Unfinished Journeys

This weekend we held the third edition of High Camp – an LGBTQ+ bikepacking retreat in the Peak District that has become one of the highlights of my summer. Superb photo by Heather Wood It was one of those ideas that came together very quickly.

I rode 300km the other day, for the first time in almost five years. And to my great surprise, everything was fine. In fact, allowing for the normal difficulties and side effects of cycling that far, I’d say it went extremely well. I’m very tired now – but there was no way I wouldn’t be, after cycling for over 15 hours.

On the vital importance of public toilets When I was a courier I had a detailed map of London in my head, and was always adding to it. As you’d expect, it included the locations of our regular clients, the entrances to their loading bays (which would often be on a completely different street from the main entrance), the routes between them, and the best spot to lock up my bike when I got there.

I’m writing this with a slight hangover1, having done my longest ride of the year two days ago. It was actually, at 215km, the longest ride I’ve done since I succumbed to long COVID in the summer of 2022 – and the first audax I’ve completed since the Sunseekers and Moonrakers 300 in late 2021. Cycling in May. Does it get any better than this?

I’m writing this in one of my favourite places: a windowless cabin on a cross-channel ferry. Maybe favourite is the wrong word. But these neat little rooms have come to feel like a sanctuary in recent years, given that I normally inhabit them at either end of long complicated bike trips, when I’m exhausted by either riding or packing, and grateful that the world has gone away for a few hours.

Galibier, sunset, 18th July 2019 You might have read recently about the Austrian man who was convicted of gross negligent manslaughter, after leaving his girlfriend behind on an ascent of Grossglockner. She was a significantly less experienced climber than him, and died of hypothermia while he carried on.

Last Thursday I took the train down to London to interview the great Lizzie Deignan – who I find impressive not only because she’s one of Britain’s most successful cyclists, but also because of her ability to make things look easy, when you know full well they’re not. She arrived at the venue with her husband and seven-week-old baby in tow, and left swiftly at the end of the evening, to travel back to Yorkshire where her two older children were being looked after by grandparents.

I have had a very good week. From Tuesday to Friday I was on the road with a friend and a dog, interviewing her at various Northern venues in the evenings, and making our way between them by bike and train during the days. And I’ve just spent the weekend riding between Manchester and Sheffield on a Brompton, as an experimental addition to the Peak Divide – which is traditionally a running event.

I had a small realisation the other day, during a call with Felicity in which we were meant to be planning this week’s events. (Come and see us, if you’re in Newcastle, York or Settle.) She pointed out that journey narratives are always far more interesting if something goes wrong, and all of a sudden I understood why I never make it to the end of travel pieces in the newspapers, even though I always open them.

Hello! Before I get into this week’s essay (in which I consider how queer people’s rights and privileges have lagged behind the rest of society by at least a generation), here’s your reminder that next week I will be on the road again, appearing in Gosforth (near Newcastle), York and Settle with the wonderful Felicity Cloake. I’ll be interviewing Felicity about her enviable career as a food writer who also does long bike trips, and is about to publish a romance novel.