile of descent with a very sharp hairpin bend halfway down that we couldn’t see yet, we flew down it, the lead rider saw the hairpin and shouted out a warning to which we all slowed down – apart from Pete the Scouser.

Pete the Scouser shot past all of us looking backwards as he did so with a puzzled face tring to work out why we were all braking, when he turned again to face forwards he suddenly realised why, by now he was going far to fast to even attempt the corner so he did what anyone would do in those circumstances – he screamed.

Fortunately for Pete the Scouser the local council had laid a big pile of road salt right on the bend for the times during the winter when the dangerous road iced up, Pete the Scouser hit the pile of road salt at around 40mph, shot up it like Evil Knievil and was airborne in seconds.

He and his bike flew so high in the air that he easily cleared the stone wall beyond and then disappeared into the field behind the wall, which, being on a hillside dropped away from the wall very steeply, because of this he estimated later that when he crossed the wall he was at least thirty feet int he air – the last we saw of him he was still sitting on the bike, thirty feet in the air, still peddling like the little kids at the end of “ET”.

The end result was a broken shoulder, an ambulance and a weekend stay at Northallerton Hospital, but oh how we laughed – and still do.

Pete the Scouser’s flying lesson on a bike was the only thing on my mind the following year as we hit the long two or three mile steep downhill into Helmsley – the speedometer on my bike touched 38mph on that hill and I too was screaming as we overtook a bus that was braking its carefull way down into the market town, its scary stuff especially when you have recently invested in the new wonder “carbon rubber” brake blocks as I had on that day, “consistent braking in wet conditions” they said on the box, what they didn’t tell you on the box is that the carbon in the rubber caused the brake blocks to “melt” in the rain, it enabled them to grip the wheel better, sure it did, but it meant that after trying to stop at the bottom of that hill I literally had no brakes left at all and a 50 mile ride home the next day – the soles of my shoes coped very well as bicycle brakes that day, as all children know.