EDI-ELG/STAGE 1.5/PER-BA

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1920)

September in Scotland is the finest - i.e. least reliably Scottish - month for weather, yet, it could be argued, the one that most closely aligns with the Scottish national psyche itself. Winter is often just seven or eight months of some higher power ramming home the fact that a) it will only get worse and b) you have brought this upon yourself for being Scottish and refusing to move to warmer climes. Were I more at one with nature and all its splendour I would see Spring as a beatific reawakening of the soul and the ushering in of a new, fresh dawn. But I am not, so Spring is like one of those artisan flavoured waters, neither enough of one thing nor too much of the other; enough of a chill to curtail a shorts-on pint outside but not enough warmth for even the taps-aff crew to commit fully. Summer will have been the inevitable mix of warmish days, cruel rain on your days off and the lingering feeling that someone somewhere else is getting a genuine tan that isn’t on the Northern sliding scale of “I am white/I am now blue/I am now horrifically burnt.” Where Eliot called April the cruellest month, he could have easily dubbed September as the most “Well, anything can happen” month. You shall, occasionally, wear the bottom of your trousers rolled.

For those of us who are lucky/foolish enough to live in Edinburgh, August represents something of an acid test, a ritual you must both endure and enjoy to cement your status as a bona fide Edinburgher. The population doubles, the price of a pint hits London levels since most of its inhabitants of certain artistic boroughs are now here, and they are demanding you come and see their 3* comedy revue about Brexit/the mating habits of pangolins/N*gel F*r*ge so that they can eat solid food. As the French say, c’est la guerre or even l’enfer c’est les autres and I have survived/enjoyed/contemplated murder for about 24 1/2 Augusts since I moved here in 1994. This year has been different. The pandemic saw Edinburgh in August revert to an alternately unsettling and often more pleasant experience. I work in the arts sector so the disappearance of the hundreds of shows and events that might typically whet my whistle left my cultural calendar feeling somewhat empty, but then so did the city itself. August often feels like a maelstrom of choice if you have money and time, and the lockdown had seen those two concepts take centre stage; losing 1/3 of my income to Covid yet spending 23 hours a day at home meant August felt particularly hard, even more so given the number of birthdays that occur in that month that would be “celebrated” differently under lockdown. Indeed, September is traditionally when the city and those who live in it expel a collective sigh, the last genuine chance to reclaim some of Auld Reekie for yourself before the Authentic Experiences of German Markets and Edinburgh’s HogmanayTM crash through the calm to remind you that for most of the year you are merely tolerated in Disnaeland.

Checking the weather forecast ahead of my ride became an obsession, the fingers moving automatically to the Met Office app every morning and poring over, above all, wind direction. Despite only a handful of people knowing in advance what I would be undertaking in those three days in September, someone had put in a good word with whichever deity was tasked with spiking the meteorological punchbowl that week, and I set out North for 72 hours of near-uninterrupted sunny delight. For 90% of my 354km my torso would be clad in no more than a mesh base layer and a lightweight, short-sleeved Rapha jersey. A lipstick-sized tube of sun cream was employed regularly before sweat and river water would join the party, sending a salty mix of lotion and perspiration down over my brows, occasionally making it to my lips. A quick-dry Lidl towel - a tremendous Xmas present from the Greens - was often doused in river water and draped around my neck for cooling purposes. I would ride through three consecutive days of blazing sunshine and near-zero wind, something only an elite few Scots would experience in their entire shift on this little planet.

Fuelled with the growing sense that I had quite a few miles ahead with only myself and the mounting roadside carcasses of Springwatch for company, I decided to crack on a wee bit. Skirting the Tay Forest Park, the road was becoming a bit lumpy, each blissful cadence-free descent followed by up-and-out-of-the-saddle bumps that were starting to tire me. I headed through Dunkeld, visions of the three witches swimming around my brain, Dunsinane’s canopy of green swaying its conspiracies in the breeze, Banquo’s ghost a lurching figure just over my shoulder. Spying a sign for a rockpool, I tracked off the main path down to the Tay and spent ten minutes or so cooling my feet in the water, having my first proper wash of the day just along from two old fellas on a bench engaged in more chin-wagging than the relatively passive act of actually fishing.

At Blair Atholl I arrived at my hastily-booked camping pod before dusk and headed out for a meal of lamb rump with parsnip mash and veggies at The Loft, the only place open until 8:30. It was a perfectly serviceable dinner that, along with a bottle of Deuchar’s and a Coke, was a welcome warm mass in my belly after all the water and malt loaf (and, let’s be frank, three mini bags of Haribo). The sun was well below the horizon as I returned to the campsite, stopping along the way to exchange a few silent moments with two enormous shaggy cattle, their milk-white horns catching the very last licks of light.

The first inconvenience that Covid regulations would throw up would be the ironic lack of convenience/s at the campsite. The toilet block was only open from 9-1pm then 5-10pm, so after sorting my stuff out at the pod I managed to wash myself as well as I could in a tiny sink in the only cubicle not wrapped in red-and-white emergency tape. The campsite had warned in advance that there would be no shower facilities but curiosity and the odour I was emanating got the better of me, so I peeled off the tape from one of the stall doors and used my key to twist the outside lock from “ENGAGED” to “LET’S GO.” They were not kidding about the lack of shower facilities. Not only were the doors sealed off and locked (to the less nimble-fingered) but there was literally no shower on the wall. They had removed everything bar the pipes and, somewhat cruelly, left the shower mat propped up forlornly against the wall. I was hoping to at least hold my head under some lukewarm mist for a few minutes just to feel a bit more human, but more worrying was that I wouldn’t be able to use the toilets for the next considerable while.

Despite being surrounded by nature, my little camping pod was further encircled by a travelling circus of caravans, camper vans and some vehicles that could have doubled as support vehicles for a pre-teen NASCAR team. By the time 10pm rolled around - and the termination of my porcelain lifeline for another 11 hours - most lights had been extinguished around me, and I was enjoying a pleasant post-prandial miniature of Laphroaig that Jen had given me as a nightcap to savour at the end of day 1.

My sleeping facilities - a sleeping bag liner, leather sofa bed and sleep shorts - were all laid out ready for slumber but at some point within the space of finishing my whisky and preparing to turn in for the night I began to face the looming spectre of the exertions of the previous 9 hours coming back to haunt me. I didn’t feel ill exactly, but nor, alarmingly, did I feel tired.

One thing living with Crohn’s Disease makes you acutely aware of is your relative proximity to toilet facilities. My own facilities - that can occasionally be running triple shifts where number 2s are involved - were actually performing like my pre-operation 19 year old self for the entire three days (and even beyond, something I chalk down to my body choosing which emissions to prioritise, given the circumstances). I would use, in the entire 354km, the roll of toilet paper bungeed to my saddle pack precisely once. Granted, my cache of wet wipes, chamois cream and Savlon would be all but depleted by the time I got to Elgin, a just-about-effective defence against the brutal conflict being waged against my nether regions, but round the back was coping admirably.

So why, then, could I not stop peeing?

The crippling urge to pee yet nowhere to do so without disturbing one of the many curtain-twitching socks-and-sandals types safely tucked up in their van/mobile home was becoming an issue. In a comic twist I was becoming somewhat accustomed to, the cheap torch that the pod key came attached to was only intermittently working and, for a brief moment, the thought crossed my mind that no horror movie hack could have written a finer opening scene.

SCENE: EXT. NIGHT
A dishevelled man wearing long johns, sleeping shorts, a down jacket and a woollen hat is slapping a cheap plastic torch against his leg as the beam cuts out and dies. He has in his other hand an overflowing pink container, faint wisps of steam rising from the bottle, and is cursing to himself as the liquid slops out over the sides onto his hand.
From behind him, a shapeless black form tracks silently through the undergrowth, its breath misting around him in the frosty air.
VIOLIN CRESCENDO. CUT TO TITLES

So, for the next two hours or so whilst the temperature dropped - my energy levels with it - I used the water bottle I was using for emergency water to pee into. And keep peeing into, each time sneaking out furtively to dump it into the furthest away bushes, making sure it wasn’t spilling over the top, and using what meagre water I had left in my non piss-filled bottle to rinse it out. I had factored in that some kind of physical misfortune would befall my travels at some point, but as I got colder and colder I became more and more tired, the synapses dulled by the exertions of the previous hours out on the road. My pod - warmed earlier by the evening sun and the tiny space heater on the wall - had now become desperately cold, since I was opening the door every time I went on my mini piss drops and frequently forgetting to close it all the way. My brain was starting to fabricate weird scenarios; I shouldn’t fall asleep in case I hadn’t expelled all the water from my system and I balked at turning on the space heater because I would definitely die from carbon monoxide poisoning, clothes saturated with my own liquids. I had on my long johns, winter socks, sleep shorts, long sleeved top, woollen beanie and had wrapped my down jacket around my legs but warmth and sleep still felt a long way off. The SPAR shop had closed 17 minutes before I arrived so I had nothing substantial for breakfast besides an energy bar and a bit of water. I felt feverish, and a particularly annoying pop song rattled around my head - more on which later. I feared I would have to phone my wife to rescue me. I was only a third of the way there. How did I get here? Would a few desperate hours of shivering near-sleep and the expulsion of all the fluid in my body be ideal preparation for the 150+km that faced me the next day?

NEXT: STAGE 2 / BA-TORN*