Unearthing moments

Bristol to Newport via Bont. 125km over 2 days.

In the end, all we have are moments. Moments that reassure us. Moments that break us. Moments that challenge us, shape us, create us.

I had 9-months of wonderful moments in which I was almost entirely present. I woke to sunlight caressing the canvas of my tent. I laughed at a beaming child trying on my oversized helmet. I strained for breath, legs on fire during an out-of-the seat climb.

I drifted through landscapes, delighted in silence, charted a course through an uncomplicated world. They were the true gift of a time-rich existence.

In one particularly forceful Colombian downpour, an old man offered me temporary shelter.

“¿Quieres tinto?”

“You want coffee?” he said, beckoning to me from beneath the corrugated roof of his veranda.

He said it with an open smile that expected nothing in return. He didn’t need much conversation to make me feel welcome. We just sat and watched as raindrops somersaulted in fresh puddles whilst the black nectar bolstered my resolve to pedal on.

At the turn of the year, returning to my normal routine, it felt like that level of engagement with life was distant. It felt like those moments couldn’t exist outside of that trip. They were special and unique. They were gone forever.

But then I realised, they are still there somewhere. Behind a thin grey film. The colours washed out like a sun-bleached baseball cap. Or a pair of battered running shoes a few hundred miles into their life cycle.

Perhaps more importantly, I can experience new moments. In fact, those moments are all around me. It takes a pause or a stepping back. It takes carving out a little piece of time to be present. No phone, no music, no podcasts. Just deep breaths, and a little focus.

There is beauty in the bracing wind and in a warm embrace and in the lights on a bridge slicing winter mists.

There is beauty on bikes.

Six weeks after coming home, I got my first chance to go long again. Home is a stone’s throw from a national border, albeit a rather unexotic one. A straight shot over the Severn Estuary from Bristol into Wales. Lukas, one of my best and oldest friends, locked in for the ride.

The weather in that first month and a half had been awful. Low cloud, persistent drizzle and a greyness that sapped the life from my surroundings. But the morning we cycled to Wales - the first proper day of half term - the skies cleared, the sun returned, and the breeze lifted spirits high. We skimmed the flooded roads and empty cycleways of south Gloucestershire and rode up and over the bridge towards the famed Welsh hills.

The gloopy Severn banks passed in a rush of motorway traffic and a hint of something different. The blinkers of routine shifted, just a little.

We pushed on through Chepstow and out into the countryside towards Usk. I had stuffed baguettes with tomato, cucumber, falafel, aioli and sriracha before wrapping them in tin foil. We gorged ourselves on a sunny wall outside the public toilets. I couldn’t have cared less about the location. It was good to move again.

I bought a coloured glass bird as a small gift for our host that night. It flickered in the light as I turned it over in my hands The shopkeeper sheathed it in thin brown paper and the door tinkled as we left his space and set out for the lanes once more.

And steadily, I began to realise, they were there. The moments. All around me. Each as engaging and as beautiful (well, almost) as those on my long trip.

A rattling downhill. Water flecks spinning from glistening tyres. Branches swaying with the first leaves of spring. A submerged trundle along a shortcut gone wrong. We arrived filthy and aching to a cosy Welsh farmhouse with the most welcoming and generous of family friends. The fire crackled and the cats tumbled as we ate well. We cracked cans of cold beer whilst the flagstones pressed against our feet and all outside was silent and calm and black. We joked and laughed and slept deeply.

Predictably, the weather was shite the next day. It dripped and it drizzled and the view was blocked by thick whites and greys in every direction. Mud splashed and arms shivered as our clothes soaked through and never recovered. We had to cut short our plan for Cardiff and target Newport instead, pausing for mochas in a chinking coffee shop to wait out the rain.

We wheeled our bikes into a covered alley and tucked dripping legs under a wooden table close to the window as the sheets came down once more.

“Would you like some coffee?” said a lilting South Wales accent.

I felt like I’d heard that question somewhere before.

Day 1: GPX Bristol to Bont (75km)

Day 2: GPX Bont to Newport (50km)

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The story so far

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

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Podcast appearances: 10Adventures | Seek Travel Ride

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