Weeks of rain. The steep lane down to the house runs brown with runoff from the empty fields and the lawn is more puddle than grass.  Then, one day the weather suddenly changes. Frost sparkles on the grass, clouds are gone. It’s blue sky cold, the air sparkling like champagne, filling the heart with happiness.

The plan today is to visit the Lizard, the most southerly point of mainland Britain. I left later than planned: procrastination, indecision, last minute changes of clothes.

The cold quickly numbs fingers and face, nose running freely, a salt taste on the lips. Cold squeezing between the layers of clothing. Uphills don’t warm me, downhills are a trial of endurance, shaking and shivering. 

Once past the vast naval air base at Culdrose, it is possible to leave the busy main road and enter the quiet lanes that meander across the Lizard, an ancient peninsula projecting southwards into the western approaches. I have the whole of it to myself today, no one else is out riding. Following  sunken lanes amongst frost nipped gorse with the horizon marked by the giant inverted domes of Goonhilly Earth Station, the ‘satellite talkers’. Are they listening to words from beyond our solar system, silently communing with aliens as some locals believe? On a lonely Celtic road anything seems conceivable.

Closer to the domes I  can hear a rhythmic echo, a sonar noise. Ping, ping, ping…I look around but I am alone. The noise is definitely there. Am I hearing a satellite talking? It is a mystery only solved once I get home. “Did you not hear the pinging on your phone?” My wife asks. “I was trying to find you with ‘Where’s My Phone’. Your beacon was off and I wanted to know where you were”.  

Lizard village is busy even on this cold Sunday.  It is a shock to see so many people suddenly, a jealousy that they are sharing this place when I wanted it to myself. I resent their presence, their bright chatter, their warmth swaddled beneath layers of clothing 

Just for a moment it is almost warm, eyes closed, face tipped towards the bright winter sunshine. The cafe on the cliff edge is doing good business.  The air is particularly clear and every detail of the cliffs, rocks and breaking seas is brightly etched. I am the most southerly man in (mainland ) Britain for a minute. 

Turning back for home and a cold North easterly headwind has brought low cloud, flattening the light and dropping the temperature. The same lanes but looking the other way I can see things I missed on the way out. This is a short ride, just over 100 kilometres and in another two hours I can be home for a hot shower and be sitting in front of the woodburner. The ride back feels much longer. 

Arriving home just before dark, skidding down the steep lane to the house because the farmer has been on and off the fields all afternoon muck spreading, a thick layer of clay and mud gumming the wheels and filling the mudguards. Tomorrow I will clean the bike…..but for now I will close my eyes and remember the silence of the Lizard, the tiny daffodil bud bravely poking out to promise spring will come and the fuzzy warmth returning to fingers and toes. 

February

February has brought a blast of mild, wet Atlantic air that has filled the ditches and lanes with water and battered the trees but it has lifted temperatures. Warm enough that the gorse is beginning to flower, daffodils are pushing through the rough grass at field edges, wild garlic has formed an ankle high forest of green spears. I have been living in ‘rain land’ for weeks. The ten day forecast is rain and the puddles spread wider and longer every day.

Hours are spent on weather forecast sites tracking depressions and wind speed and rain belts, looking for a day when it is neither raining nor windy and I have no other diary commitments. A unicorn day. Then I can go for a long ride. Not just a couple of hours which even with my most agreeable friends is not enough. I need to go out for a long ride, have to go out, itch with an unbearable thirst to get out. I want to feel the exhaustion, the burning legs and stiff back that tells me that I am alive, that I have done something worthwhile, given of myself, been tested and not come up wanting.

Grey cloud-sails fly landward from the sea. The air is salt flavoured. Weather watching, diary shuffling, weighing obligations as a husband against the siren song of the road.

A ride is planned, forecast hopeful or at least not windy. I am excited that night but faced with a dull, misty and depressingly dark morning, still aching from a heavy spin class, head thumping with a red wine hangover, I am feeling distinctly less enthusiastic. Nauseous at the prospect of up to ten hours on the bike. 

Nothing feels right this morning; legs clumsy, gears crunching and clashing, shoulders tight and fingers numb. The bike and I are not at peace. The lane has a glistening layer of slurry. Part rain soaked mud and part manure that has  washed out of the sheds where cattle are spending the winter, miserably huddling together for warmth, steamy breath rising.  

The morning mist has become an un forecast light rain and the pale winter light is diffused, scattered and lost. My front light strobes, flashing against the rain, beam lost in the misty gauze.

My first checkpoint, a random point selected with a click on a screen, is a roundabout in Penzance. Fifty kilometres from home and as far west as I will be going. It is disconcerting to go from quiet lanes into the wet, Saturday shopping atmosphere of the town and then as suddenly to empty back lanes again. A reminder I am not alone, that other lives intertwine around mine. The misty rain swirls around, confining me to a small radius of hedge, road, overhanging trees. 

I keep trying to go faster, always convinced I am too slow, that my friends would be leaving me behind if they were here. I have an invisible peloton of them riding with me today; just behind and exhorting me to go faster lest they overtake. Sometimes a younger me is glimpsed ahead, disappearing over the top of the hill, Fitter, stronger, leaving me behind, my calves stiff, knees aching. I don’t stop at cafes because my invisible peloton might leave me behind. I don’t stop for food but pull it out of pockets. In eight hours riding I have stopped for just twenty minutes in total. Keep moving and the ride will finish quicker. There is no good reason to be out on these roads alone.

Heading eastwards along the north coast cliffs, the road suspended above the Atlantic, the sea booming below, each individual wave lost in a continuous bass rumble like fishermen complaining about their catch in a Newlyn pub.

Steeply, crazily downhill into Portreath, a surfing village that sits in a shaft of light from a solitary break in the clouds. A line of seal headed surfers sit beyond the break, sunlight shining through the wave crests, a rich turquoise against the grey sky. . Windblown sand covers the beachside road. I could be home in less than 40 minutes from here but that would never do. Another ninety kilometres to go to reach yet another arbitrary point and then turn for home. 

I forget where I am, the lanes confused in my mind, sometimes further on than I thought and sometimes behind. Rolling on, pedals turning, uphill, downhill, getting colder, wetter, fingers wrinkled beneath damp gloves. Lights switched onto full beam in the gloom of a three o clock winter Saturday afternoon. Around Goss Moor, the distant roar of the A30  is soaked up by the mist.  On through the clay country villages; green stained granite faced terraces clustered around half abandoned clay quarries. Ragged villages  set amongst deep, pure white pits filled with azure lakes. Once places of work, now places of disaffection and scruffy poverty.

The world seems empty today. It is surprising how much land is given to empty pasture, rough grazing, small woods. A complex topography of hidden valleys and un named hills. Being passed by a car becomes an event, the Wahoo’s chirped warning reminding me that I am not completely alone . 

Time has taken the day and the light has gone, a soft thievery, the last of the sun flaming the low tide mud flats of the Tresillian river. Egrets and herons silhouetted against the sunset and the owls beginning to call from the oakwood fringes. The hearth of home is beckoning. Racing against the fast approaching night, cutting through the Waitrose car park at the edge of Truro. Cars are leaving, laden with food, headlights catching the droplets in the air, windows steamed up. Out through the secret exit and back into the dark countryside, heading for home. The town lights recede and darkness returns.