'My riding companion proceeded to fragment into countless tiny particles and dissolve into the night sky — I was hallucinating': Inside a 500km ultra ride

It was about 3am on the Saturday morning, closing in on 36 hours of pedalling, when things started to get interesting. The finer points are sketchy, but It was me and another guy, I remember that much. We were in the wilds of Kent, riding through a claustrophobic section of bridlepath, a sunken holloway lit by the powerful lumens of our lights. I started to flag and signalled for my riding companion to rein in the pace – he had been gunning it for many kilometres now and I was beginning to wonder where he’d got his legs from. “Hey, wait, I’m falling off the back here!” He ignored me and kept riding, fast. I pressed the issue: “Mate, I’ll let you go, this is too hot for me.” Still nothing.

I got out of the saddle and chased him down to within a few feet of his rear wheel. In a rather bizarre sequence of events, my riding companion then proceeded to fragment into countless tiny particles and dissolve into the night sky. With that, he was gone. Either this guy really wasn’t in the mood for a chat or I was hallucinating. I stopped my bike and slapped myself hard across the face. Coming-to from some kind of reverie, I deduced that my erstwhile riding companion had never existed. I was alone in the darkness with a brain working as effectively as a thrice-used teabag. And things weren’t about to improve...

I was riding the Great British Escapades, a 500km off-road ultra event held over the second weekend in June and organised by Kevin Francis, who also designed the Great British Divide, one of the country’s flagship ultra-cycling events. I use the term ‘event’ advisedly – technically, this is not a race but 310 miles just for the hell of it. So why the hell was I doing it? Well, at 46 years old, my top-end performance is never going to threaten the business end of any leaderboards, but the good thing about getting older – apart from getting excited about garden centres – is that endurance performance isn’t hugely compromised. Type-one muscle fibres rule for the middle-aged; we’re very much the tortoises to Generation Z’s fast-twitching hares. The Escapades would suit my aged performance characteristics, or so I hoped.

I would be riding through two nights across some of the toughest terrain in south-east England. I was confident I had the physical ability, but mentally this would be above and beyond anything I’d tried before – not to mention the logistics. Yes, the Great British Escapades would be a true test of my middle-aged mettle. This was a chance to see how far I could cycle in a single sitting, and if I got through it, how I would measure up against the rest of the field.

Soggy start

Two full nights lay ahead of us, but just a few clicks out of the start gate at Patrixbourne my thoughts were not on dark forests but on the tropical rain clouds currently emptying their contents over my head. Contrary to recent weather forecasts, all 103 participants of the Escapades were bearing the brunt of a vehement downpour. There we were in our slickest summer attire getting soaked to the skin. Many around me laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation – how else could we react? Crying would’ve only made us wetter. After two hours of being subjected to Mother Nature at her most scornful, the sun slowly emerged through dispersing clouds. But alas, we weren’t treated to its warmth for long, and just as Rochester, Kent, some 50 miles into the journey, materialised on the horizon, the last light of the day ebbed away and we rode into the first night of the Great British Escapades.

I had packed light. Ludicrously light. My sleeping equipment consisted of, well, nothing. My thoughts prior to riding were that if I had nothing to sleep on, I would not attempt sleep, thereby saving time. My contingency plan – in the event my body demanded sleep – amounted to hypothermia and, as a very last resort, death. As the night sealed off the world save for the path lit by my helmet and handlebar lights, I followed the well- trodden North Downs Way west in something resembling cruise control.

By this time, the field had well and truly fragmented. I saw no one ahead of me and no one behind me. Occasionally I’d catch a flicker of a back light in a distant woodland but for now I was very much alone – just tapping away at the pedals making slow but steady progress. At 3am – just before descending the zig-zags of Box Hiil – I went to take a drink from my Camelback and was rewarded with nothing but a dry gurgle. If an ultra- riding handbook existed, the first line on the first page would read something like: “Under no circumstances run out of food and water.” Reaching into my back pocket for a fistful of Haribo only to rustle an empty packet, I found that I had contravened rule one and committed the cardinal sin. Happily, however, this was an area I knew well, and if my calculations were correct, the night porter at the hotel at the bottom of Box Hill would just be coming- to from a doze. Time to give him something to do...

Thankfully he let me in, and I necked a carafe of water in the lobby. The bleary-eyed porter looked at me like I’d lost my mind. I wanted to explain that I’d only temporarily misplaced it, but I wasn’t sure either of us were in the mood for existential chit-chat – nor was he amenable to my request for a quick sausage and bacon butty with lashings of HP sauce. So I took my leave and headed back out onto the trail. It was while making my way across Ranmore Common, as the beginnings of the dawn chorus started to permeate the air, that the oh-so- familiar feeling of bonking overtook my body. And to make matters worse, I’d just got a puncture.

It’s in an hour of need that you discover the best of humanity. Case in point: having managed to plug the aperture in my tubeless set-up, I attached the adapter to the valve, went to take the first stroke and quite inexplicably pulled my pump apart. So there I sat. Deflated, bereft and very hungry indeed. Five minutes later, however, the cavalry arrived. I’d ridden with Francis Barnett before, during the Pennine Rally, when our paces had seemed closely matched, and likewise here: after 110 miles of Escapades, he was just minutes behind me. “How’s it going?” enquired Francis, handing me a pump.

“Middling to fair,” I replied, “but I’ve balls-ed up my fuelling again.” “Do you want a double cheeseburger? “ he asked.

I continued pumping, laughing at the absurdity of his offer. Who the hell carries a double cheeseburger around with them? He held it out to me, the McDonald’s- emblazoned wrapper rustling as I incredulously took it from him. Was this too a hallucination? Had I fallen asleep in the woods and entered a trailside reverie involving fast food? I kept a close eye on Francis, waiting for him to turn into Ronald McDonald as I took my first bite. As squashed and mangled as it was – Francis had picked it up 60 miles back, in Rochester – this was the best burger I’d ever tasted. Likewise, Francis was promoted there and then to the best person in the world.

Kebabs and carnage

It was 11am when the South Downs first emerged on the horizon. By this time I’d been riding for 18 hours straight and covered 160 miles. According to my tracker, I was currently trundling along in 15th position. The National Park’s neatly nibbled contours were a very welcome sight, marking just over half-distance. The South Downs ridgeline, though not as spectacular as Snowdonia or as visually striking as the Lake District, is for me classic British countryside at its absolute best and remains my favourite place in the UK.

But now, hike-a-biking out of Graffham on a slope so steep that a misplaced foot would see me tumble back to the village in a ball of Spandex and bicycle luggage, I did not appreciate the South Downs Way. My leg power had already been restricted to Zone 2 at the very most, and the next 75 miles to Eastbourne were continuously undulating. There was no other option. I would have to eat my way back to Canterbury. This was no longer a bike ride. It was a quest to redefine the limits of human calorie consumption. Having stocked up at the little convenience store in Graffham, my cheeks bulged with Haribo as I traversed the South Downs Ridgeway. Due to my relative heft, however, and the energy it required to heave my ample frame up and down the climbs, it wasn’t long before I’d put paid to half a dozen packets. This was proving quite a costly exercise...

Riding through the midsummer heat – up Amberley Mount to Washington, from the Devil’s Dyke to Ditchling Beacon and beyond – it was interesting to note that there was no longer any physical or mental pain present. I was absent-mindedly propelling myself across the landscape seeking out sustenance; it was all very Night of the Living Dead. However, after finally reaching the dogleg where the South Downs Way meets the 100-mile home straight back to Canterbury, I found myself revitalised, urgent, with a fresh sense of purpose. I remembered that this event actually had an ending.

Now riding with Adam and Tom (real riders, not illusions) who were also euphoric to have left the godforsaken gradients of the South Downs, we made a pledge that the first town we came across would bear witness to an unprecedented feeding frenzy. We wanted hot savoury food and by god we wanted it now. We were currently maintaining positions 12-14th and a solid hit of salt would replenish some much-needed electrolytes. The poor people of Polegate, th en, did not know what had hit them when 15 minutes later we rampaged through town from chip shop to chip shop seeking every last portion of halibut that remained at 9pm. Eventually we stumbled on the motherload, a kebab shop, which glistened with a utopian aura amid a parade of shops – angels sung, a harpsichord played, the spinning stick of mystery meat turned in exquisite circles. We levitated towards it. It was feeding time at the zoo. Pure savagery. Extreme physical and mental fatigue combined with an enormous quota of food can ultimately lead only to one thing. Sleep. We were now some 32 hours into the ride and although I took a catnap coming down Ditchling Beacon – it’s genuinely amazing what a few fi ve-second snoozes can do the need to lie down was now urgent. So after riding a further 15 miles up the Cuckoo Trail, my acquaintances decided that this was the only course of action and promptly passed out in a ditch. As for me, having nothing to sleep on, there was no other option than to ride on.

It was about now that I started riding with the chap who rudely turned out to be a figment of my imagination, the fi rst of many hallucinations. After he’d taken his leave, I slowly navigated my way around Bewl Water – feeling like I could have drunk the whole reservoir, such was the eff ect of the salt from the fast food frenzy in Polegate. But it was 3am and the world was shut. I sat down on the pavement and took stock. The air in my back tyre was slowly ebbing away, there was no battery left on my phone, and I was on the verge of drinking from a puddle. Self-preservation prevailed: I set my Garmin for the most direct route to the fi nish and pedalled crestfallen into the rising sun.

My Great British Escapades came to an impromptu halt in a place aptly named Wye, in Kent, at 6am. My back tyre was now flat, my pump was still broken – and Wye had a train station. So with 280 miles on the clock, and 38 hours of riding time under my belt, sitting in 12th in the rankings, I called it quits with just 20 miles to go. Am I disappointed? Yes, of course – but lessons have been learnt and experience gained. The fact I was riding towards the pointy end of the race (sorry, ride) has cemented my belief that, when it comes to endurance, age is just a number. This was an adventure, a life-affi rming, rip-roaring roister around England’s rural south-east, and you can bet a bivvy bag to a barn dance that I will be back to right a 20-mile wrong next year.