Today is a day to head west chasing the low winter sun down past St Ives and onto St Just. By the time I reach West Penwith I  haven’t seen a car for more than half an hour. Every isolated cottage is empty, tourists long gone in this empty month. No one lives here anymore. Too remote, no work, houses given over to letting agents and holiday management firms. Slate roofs glint blackly in the low light, outhouses and broken backed barns, a hotch pot of levels and angles haphazardly arranged.

The stone walls of the small uneven fields here are older than the pyramids, remarkably persistent and still in place after 3000 years of farming. The lonely farmhouses remain where Bronze Age farmers first built their reed and stone shelters. Dig beneath each farm and you will find the remnants of every house that came before, generation after generation. Time moves at a different speed in the far west.

The wide Atlantic horizon stretches unimpeded to America.  A calm, dark sea under a leaden sky today.  There is a freighter a mile or two off, the deck loaded with containers. It seems stuck in place, unmoving. The world is still, nothing moves apart from me, no wind, no sound apart from my wheels. I haven’t heard a bird or seen any living creature for a while. The air is thick and cold. The low clouds flatten the light, making everything monochrome, dirty and gritty. The north coast road stretches on ahead, rising and falling as it follows the narrow bench between the granite hills and the cliffs. This is a stunning road, even in winter.  The austere moors and wide Atlantic, the granite outcrops and patchwork of heather, gorse and bracken, the sense of space that leaves you breathless. 

Granite cliffs rise up from the grey, flat sea, and the hills are stained by mining, scars that heather and gorse cannot conceal. Starving crows line the  bare trees in their winter torn, ragged black gowns, watching me pass, a quiet intelligence in their beady eyes. They see everything but keep their thoughts to themselves.

I would enjoy some company right now, someone to share this view, to distract me from catastrophising, worrying about what might happen here on this lonely road. It stretches ahead rising and falling with steep little ramps and sharp descents. I want this ride to be over. The cold and the emptiness are making me feel anxious. Flat shades of grey light, monochrome in the gloomy winter half light. If I fall off here, who will find me? My heart clutches and my breath shortens, a rising tide of panic rises up, closing my throat. I have been here before, it is a familiar fear. I turn off the heart rate monitor because I know it will make me worse. I feel my heart beat harder, thumping against the ribs and my breath comes up short.

The hours pass marked only by the ebbing light. Just keep the pedals circling, unable to stop or slow, hoping to out run these negative thoughts. Just keep moving, keep escaping, get ahead of the fear. 

Thoughts revolve, conversations replayed, a life relived with consideration of different endings, of choices unmade, untaken. Penwith behind me now, Penzance passed through again, the more familiar roads closer to home allow anxiety to subside as if it was never there. It’s all in the mind. My mood lightens, shoulders relax, fingers grip less intensely, breathing slower, heart quieter. 

Darkness is chasing me up the last few hills  and the roads have become busy, crowded with pre Xmas shoppers. Passing through Truro, the Christmas lights reflecting wetly in the road, steering around people in the still busy winter market, crossing the square. My rear light flares in the misty dusk. The spires of the cathedral are lit up, the low cloud pearlescent.

The Wahoo blinks to say ‘Arrivee’ as I rattle across the cattle grid at the top of the lane and descend into the darkness below. Not the same as arriving at a village hall or cafe, handing over a brevet card, grabbing cake. But good to be home and to feel the warmth return to my fingers, numbly stripping off over shoes, suddenly sweating in the byre warmth of home.