Days of struggle and spectacle II
In which I discover the comfort that lies beyond our biggest challenges
Hello friends,
I sent out Part One of this essay last month (you can read it here); this is the conclusion. Not that I fully conclude anything. I’ve been trying for quite a while to reframe my relationship with cycling, as I’ve come to realise that the old formula, of picking a challenge and then fighting my way through it until I win or succeed, no longer serves me. (I’ve won everything I needed to, and succeeded at enough tasks that I no longer feel the urge to prove myself.)
I’m never going to give up cycling – it is by now inextricably woven into my body and soul – but I still need to find some sort of schema along which to plot it; a sense of purpose that reaches beyond my mere self, and a story to tell about what I’m doing that carries the motivation to keep on doing it.
So this is my latest attempt.
I finished last time by remarking, as I very often do, on how profoundly cycling has shaped my life, professionally, socially, creatively, physically and emotionally.
A further, subtler gain I realised last summer, was the sheer detail in which riding has enabled me to get to know the world. I often marvel, when I ride through yet another pretty little village in the UK, at how lucky I am to get to see these places, which are miles off the beaten track, and so objectively unremarkable that it would be difficult to find out about their existence without having someone to visit there, or stumbling across them after taking a wrong turn on the way to somewhere else. If I had spent the last 17 years driving from place to place, I’d know a lot more about motorway service stations, but a lot less about the good views you can get from a certain tiny lane in the Welsh borders, or the particularly tasty millionaire shortbread sold by a village shop near Lake Vyrnwy, or a shortcut through south London whereby a tired courier can avoid all the hills, on her way home.
It struck me that day last summer, as I backtracked down the Stelvio and rerouted to Passo del Fuorn, which I had crossed in the opposite direction during the Transcontinental six years previously, that this psychogeography now extended to Europe. When I set off on my first big tour in 2011, my geographical awareness was embarrassingly sparse. I knew where France and Germany were, but not how their borders intersected with those of Switzerland and Italy, and when it came to the Balkans, I couldn’t have listed the countries there, much less told you what was north or south of what. I visited Slovenia for the first time on that trip, because it was on the way to Croatia, and because the parents of a German-Slovene friend had invited me to stay with them when I got there, and all I knew about it in advance was that it wasn’t Slovakia.
Since then I’ve cycled across Europe several times – more than I can think of offhand, though I’d say it’s about five. I’ve got to the stage where I not only know where all the countries are; I will also, as soon as you speak to me about riding from one to the other, have a sense of what landscapes will be around you as you do so, what the weather might be doing, and which border crossings will be available to you. I looked at the blurb on the back of a bike-touring book the other night, which described the author riding through the Alps and south via the Balkans, and noticed that rather than imagining these places on the map, as I might have previously, I was now picturing what it would be like to cycle through them.
I’ve got into the habit of spending a chunk of every spring riding around France, to recce Tour de France stages routes in preparation for Le Loop, and that’s different every year, so I’ve gradually filled in more and more areas of my mental map of that particular country, animating them into visual memories. Indeed, that was what I was rushing across Switzerland to do – the following morning I would set off to ride the route of Stage 9 (Aigle to Châtel), and now when I see Gruyère cheese in the supermarket, I think about the rolling green countryside north-east of Lac Léman, where I learned that it is made.
Crossing Passo Fuorn, a few hours before I set up my camping spot near St Moritz, had provoked all sorts of memories, and I spent a few minutes at the top, carefully arranging my bike against the col sign so that I could take a photo that exactly replicated the one I had taken six years previously (see below), when I crossed in the other direction, during the Transcontinental.
Back in 2016 the weather had been cooler, and the sky covered in cloud. I had pushed extra hard during the final steep kilometres of the climb, because I had spotted another racer a couple of hairpins below me, and wanted to avoid the shame of being overtaken. By the time he reached the top, I had mostly got my breath back, and was poised to take his photograph. I remember how he leant on his bike for a few moments, panting theatrically, and shaking his head at me, to acknowledge the absurdity of what we were both cheerfully doing.
His name was Stefan, and if you’ve read Where There’s A Will, you’ll know that we crossed paths again in Bosnia (that time he did draw ahead of me), and briefly again as I took a wrong turn in Montenegro. A few minutes later we were joined by Joe, the youngest rider in the race, in his sweat-encrusted skinsuit, and we all passed the time of day as though we’d met at the corner shop, rather than at the top of a 2,149m pass.
As I descended towards St Moritz, I thought about Stefan and Joe (where are they now?), and our various routes towards Turkey. I had lost them on the descent into Italy, and we crossed paths again at Checkpoint 3, just before climbing Passo Giau, where I discovered that they had shared a hotel room while I camped behind a bus shelter just north of Bolzano. I remembered how quickly I had raced along the flat cycle paths of the Adige Valley that evening; how strong I had felt as I sped past canals and apple orchards. I know now, several years later, that that route is far from flat – in June 2022, heading west out of Bolzano towards the Stelvio, I crawled along the valley for hours, cursing my weakness, and being overtaken by elderly Europeans on e-bikes, only to discover that I had gained a thousand metres in only 80km.
Heading downhill into Switzerland shortly afterwards, past wide-open fields of buttercups, I passed the left turn for Umbrailpass – which leads on to Stelvio – and thought that, had I passed by merely two days later, I would have been on that road, having finally crossed Stelvio, rather than having had to reroute via Passo Fuorn. I thought about another racer I’d heard about in Transcon 2016, who had apparently crossed Stelvio without even meaning to (“hmm, this is a big hill”), descended, realised he’d made a mistake, and backtracked all the way up and back over. I had enjoyed the anecdote at the time, but now realised that it made no sense – if you crossed the Stelvio from this point, you’d end up in the broad, flat Adige Valley, that very clearly was en route to Checkpoint 3 in Alleghe. How could he have thought himself in the wrong place? Then I realised, with a little vicarious shudder, that he must have already arrived in that valley, via Passo Fuorn or Reschenpass, then accidentally turned right instead of left, and ridden all the way out of it again, over Europe’s second highest pass.
Ten years ago, all of these towns and passes would have been little more than foreign names – if I had heard of them at all. Now, not only had I got to know the shape and flavour of them enough to consider the different ways in which they might be strung together on a bike ride, I also had detailed memories of the previous times I had ridden through, which I picked up like stitches on each return journey. When I first rode along the valley towards Bolzano, it was dark, and I had no idea where I was on the map. Now, I have crossed Reschenpass, which enters the valley from the north (that was in 2017; I camped beside a sports pavilion near the top, and was surprised to see the bell tower protruding from Reschensee as I passed by at dawn). I have crossed Passo Fuorn, which lies to the west, in both directions. I have yet to ride the road that goes over Stelvio, but I know both ends of it. On this journey, in 2022, I had also entered the valley from the east, via Passo Gardena, where I met an enthusiastic German couple in a camper van, who cheered me to the top of the col, then admitted that they had recognised me from Instagram (which felt surreal), and gave me a peanut butter sandwich and a bag of cookies to see me on my way.
Ten years ago, I was not a person who cycled in the Alps. Those people were a different breed, hanging out in the cafes I frequented in their expensive cycling kit, exchanging stories that included exotic names like ‘Izoard’ and ‘Galibier’. The knowledge of these places, the ability to find them, the experience to distinguish them, the money to get to them, and the strength to cycle up them, all seemed a very long way from me. I doubted I would ever achieve the nonchalance to drop them into my conversation the way these people could.
I had, technically, crossed the Alps on my way towards Asia in September 2011. But my route-planning back then consisted simply of following an imaginary straight line across each country, and I had unwittingly picked a route so far east that it missed all the good bits. I went over a couple of big hills, saw a blue lake and some distant peaks, and thought that that was it. I wouldn’t ride above 2,000m until I got to Eastern Turkey, several months later, and I wouldn’t see the high Alps in all their glory until I rode the Strada dell’Assietta, during the 2015 Transcontinental.
Someone recently told me that people always overestimate what they can accomplish in a year, but underestimate what they can achieve in a decade. And that resonated far too keenly, a couple of weeks into January, as I came to the all-too-familiar realisation that my calendar was filling up, and there just wouldn’t be enough time in the next twelve months for all the plans and projects I had in mind. “How does anyone ever get anything done?” I despaired, as I remembered how long it takes to write a social media post, let alone plan a trip.
I now understand that, if you just keep on doing the things you love, you will eventually become an expert at them before you’ve properly let go of the notion that you’re a beginner. I don’t always feel like a particularly experienced cyclist (there is so much I don’t know, and I still haven’t ridden over Stelvio), but when I cast my mind back to my first year on the bike, it feels like a very long time ago indeed – long enough, in fact, for the world to have been different around me, and for me to have watched it grow into what it is now. Every year since 2006, there have been more cyclists in London – I watched the numbers of people at the traffic lights swell around me, from the point where we were so scarce that everyone was on nodding terms, to now, when we are a clear majority. When I first rode the Transcontinental, in 2015, I was one of only three solo women, and the last one to drop out, when I scratched in Slovenia. Over the eight years that have passed since then, I have watched women flood into the discipline, to the extent that some races have now managed to achieve a 50/50 gender split. I often joke that now most of my close friends are female ultra-cyclists, and although it should now feel normal, I haven’t quite got over my surprise and delight, remembering all the years when I felt like the only one.
It wasn’t necessarily expertise that I was chasing, although I’m pleased to have it, and to be able to profit from it occasionally. (My summer job now involves leading other cyclists through the mountains, and it helps that I have stories to share, and can sometimes remember the location of the next water fountain, or warn them about a steep section that’s coming up.) What I was really searching for, I think, was comfort. When I think back to my early twenties, when I left the small market town where I’d gone to university, my geographical perception of the world consisted mostly of blurred areas where I couldn’t have told you what was there, or how I might get through it. London was a terrifying mystery. The Middle East and Central Asia were a blank. And I had no idea how you’d even get to the Alps – the only foreign travel I’d done till then involved booking a flight, and then doing whatever the guidebook said you did, to get yourself to a pre-booked hostel in the city centre.
It was always with fear and self-doubt that I approached these unknown wildernesses. I barely slept the night before I cycled to work in London for the first time, and was awake at first light, sitting on the edge of my bed with the A-Z, running my eyes again and again over the complicated series of roads and junctions that lay between my house in Brixton and my office near Regent’s Park. Within days (of course), my terror had melted into enjoyment, and within weeks I had finally fallen in love with London, after nine miserable months of thinking I’d never get my head round it.
It seems that my way of dispelling the fears I have about the world, is getting to know it in intricate detail. And on the other side of fear, lies comfort. I hadn’t quite anticipated when I hurled myself at all these challenges, that in the process of overcoming them, I’d start to feel at home. I am now less afraid of crossing a continent by bike than by public transport. I learned every nook and cranny of London over the years I spent as a courier (though of course, London is constantly evolving, and many of my old haunts have since been swallowed up by new developments). And riding through the Alps has become one of the parts of my year that I look forward to most, with the opportunities it gives me to go back and pick up the memories I left there last time, and to discover new routes up familiar hills, and to make good on the promise I made myself as I raced through during the Transcontinental – that I would one day return, admire these mountains at my leisure, and stop in places like Andermatt and Bolzano and Briançon, for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed, the better to do it all again the next day.
I didn’t know that this comfort was what lay beyond the challenges I kept setting myself, and that by seeking out the things that frightened me, I would effectively discover the opposite. Or, if I did, it was on some primal, instinctive level; a genetic twist of character that felt itself drawn to fear, rather than turning away. And now, as I gradually realise that almost everything can be tamed if you charge straight into it, I think the fear is mellowing to curiosity. I no longer ride into the mountains wondering if I will be able to cope with what I find there – I go because I want to see how the light is playing across the pinnacles of the Izoard on that particular afternoon, or if the snow on the upper slopes of Galibier is deeper than it was last year. I go because I want to find new routes up old cols, and to explore a set of hairpins I might have seen across the valley, a year or two previously, and wondered what they might be like to ride. I go to relive the memories of other occasions when I followed these roads, and to access the particular flavour of joy that I can only recapture when I’m there. And this would take me many more words to explain than I have space for here, but it’s something to do with being a tiny speck amidst the enormity of the mountains, these enormous slabs of rock so much bigger than me, and so much older. And yet, despite my insignificant size, I am also strong, taut, concentrated: a tiny spark of heat and power, moving steadily towards the unknowing peaks.
Thank you for reading.
Emily