# Your first tour experience ...



## Crackle (2 Feb 2011)

... couldn't be any worse or any better than mine.

At the tender age of 16ish (just after O levels), a good friend, my cousin and myself decided to go on a summer working holiday. My friends brother, assured us that fruit picking jobs abounded in Devon and Cornwall and all we had to do was get there. This was 1979 by the way.

We had little money and so decided to cycle there. We'd already done a number of day trips so knew we liked cycling but we had no money and no gear. For some reason best known to ourselves we bought every 1:50000 map we needed to get from Runcorn to Cornwall, it took up one pannier and most of our money. As for the panniers, we made them out of denim we bought in the market and used coat hangars as internal frames. They were hung off the cheapest racks, which is all we could afford. We filled them with what we could raid from our respective homes, so in the history of touring we were the only people to carry pounds of spuds and tins of beans and peas.

The night before we set off I hardly slept. We were riding, me a Carlton Stadium, friend a Raleigh Arena and my cousin a bike of indeterminate make which we had all built together out of skip parts. Things didn't bode well when 1/2 a mile down the road one of the panniers split and we had to empty it and stitch it up.

Putting the 1:50000 maps to good use we cut across a private estate as a short cut and half waythrough my cousin was attacked by a dog outside a lodge. He panicked, fell off and bust his front brake and the dog retreated. We spent half an hour putting his bike back together and then continued. The day dragged though, we were beset by technical problems and weighed down by our panniers but the final straw was my cousins back wheel collapsing and spewing bearings everywhere. We managed to round up enough bearings off the road to continue and decided to get over Esclusham Mtn near Worlds End (Llangollen way) before finding a campsite to regroup.

Going down the mtn I frightened a sheep which my cousin, unable to stop (minus one brake after the dog incident) chased for a mile down the road, screaming in panic and cursing me roundly.

Eventually we reached a campsite, very late on and totally exhausted. Only my friend had the energy to go back down the hill to the shops for some chocolate for all of us.

We never left Llangollen. My cousins back wheel needed replacing and so I set off in the rain on my bike to Ruabon to get a new one. With the map upside down I cycled 10 miles the wrong way before realising my mistake and turning round. By the time I got to the bike shop, it was shut.

We stayed a week until our money ran out. We had lots of adventures, ended up with a French girlfriend each for the week and generally revelled in the innoncence of our age. When we finally returned we had a lot of explaining to do but stories to tell for the rest of our lives and all for about 200 miles of riding.

I think I learnt more from that tour than any other. It taught me every mistake there was to make and I never repeated them. Unfortunately I never repeated the pure adventure and exhiliration that that tour gave me either.


----------



## rich p (2 Feb 2011)

brilliant Cracks - did you ahem......oh never mind!


----------



## Dayvo (2 Feb 2011)

Excellent, Crackle! 

It had me chuckling, it did!

Time, now though, to start palnning another, long-overdue journey!


----------



## Crackle (2 Feb 2011)

rich p said:


> brilliant Cracks - did you ahem......oh never mind!




I was innocent at 16 Rich. I may have walked along the canal bank fiddling with me camera nervously, my memory's fading now


----------



## ColinJ (2 Feb 2011)

Crackle said:


> My cousins back wheel needed replacing and so I set off in the rain on my bike to Ruabon to get a new one. With the map upside down I cycled 10 miles the wrong way before realising my mistake and turning round. By the time I got to the bike shop, it was shut.


----------



## Encephrich (20 Feb 2011)

Just what my wife and I needed this morn, thanks for the chuckle. (we're bound to do something just as clever ourselves one day)


----------



## 661-Pete (20 Feb 2011)

Brilliant! I'm trying to figure out how, on a Runcorn to Cornwall route, you ended up in Llangollen, but ..... never mind. Perhaps you were drawn to the place by the prescient aura of a mighty presence-to-be (assuming our Patrick was not yet around to take up his abode .....  )

You do realise, of course, that you could have saved oodles of dosh by investing in Bartholomews 1:100,000 instead (which were perfect scale for cycling), rather than OS 1:50,000. Ah well, never mind .


----------

