Scarbjorca

The first day that I took the Viscount over to Scarborough was the day of the second stage of the Tour, and I remember - and this is a first for me - feeling genuinely excited, because the new job and having the whole of the Yorkshire Coast to ride were so closely linked. I kept catching myself thinking, "I hope I get this job, so that I can smoke round these beautiful lanes on my bike…" . The feeling was particularly strong where the motorway crossed the route of the Tour. Looking down at the aftermath of the great race triggered a pretty powerful urge to pull over on the hard shoulder, get the Viscount out of the back of the car and chase the Tour down. When I arrived in Scarborough, I was so keen to get on the bike and explore that I ended up doing a sort of running triathlete's stumble*, like Bambi on rollerskates, as I tried to saddle up, and ride away all at the same time.

Up on the saddle, with the evening breeze rushing past, it was immediately obvious that this was going to be a different experience than I was used to. Ever since my cycling dark ages came to an end, I’ve been setting off on bike rides in Manchester, which is to say, on an absolutely level surface. Gravity treats you more or less with ambivalence when you’re on the flat. The bike accelerates exactly as fast as you can push it. You have to ride for quite a while before you find out whether your ride is going to be characterised by going faster and further than you expected, or shorter and slower.

In Scarborough, on the other hand, there are very few roads that don’t have a fairly decisive gradient on them. This one pointed nicely downhill towards the sea, so each pedal push downwards was matched by a cheeky little shove back up as gravity did its stuff. " Go on," gravity was saying, "give it some beans! This downhill could last for ever, and when it does point uphill, you’ll probably be going so fast you’ll coast right to the top." A very silly, wind blown smile was plastered across my face, as the Viscount quickly approached Fred "Woo Hoo Hoo Hoo"speed *. "I wonder whether the North Bay will look as amazing as I remember it?" I thought, and in about ten seconds I was there, noting that yes, it did, and hoping that I did not do something which defined me as unemployable at my interview the following day.

Once I’d settled in, I started to get ambitious. Not just on my own behalf, but on behalf of all the people in the country who love cycling, but have never made it over here to the coast.

Taking the Viscount round the twists and turns of Forge Valley - entirely on my own in spite of it being a beautiful, early autumn evening - I thought to myself, "This place is amazing! It should be as popular with cyclists as Majorca. I should be getting overtaken right now by some remorseless professional chaingang, scything past on their plastic bikes."

Majorca is great of course. Me, Mrs L and Kate went there in 2012. I hadn't been since the '80's, so I had no idea that it had become a sun kissed bike riding paradise and its status as such played no part in my selection of it as a holiday destination. No, really! But there they were: thousands of bikes, of all shapes and sizes, zipping up and down the big wide bike lane, next to the road leading from Port de Pollenca to Alcudia.

In the hotel where we stayed there was a pretty spectacular Max Hurzeler bike hire station, whose meticulous Austrian manager rode this beautiful titanium Colnago:

Bit of close up?

Yum.

The Colnago was, as you can see, spotless. And so was everything else. I borrowed an aluminium Cube touring bike (in the Continental rather than the British sense of the word) and it looked like it had been delivered from the factory immediately before I climbed aboard.

South of Port de Pollensa were salt marshes. North were the fierce looking mountains of the Serra de Tramuntana. I rode them both, and particularly enjoyed winding the Cube all the way to the top of the mountains, round twisting hairpin bends, until I could see the whole Bay of Pollenca beneath me.

It was a brilliant week, and the island thoroughly deserves its reputation as one of the great cycling destinations. But Scarborough – and the countryside around it – is probably equally deserving of such a reputation.

Let’s start with traffic. There’s a certain satisfaction to be derived from avoiding death or serious injury on a busy city street, but cycling is undeniably more pleasurable if you don’t have to worry about cars, trucks and buses all of the time. This bit of the world just doesn’t have that many motor vehicles in it. If I’m out on my bike and I particularly want to see some cars, then there are probably three or four roads where they will definitely put in an appearance. But if you’d rather just enjoy the scenery, you can do that too. The natural state of a motor vehicle in this part of the world is a mossy Land Rover, sitting in a farmyard, with one wheel missing.

And what scenery it is. I can’t promise you mountains, but there's a British speciality instead; high, wild, heather clad moorland. Round here, the moors are riven by steep sided valleys with woods on the slopes, so sudden that there is a corner where the top of the valley side meets the moorland above. Steep slopes means climbs of course, and there are plenty of vicious, short ramps which will leave you bathed in sweat and anxiously Googling the symptoms of a heart attack when you reach the top.

If all that sounds a bit tiring, there’s the Vale of Pickering: a wide, shallow valley perfect for clocking up fast road miles. The Vale is littered with lovely villages, each one stocked with the kind of pubs which I imagine will start to look more or less irresistible half way through a ride on a warm summer evening. Then to the south there are the Yorkshire Wolds. These are a new kind of terrain for me; a slightly eerie, empty chalk upland with villages nestling in the hollows and twisting roads. And last of all, there’s the sea. OK, so you can’t ride in it, but there is something magical about having it as a companion while you’re on your bike. North of Scarborough, National Cycle Network Route 1 uses the trackbed of the old Scarborough – Whitby railway line to take you up the coast. Unlike the road – which runs a mile or two inland, and only gives you brief glimpses of the sea – the railway line never strays far from the cliff top, letting you look down into secret bays, or southwards to Scarborough Castle and the towering cliffs at Bempton.

NCN Route 1 has one of the greatest "ta-da!" views in the land. From Scarborough there is a more or less constant climb from 50 or 60 feet in elevation to a much more chunky 615 feet at Ravenscar. You’re no sooner aware that you’ve finished climbing than the sea appears, far below and with a horizon half way to Denmark. Then the whole, wonderful sweep of Robin Hoods Bay opens up in front of you.

There are some great businesses here already, helping people get the most out of riding this bit of the world. Pete and Anne Blood's Let's Bike Scarborough will drop off a spotless and capable Specialized mountain bike - one of these in fact

- outside wherever you're staying. And when you've finished ripping round the countryside on it, they will come and pick it up, clean it to within an inch of its life and loan it to someone else the next day. If you're not absolutely sure about how to avoid broken bones on the "...berms, large rocks, medium steps, drop offs, cambers (and) water crossings..." of the red route through Dalby Forest, Pete will guide you through it.

This is a business very much in the same mould as that spotless Max Hurzeler rental station I was getting excited about a little further up the page. When I excitedly blurted out "I love that you don't have rubbish bikes like other hire places do!", Pete calmly explained his belief that North Yorkshire had some of the best riding in the country, and that it shouldn't be spoiled by riding it on poorly maintained, worn out machinery.  Bike About Filey offer a similar service - plus repairs if your own bike breaks - if you're riding a little further south.

Scarborough's Lord and Lady Mayoress Andrew and Sue Backhouse fell for cycling in such a big way last year that they put together a gruelling 200 mile tour round the Borough of Scarborough involving - naturally - 14,000ft of climbing. This year, the original punishing tour has spawned two slightly more manageable sportives (one centred on Whitby, one on Scarborough) as well as a repeat of the 200 mile monster.

Scarborough doesn't need to reinvent the wheel. All it needs to do is polish the current offer and tell everyone about it. The accommodation is there already, although it needs to be tuned to match visitor expectations. There is a really good tourism organisation working to promote the Yorkshire coast, which would, I'm sure, do a great job of telling riders how much Scarborough has to offer. There are already some superb places to ride, and with some effort and investment, there could be many more.  This has been done before. A couple of years ago, Eden Borough Council funded a similar effort to market its patch as a cycling destination, and to improve its existing offer. Routes were compiled. A Sportive was organised. A list of cycle friendly accommodation was put together. The funding only lasted for a year and a half, but there's a good chance a lasting legacy will come out of it.

And I think Scarborough can do better. Scarborough's existence is a triumph over geography. Built at the end of a road which goes nowhere else but the North Sea, the town is used to getting people to make a leap of faith just to get them here. And the trick is to realise that if you're telling bike riders about the Yorkshire Coast, you're not even asking them to make a leap of faith. You can stumble on a great ride here by just saddling up and setting off. 

*Courtesy of Bike Snob NYC

King (of the Mountain) for a day

I logged on to Strava after tonight's ride - of course, of course - and scrolled through the segments. It looked pretty swift - PB, PB, Second, BIG SHINY GOLD CROWN - Oh my word! My first ever King of the Mountain! I jumped up to go and get a bottle of Unicorn - mmmmm, lovely Unicorn - with a vague idea about checking the entry criteria for next year's Tour de France (looks pretty manageable, I thought). I stopped mid stride, half way across the kitchen.

"There's something not quite right about this sudden display of world beating athletic prowess." I thought to myself.

I went back and double clicked on the segment.Oh dear. First out of four riders. And the segment was created today. And actually it's all downhill. And I think I was trying to sing "14 Years" by Guns N' Roses, after yesterday's rediscovery of the band, while I was riding it. Which I don't think I have ever seen riders in the TdF doing, now I think about it.

I have still been back to look at the shiny gold crown about ten times though.

The Tour de France

You might have been wondering when the Tour would put in an appearance. Well, I'd better own up right now and say that the Langsett household's interaction with The Most Watched Sporting Event in the World was pretty tangential, but enjoyable nonetheless. It went like this:

Thursday 3rd July
"We should go and see the Grand Depart!" said Mrs L, surprisingly. Mrs L does have a bike. It is a Raleigh Pioneer, from the heartbreaking period in Raleigh's history where they had learned to build bikes that were absolutely bulletproof, but sales declined nevertheless. It is The Bike That Will Not Die. For five years, my mum didn't ride it. And during all the time that she didn't ride it, it stood in the back yard of mum and dad's house getting snowed on, baked in the sun, refrigerated, blown over and drenched in rain. I borrowed it for Mrs L to have a go on. It needed a wipe down and some new tyres in order to be ready for the road again. It basically looks like new. Unfortunately Mrs L shows no more respect for the Pioneer's fierce will to survive than my mum did, and it is enjoying a comfortable semi-retirement in the shed outside. So I was, as I say, a bit surprised that she wanted to go and have a look at the Tour, which I imagined would be a bit like being hit around the head with a bicycle while someone bellows the Marseillaise at you, if you don't like cycling. Still, I jumped on Destination Yorkshire's website to have a look at how we might manage it. I wanted to see the peloton climb Holme Moss, the bleak and beautiful Pennine pass between Woodhead and Holmfirth. I had a bit of a moment, and couldn't work out a way to get up to the summit - all the roads seemed to be closed for miles on either side of the route. I thought about trying to explain to my daughters why we were hiking through the Pennines to the top of a windy hill to watch a race pass, when the passing would be over and done with in a few minutes at most. I imagined it raining while I was doing this. I wrote it off.

Saturday 5th July
I honoured the Tour by getting up early and sneaking out of the house for an early morning ride. It had been raining, so I needed mudguards but I was (naturally) feeling all roady, so I took the Sludgy Green Bike rather than the Inferno. The Sludgy Green Bike is a relatively recent arrival in the Langsett bike cave, and it is another Viscount. However, it occupied a less illustrious position in the catalogue than the mighty Aerospace Pro when it was new, and mine is a bit dog eared and tired. In addition it is, as the name suggests, a sludgy green colour. And as you can see, it has all been co-ordinated pretty thoroughly to create a slightly camouflaged effect:

In the right conditions, the Sludgy Green Bike can actually disappear entirely, merging seemlessly with the greenery behind it.

It was a great little ride - out past the paper mill at Carrington with its weird freshly braked bread mixed with sweaty socks smell, up the hill after Oughtrington (with the gradient issuing its customary reminder that a bit more self control when it comes to late night snacks and all-Pasty lunches would be no bad thing) and then right on to the empty A56 and the long run downhill into Lymm. Through the S bend down onto Lymm Dam at a positively conservative 29mph, through Lymm village and then home.

I got back and stuck ITV's wall to wall coverage of Stage 1 on. Kate looked at me askance, while I excitedly rattled off a series of unrelated Tour facts, the closest I could come to actual conversation.

" Look, there's Ned Boulting!" I said excitedly, bouncing up and down a bit. I read Ned's book about the Tour de France earlier this year and it was nice to see him doing his day job.

"Daddy, why do you like bike races so much..." said Kate in a pitying tone of voice.

We were in and out for the rest of the day, so I caught bits of the coverage. I heard about how the stage ended, but I didn't see it.

Sunday 6th July

The Bike that Will Not Die's former owner came over in the middle of the day to visit my uncle in hospital, and I had a secret mission to a classified location in North Yorkshire to complete later that afternoon, in connection with Mrs Langsett's new job. The Tour was impossible to avoid completely. It was on whenever the television was on. My uncle lives up the hill from Langsett, and my aunt described seeing the peloton coming down to the hill before taking on the Cote de Midhopestones when we spoke to her from the hospital. Later on, when I set off for North Yorkshire, the westbound lane of the M62 was full of cars with bikes on the roof or hanging off the back - more than I'd ever seen before - all returning from watching the Tour. Crossing over the stage route outside Huddersfield, there was a brief glimpse of blue lights and the debris that was the race's aftermath being scrupulously collected.

Checking Facebook later, it seemed that everyone in the world had managed to catch the race. Helen and Martin had made it to Holme Moss with their lads, as had Kate and Rick. The sun had shone, and this bald hilltop between Manchester and Sheffield looked thoroughly tamed, with thousands of people (accompanied by thousands of bikes) spread out along the final few hairpins to watch Blel Kadri storm the last ramp before the summit.

Monday 7th July
I got to work on my TdF television coverage backlog, watching the bits of stage 1 that I'd missed. The speed that Yorkshire whipped by at was eye opening. Familiar landmarks and places that we've been meaning to visit for years tripped by in turn as the peloton rolled onwards, until it felt like there wasn't a bit of the county that I'd seen where the TdF hadn't also swooped past. There was that side road on the way to Malham where Mrs Langsett demanded a comfort break, only to be surprised by a farmer on his tractor! There was the bit on the Harrogate road where, in the minibus on the way back from Kate and Rick's wedding, I'd realised that getting stuck into the chocolate fountain was going to have toilet consequences! And then there was that stage finish....


I haven't watched that much cycle racing. So the way in which the peloton sorted and distilled itself as the last few kilometres wound down was like a magic trick done in plain sight. One minute, there was a huge, chaotic, multicoloured group of riders rolling along in a way that looked almost relaxed. The next minute, the speed was up, and the group had separated into neat little lines formed of the riders of each team, each working to move their sprinter into the best position.  Mark Cavendish's Omega Pharma-Quick Step team in their black and white jerseys came hammering down the right hand side; Cavendish was tucked away third from the front. I instinctively wanted to duck out of the way. The Katusha team jinked and swerved to the left, trying to find a way through but had nothing. They were coming up on the last kilometre. I knew what would happen next. Those first two Omega Pharma riders would fall away. Cavendish would engage warp drive, treating the whole peloton like his own personal launch pad. The background would blur. The Manx lad would scream across the line and punch the air. Except nobody had told Cancellara that: he put the hammer down over on the other side of the road, racing ahead of the pack so fast he looked like he was leaving his bike behind. Omoega Pharma's hold on the front broke. I lost Cavendish and only saw him again when the crash happened, Simon Gerrans' bike going under his front wheel. Mark of course, was trying to find a gap to get himself back to the front.

Here's the thing: I knew the end result before I sat down to watch. But it was still the most exciting bit of televised sport I've ever watched. It was just incredible watching the peloton form up for the sprint, and just as incredible seeing it suddenly come unstuck.

Like I said - tangential, but enjoyable.

Death Fork Rally

I'm writing this, of course, in the euphoric aftermath of the Tour de France bobbing and weaving though the hills that are the heart of my bit of England. Superb as it was, it doesn't overshadow the mighty lane conquering bike behemoth that was the Second Annual Death Fork Rally. But before we get to that, you might be thinking to yourself, why "Death Fork"?

Well, there's a story there of course.

The Death Fork Rally is for Viscounts, like my blue and silver Aerospace Pro. The first generation of Aerospaces were built with a fork made out of a very beautiful bare aluminium casting, joined to a steel stearer tube. The persistent rumour that follows this design of fork is that the aluminium casting can separate from the steel steerer tube. If you tap "Viscount" and "Death Fork" into Google, you don't have to go very far before you come across stuff like this, from bicycling legend Sheldon Brown.

"UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD A LAMBERT OR VISCOUNT BE RIDDEN WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST ALUMINIUM FORK!!!!!!!!!"

There was a recall of Aerospaces in the US too.

Which all sounds a bit scary. doesn't it?

Fortunately, Viscounts have a quietly spoken hero on their side. His name is Steve, and he lives an hour or so up the A6 from me. Steve loves his Viscounts, and when faced with this death fork legend, he dealt with it in the best possible way: he found and spoke to the people that made these bikes back in the seventies. There were, in short, three versions of the aluminium fork and the last version (which is the version fitted to my bike) has no recorded failures.

Still, that recall notice and Sheldon's stern warning add a certain something to the time I spend with the Aerospace. Just occasionally, when I'm on a fast descent, I'll sneak a look at the fork flexing and moving to take up all the bumps in the road and wonder about whether it and I understand each other's requirements...

So that's why its called the Death Fork Rally. Jem did the organising this year, and sorted out a brilliant route through the beautiful countryside to the north of Burton-on-Trent.This turned out to be a land of steep little hills, oak woods and villages built out of warm red brick. In the middle of the ride was a very good pub, and at the end was another one along with tea and bacon butties courtesy of Mrs Jem. My day pass from Mrs Langsett expired at about tea time, but I left behind a campsite full of Viscount owners planning their second pub mission of the day.

Stella brought her top secret, newly restored pink "Viscountess"; John rode his incredible 24 karat gold plated Lambert; and Whippet's essentially brand new, ruby red Aerospace Sport proved once and for all that if you make your bike clean enough it will eventually become so clean that dirt just slides right off it. There were plenty of other beautiful bikes there, but also a brilliant, kind and warm hearted group of people riding them.

Here are a few pictures from the day:

Team photo. Keen eyed readers will spot The Langsett's confused pairing of shorts with long sleeved top. The weather hadn't made up its mind yet and neither had I.

John and Rhona, quite possibly thanking their lucky stars that the sun wasn't bright enough to light up John's golden Lambert.

Whippet's beautiful, better than new Aerospace Sport, set up for time trialling: the cogs on the back wheel ready to provide five slightly different sorts of pain and suffering to the rider.

Rhona and Stella's bikes having a rest before the off.

Jem and his world tour ready Deore 18AX.

Thirsty Viscount owners being attracted by the gravitational pull of the pub, Timothy Taylors' Landlord and lovely, just made pizzas.

The Aerospace getting its post ride wash.