Stars align and the weather looks feasible as I keep going through online weather sites looking for confirmation that all will be well and the rain will hold off but who am I kidding?

It probably won’t rain until 4pm. 

I could be nearly back by then. 

It won’t get dark until 5pm. This should work out.

Jackie is away visiting her son in Sussex but has left me the car so I can drive to a start point ‘out of county’ (which is the Cornish term for the rest of the world) rather than beginning a ride from home. 

But where to go? Planning routes is such fun, sat at the kitchen table with a glass of wine and a laptop. 

Less fun is the reality of a 5am awakening and a long drive to the other side of Exeter. 

I have previously begun some 100k audaxes from Cranbrook, a toy-town like, planned village with the advantage of safe and free parking. Its a few miles NE of Exeter, so that seems a good jumping off spot. 

Exeter- Cheddar- Exeter is the plan, riding across Devon and Somerset and crossing the Blackdown hills and Somerset levels. 206 kilometres. 2000 metres of uphill. It will be a DIY audax so I will need to keep to the route. 

Grey skies this morning but with some hints of clearing up later. Perhaps. I am going to be optimistic. 

Dirty roads still recovering from winter. 

April has come but the hedgerows seem asleep with just daffodils waving damply in a bitter wind. The ride spins out as I planned it along quiet roads and back lanes, substituting uphill effort for peace, as my chosen roads climb up and down valley sides rather than follow the flatter but busier valley floor roads. 

Broadclyst and Broadoak, Oakfield and Westcott. Proper Saxon place names, they feel unfamiliar on the tongue after so long living in the Celtic fringe of Cornwall. 

Villages with pavement edged roads, brick houses and well tended gardens, trees showing signs of life, thriving village stores and primary schools. It feels different to the scattered whitewashed villages of Cornwall with their rough and rowdy lanes, shabby housing, decaying farms.

Fifty kilometres to Taunton and that is just a couple of hours, spinning nicely, the pace sustainable. 

Sitting on a bench in a Taunton park. Sending a text to Jackie who will be awake and wondering where I am. 

‘Quarter of the ride done and it feels OK. I can do this’. I add a photograph. 

But I am nervous of this ride. 

I have no way of getting any assistance if things go wrong. I can rationalise that I can get a taxi to a train station but have no idea if the trains here take bikes. And I worry about feeling silly dressed in lycra on a busy train. I don’t have the usual option of phoning Jackie for help. She is far away and our car is in Devon where I left it. I can think of no one who could help. 

I have read that eating and drinking regularly is important on long ride sand take items from my well packed saddle bag more often than seems necessary through hunger.

I have a peculiar phobia about buying food en route. I dislike stopping, find cafes intimidating, worry about leaving the bike unattended. I have a bag of sandwiches and cereal bars. That will do. 

Somerset arrives – a sign proclaimed the fact although the fields look the same.

The route has been along a canal for a while, easy riding apart from ducking below bridges that were not built for cyclists. The horses that pulled the canal boats must have been smaller. The canal water is green and looks cold , a scum of fallen leaves and a sad looking duck. 

I must have stopped paying attention as I have gone off route, the Wahoo bleeping furiously and the canal path now just a thin track through tall grass and next to overgrown hedges. I decide to carry on and hope this path ends up in the right place as I can’t face the idea of retracing my steps, consumed by the urge to keep moving, keep nibbling at the kilometres worrying about getting back before dark, before it rains. 

Seventy kilometres has brought me to the edge of Bridgwater. I made a concocted route through housing estates to avoid main roads. They are silent places. Vans and cars perched on pavements, stunted trees, unkempt gardens. No sign of life. Everyone is in hiding or at work maybe. Street after street with only Amazon and DHL vans for company. 

Out of Bridgewater and across the River Parrett, a slow moving sludge heading towards the hazy Severn estuary coast where land and sea blur into a marine suburbia of silt, mud flats and reeds. 

Suddenly I am into the Somerset Levels, grass and reed fields between dykes, the distant smudge of the Mendip escarpment visible beyond. Swans are sitting beside a decaying, shrinking flooded meadow, a remnant of last winters rains and now vanishing as spring approaches. Where will the swans go then? 

The lanes are perched high here as the surrounding peat shrinks as it is drained. As a result the road surface is rippled, long crevasses split the tarmac, the road edges roll down into the field drains. Riding here needs concentration, the road ahead dipping and rising towards a distant horizon, a line of willow trees, a few cows watching me pass with indifference. 

Cheddar village, set inside a bitten off valley, a split in the limestone edge of the Mendip. famous for its caves and cheese and already busy with visitors. I am looking for a cafe where I feel it will be safe to leave my bike, conscious I must make an effort to eat some proper food after riding 105 kilometres this morning. There is a fish and chip takeaway set back from the road and from there I can watch the bike whilst queueing for food. 

Sitting on the pavement, pushing greasy chips down. 

I am trying to look like the audax riders I watch on You Tube but I just feel a bit nauseous.

And in the way. People stepping around me, irritated. No one has given the bike a second glance, its rear light flashing, muddy from the lanes, weighed down by drink and food bags. It won’t be stolen.

Homewards now, which should feel good but it is still a long way and already my shoulders ache and the saddle has begun to nibble at my arse. A different route back, heading back across the Levels towards Glastonbury and then the South Somerset hills. 

By 120 kilometres I have begun to tire of my own company. I haven’t had an original thought in a while, merely the same one repeating. 

How far? How long now? Is this saddle adjusted properly?

It would be easier with some company. Different conversations, allowing the kilometres to pass un-noticed.

But thats just wishful thinking because I am alone on this road apart from shoulder brushing vans and cars and the weather is looking as if it has a nasty shock for me. 

Hours seem to pass. The road flows on, some hills, some junctions, changes of clothing.

Glance at the Wahoo. 125 kilometres. How can that be? Five kilometres in what feels like hours. 

Despair is lurking just behind me and I need to go a bit faster to outrun it. 

Mental maths. Distance divided by speed to give an ETA. Tidal calculations unnecessary except to offset for wind strength and direction. Four hours at least and it will be dark in two. I switch off the front light which has been flashing for hours. I might need the battery.

Stop to eat. Another cereal bar. Dry and hard to swallow. 

More hills now, crossing the Ham ridge, sandstone and iron deposits leaving the remnants of mining and quarrying. A few houses pass. I planned this route to avoid settlements but now I wish I had planned more variety. I have become bored of fields and hedges and unidentifiable trees. The leaves aren’t out to help me name them. Hedgerows are sullen, winter lingering in their hearts, unwilling to engage with spring. 

On and on and on. 

Higher up now. Following a long finger of raised land, the road avoiding the winter floods. The Saxons called this land beyond the Mendip ‘Sommer Saeter’ or summer pastures because it was too wet for cattle in winter. Now its just ‘Somerset’ and the wet has become drained and tamed and crossed by ridge following lanes like mine. 

Back in Devon again. Making distance now. 

Hills and woods, small villages straggling by the road. 

160 kilometres. It has begun to rain, steadily gaining in quantity and ferocity. Rain jacket no longer beading, I can feel a cold damp on my arms. 

180 kilometres done and just twenty six left which is still more than an hour at my pace. It has become dark without me noticing and I have to stop to get lights fixed on my helmet and the bike, flashing and burning brightly, a small oasis in the darkness. 

The front light is not picking out the road surface very well and I am now very aware that planning a route to find the smallest, quietest lanes is not the best way to end this ride. The lanes are broken and treacherous, steep dips and ramps, uncertain edges, a thick line of grass in the middle. 

The rain is bouncing off the road. I have overshoes on but they are unequal to the task as water penetrates from below or runs down my legs. I am wet from the waist down. Neck and shoulders too. Gloves wet and useless. Shivering. 

I haven’t seen a house for twenty minutes and there are no lights visible. Just my cone of wavering battery driven illumination, riding beneath overhanging trees, a dark tunnel leading me on, uncertain of where I am going, following a thin white line on the rain blurred Wahoo.

I worry about crashing, about being unable to move, getting cold, slipping away. There is no phone signal here. No one has passed me in a long time. Just blackness and rain and trees and a thin strip of bouncing light, a tiny flickering drowned by the night. 

It has to end. 

If you just keep going.

And it does. 

The lights of Cranbrook come into view, rain slicked streets, warm orange light behind curtains. I can feel the grit and mud from the lanes on my legs, the rain has matted my hair beneath the helmet and is running down my face. 

The car park is empty and I strip off dirty lycra and nylon beneath a neon street light, uncaring about modesty, tugging impatiently into dry clothes that stick to my wet skin, rushing to get out of the rain bouncing off my head and shoulders..

Car heater on full, the windscreen wipers are going as fast as they can but the rain still obscures the road. Traffic has slowed to a crawl, solid sheets of rain, the road surface dissolved into spray, headlights reflecting wetly. 

Happy to be inside the car and warm. Happy to have finished. Looking forward to the meal I will cook in a couple of hours when I get home. Eyes gritty, sore where I am sitting, legs gently aching.

In a few days time I will have enjoyed that ride. 

Right now, I am just happy it is over.