Fin.

I am very nearly out of spoons.

Put on your bravest face

A notepad and a baking tin. This sounds like nothing out of the ordinary; indeed, it sounds quite good. That recipe for flour-free banana loaf, scribbled down by pencil on a random scrap of paper in frantic dictation with a friend talking ten to the dozen, and which nearly disappeared thanks to my precarious habit of carrying around, in my vaguely showerproof but definitely not milk proof bag, for far too long bits of paper with useful stuff written on them, duly rescued and stored in my impressive, if haphazard, home "vertical filing system" prior to transcription into a better paper-based filing system, actually turned out jolly nicely. That this better paper-based filing system neatly combines recipes in beautiful bullet point arrangement, beam deflection calculations, sketches of mechanisms, and dimensioned technical drawings in beautiful third angle projection, perhaps suggests my system requires a degree of fine tuning.

Instead of bananas, eggs, cocoa, baking powder and chocolate spread—though I would perhaps substitute peanut butter—assume our recipe instead comprises the aforementioned notepad and baking tin, and a large steel ball bearing. It should be large enough to hold in your hand, small enough and thus light enough not to be so tiring as to hold for as long as the recipe calls for, which, unlike most recipes, is an indeterminate amount of time; it too should be small enough and thus light enough not to damage irreparably your best baking tin in the event of success, not unlike the propensity of an electric hob to accidentally detect your best baking tin that you plonked on it having nowhere else handy, and accidentally induction it to within an inch of its life. The ball bearing should also, and this the most important criterion, be heavy enough to make an excitingly loud bang when dropped onto the baking tin from a gentle height. For most purposes, the height should be a foot or two. And the notepad? This should be placed no further from the baking tin than arm's reach.

If the prerequisites are at least clear, the methodology may not be. When one goes to bed of a night, lie down as normal but with one's arm relaxed, holding the ball bearing aloft and above the baking tin. At the critical time, just before the electric shock of almost falling asleep, when one's thoughts begin to leap around one's head like so many cats having a mad half hour, one is often disposed to mad and peculiar logic, invention, inspiration. Riddles abound and are curiously solved by the absence of directed thought. In this welter of creativity how can one put to good use this untapped brainpower? Thomas Edison was reputed to have invented it in order to think his way through a problem, offline as it were. With that electric shock the ball is dropped, the bang is made, and one is rudely awakened mid-daydream. Like the monk who writes his words unconsciously, quick as a flash, put down everything. Sometimes it makes remarkable sense; in the case of an incredible invention that would solve many of mankind's greatest problems, to wit, "The banana is mightier than the sword.", it turns out to be remarkable nonsense.

Thus, in a similar, yet inevitably forgotten by the morning, manner were borne so many potential new entries here. It's only been ten months. I lost count of the different ways I would usher in the next instalment, confused them over time with new and intriguing introductions I imagined for my next video—another activity that has become delayed beyond measure—and wrote down literally none of them. I could start at the beginning, but just to be contrary I shall ignore temporal mechanics and instead start at the end. I wouldn't want to forget anything now, would I?

The irony is not lost on me that I should be quite the enthusiast of music that was created before I had learned to hold a spoon, let alone a bass guitar: music, on which I have elaborated many times before, whose raison d'être is to look forward: to embrace new technologies, new scales and chord forms, new mash-ups of prevailing genres. They say nostalgia isn't what it used to be. When you've written a diary for a long time, and you started out with such amazing foresight as to use one of those newfangled computing machines in order to make your writings more easily refer back toable, and you're faced with the harsh reality of stonking great paragraphs that, twenty years later, read like so many teenage angst words, nostalgia may be conveniently thrown out of the window and into the bin. Of course, we write at the time to the best of our ability, with all the information that may be to hand. Geddy Lee, for Rush's first album at least, was also the band's lyricist, before someone far more capable joined.

It's self-evident, too, given a longer listen through the catalogue of something of the order of 130 songs, that Geddy's finest Robert Plant impression quickly made way for full-on shrieking (while simultaneously being a better musician than you), which itself in the New Wave and post-New wave days of PPG Wave 2.3s and Simmons drums gave way to more nuanced high notes as experience (and age) demanded. Geddy once said himself, of revisiting the songs making up their famously ill-received Difficult Third Album, Caress of Steel, 'I don't like to go there.' Youthful exuberance was matched only by the naïvety of their expansive songwriting ideas. After all, when you've spent forty years honing your craft, you're bound to look upon your early work with suspicion. But to his—and the band's collective—credit, they soon stopped taking themselves too seriously, increasingly poking fun at themselves and going to town on retrospectiveness. Indeed, where once the compilation album was entitled Chronicles, a mishmash of would-be hits and generically popular songs, later compilations actually were called Retrospective such-and-such. I lost count of how many they did in that vein.

It was on Saturday, two days ago, that I was brought to thinking back in time, to June 29, 2015. It seems so long ago already that bass supremo Chris Squire died. How can a musician like him, a pillar amongst bandmates, be taken from us so soon in the medical world of today? Chris was only 67.

Neil Peart, famed drummer with Rush, outstanding lyricist, commanding author, and perhaps even a role model for introverted people, was also 67. Some things are just not possible. How? I was never a drummer, unless you count air drumming, typified by mastering the pattern that introduces Subdivisions, but my brother is, and I daresay the bottom fell out of his world just as mine did with Squire. I saw Rush perform four times, twice with my brother. We had a ball. For the last year and a half the band was already officially retired, but the sudden finality is jarring. Think too of Family Peart. In 1997–98, within ten months Neil lost both his wife and his daughter, and yet had the strength to pull himself back eventually from enforced solitude to drum again with his best buds, subsequently knocking out two of their best albums since the mid-80s. He regrouped, met Carrie, they made Olivia, and once more everything was right with the world. The Big C then had the temerity to arrive, and burdened Geddy and Alex with faces to show the world that, to respect not just the family but Neil's own desire to avoid the limelight, could not be the face they show themselves. And so the titans of the tricky time signature are laid to rest and fully cemented in rock history.

Our better natures seek elevation
A refuge for the coming night
No one gets to their heaven without a fight

Another fight was probably what I needed, too. I hadn't really had one for quite some time. An occasion, perhaps, for a DIY exorcism. It's too easy to go all retrospective and introspective and lose sight of a new objective. I wouldn't care to visit the road where there be dragons, or octopodes the size of houses, or worse, demons: at least not under the same conditions. That much I learned the very hard way. But this time I had otherwise good reason for some DIY. In a very real sense, it was a chance to catch up with myself, to try to pick up where I left off ten years before. I started with some more typical DIY: brakes, brake pads, discs, steering bearings…a little wiring. The last was essential. Before, I was using for navigation a device I called Dumbass: an outdated iPAQ with a dodgy OS, inside a homemade waterproof box, alongside TomTom's own outboard GPS receiver whose enormous size, to be fair, was probably mostly battery. The iPAQ's battery was unreliable at best, and rather smaller at worst, lasting fractions of an hour unless plugged into a power source. My Africa Twin didn't have an appropriate power source, so I'd made one from good old cigar sockets and a plastic box. But that was then, and this was now, and now meant my Garmin, and/or my phone, and USB. A few quid on eBay, and a couple of afternoons' tinkering time later, I had the power. I'd also saved myself about £45 compared with buying very much the same thing you find pre-made in the motorbike accessory shop.

When I was a car owner, I spent many happy hours turbocharging my way up and down the M6 in Clara the Rover, visiting exotic-sounding, faraway places like Manchester, and Conwy. The reason for those journeys hasn't gone, entirely, although the desire to run a car has, when taking the train often feels like as good an option, assuming I can bring my bike onboard. Of late—the last couple of times in fact—I had to borrow a car to make that kind of journey, the red torpedo on the roof, and behind me no doubt a trail of motorists with their necks snapped in two from sheer incredulousness.

I hadn't had an adventure for ages, and now was the time. S, R and A were visiting from the USA. S had given me plenty of advance notice, which of course I had done nothing about other than block out the time in my work calendar, until train ticket prices were considered to be less fun than burning petrol, and, as we shall see, rubber. I couldn't not make the trip to Wales. Before riding 500 miles along the Erie Canal in 2009, spending my birthday in the city I love more than almost anywhere else—Toronto—I had been further south in good ol' North Carolina to spend a few days with one of my best friends. It was only ill-fortune that my loose itinerary and S and R's movements couldn't coincide, for they were just up the road, in a USAnian kinda way. And of course I couldn't not make the trip, because our personalities are so very similar. A chance to hang out with people who wouldn't bat an eyelid if (or rather, when) I said the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Apart from having to stop in Moffat to wrap my gloved hands around the exhaust pipe, for it was a six-baselayer day and my heated grips (a) stopped working the week before, and (b) were the only thing I didn't know how to fix, and having to stop at Killington Lake later again to find a hot radiator to sit on and to drink even hotter coffee, I had a pretty decent ride to Jodrell Bank. Had my itinerary allowed, I might have pottered for a few hours at the great telescope, but it was cheaper to spend more time riding and less time sleeping in B&Bs so agreeably appointed that they came with enough milk next to the kettle.

The next day, I nearly upended my motorbike after travelling, oh, twenty metres at least, with the rude reminder that gravel is indeed less grippy than tarmac. Then my automatic chain lubricator stopped working. I found a motorbike shop in Crewe, with good stuff and ambivalent staff, and bought an aerosol of racing lube or some such nonsense. The M6 became the M5, and the M5 became the M50 as I blasted south. I changed my itinerary on the hoof because I had a bit more time than I thought. When I was in north Wales, I learned that it's either raining, or about to rain. I reckoned on south Wales being more like Devon, Dohrset, Zummerzet, where people go 'ooh-arrh' and sound like they're a little bit drunk. On my way to the Big Pit at Blaenavon, the road over the top got higher and steeper and even before the summit it was sleeting into my visor. So, not wanting to die horribly, I turned around and rode straight to where S was staying. The weather in south Wales was overjoyed to see the Mistress of Moisture again, so it hailed like mad as I navigated narrow country lanes with even narrower tyre tracks.

I liked S, R and A immediately. S of course I knew from long ago—hi, if you're reading!—and we all talked over our long breakfasts and our even longer expeditions to castles and bird hides, along roads wiggling over hills and down through valleys. Of course, to A I was nobody, so I wasn't overly worried about moody teenagedom amongst so many strangers, although events since then provided some background. I talked shop with S and R and did what I could, but I don't know how much it helped.

The valleys of south Wales mostly run north-south, so that's what I followed to get myself to Chester. Somewhere on the A49 a tree had come down. 'I wish I'd bought one of those when I had the chance!' said a friendly policeman to me, nodding approval at my rather massive motorbike and equally massive luggage boxes hanging off each side, before he explained the diversion route. I got to ride through a flood, too.

It would have been stupid not to carry on following Mark Williams' Industrial Revelations, or 'sites of special scientific interest' you might say. I'd done Dinorwic, the huge slate quarry by Llanberis; I'd been to see my carved stone lions of the Britannia Bridge; I travelled through the Conwy tubular bridge and up the mountain railway; this time my trail led to the great Pontcysyllte (say "pont-keuh-sidll-tie") aqueduct that strides magnificently across the River Dee between Trevor and Froncysyllte, and atop the eighteen stone arches, the merest ribbon of an iron trough that carries the Llangollen Canal. It was brass monkeys weather and blowin' a hoolie, so naturally I clumped out to the middle to take photographs and, of course, to look down.

In the safe and familiar—remarkably familiar, I have to say: even on my first visit so many years ago it felt peculiarly like I'd been there before—streets of Chester, all top-heavy, half-timbered history interspersed with the worst that the 1960s could create, I met my friend J. Such are the complexities of modern life, we manage perhaps to see each other once every two or three years. And such are the burdens of modern life, it's always in Chester. For a change though we ate tapas as we caught up, and I walked the long way back to my last hurrah of luxury: a B&B with woodwork, high ceilings, and paintings of vintage British fighter aircraft on the walls.

At Tebay the next day, for where else does one stop when motoring up the M6?, I happily cooked myself on a huge boulder and ate Dairylea for lunch. By the time I turned off the motorway I was back to warming my hands on the exhaust, while chatting to a guy who had thirteen motorbikes. And by the time I was on the home run it was so foggy I missed the final turn. I had to ride all the way into Big Town before I could turn round.

I'd had nearly 800 miles of wind, rain, frost, sleet, floods, and sunshine, and I bloody well did it.

I can't unimagine the events of eleven years ago; I can't unsee them in my mind, but now I can perhaps try to put them to bed. Like a child who gets shouty and stampy when they're over-tired, a child who cries and cries when the light goes out, a child who can't sleep all the way through the night because mummy isn't there, to say nothing of a full grown adult who ought to know better than to drink two glasses of water before getting into bed, the memories will resurface sooner or later at a time and circumstance of their own choosing. With any good fortune I can temper them, blunt them and leave them in a damp shed to go rusty.

May brought me up to date with what was partly a tribute to my Grandad, who I'm sure would have had kittens, or possibly sabre toothed tiger cubs, had he known about it. I comprehensively failed to live up to his—and my own—engineering expectations, but I share his deep and endless love of nature, particularly insects, and especially moths and butterflies. Despite already having modest artwork on my back and my foot and ankle, I wanted something else, something bigger, something stylin'. I'd initially convinced myself that I wanted it on the inside of my arm, very 21st century and relatively easy to hide, but it was an awkward shape with which to work. While I was fiddling around last year, looking in the mirror and drawing lines on my arm with my lip pencil, someone had asked me, 'Well, where would you want to have it, if no-one else cared?' Where indeed? That was why Morag at Tribe was finishing off my half sleeve tattoo that we'd been working on since the summer before.

'I thought you said this was going to be just a touch up!'
'Oh, well I'm just indulging myself. I'm a bit of a perfectionist.'

More than one person has quietly voiced an expectation that it will extend, inexorably, beautifully, down and around. It may.

What goes up must come down, sooner or later. I kicked off June by talking to my doctor about something I'd never dared discuss before. I touched upon it last time. I'm supposed to be clever, capable, caring, strong, self-assured, self-aware. People like me get into a funk, we get moody, bummed out, depressed, sure, but people like me aren't supposed to have depression. I was scared—I am scared—that it might be true.

I then outdid myself by breaking my beloved touring bike. The alternative was to ram right straight into the little girl who appeared around a corner on her way to school. I would often say that my Lightning was the bike that had never, ever hurt me. Now with its neat little fork folded underneath itself and jammed sideways into my front wheel, my plans for camping at the York Rally two weeks hence were in immediate disarray. It's hard to articulate just how much I love that bike, and how much the damage upset me.

My York backup was my RANS Sequoia, recently converted from smooth commuter to gnarly bikepacking monsterbike. My Lightning goes onto trains without a problem, it's one of the reasons I bought it. My Sequoia is just slightly long wheelbase, and consequently does not easily go onto trains, especially those with bike cubicles and godawful hooks that make me glad I have height and at least a degree of upper body strength. CrossCountry, Virgin/Avanti, and LNER, I'm looking at you. Why do you hate cyclists so very much? I spent the first half an hour of my journey to York arguing with the train guard because my bike didn't fit, and I fumed for ages before eventually calming down with two albums' worth of the most soothing music I could find.

York was sunny and warm. I wandered over to the Abbey, over the river, for lunch, and it was really lovely. I had a great chat with the lady in the chemist, when she asked about my tattoo, as I was buying suntan cream. The morning sun the next day helped the inside of my tent reach 40ºC and was just too hot to lie in. After breakfast I propped myself up in my chair and read my book for what felt like hours, before ambling around the Rally. It was much the same as last year. Small trade tent. ICE Trikes. Brew York. Junk stalls that make The Bike Station look posh. By the mid-afternoon I'd had too much sun and half-slept in my tent. By teatime I was reaching for the co-codamol, which at least did the trick in time for our annual ride down t'path t'pub.

I upped sticks on Sunday afternoon, even though I was booked to stay another night. The weather forecast for the night was thunder and lightning, which was fine except I didn't want to have to pack my tent and sleeping bag and everything the next day in pouring rain. But overwhelmingly, I was amongst sort-of-friends and mostly-bikey-acquaintances, at an event for which I'd been there and got the t-shirt, and I was lonely as hell. So I decided to please myself and found a bed at a rather nice hostel in town. Over dinner I struck up a conversation with tech journalist Deb Shadovitz, and spent Monday morning visiting an old friend. But the windmill was shut. The nuclear bunker I didn't know about before was also shut. I took myself to the railway museum and spent a lot of time pottering amongst the warehouse while the weather, once again so happy that I was in town again, emptied a cloud's worth onto my bike and sleeping bag that was still attached to my handlebar. I caught my train home, went to Mum and Dad's, and had a long cuddle on my own with my cat and cried a little bit.

July came and went.

August was my summer holiday that wasn't. Three weeks with nothing planned wasn't so bad because I had a mountain of DIY to catch up on. I like a spot of DIY. Except I couldn't even enjoy that because, at the last minute, I found I had a job interview to prepare for. That meant I couldn't, and didn't, dare go away anywhere. I stole enough time through the month to make substantial progress rebuilding door jambs and rehanging doors and painting and everything, all the while with half a mind on questions and examples. Later I was back at my doctor to discuss mood and some treatment options, and didn't want to go home afterwards. I walked up the road, around the park the long way, I watched the birds and photographed toadstools, and came back along the main road on the other side of the village. D-Day came, I did my interview, and I sped out of the building as soon as I could and rode home the long, long way.

I so very nearly got the job.

After Chris Squire died, his old sparring partner, frequent collaborator and one-man record industry Billy Sherwood took over the low end in Yes. For his earlier tenure with the band for their The Ladder album, I once described Sherwood as "dull as ditchwater". I actually haven't listened to very much of anything Yes-wise since their Heaven and Earth album, Squire's last, for two reasons.

Firstly, some bands, like Rush, were formed as though forged out of friendship, and stayed together forever and ever. Britain's cerebral, classical, counterpoint to the Canuck trio however was always something of a revolving door. After Jon Anderson left the band, not for the first time but quite possibly for the last time, and Rick Wakeman had left the band, not for the first time either, and indeed a while after Trevor Rabin had left the band, Yes was a hotchpotch of new and old: Steve Howe came back, grew his hair again and looked about a hundred years old; Wakeman, son of Wakeman, tinkled the ivories here and there but the role more properly belonged to Geoff Downes, once of The Buggles, always of Asia, sometimes of Yes. Jon Davison is Jon Anderson, with a velvet voice that could shatter glass; and Sherwood is a Spector guy and not Rickenbacker. Ho hum. They've made so many 'best of' albums that anything new is as likely as not to go under my radar completely.

Back in the day when Yes was effectively Yes West, ABWH came along, Bruford bringing with him the ageless King Crimsonite Tony Levin on bass and stick, and it was otherwise entirely the old Yes. ABWH excited the old guard, made a hi-tech sounding but otherwise rather mediocre album or two and then disbanded, back to KC, Asia, Vangelis, or if you're Wakeman, back to simply cranking out the solo albums. ABWH was a product of its time, the white heat of digitality. Wakeman's cheesy widdling on black plastic Korgs and Rolands was perfectly met by Bruford's hexagonal drums and bonkers sequencing of bleepy sounds that probably belonged in a Doctor Who episode.

ABWH didn't interest me then, and doesn't interest me now. Ah, but what was this? ARW! Anderson, Rabin, Wakeman. Even better, they were playing at the Usher Hall! And then I discovered that tickets were £75. Jaw? Floor. Floor? Jaw. Not so much Yes as Aye, Right.

While Yes were distracting themselves with lineup changes and Cruise to the Edge for all y'all jet setting high hiedyins, I forged a new best band ever. Strangely, it wasn't Gentle Giant, whose multi-instrumentalism and baroque-and-roll stylings supplied me with plenty of enjoyment until I tired of Derek Shulman's precious frontmannery. I don't care that he went on to sign Bon Jovi and, rather more impressively, Dream Theater and Pantera. Hell yeah. I was more drawn to the softy spoken and even more softly sung Kerry Minnear, on Minimoog, clavinet, recorder, cello and a dozen other things. In fact, I was drawn more to the renaissance elements, the more gentle side of Gentle Giant. Put them in a barn with bales of hay, lose the fraught delivery, lose the stomping drums, add someone absolutely shredding on recorder, and replace Precision Bass with bassoon, and you might end up with Gryphon. Who?

The second reason, and this is quite important, is that Gryphon is one of the few bands to give Yes's musicianship a shock. One of the few bands whom you wish had played a longer support set. The last band I saw do that was Skin, who very nearly blew Thunder off the stage. No stranger to the revolving door, the Griffs made five albums in the good old days then went away for thirty years to do professorships in being terribly clever, and perhaps create Kerrang! magazine. And then they came back as though nothing had changed, except possibly Brian Gulland's youthful excess of hair. A new album appeared, no less, and Gulland busily re-establishing himself in the role of class clown could only mean one thing: concerts. And better still, make the tickets less than £20! GG? ARW? Dinosaurs.

The only good thing that came out of my speed bike training with the ARION boys two years ago was a remarkably quick and pleasant working knowledge of Liverpool, a city that I liked a lot. With moderate travel costs and accommodation as cheap as I could find, I was jolly well going to see Gryphon performing. In a way, I wouldn't have wanted them to play anywhere else.

I sightsaw for the afternoon, pottering around the docks and looking at railways and bridges and tunnels. My hostel was scraping the barrel though: the window in my dorm was squint and didn't shut properly, my mattress was full of lumps, the oven in the kitchen didn't work, and the only bread knife I could find was less sharp than school scissors. Still, I was sharing a room with a guy who did a drag act so it wasn't all bad.

The concert, in a grand church a short bike ride from the city centre, was excellent. Gryphon played lots of stuff from the new album, various pieces from the first and second albums, plus a medley of bits from the third. The irreverent onstage manner and modest audience—I reckoned on a hundred or so people there—made the show feel much more like a cosy gig than a concert, and the time they afforded everyone during and after the show, to sign a bit of vinyl or a poster, was lovely. As I was chatting with the two guys from my row, they realised how far I'd come. They said I ought to get a poster or a photo with them. I wasn't much for doing that, and dithered a bit, but went with some encouragement. Before I knew it, the main man from the Liverpool Prog Society rounded up all the band members and got me into the photograph.

October I seemed to spend mostly babysitting. My neighbours came over for tea one day. The little ones were full of beans. We played at being helicopter pilots with my motorbike helmets, and they climbed on me for a while and we did some jumping before having food. But by the end L and I were at the ends of our tethers, the little ones were now bored, because my house is not full of plastic toys, and I was running out of enthusiasm and ideas, so they went home and I flopped.

Another time, my neighbours were away to an evening do, so I took over to lay down the law amidst semi-organised chaos. We did some more jumping, and we played with a balloon, but we eventually resorted to computer games. Bedtime took an hour or thereabouts; afterwards I realised I didn't know how to work the cable TV. Fortunately paperbacks require neither instructions nor electricity, and I got through entire chapters. I stayed a while longer once my neighbours returned, to make sure they were OK, because they were slightly the worse for wear and even more friendly than usual. Possibly thinking out loud, L said it was hard to get any emotions out of me. I was tired, certainly, I was tolerant, I was watchful, but I was also emotionally wary, and embarrassed for them. I've never been in that state, ever, and I daren't, and it's impossible to match the freely flowing love that comes from chemically losing your inhibitions.

I started to wonder if I'm actually habitually anti-relationship. It would explain a lot. There are aggravating factors that I spoke to my doctor about and which, rather unexpectedly, nearly had me in tears. But I go to work on my own, I come home on my own. I read by myself. I listen to music by myself. I play music by myself. I write by myself. I travel by myself. There is a convenience to having the wherewithal and the bloodymindedness to please oneself, temporally if not financially, but gosh darn it when it comes to enjoyment it feels like I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't. I spent Boxing Day morning tinkering in the garage. I wrapped a couple of late Christmas presents, and then…I sat staring at my Christmas tree, as though I was all dressed up and nowhere to go. I could go anywhere and do anything. I could've been out having a microadventure, but I wasn't, and I don't: I think endlessly about the possibilities. I sit, my brain finding its own imagination far more interesting than real life, and without any concrete objectives that might otherwise come to the fore while the weather is agreeable or the day is young, I write about how I can't bring myself to do any of them.

After Christmas, in lieu of objectives I had a last minute, last ditch random ride on my motorbike to the other side of Big Town to watch a train, which turned out to be a different train. I rode around the coast in the hope of photographing some ships but failed to actually do so. There was nothing else for it, so I rode home and dyed my hair purple.

Shreds of black cloud loom in overcast skies

Ten years is a long time. It's a long time to still be mindful of events a decade ago and, if by coincidence, which it may well not be entirely, a long time certainly in which to hold a grudge. And it's a long time to labour under the misapprehension that one can hold a grudge against oneself. Is that even possible?

It is two years—two years!—since I wrote about a journey to buy a bicycle for a small boy who has since grown out of his balance bike so completely that his little legs—legs that soon had the measure of the bike's seatpost at full extent—are now quite capable of running, jumping, and propelling the rest of him up the very juniorest of climbing walls. What of the balance bike but mere memories, of the face that at once lit up at Christmastime and lit up again as his gaze quickly moved onto something else again minutes later. A bike that, in fact, he opined to me that he kept falling off. Best laid plans, it seemed, were at the mercy of the bumpy track and unfriendly road that lay beyond the safe confines of his house and driveway. That lovely little Islabikes Rothan has since been replaced: a birthday present from yours truly being a proper pedally bike, with bright red paint. Not, of course, before I had taken it to bits to regrease and rebuild. The small boy meanwhile shows every sign of growing as tall as his daddy.

It is a year and a half, already, since I moved house: out of the city and into the almost-but-not-quite-country, the village being very nearly connected to the city by slivers of contiguous housing developments whose growth, like the small boy, knows no bounds. But for all my faults I'm still working where I'm working, and therein lies part of the problem, for my commute length more or less doubled, and I spend ever more time riding in order to get anywhere. It only took a year or thereabouts for me to become bored with the same old routes: the same high speed traffic that may or may not be trying to kill me, the same unending hills up which I sweat and grimace, powering 35 kilogrammes of carbon fibre; supposing good weather and/or unusual amounts of energy at the end of the day I might ride the long way home and add five or ten miles to the distance. "BigTown", as the prolific Sally Hinchcliffe puts it, begins but three miles away as the bus drives, and four miles as the car drives, but random journeys to the railway station are now an expedition that requires planning of clothes, timetabling of movements with recovery time for traffic lights and traffic jams; and the vagaries of everyone and their dog trying to do the same commute at the same time requires unearthing myself from bed at a time of the morning that before would have marked a further hour and a half's sleep. It's not all bad, though. I have a nice view, a quiet street with nice neighbours, shops I can walk to in a few minutes, and supermarkets that are a few minutes by bike.

But moving house also meant moving away, not just from people but from the big scaredy tabby cat that I've known and loved for 12 years. I have no facility for a cat flap chez Bex, just acres of double glazing and certainly not the wherewithal to shovel money at Rockdoor. Not having the big boy here nearly breaks my heart.

We bookmark our lives by significant events: starting uni, graduation, starting work, changing job, having children, moving house, having your boobs cut open,…or crashing your motorbike.

It really is that long ago: ten years, and for half of them I've put a ton of miles on the big machine that once upon a time I was putting my heart and soul into repairing. Together we've worn out chains and sprockets and tyres, and we've adventured all the way to, er, Loch Lomond. A long lost tailor in Nottingham doesn't count. My grand plans of Croatia are still an idea, but ebbing away as quickly as the tomfool deadline to leaving Europe advances. It took me a long time to face sitting on a motorbike again, yet the desire hadn't gone away, and indeed, the theory and practice hadn't either. Velma the VFR came, and I spent too much time and money fixing all the stuff the previous owner didn't. I sold my car, tooled around for a year or so on two wheels and later sold up, for Velma was never more than a stopgap.

Yet, I am still burdened by the memories of that terrible afternoon. I'm no longer haunted, but I am burdened, that I should have so easily exceeded my limits, and in doing so set in motion a chain of emotional damage that might never go away. Where once I was organised to a fault, I now find myself slipping. Where once I felt powerful and empowered, I feel suppressed in my abilities. There are possibly compounding factors on which I may not elaborate, lest I open up too much and remove all doubt. I don't have a black dog sitting next to me; if I did it would at least be company. The energy and enthusiasm I had back then, when I decided I would do someting and by golly go right through with it, isn't there anymore, sucked out of me by dented career prospects that themselves were stillborn from so much awkward history when my brain and my outlook was utterly fucked up.

I got through that mindfuck—with flying colours I'm sometimes told, though I rarely believe it—and then I got over my crash, and then somehow I had no more fight in me. That's a long time to be damaged. A year and a half ago, aside from home improvement, the newfound demands of proper lung-bursting training on my bike, watching my heart rate monitor climb and my weight plummet, came to a desperately frustrating end, sliding to a halt on the fourth day on a windswept disused runway in Stockport. When I was meant to be breaking 75mph in a high-tech carbon fibre speedbike in Nevada, I found myself pulling up carpet and painting walls, all the while treading water while watching other people go about their perfect lives in their perfect jobs with their perfect skills.

What, then, of this relentless grudgery? I used to write so much in here, when words flowed out of my fingertips in torrents of angular prose, and I wish I still could. But that particular fight was won long ago and even I have moved on. Not for me is the essay-writing left hidden on some social network that pretends your privacy is worth a damn. I was on the bandwagon way before that: in fact it is 20 years ago this year that I started writing publicly in any quantity. I might have torn up that historical evidence, but here I can still be nobody, with no-one listening, and no-one to tell me that two years is much too long to leave between posts. But what do I write about?

Phil Gould, long the drummer with Level 42, described those halcyon days in the 1980s as like living in a holiday camp, playing the same grinding stuff day after day, the subjects of the songs akin to the bland leading the bland. With nothing to fight for, nothing to spit at and no walls to kick down, what does one do? Shiny pop sensibilities wrote of little other than beautiful girls, guys in sharp suits, and the exciting world of foreign travel, but they came hot on the heels of the bleak years of three-day weeks, high rises with damp problems, drugs, and concrete playgrounds. Those punk years had something to rally against. And they had been preceded by several years of increasingly complex, overblown and hyper-musical songs about swords and sorcery, spiritualism and science, years that were themselves descended from the exuberant positivity of the sixties and technological tours de force. Just as some bands failed to evolve their music while others did to great acclaim, albeit with some turkeys along the way, perhaps I need to find my angle again. What do I have to be angry about? Or passionate about?

It had been so long, so very long, that I had to challenge myself today just to see if I could even still tear it up on my Rickenbacker. My fingernails on my fretting hand are too long, and my strings sound like rubber bands. I hardly play anymore, not just being time-poor Monday to Friday, but soundproofing-poor, with a dividing wall that has turned out to be less capable than I had hoped, and internal walls that make papier mâché look highly engineered. But I've mostly still got my chops.

So what then, of this relentless grudgery? There was never anger: I'm either too laid back or too tired to ever be angry for very long, but depression is perhaps merely anger without enthusiasm. There was shock, and there is sorrow, overlaid by the sense that for all this time I've berated myself for making a stupid decision so long ago, and being desperately mindful of its effects ever since: effects from which I cannot seem to escape.

14 More Words

schuum-en-hauff

Volkswagen Golfs are not, to my knowledge, fitted with studio quality audio systems, and while acoustics engineers can no doubt work miracles in their fine tuning of the frequency response of car interiors, battling the incessant drone of rubber on tarmac—and have you realised just how loud it is, these days, as a BMW X5 roars past?—and the interrelated breathing of door panels and dashboards, I wasn't hearing the whole thing. I didn't realise it at the time, or rather that I simply forgot, as I sat back and let the new music surround me and wash over me. And "wash" is not so far from the truth. I was driving down The Great North Road and having a really rather lovely time of it.

iceglide

Spinning in the dashboard was an album by an artist whose works to me are largely unknown listening, an artist long of British applause, at once steeped in mystery yet revered as she flounced around in front of a camera with Vaseline smeared on the lens. A pop artist. Good heavens, have I taken leave of my senses? I wouldn't have taken this route at all if it weren't for a remarkable diversion of tradition on the part of the German online music magazine, laut.de, and its myriad internet radio stations; specifically one specialising in progressive rock, that one finds more likely to bring to the listener Gong, or Can, or King Crimson, Barclay James Harvest, Gryphon, Brand X, Caravan, Curved Air and so on. There's a lot of Canterbury sound in there, too, which is no bad thing, but it's perhaps a reflection of when I have time to tune in.

whisperspikes

Why was my radio station playing pop? It's not mutually exclusive; it depends on one's definition of popular, and indeed, progressive. Forward looking. Inventive. Experimental. Constantly developing and changing. ELP, now so sadly reduced to P, weren't known for filling a concert with just their latest numbers, rather, the dozen classic pieces audiences wanted to hear. Rush, still very much a trio but sadly winding down, and who had a mission to change as much as possible from album to album, found itself forever cast in the prog mould of swords and sorcery, even in the later years of soaring synthesiser leads and Top Man jackets with the sleeves rolled up. Prog doesn't overly concern itself with "She loves you yeah yeah yeah", even if those particular writers went on to thoroughly sow the seeds of progressivism . . . and here I was with a pop artist in my hands.

astramillealba

I had 130 miles to drive down the east coast, and it had been many years since I'd undertaken a similar journey. I had happy memories of that occasion too, when I reeled off the 200 miles to York in the company of Pat Metheny on Radio 2. My Windcheetah trike was stowed alongside me, and I was on my way to the York Cycle Show for the very first time. Today I was making another bicycle related trip, with an altogether smaller objective.

flimpleflample

It wasn't really a pop album at all. There was no standard approach here, no verse-verse-chorus-verse, no solo, not even a chiming DX7; no frenetic repetitive drum beat, no-one behind the microphone, all hair, gyrating with half her clothes missing…and certainly no studenty guys all short-back-and-sides and a leather tie, coaxing swooping sounds from an old Oberheim, and definitely no glitter-caped raconteurs encouraging the wheezing and swelling bellow of a church organ. Nothing like that at all: just piano—simple but choice piano—some string bass, some gentle guitar and drums here and there…and that huge vocal range: bluesy at one end; a mellowing shrill whistle at the other. If the music had been any more relaxing I might have stopped in a lay-by and gone to sleep.

crystallissimo

The radio station, on the day, had played only the title track from the album, before moving on to something more traditional, and yet I was captivated. The interplay between a deeply sonorous, professorial voice and the singing. The drumming was a shoulder and hip–wriggling shuffle to end all shuffles. And of all the subjects, it seemed to be a song about wintertime! I knew that the artist had come out of hiding, as it were, of late and I presumed that this was the New Work, the triumphant return to form. And so it happened that the next day I ordered an album by none other than Kate Bush, and not knowing quite what to expect. I'd bought many albums before on the strength of just one song, Thunder's Behind Closed Doors and Van Halen's Balance being two of the earliest instances I can remember; more recently, Le Orme's La Via Della Seta took its name from its last song, and I bought Ze Słowem Beignę Do Ceibe, by SBB, purely on hearing "Przed Premierą": one advantage of the internet-based radio being, listeners' patience notwithstanding, unlimited scope to play anything longer than three-oh-five. In the test of time, neither Thunder nor Van Halen really stuck with me in the way that others did; less of the rock and more of the prog, perhaps.

hexamagica

I shuffled around on the car seat and tapped along on the steering wheel, making the best of an otherwise miserable day; the rain couldn't decide whether to be drizzle or proper, and eventually I tired of turning the windscreen wipers on and off, and left them on. I didn't care much for the automatic setting that seemed to kick in only once the screen was speckled so much that it became hard to see through.

skutchenploshen

An hour or so later I was still listening to the gentle tides of piano, having surfaced occasionally for lyrics about city streets and melting snowmen, and hearing a guest singer who was none other than Elton John! I'm not the world's foremost fan of dear Mr John, though I quite enjoyed his cover with RuPaul of Don't Go Breaking My Heart, yet here he sounded deep and serious and thoughtful. Who knew? Before very long, and probably when I was well on my way towards Alnwick, I started to recognise certain phrases: a piano chord here, a vocal phrase there. Not only had I listened to the whole album, I was now on lap two. I was still en route, and not wanting to spoil the experience, for I'm no stranger to overlistening to new music – as was someone at university who was so mad for Kula Shaker's Hey Dude that he played it over and over and over, ad dementia!! – so I opted for some equally mellow Classic FM.

microrain

With rain and more rain, and a mild diversion to the monotony thanks to a broken down van on possibly the narrowest section of the A1, I arrived in Morpeth. The sun actually came out. The objective was Christmas present-picking-up, for a little boy who has yet to learn to ride a bicycle. In. Chat for a few minutes. Out. No sooner said than done I was on the road, retracing my steps northwards. I put some music on again.

perfectocrunch

I well remember the tinniness of music played in a car. It sounded like Tony Colton's mixing desk in 1970. You might hear a pin drop but any frequency below that seemed to disappear. When Max Power magazine came to prominence twenty-five years later, suddenly every Vauxhall Nova seemed to sport a bootful of shiny aluminium heatsinks and at least two honking great speakers. If you were older, or richer, or both, you took the back seats out and turned your car into a laboratory experiment with the sole objective measured in decibels by people wearing white coats, or possibly white tracksuits, with additional visual evidence from banks of equalisers with dancing LEDs. What a lot of nonsense. If you were classy, though, you pulled apart your dashboard and doors and installed components with labels like "Celestion" and "Fostex", and the thickest speaker cable this side of a BBC Outside Broadcast van. But twenty years of aerodynamic research has pared down the wind noise to an amazing degree, while the tyre makers have decided wider is better and wider is louder so louder is better, but the boffins in the anechoic chambers have been left to their own devices. Now the cockpit of your Golf is so luxuriously appointed and rattle-free that all you can hear are rampant bass frequencies.

featherjam

None of this even crossed my mind as I stopped for a sandwich at a car park, home to myriad up-and-down-the-country lunch stops from years gone by. Coldstream wasn't part of my itinerary, actually. After a diversion before Berwick that, on paper as I learned afterwards, was far shorter than I imagined, I decided to be clever and short cut cross-country, but my GPS was for recording where I went, not where I was going, and even less for button-pressing while on the move; my big road atlas was spreadeagled on the passenger seat but there was nowhere to stop to read it. The not entirely unexpected result was that I found myself going south and west from Berwick instead of north and west. It's called an adventure. The day was still young, at any rate, and I wasn't in a hurry. I chewed slowly on peanut butter and strolled absently around the tarmac. Come on now, just 50 miles to go.

naturecrete

Back home, finally, away from the miasma of motorways and surburbia, was the chance to invoke some hi-fi.

I closed my eyes and listened for a time, and Kate's voice soared in the quiet. "I am sky, and here…"

tinderfris'n

cryoclastic flow . . .

snow.

Eyes are focussed on some far off galaxy

The BBC weather forecast had reckoned it was going to chuck down overnight, cloudy and wet on Sunday and, as if that wasn't weather enough, thunder and lightning on the Monday, when I was planning to resume the cycling bit of my tour. The wind was certainly up that night, and as a result, so was I, watching my inner tent flapping around and listening to the unending patter of rain on the outer tent.

Morning came at long last, though my heart sank a little when I realised that it was still blowing a gale out there. I opened the door a fraction to survey the situation. Other tents were still standing, as was the motorbike, so it hadn't been that bad a night really. Not exactly Hilleberg-in-the-Alps, here in the Fisher Price hills of north Wales. I ate my breakfast while still wrapped up in my sleeping bag. The good thing about it being the height of summer and cold enough to make you wear all your extra clothes is that milk doesn't go off for at least 48 hours.

I'd had the idea to bring my new sandals with me, to save me walking everywhere in my cycling shoes with their steel cleats crunching over every little bump on the pavement. There'd been room to stow them at the bottom of a pannier, although that meant not bringing my folding seat. The grass was sodden and quelched as I left my tent for the road down to the village. I decided that my socks would dry out quicker than bike shoes. With my skiing baselayer on and my fleece and my Goretex jacket, and my lycra legwarmers keeping my calf muscles warm after a fashion, I realised that my body heat was being sucked out through my feet. There was nothing for it but to get cold. I couldn't buy extra clothes because I didn't have any more room on the bike to carry anything. I waved goodbye to my motorbiker friend and padded my way down the hill. The clouds were overjoyed to see their Mistress of Moisture again, and began drizzling.

I arrived at the Snowdon Mountain Railway ticket office. 'I'm afraid,' started the lady behind the counter—and I already knew what was coming because I'd spent some time the day before studying the printed out weather forecast in the window of the outdoors shop—'that we're not going to the summit today. The wind is gusting to 60 miles an hour up there, so we're going to take you as far as Rocky Valley. It's too dangerous to go any further.'
'Mmm, I thought that might be the case. And after yesterday afternoon, as well! Where's Rocky Valley?'
'That's the platform five-eighths of the way up. There's a good view over the side if the clouds don't come down too far.'
'Well let's do what we can. Thank you,' and I wandered off to waste half an hour.

"I'm beginning to want to go home. Supposedly the weather will be better by Wednesday/Thursday. This is me having better weather by taking my annual leave earlier in the year."

I parked myself in the station cafe and bought some overpriced coffee to warm myself up a bit. Eventually I took myself over to the platform where a small green steam engine was hissing happily to itself, behind a neat wooden coach with brass handles and no double glazing.

'Tickets please,' said the assistant, '…thank you. You can board now if you like, and you can sit anywhere.'
'Thanks.'

I went down the platform to say hello to the little locomotive, No. 6 Padarn, with her tall chimney, sloping boiler adorned with pipes and valves and even a gauge glass, and square water tanks in front of the cab. The boiler slopes down towards the front so that on the mountain it is more or less level, otherwise it wouldn't generate steam properly. Ahead of the platforms are the water column, the coaling stage and workshops, and a network of points made complex by the central rack. No ordinary engine no matter how powerful would be able to climb a railway that averages 1 in 5, even with sanders on full. Wheels would simply slip uselessly. On a mountain railway, the rails are purely for trundling on, and all the driving is done using gear wheels mounted on the axles of the locomotive. The gear wheels engage with a staggered rack between the rails, and a gripper, a little like the system used by cable-hauled trams, runs either side of the rack. This way it becomes almost impossible for the locomotive to run out of brakes or to derail itself. With all that knowledge safe in my head I took a seat in the carriage.

I'd opted for the "Heritage" experience. Why would you go to Snowdon and be taken up the mountain by a diesel? Smelly, droning things those, full of bluff and bluster and conceit. Not like a steam engine, who works hard for a living and becomes immortalised in small books for children. The Heritage experience also buys you wooden slatted seats that don't even come with cushions. The carriage filled up gradually, and our departure time came and went. It seemed we were still waiting on some more people. The more people who took seats, the more the windows steamed up. So now we were having a trip up an improbable railway that wasn't going to the top, but that wouldn't matter because we wouldn't be able to see anything anyway. I switched on my GPS so that I'd at least have the evidence.

A peep from the whistle signalled 10.50 precisely, and with a hefty jolt as the brakes came off we powered out of the station at all of five miles an hour. The track rose up at a crazy angle in front of us, and driver opened the regulator. We crept up to seven miles an hour, eight, almost. Padarn began breathing heavily as she took the weight of the carriage in front of her and pushed it up the hill, her gear wheels digging deeply into the rack and her exhaust darkening. The drizzle had turned to torrential mist that in the wind battered the windows of the carriage. But the weight of the passengers held us firm on the track, and as we left behind the gorges, spanned by small viaducts that looked not a million miles away from the lift hill on a roller coaster, the mountain started to open out beside us.

Padarn made slow but surprisingly steady progress up the mountain. I looked back as we passed Waterfall Halt and wasn't entirely sure that I couldn't see Llwyn Celyn Bach in the distance and perhaps even my tent, a tiny green blotch on a hillside. After ten minutes we slowed to walking pace, at the passing loop of Hebron Station to let a train descend. Another ten minutes and we came to Halfway Station. Padarn came to a stop because she was almost out of water. Her builder was the Swiss Locomotive Company, highly experienced in rack railway engines, but they didn't give her very big tanks. Even her small cylinders and superheated boiler weren't enough to compete with the full length of the Snowdon railway.

Down the hill to the right was the Llanberis Path, also known as The Pig Track, and it was busy with hundreds of fell runners with numbers on their backs. Some in tracksuits, some in shorts, all of them stick thin and designed for running up hills. The weather was horrible and I didn't envy them.

It only took six minutes to fill up Padarn's water. Another jolt and her throaty exhaust note filled the air. I hadn't realised until now that the windows of our carriage were see-through again, and I pulled my fleece as high up my neck as it would go. The cloud was still above us, while the wind seemed to have died down along with the rain. At 11.23 we stopped again.

'Ladies and gentleman, this is as far as we can go today,' our conductoress announced. 'This is Rocky Valley. You can see why if you look to your left.'

We were at 680 metres (2230 feet). If you stepped out five feet from the railway at this point you would plummet 500 metres into a rocky green nothingness, and end up on the Pass of Llanberis. The Victorians certainly had guts. As I looked around I noticed that the grass and the shrubs were all bent over at an angle, waving around as the wind tugged at them. In fact if you tried to step out five feet from the railway at this point, you'd've been blown off the edge before you'd covered three feet.

The celebrated railway photographer, Henry Casserley, recalled the story of the very first passenger trips up Snowdon in April 1896. His account was slightly fanciful, if no less alarming than the truth. The inaugural train up Snowdon was propelled by No. 2 Enid. Her journey to the summit was made successfully, with a carriage full of passengers. Two more carriages were put on the next train, controlled by No. 1, an engine called LADAS, short for Laura Alice Duff Assheton-Smith, who was the local landowner; Enid was her daughter. LADAS the steam engine was to have a very short life.

LADAS took the first return journey and set off down the hill. As she neared Clogwyn Station she lost her grip on the rack. Her handbrake failed against the rapid acceleration, and her driver and fireman managed to jump to safety. As LADAS hurtled down the line she derailed on the next turn and plunged over the mountainside. Her carriages, having their own automatic brakes and a brakeman, brought themselves to a stop and all aboard were uninjured. But not before a passenger, Ellis Roberts, expecting the worst when he saw the enginemen jump clear, did the same. As he landed he cut his head badly, and he later died from his injury.

Worse, as LADAS left the track near the station she tore through the signal wires. After waiting 45 minutes in thick fog at the mountain's summit, Enid's driver believed the line was surely clear and started down the hill. As Enid reached the point above Clogwyn Station she too lost her grip on the rack, and ran into the carriages that LADAS had left behind. The impact jolted Enid back onto the rack and her driver was able to bring her to a stop, but the brakes on the carriages were overcome and they were derailed at the station.

An inquiry discovered that both engines lost their footing, not because of any problem with the rails, but because the rack had settled since the track was constructed. This, they believed, was caused by subsidence resulting from melting snow and possibly poor transitions in the gradient, for each piece of rack was several feet long and as straight as a ruler. Following the incident they installed the gripper arrangement on the steepest parts of the railway. While no harm came to Enid, LADAS had landed upside down 2000 feet below and she was completely destroyed. No engine at Snowdon has carried her number since.

We stayed at Rocky Valley for about ten more minutes before setting off back down to terra firma. I changed seats to be closer to Padarn and to get a better view over Llanberis and beyond. Perhaps understandably, our brakewoman declined to tell us the story of the little engine that went over the side.

After the station I still had almost a whole day in hand and it wasn't even lunchtime. It was raining as I rounded the shores of Llyn Padarn and Llyn Peris, dodging around the fell runners who were seemingly going in both directions, some towards Snowdon while others, the faster ones perhaps, were heading around to the marquees and the finishing line, and possibly a space blanket or two. With my memories of Mark Williams (the Brummy one on The Fast Show, and more recently, Father Brown) enthusing about ye olde tyme slate industry, I headed towards the grand arched entrance of Dinorwic Slate Museum.

Of course slate is grey, but nothing quite prepares you for the incredible greyness when every building is made from it. They call Aberdeen 'the granite city', in its coarse grained, ever so slightly sparkly but otherwise unyielding monotonality. But slate is a darker grey, perhaps polished and shiny, perhaps matt and roughly squared, and even darker in the persistent rain of Snowdonia. It was a grey day alright.

The tour of the museum, such as it is laid out in a rather nicely produced little map, took me from the centre of the enclosure to each of the rooms and workshops in turn. At first I wandered around haphazardly, trying not to look at everything too quickly, then deciding to follow the route. Just to be contrary I ended up doing the first bit back to front. The museum wasn't always a museum, mind you, not with that gigantic water wheel and casting shop and legions of massive machine tools. It was the epicentre of Dinorwic quarry operations, where men were men and Things Were Made. Now though you can buy souvenirs so heavy they'll strain your shoulder and cut a hole in your bag. That wasn't a problem because my bag was already full to bursting.

After seeing most of what there was to see I was freezing cold and aimed myself at the cafe. Some encouragingly thick leek soup and a pot of tea warmed me up, and some of the moistest banana loaf I've ever had gave me some energy. I finished off my visit watching a short film about the history of the quarry, and how one can bring to bear the power of black powder and coal and steam upon the land and by golly carve away the whole side of a mountain.

It was still raining, on and off, as I returned to Llanberis high street—as if there were many other streets to wander along—by which time I was cold again. 'Outdoors shop, now!' I said to myself, with waterproofing being my newfound interest. Not just out of becoming fed up, either, for it would put a real crimp on my holiday if my down sleeping bag became wet while it was stowed in my pannier. I did wonder whether it might be afforded some protection from my sleeping mat and everything else that was stuffed alongside, the way tightly packed paper files in an archive are surprisingly fireproof, but my panniers were only water resistant. I didn't particularly fancy repeating my earlier experience of riding through two thunderstorms and finding my plane tickets home were becoming soggy. I did learn something from that holiday, because at least all my maps (and train tickets home) this time were carefully sealed in plastic bags. However I only had with me my woolly hat and my cycling cap, and a waterproof hat was suddenly terribly attractive. Alongside browsing titanium cooking pots and USB powered lamps and a hundred other cool things I didn't need, it only took me an hour to decide which hat to buy.

It was then that I realised I'd forgotten all about the ticket office at the mountain railway. After all, I'd paid (in advance) to go to the summit, and we had all been promised a partial refund. My grey day continued when I discovered the ticket office was now shut, and I stomped back along the road again.

The supermarket cheered me up slightly on account of having chocolate milk on the shelf, along with the most expensive punnet of raspberries I'd ever dared buy. Back at Camp Bex I made more tea, and then really pushed the boat by having cold sandwiches for dinner, having saved them from lunchtime. And with no cream or yoghurt to make dessert more exciting, I ate all my raspberries au naturel.

"I can understand why people go to hot places and drive cars. It just keeps RAINING!"

I sat inside my tent with a tummy full of my ultra-low frills dinner, and started worrying. It was a strange mix of fear, of trying to be too ambitious and coming a cropper somewhere (the rain, plus or minus my planned daily distance), and hope, that I would able to tough it out all the way to Pendine. The notable lack of a) a hairdryer, and b) a tent door that didn't drip every time I opened it, really did start to get to me. It's not like I didn't have any shampoo with me, but were I more into the whole rufty-tufty camping thing, I probably would be wearing my hair much shorter, instead of my untidy plait down one side to try to keep it all out of the way.

Pulling out my map, for I was still on my well-thumbed OS Explorer—we were nowhere near getting onto Landranger no. 124—the railway lines started to intrude into my oh-so-carefully programmed itinerary.

'What if I go a different way tomorrow?' I asked myself.
'Now you've done it,' my brain said to my heart. 'You've only gone and started thinking of excuses.'
'Well I'm fed up, you know. I'm sick of feeling cold and wet. This is my summer holiday and I just want a little bit of sunshine.'
'Well you'll have to make a decision. Tabitha and I are going to ride to Caernarfon Castle tomorrow, and then the road goes to the left and Porthmadog, or to the right and back to the Britannia Bridge and Bangor, and you'll have to tell us which way to turn the handlebars.'
'I've made all these plans, booked all these places to stay, I've got myself to the middle of bloody nowhere in fog and wind and rain, and now I don't know what I want to do.'
'Porthmadog isn't really that far, you know.'
'But I'm not staying there, I'm in the campsite on the far side of the valley. It was hard enough riding over the top to Llanberis yesterday.'
'What kind of rubbish cyclist are you? You've got a pannierful of Jelly Babies and chocolate milk, and those big velomobile muscles. I dare you.'
'I know, I know. It's not that bit I'm worried about, it's afterwards: that big diversion I might have to do if I miss my train. It's an extra 24 miles. And after Aberystwyth the railway runs out. I have to make that bit work too.'
'What's 60 miles? You're supposed to be an expert at this stuff.'
'It might be 70 miles. I think I miscalculated, and it might be hilly again.'
'Pedal for Scotland was only 65 miles.'
'I wasn't hauling a metric tonne of stuff with me that day.'
'Well if you turn right you won't be doing any more little train rides or museums. Where are you going to stay? And you'll have to buy another train ticket to get home.'
'I know. Shut up, I'm thinking.'
'I'm just saying.'
'Shut up!'

The weather was delighted that I was still in Snowdonia, so it was drizzling the next morning. My bike was still propped against the stone wall which was still affording no protection from the elements whatsoever. At least the wind overnight hadn't managed to dislodge the plastic bag I'd put over the seat cushion. In a rare few minutes when the weather calmed I managed to tear down my tent and pack all my bags. I was already hugely enjoying my new hat. At first my gears didn't work; thirty-six hours of wet probably wasn't good for them, and my front brake blocks sounded like they were made from sandpaper. My first port of call was that outdoors shop, where I added to this season's waterproof collection with a pair of rucksack covers. A mile or two down the road I decided to use them.

Caernarfon was actually only a few more miles from Llanberis and I covered the distance in fairly short order. I managed a faint and rather ironic smile because now that I was near the coast again, I'd left that no-good mountain weather behind and it wasn't raining. In fact, it was almost sunny. I did a circuit of the castle, immediately got lost and rode the wrong way down a one-way street. I could see the coast and the Menai Strait, and Anglesey beyond. I sighed heavily at the loss of my itinerary and started out for Bangor.

The first few miles were along the trackbed of an old railway line, in fact the very one I'd been told about two days before. Once upon a time this was the London & North Western Railway's Bangor and Caernarfon Branch; to the south one could travel to Pen-y-groes and the quarries by Tal-y-sarn, and on the south coast, Pwleheli and Criccieth. Later it all became part of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway; in 1972 the tracks east from Caernarfon were torn up. Now though it was pretty efficient by bicycle and quietly scenic. It was better than belting along the A487 amongst the car drivers. On the outskirts of Bangor I passed the road that led to the long grind towards Llanberis, and then I took the wrong exit on a roundabout. Had I known where I was going I wouldn't have worried, but with some dead reckoning and a conveniently appearing short lane with hairpin bends I was able to rejoin the road past the Britannia Bridge. Everything was becoming very familiar as I hauled myself to the top of the town. It's so built on now that for the passing traveller there's no view over the Menai Straits anyway. Next stop: Bangor railway station.

The train was late, and I was now cold again, sitting on the platform for about 45 minutes. Presently my ride home arrived and I shoehorned my bike onboard. After emerging from the long tunnel under Minffordd the scenery jarred. It was fun, but galling too, to see the paths I'd ridden along only two and three days earlier. So much for adventure. Conwy tubular bridge was welcome, and if nothing else I could tick off another item on my 'places to go' list. All too soon I was back in Chester station, so I enquired about a ticket home, and then shuffled off to think about the rest of my day, riding around the block the long way and checking out possible places to spend the night. I returned to the railway station, my mind made up, and bought an 0630 reservation for the direct train.

I was only a week early in dropping by at my friend's house, but it was good to see her and catch up for an hour or two. With the last few electrons in my phone, whose ancient battery was so completely awful that two phone calls would flatten it completely, I called a couple of hostels, booked myself in, and then cycled over there to dump my bags and my bike. I looked like hell, quite honestly. I made the best I could in the meantime, unpacked and then flopped for a while. I met my friends at the station, and we ambled around the old town for a while to find somewhere to eat, deciding in the end on cheap fish and chips in an even cheaper cafe. It was OK, all things considered.

After fond goodbyes it was back to the hostel for me, an early night, rubbish sleep, and an early morning in which my evening of careful packing and re-packing enabled me to creep out of the dorm without waking anyone. I wasn't there long enough to get to know anyone, of course, but good manners cost nothing and I suppose it all counts.

By lunchtime I was home. I unpacked in a half-hearted manner, laid out my tent, and wondered where on earth it all went wrong.

The road leads cursed and charmed

The A55 from Chester to Bangor is a lovely road, a great big smooth dual carriageway. It flows through green countryside following the contours and skirts the flatlands by the coast. It plays catch with the railway that threads its own way along the coast and past cliff faces. After Conwy it takes on an alpine air as it hugs the hills, twists and turns on enormous elevated concrete viaducts, and plunges gleefully into excitingly dark tunnels guarded by big signs with red and green lights.

If you're a cyclist, the A55 is a total pain in the arse.

It used to be worse. At one time, and not so very long ago, it was practically impossible to cycle west out of Conwy and stay within sight of the coast. You could do it, but it involved a narrow footway right next to traffic coming towards you at 60mph. Then someone had a huge injection of cash, and infrastructure was built. Great steel bridges were erected. Cliff faces were tamed with Gabion baskets and dovetailed concrete slabs and huge bolts. Parapet walls were rebuilt, footways were resurfaced and widened. It was this newfangled cycling facility that lured me—dared me—to Wales to try it out. Mainly for research purposes, you understand, and partly out of bloodymindedness. My itinerary for the day was fewer miles than Chester to Rhôs on Sea, but more industrial. And not just in the sights.

I always have a bit of a blind spot taking down my tent: I stand and stare at it, hands on hips, trying to work out whether to unpeg it first and then pull the poles out, or the other way around, or a bit of both. Do I fold it neatly, or stuff it? As it was, I was ready to leave Dinarth Hall before ten o'clock. I fared better than some others on the campsite, though. Several people had left their four-poster gazebos standing when they went to bed, and the wind overnight took down every one of them. But while they luxuriated in their duvets under rigid fibreglass, and I in my cosy little down bag, I had a pretty poor night as my tent's fly flapped this way and that. Broken sleep does strange things to you.

"Dreamed that I watched a Deltic rounding a tight left-hand turn at Prestonpans (!) and it overturned almost where I was standing watching! Class 91s in Electra livery came to the rescue.

I looked at the sky and it was overcast. The wind was still up, too, but at least the air pressure had crept up a fraction to 1013mb. But it's only weather, and I had a waterproof with me just in case. The campsite had a back lane with a gate at the end. I'd seen it when I arrived and was choosing my pitch, but I'd presumed that it would be locked. After all, you can't have every Tom, Dick and Harry rocking up with their seventeen-person canvas headquarters and flushing your toilets like they own the place. I therefore had to go right the way around the farm, past my supermarket and along and down, saying hello to the back gate on my way. As I made my merry way through the country lanes I realised that I hadn't refilled my water bottles again. I remembered the cold water tap and decided I'd stop by. Well if the back gate wasn't only bloody well wide open! I rode past my former tent pitch, filled up, and hauled my heavy bike back on the way to tubular bridge country. At least it was a pleasant two-mile warm up.

Getting to Conwy was surprisingly difficult. I wafted around the edge of Llandudno Junction and saw the bridges over the river, first Stephenson's baby tubular railway bridge, behind it Telford's chain suspension road bridge, and behind that the modern concrete arch road bridge that carries the traffic nowadays. I would have happily followed the signs and stayed on the A547 but the Sustrans route took me on a wild goose chase away from the roundabout I was nearly at, under the big scary road, through an industrial estate and dumped me on the road north heading towards Platt and Conwy Bay. This wasn't where was I meant to be going.

'For crying out loud!' I shouted, stabbing the zoom buttons on my GPS, turning right and putting back on my Experienced Cyclist hat. I powered up to the roundabout, hauled my bike hard right and headed down the promontory. I jinked left at the last minute to take the Telford bridge over the river and hit the brakes. 'What? A Pound?' I exclaimed as I saw that the bridge was gated and a fare was chargeable. It might be a National Trust site and quite rightly, but it was ridiculous. I'd walked the bridge before, from the castle side with a friend, and I've no idea if we were supposed to have paid or not for the privilege. Where on earth was the cycle route?

'Oh for heaven's sake!' I shouted, and I launched myself into the mêlée of cars being driven ten to the dozen into the historic town.

It should be noted that the cycle route does in fact exist. Just after going under Big Scary Road you turn right and go up a ramp with a hairpin corner halfway up, and it brings you out onto the footway on the north side of the road. Simple. Of course this means you're still on the wrong side of the road when you get to the other end.

I did think about pottering around Conwy castle. After a brief circuit of the car park, an inspection of the entry fee, and my own darkening mood, I did a brief circuit of the town instead. It took several minutes to locate a way out, eventually finding a ludicrously steep descending lane that in turn fed me onto the coastal path. My mood brightened, I spun my way around the bay for half a mile or so and stopped to take some photographs. Out past the golf course and I was back in the countryside and as the motorists disappeared into the Penmaenbach Tunnels, I took on the infrastructure.

For the most part, it was very hard work. While motorists with unlimited horsepower glided past without a care in the world for gradient, and diesel trains rumbled along happily right by the sea wall, the cycle route lurched up and down, threaded its way through sheer cliffs and did right-angled turns past sharp-edged walls that caught my panniers more than once. To give Wales credit, there was barely any cycle route before, and they couldn't just magic a fantastical Dutch expressway out of thin air. "Shoehorned" might describe it. At Penmaenmawr the path opened out to a wide, paved promenade with a cafe and a playground and some shelters for weary travellers. It was a Saturday morning, and the place was almost deserted. The cafe and its occasional patron had a tired, motorway service station look, which is not that great loss considering the nondescript Edwardian promenade of much the same format that was swept away in the A55's construction. I sat out of the wind in one of the shelters and ate a banana and some flapjack. I looked up at the hillside and could make out a series of inclines and galleries and a few stone buildings. Quarries! Now I was getting somewhere, because quarries meant slate, probably, and slate meant I was on my way to Snowdon central.

The unlucky westbound cyclist from Penmaenmawr has to cope with an amazing construction. From sea level one is required to ride up an unsurfaced access road with a gradient of about 1 in 5. Add a camping load and it might as well be 1 in 1. Then, as the A55 hammers overhead on its massive columns, one navigates a series of hairpin bends bookmarking steeply graded ramps that would give a wheelchair user friction burns, all the while climbing madly to reach the top: the old road to Bangor, which here is of course Penmaenmawr high street. This convenient gash in the landscape so ably filled by enterprising civil engineers, clearly imagining all cyclists to possess thighs like Robert Förstemann, was in fact once the inclined tramway leading to (and from) the great Penmaen-mawr Quarries whose output once upon a time departed from the nearby jetty, now but a series of stumps. And in the process the top of Penmaenmawr mountain—literally "Head of the Great Stone"—was completely quarried away.

Having made it up onto the old road you can't stay on it, because it was subsumed by the dual carriageway. Instead, the cycle path diverts to sweep grandly over the road on a new bridge. One is afforded a splendid view of the Pen-y-clip Tunnel, and then the route cuts away and hides itself inland next to the eastbound carriageway. The land rises and falls again and, around the other side of the mountain, another new bridge takes you across the westbound lanes again. After so much buggering about, stop-start riding and winkling around corners, I arrived in Llanfairfechan. I'd been working on the bike hard enough that I'd quite forgotten about whether it was trying to rain or trying to be sunny and summery.

Sustrans gets a bad rap from a fair number of cyclists. Most of the complaints come from the highly experienced, or the fast and vehicular, or those riding trikes, towing trailers, or riding anything that isn't a cookie cutter "bicycle". Tandemistas, recumbent riders, and occasionally a lone velomobile pilot, know it all too well. I've strayed too close already to the epithet, "Sustrans barrier", but a greater percentage of the big S's route mileage is on good old blacktop, carefully surveyed, cycled, signposted and stickered. But after Llanfairfechan they really outdid themselves.

To be fair, there weren't many alternatives. I followed the old road to Abergwygregyn where at the big junction most people pointed their cars at one of the snaking little slip roads, to play with the other cars on the A55. My route turned south past a farm and immediately started climbing towards the trees. It was only the bitiest of country lanes, with tall hedgerows and overgrown gates to fields. I was concerned that a tractor, Chelsea or actual, might come thundering down the hill and not see until it was too late this laden cyclist winching along her lowest ratios. It was slow going and summer had arrived, so I crested a rise and parked under some trees and ate more flapjack. I could see the main road low down in the distance, on the flats before the sea.

After Crymlyn Farm the road started descending—at last—all the way to the next junction with the A55. It's a fine line between following a route that has been designed to accommodate the least experienced cyclist and being able to deviate from it in the name of efficiency. My maps were mostly buried in my pannier, and map reading involved stopping and faffing. So I mostly followed the blue signs and glanced at the cyan coloured line on my GPS. Had I known all of this I wouldn't have cycled three sides of a rectangle just to get to the next town! Come to think of it, I had the same issue in Ontario, following the cycle route through Oakville on the way to Burlington, on my way to Niagara-on-the-Lake.

On the main road into Tal-y-bont I caught up a group of mountain bikers. As the road descended in a great right-hand sweep to the bridge over Afon Ogwen I put the pedal to the metal and the thing to the floor, and overtook the lot of them. I impressed myself by managing to keep them out of sight as the road climbed out of the valley towards Llandygai. With a left and a right I took a country lane even smaller than the one before, with hedges even taller. I cycled over the route of the railway to Bangor—it's in a tunnel at this point but I wouldn't have known, unless I'd been on a ventilation shaft hunting expedition, which I wasn't—and came to a ford. Living in a city you tend not to encounter them. But there is one, is in the old village of Dean where the Water of Leith is about as accessible as it gets. At one time, and possibly not all that many years ago, there were great stone slabs, and you could drive your car down a precarious cobbled ramp, splosh your way through, and power up the cobbled road on the other side and hope your crossplies did their job. Now though the river is two or three feet deep and you have to use the pedestrian bridge. But here, perhaps half a mile from Bangor, the ford was flowing well and looked distinctly slidey. I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and took the footbrige.

Then Sustrans' planning really showed its worth. From the ford my lovely little country lane climbed upwards. I changed down the gears, and eventually reached '1'. The route ascended 75 metres, averaging 1 in 10-and-a-bit. That's quite steep and I've climbed worse in my velomobile. But the stinger was the section of 1 in 5 up to a junction, and with a full camping load I had to get off and push. Quite how a family would deal with a road like that is a good question. But I got to the very top at Minffordd eventually and plummeted down the other side to Glen-Adda on the southwestern side of Bangor.

I didn't know that Bangor was built in a valley, and promptly found myself another lung bursting and leg wrenchingly slow climb to the top of the ridge that runs southwest to northeast. My speed was little more than walking pace, about 4mph, I was sweating like a pig and I may have been gritting my teeth, but I wasn't going to get off and walk this time! Along the ridge I found a cheap little supermarket, staffed by a disinterested man who seemed to spend all his time talking with his regulars. Even when I was giving him money for Jelly Babies and crisps he barely managed a thank-you and a smile in my direction.

Shortly before yet another big junction with the A55, where it swings north to cross the Menai Straits, I turned north as well. Passing through the collection of houses of Ty'n-y-lôn my road reverted to country lane, which reverted to a roughly slabbed track as it plunged downhill. I wasn't looking forward to cycling back up, put it that way. And plunging downhill in these here parts meant only one thing. Above the trees strode the mighty Britannia Bridge. I passed underneath the southern end of the road deck, where the railway curves tightly to the right and hides underneath, and watched a train rumble its way towards Anglesey. A short way down the hill I found an access road. It seemed to be in the right sort of place, so I climbed up for a look.

Silently and impassively keeping guard over the bridge, as it has done for 165 years, was my stone lion. Like his three brothers, he is simply magnificent. It's a tribute to an age when we built things and were so proud of them that we'd spend money on decorations to make them look even better. Looking all of their twelve feet tall, and sitting on their twelve feet tall plinths, the lions were in keeping with the hefty Egyptian themes of the bridge's masonry. They were carved by John Thomas, who produced many other splendid works, mostly of people, including statues for the then Euston Station. And while railway passengers were no doubt awed by the audacity of the Britannia Bridge, they had time to groan, too.

Pedwar llew tew

Heb ddim blew.

Dau 'ochr yma

A dau 'ochr drew.

Four fat lions

Without any fur.

There's two over 'ere

And two over there.

John Evans no doubt thought himself a fine poet, but he was very much a contemporary of William McGonagall, who wrote so memorably about the Silv'ry Tay.

In the clearing further down the hill stands the other edifice that I'd wanted to see. In 1970 some teenagers were exploring one of the iron tubes of the bridge, their passage lit by a flaming torch. In the heat of the moment the torch was dropped. Imagine the debris left behind by a century of steam locomotives: ash, coal dust, lumps of coal, oil, oily rags. Imagine, also, the construction of the tube and its treatment: iron panels on all four sides, lined at the bottom with the railway's wooden sleepers, and at the top a wooden roof coated in tar. What could possibly go wrong? The burning torch caught the debris on the ground, and the flames seared up to the roof. Stephenson and company might have been brilliant engineers but firefighting and access/egress was possibly not high up their agenda. The teenagers might have survived—and are probably living lives of extraordinary shame—but the fire could not be put out. The flames and the heat travelled the whole length of the bridge and the great iron tubes were ruined: still in place but distorted and brittle, with rivet heads popped out of place and panelling buckled and stressed.

It's perhaps just as well that a new road bridge to Anglesey was needed at the same time, because British Rail was in a frenzy of closures, and would doubtless have been happy to close the railway entirely and demolish the bridge. Happily, perhaps, the bridge was saved by rebuilding it with two main steel arches supporting a new railbed, and the huge stone pillars were cut through to build the road deck above. Although the majority of the iron was now scrap, one section was preserved, in the clearing where I was now standing. I thought it was rather an ignominious end. Of course it should be displayed next to its home, and of course the monument should have its own bronze plaque, but it's practically forgotten in the middle of nowhere with no tourist signs to guide the visitor.

As I walked my bike back up the steep bank of Afon Menai, I did wonder whether the lack of signs was for the best. It would be a terrible thing for a new generation of teenagers, bored with their electronic toys, to discover the lions. But already the sheltered area under the road deck is the site of bonfires and drinking, and palisade fencing is only so good. In Stephenson's day they'd be given the cane for such insolence.

The sun was out in force, and I was surprisingly tired and close to the dreaded bonk, as in, 'I think I need to sit down right now, please.' I cycled back to the main road, found a bench, and ate the entire bag of crisps, half a banana and drank great quantities of chocolate milk. While I gathered my strength I chatted with a man who was mowing his lawn nearby.
'That's a comfortable looking bike! You look like you're going a long way. Where you off to?'
'I'm on my way to Llanberis. Not too far to go I think!'
'Which way are you going to go?'
'I was planning to cut across in that direction,' I said, pointing south, 'about 12 miles or so.'
'There's a bloody big hill that way you know, and the drivers are crazy these days. You can go around; go down the hill and take the old railway line to Caernarfon and then come in on the main road. It's more level.'
I had no idea what he was talking about. 'I don't mind hills too much. I've had quite a lot of experience.'
'Have you got a map?'
'Aye, I've got my OS map and my GPS. Is it much further going that way?'
'Few miles more I'd say.'
'Ok, I'll check it out. Thanks!'

Frankly I wanted to get to Llanberis as quickly as I could, and I had no intention of trying to navigate off-route. I headed west out of town on the A487 which didn't seem too crazy to me, and then took the B4547. Quieter and quite enjoyable. The road turned left and started climbing, into the trees and into the shade. This was becoming a recurring theme, I noticed. Before long I was rounding a long curve in almost bottom gear while trying to take the lane. The drivers were in fact crazy, I decided, as time and again they sped past as close as possible to me, as though the white line was covered in spikes. Once it levelled out I accelerated and shot across a roundabout, held my speed for a while but then road started to climb again. The A4244 might be a wide S2 type road but the drivers were completely insane. I may have turned the air very blue on more than one occasion. It was a long hill and the traffic was spurring me to ride faster than I needed. What difference to them, hurtling up the hill at 60mph or more, would it have made were I riding at 4mph or 8mph? Or 15mph? I should have saved my energy. After what felt like about an hour's worth of climbing, but amazingly was only ten minutes, I reached a petrol station. I was nearly dying. I sat on some big boulders, tore open a bright yellow plastic bag and chomped as fast as I could on several Jelly Babies. The other half of my banana disappeared even quicker.

I ought to have stayed longer but impatience got the better of me. I relaxed as I dropped quickly down the far slopes of Moel Rhiwen. Terminal velocity seemed to be about 35mph, and that was fast enough for me in those conditions. Once into the valley floor by the Afon Rhythallt which empties itself at Caernarfon, I was riding upstream so I was climbing again. Fortunately the worst of it, and the road was pretty narrow at the best of times anyway, is where they've built a reasonably wide footway that is also the cycle path. I was glad to take it, and as soon as I left the tarmac I also stopped rushing, and settled into a friendly stress-free rhythm. Lake Padarn to my left stretched out into the mist. Mist? Yes, it was actually attempting to rain by this point. I think the actual word is "mizzle". The lake was my friend all the way to Llanberis. I waved to a couple riding equally heavily loaded touring bikes, all bright red Ortliebs and stout tyres.

Llanberis looked like your typical one-road village. It reminded me of South Queensferry; there were strings of shops selling everything from antiques and buckets and spades to paninis and waterproofs; cosy B&Bs with flowerboxes in the garden competed with converted grand houses with cars in the garden; the derelict petrol station was thrown in for contrast, I assumed. I found the road to my campsite—Llwyn Celyn Bach—and started up the hill. It seemed fairly steep but nothing I hadn't encountered already today. Then it got steeper. A turn here, a turn there, and it got even steeper again. By the time I was almost out of the trees my heart had nearly burst through my chest and my legs were more lactic acid than muscle. It was all I could do to push my bike to the top. After all that effort I surveyed my surroundings.

"I seem to have found the world's slopiest campsite at the top of the world's steepest hill."

I quickly realised there wasn't a level bit of ground anywhere. How the hell was I going to manage to sleep here? I was so utterly worn out after 35 miles that I couldn't face climbing that road again. I phoned various establishments and only one had a vacancy. I decided it was worth trying, and after much thinking I took off back down the hill, my brakes grinding themselves into oblivion. I soon discovered why the hotel had a vacancy. With its brown reception desk, pictures all faded to buggery, a hall with brown and red threadbare carpeting, and a "Break Glass" fire alarm all taped over, the hotel probably had lots of vacancies. I went with my gut feeling and I shot out of the place before anyone tried to help me.

'Bollocks!' I think I said.

Since I was at ground level I cycled all the way to the other end of the village to have a look at the Snowdon Mountain Railway station, and to scope out the area for bike parking. Research purposes, you see. There wasn't any bike parking. I'd heard rumours that the weather for the next day wasn't meant to be very good, and I asked at the station ticket office. A lady who'd found herself with a spare ticket for the railway asked me if I wanted to buy it and enjoy the views while the sun was out. It was only mid-afternoon. I thanked her and carried on with my day, deciding that getting my tent up was more important. There was a hullabaloo in the park opposite the station with catering tents and gazebos going up. Some sort of charity event I thought, maybe a mountain bike race. I needed some food for dinner anyway, so I popped into the supermarket. After a bit more aimless riding up and down there was nothing for it but to go back to the campsite, and I wasn't feeling any stronger.

Back at the top I picked what looked like the least sloping bit of ground that was left, next to a wall, and set to work in the sunshine. From the campsite you can look right across to Dinorwic Quarry. It is absolutely enormous. Inclines, huge layers of grey spoil, more inclines, a few scattered buildings high up… In another direction you can just see the mountain railway. I could actually hear the little engine as it chuffed its way up towards the summit, and I wondered whether I should have taken up that offer.

A motorbiker arrived while I was making my dinner. Big old Yamaha FJ with Krauser boxes. He poked around for a few minutes, puttered off up the hill, and then came back down and disappeared into town. Llanberis was defintely bike-with-an-engine sort of terrain, but I decided that the ground of the campsite was just too steep for parking a motorbike safely. In one direction your bike wouldn't lean over far enough to sit on its propstand, and in the other direction it would lean so far it would fall over immediately and be impossible to lift. I was coming back from washing up when the motorbiker returned. Obviously he'd not found any vacancies either. He was investigating the least sloping bit of ground after mine, and I realised the rocky bit next to the gate might actually do, so I pointed. He nodded and came over, and I helped him find a better option to keep his bike upright. As he threw up his tent and fiddled with a can of lube we got chatting. Whereabouts have you come from? Have you done much touring? Of all the people to meet in this particular campsite on this particular day it turned out that, back home, he rode an Africa Twin. Well! Instant friendship. Tall, long hair, muscular, adventurous…damn.

Neither of us had anyone else to talk to, so we wandered down the hill and found a bar that was doing evening food. I'd already eaten dinner, of course, but I did find room for mushroom soup and a drink. It was refreshing to have some conversation, and it was dark when we walked back up to the campsite.

And like two passing ships, I returned to my tent, quite the warmest place to be by this point, snuggled into my sleeping bag and read about midwifery.