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Having (somewhat erroneously) believed that my number was up a couple of years back, moments of joy have an extra special significance now. As something wonderful happens I think - I might not have experienced this. And if I hadn’t got my suspicious ball checked out then maybe I’d be dead or gravely ill now, so it’s not entirely erroneous. So I am always thankful to the people who saved me for this extra time and the chance to create some proper memories of me for my kids.
Phoebe is obsessed with cycling now and has been badgering us to hire some bikes, so today we drove to Yatton (about ten miles away) to pick up one for her and one for me from
Strawberry Cycles. We’d booked some by email yesterday, without a deposit and there’d been a rush on and there was only two adult bikes left. Luckily one of them was small enough to accommodate my tiny legs. Obviously the bank holiday is their busy time and I couldn’t expect them to hold on to the bikes if they had had a chance to hire them out. But the lady running the place was pleasantly surprised by demand - her mechanic was about to turn up to find there was basically nothing to work on. It’s a great not-for-profit enterprise with a community feel to it and with adapted bikes for all kinds of people. A young disabled girl was ahead of us in the queue with her parent or carer and they were off for a ride in a special tandem bike.
If you’re in Somerset then please support them. They’re not only great, but riding through the Somerset countryside is a brilliant use of a day.
The bike rental is right at one end of the Strawberry Line, a 10 mile cycle track running largely along the old long-gone railway track (Cheddar used to have a railway station - how useful would that have been?) and Phoebe was determined to cycle all the way back to our holiday home. This was quite a bit further than we’d managed on our previous ride, but we were told it was mainly flat and I was fairly confident that we could do it. It was a lovely sunny day and the trip took us through some beautiful Somerset countryside and I was, of course, bursting with pride at my tiny determined daughter successfully riding her bike over a long distance over a bumpy track without any fear. This was me and her against the world and like
our kite flying exploits from the day after I was told I was losing a ball, I knew she was going to remember this and remember me. 9 mile bike rides aren’t the kind of thing that I’ve been falling over myself to do in my life, so this was an experience for me as well as her and I got a similar sense of achievement for managing it. We stopped about halfway for a drink and a snack (I’d left my bottle of water in the car, but Phoebe let me share hers). I had a banana and Phoebe has a double Milky Way, but she offered me one of them saying “There’s two.” She has not always been the best sharer, especially with chocolate (I don’t know where she got that from) so for her to volunteer a Milky Way was a big moment. And even though I am not eating chocolate (well supposedly) I couldn’t refuse this moment of comradeship. We were a team.
There were some cool places to stop and look at if you were so inclined, but this was all about the journey for us and we pressed on. I had thought it would take us about three hours, but realised we were going to make it in half the time. There were a couple or places where we had to cross roads and more steep bits than we’d anticipated and a smelly cider factory, but we took it all in our stride.
There’s a long tunnel too, which got quite dark and scary. The grown men proper cyclists behind us screamed like children (they had made the mistake of keeping their sunglasses on), but Phoebe only had a little quiet wobble.
When we got to Axbridge I knew I had to work out how to get to our holiday cabin and for the first time things weren’t particularly well sign-posted and we ended up in a car park. We weren’t the only ones who’d gone wrong. As we tried to go down a path two cyclists returned to tell us it was a dead end. I thought we probably needed to ride down a cycle lane into Axbridge, but mistakenly thought we were closer to our target than we were and I took my 8 year old daughter whose only just started cycling on to the Axbridge bypass, which she would later describe as a motorway.
This was a parental error, which reminded me of when our dad took us out on a rowing boat on the Isle of Arran and we got into the rough sea until my mum screamed for us to go back in. Although the road is quite straight, cars and lorries were whizzing past us and the crosswind was hard to deal with and Phoebe got dirt blown up in her face. We soldiered on and again Phoebe seemed remarkably calm (though she was afraid she told me later - as was I, but mainly for the trouble I’d get into if I came home with a squashed child). Now we’re through it I’m glad the adventure took this dangerous turn, as it was thrilling and terrifying and we worked together to ensure our safety. But we got off and walked on the verge after half a mile and then cycled the last bit on the pavement. We were still heroes though and we did the 9 miles in 90 minutes.
I shied away from adventure for most of my life and I know this is on the very mild end of what is possible, but it was as fulfilling for me as it was for Phoebe. We had no real idea if we could make it or what dangers we might face (some real ones as it turned out) but we did it anyway.
I asked Phoebe if she’d remember this as long as she lived and she said she didn’t know. I said I would and she pointed out that would be easy as I might not have that long to live. This was during our Milky Way break and to be honest I wasn’t sure I’d even live to the end of the journey, so she was right.
But I was glad that I'd lived long enough to experience this. Thanks NHS.
