A Cold Game

There is a challenge known as The Monthly Metric Ton. This has nothing to do with the quantity of fries a European can eat in four weeks, but is cycling at least 100km on at least one occasion each calendar month from January to December.

I've decided to attempt this for 2015.

I need to preface Sunday's failure with a story about how I nearly qualified for The Darwin Awards ten years before they were inaugurated.

I got lost on Dufton Pike. In winter weather that went from mist, to sleet, to rain, to snow, seemingly with every other gust and whim of Fate. I was as naively prepared as every idiot is who dies in the wild doing something they shouldn't. I had broken my Thermos, I was wearing an army surplus camouflage jacket, I had consumed most of my Mars bar rations, and rather than do the sensible thing when I comprehended the surroundings didn't match where I thought I was on the map and retraced my steps – something I was absolutely confident I could do –with less than half the distance of my intended route covered, I elected to press on and Get Back On The Map that way. Out of stubborn pride.

I so nearly became a statistic.

There are uncomfortable memories of fording a knee-high river in peat-coloured, frothy spate.

There are chilling memories of scooping up snow quench my thirst.

There are Hound of The Baskerville memories of black bogs I found myself stepping into and had to struggle from.

And there disconsolate memories of total, deadened silence as yet more snow fell, only alleviated by my breathing.

Finally, there is a sobering memory of the elation of discovering a small wooden bridge which enabled me to Get Back On The Map.  

I am convinced I suffered from mild hypothermia. I certainly found my ability to make decisions slow to frowning frustration. (A condition that some claim I never quite recovered from.) But after many hours I saved myself and learnt that Prudence trumps Pride on most occasions.

So yesterday, as a memory-jarring cold breeze immediately began dragging heat from my body as I cycled towards Coddenham, I decided to shorten my ride and only go to Framlingham before turning back for home. No major harm done, I thought.

About half-an-hour later, I realised that I needed to curtail the ride even further and so, three or four miles short of Framlingham, I headed for Crettingham and thus towards home. It only as I headed into Otley that it occurred to me that my lightweight shower jacket might reduce the wind-chill as it has done before.

It took me three minutes to get it on.

When I got home and found I'd cycled thirty-five miles, I changed into my non-cycling clothes – with the addition of an extra fleece – and remembered Dufton Pike again.

On that day I saw an emerald sky.

As I stumbled through the lifting mist after getting my bearings from the position of the bridge, I thought I was so far gone I had begun to hallucinate. It took me some minutes before I realised I had gained so much height I was looking down onto fields.

I passed a woman wrapped in a silver foil blanket whose walking partner had gone for help. She said she was alright.

I had supposedly given up smoking, but I bought a packet of twenty at Dufton and got through most of them before the YHA opened.

I have long given them up.

As I have about being worried about what people might think of me failing to achieve self-imposed targets.

 

 

Try not to do the stupid things stupid people do.