It is early Sunday morning and I am on a bike, on a mission to do another 100 mile ride for no good reason other than making me feel better about myself, which is a poor reason, but the only one I have.

The spires of Truro cathedral are sharp edged this morning, bare thorns against a luminous sky. There are three spires and you wonder if there should be four to be symmetrical, but nothing about this cathedral is as expected, grafted onto a pre existing church early in the 20th century. Britains newest cathedral and one of its smallest. 

A three spire cathedral then, all three different sizes and shapes. A trinity of unwed sisters, each separate and aloof but from the same family. A visible promise of life after death, the intervention of a higher power in matters mortal, to believing in the unbelievable. It pins up the sky above the people of Truro like the poles of a great tent of faith that keeps us safe.

The cathedral bells ring out as I pass along one of the old walls, the narrow Georgian streets still deep in shade. It is Sunday morning quiet, the bikes’ clattering gear changes echoing ahead of me, turning the heads of early worshippers.

Heading out of town, looking back for a moment, the cathedral is a vision of spiky promise above the river Fal, which extends into Truro on a high tide, framed by the wooded hills that rise around the town.

I have woken up a bit now. No more reflecting on architecture but instead about the ride ahead. I am always very doubtful before a longer ride. I actually harbour ambitions to do even longer ones one day but always find a reason not to. Last winter I promised myself I would try a 300km ride this summer, a double century in miles, but it is now the end of August and it seems unlikely I will do it. I had the same ambition last year too. I probably just need to go out and try it but at the time there is always an excuse of wrong weather or family visits or just feeling tired. 

I am uncertain I have the stamina for this ride too, but I always feel that way and have learnt you just have to begin the journey otherwise you will never finish it. It is supposed to be a challenge and I like to be challenged, to pit myself against a difficult objective and demonstrate that I can do it. So the outcome must be in doubt for the experience to be worthwhile. 

I am awkward and uncomfortable on the bike today, the saddle biting me already, knees offering a ghost of a pain that will surely increase over the ride, metallic noises and squeaks from the bike that cannot be traced and which I hope are not going to be a problem. I feel unsettled and so does the bike.

Enough! Smooth my frown, for all life is here right now and I will take joy from living another day in the sunshine and clean air and a speeding passage along quiet roads and high lanes. Begone negative thoughts, leave me, fall adrift in my wake. I will enjoy this day, this moment in my life and take every kilometre as it comes.

It’s very peaceful today, so far anyway, traffic light, no wind and the sun gentle on my arms. Thoughts revolving, staying in the moment, watching the scenery pass slowly.

I intend to follow the smallest lanes, the least travelled, the most obscure, in an effort to avoid the August bank holiday traffic. Each bend in the lane will be the next goal, another revelation to be relished when it arrives, a new horizon, a promise of fresh views, different landscapes. Some of the lanes I know and some are new and I am looking forward to the new ones, to seeing something different, maybe unexpected. 

The lanes uncoil around woods and fields and follow their own logic, which is not mine, as they find their way up hills and across valleys in their own belief about the best way forward. Odd bends, unnecessary diversions, sudden shifts in direction suggest the road once went around something. That something is no longer there, just the long lasting memory of this lane now burnt into the landscape. 

I can also see the secret world beyond the stone wall and hedgerow, a place of sunken barns, corrugated iron rusting and jagged around old wooden posts, no longer offering any shelter. There are hollows here and unknown places that no one sees apart from the farmer who probably passes them unheeded now. There are no paths and no roads beyond the field boundary, so no one can walk among these glimpsed places without climbing across a wall and trespassing. These mysterious woods and copses and the rotting stumps of abandoned homes, remnants of a more prosperous past, brambled, ivy covered, lie out of reach, unvisited, unknown. Ghosts of the past.

Time passes easily until after fifty kilometres, the seaside hugging, arty, Instagram curated village of Marazion arrives. Curled around its bay with a castle on its own island, it is popular holiday destination It’s late August busy here, the road choked with cars that cannot pass, pavements full, people looking for things to buy, a long queue for the boat to St Michael’s Mount. I pass through as quickly as possible, cutting past cars, dodging pedestrians. It interrupts my flow, my steady state, moving so abruptly from a quiet landscape of green emptiness to one so dominated by buildings and roads and people. After a couple of hours of just the sound of my tyres, the gentle whispering of the wind in my helmet, maybe the sudden whir of a pheasant or the screech of a disturbed magpie, the sound of massed voices and traffic is literally shocking.

Go past Marazion and head inland again on quiet hidden lanes. I can feel my heart rate fall and my shoulders relax once away from crowds. I am riding on the granite whaleback of West Cornwall, a granite dome extruded millions of years ago from deep in the earths core and now exposed by erosion as a line of smooth hills with ever extending views to both sides. The sun is high now and gently warming the land, a faint heat haze in the distance, the sea still visible on one side as a blue stripe beneath the indistinct horizon and on the other side harvested fields and empty pasture beyond a straggling hedge.

St Erth arrives, a sleepy village, an untidy arrangement of granite built houses tumbling down a steep sided valley that will give me a stiff climb in a moment. A small shop, open on a Sunday which I didn’t expect, so I can refill my bottles and buy some food. It is good to sit here for a moment and eat, watch people, imagine life in this village until the itch to move becomes too great.

I am a creature of the lanes today, tyres scratching the gritty surface, the land unfolding before me. Villages ticked off, kilometres accumulating, energy carefully weighed out and rationed to last the whole ride.

I like riding alone. Solitude allows dreaming. Seeing more, hearing more. The conversation of crows arranged along a wire fence, their sardonic glances as I pass, comments made in my wake. Foxes and rabbits hiding in the hedges and hollows. Moon faced cows stop chewing to watch me pass. I haven’t seen a car for a while, nor anybody out walking. I have the lanes to myself and I like that.

Dreaming up words, images I want to remember but unable to grasp them as they float out of reach like butterflies, torn away by the speed of my passage. They flicker briefly and are gone. I want to remember this feeling of freedom, of feeling capable of going anywhere on a bike, of being at one with all that surrounds me. 

I ride across the old mining district of mid Cornwall, spoil heaps, abandoned shaft heads and chimneys and then down to the seaside at Perranporth. It is suncream scented here, with bobbing heads between the waves, the beach pockmarked with sandcastles, a queue for ice creams, the lifeguards flags flying, a constant hum and buzz of conversation from the crowded beach. There can be 5000 people on this beach on a summer Sunday, a wave of human noise. It certainly feels very busy today, more people than beach.

From here it would be an easy ten miles to home but I am still forty miles from finishing the ride, so a good test of will power. I win the battle and follow the new gravel cycle path across fields to Goonhaven and up to follow the central ridgeline of Cornwall, a line of hills that separates the north and south coasts.

Another village, another Londis, more water and an ice cream, sitting in the church yard among the gravestones and tall grass to eat and rest. I know these next lanes well, have ridden them many times. I can see in my mind every hill, every junction, the kilometres spinning out before me but thinking is not doing and too much thought about distance and effort will weigh down my cycling soul, so back on the bike and continue.

Kilometres pass. The hills feel harder now and my stores of energy are running down, things hurting, stiffening. I have turned south west towards Truro and every spin of the pedals is bringing me closer to home and the secret is to stay in the moment. But thats easier said than done and I keep looking at the ‘distance to go’ on the GPS. I think everyone does this towards the end of a ride.

Home! A hundred miles of riding, nine hours alone, 2000 metres of climbing, north and south coasts visited and new lanes explored. 

A ride of lanes and junctions, hills and valleys and decisions made and things seen or just glimpsed, places passed, brief insights into the lives of other people, glimpsed house interiors, old villages, varied farms. A slime trail of electrons on a digital map, some memories, a feeling of having been ‘somewhere’ even if I did finish where I started. 

I do feel better about myself, have left a mark in my memory, some mental images like faded photographs, mementos of a happy day. I have satisfied myself that I can still do this distance at least, have the tiredness and aches that come from exercise, the skin burn from a day spent outdoors, an appetite for dinner. Maybe I should have tried for longer today but right now I am very happy to finish riding.

.As I close my eyes that night I can still see the lanes unroll beneath the wheels, feel the sun, remember the scents of summer, the things I saw, the secret places I passed. 

It’s probably the last summer ride of this year. September has brought storms and rain as I write this, but I do have some good memories. So, 300km next year? That would be a huge challenge for me, one where the outcome was very uncertain. I think am least sure of myself when faced with the future. The immediate is easier as it is over before I have begun to pick apart all that might go wrong. 

The secret then may be to just start a ride and keep going.