In aid and interest of anyone taking part in national cycling week, hopefully this will encourage some pedaling.
Ben French recounts the trials of cycling to the Arctic with three friends, their battle with the elements and exhaustion to reach one of the remotest places on earth and to attempt a 24 hour ride upon arrival. Whilst raising £27,000 for charity.
Things began to get a little uncomfortable in the 18th hour. We had not seen any form of inhabited civilisation since entering Sweden 190km ago, and a couple of us were beginning to lose concentration, almost falling asleep at the wheel. Our food supply was dwindling to the extent that Tom, ever the hungry one (understandably given his increasingly skeletal frame), had resorted to looking for food in rubbish bins outside a closed petrol station. We sat in the midnight gloom in an abandoned campsite, being nibbled by a swarm of midges while we attempted to refuel our exhausted bodies, willing the next six hours to disappear.
What on earth, you may ask (and what we repeatedly asked ourselves), were we doing? Who would willfully inflict themselves with such torture? We were tired, cold, damp, and deprived of all human contact but ourselves. And the worst thing was, the end of this seemingly perpetual day's ride only marked the half way point of our journey; we were still 1800km away from a warm hostel bunk in Stockholm.
The answer is not so much inspirational as indicative of four students with too much time and energy to burn. During one of our perhaps more deranged moments of Edinburgh life, we conjured up one of the most physically arduous challenges that we could imagine setting ourselves; a non-stop, 24 hour ride. And where better to do a 24 hour ride than in the midnight sun of Arctic Scandinavia? So then, just as an afterthought, why not cycle there from Edinburgh and back? I'm sure it made perfect sense at the time.
The challenge was set. On the 2 June, I, along with three other Edinburgh students; Tom Cabot, William Nicholson and Rollo Gwyn-Jones, left our familiar surroundings of Edinburgh. After a send off from The Scotsman and Waverley Care at Dynamic Earth, we began our journey south on the roads which we had been accustomed to training on for several weeks, only this time, at the point where we would usually turn back to go home for our tea, we carried straight on down the road to Newcastle. The more people that queried in amazement what our 'Arctic Challenge' (the mission stated on our custom made rain jackets) was all about the more the scale of our task dawned on us. When most people think of the Arctic they picture polar bears and icebergs floating in freezing waters, not cyclists in matching lycra. The trip began to feel like a journey into the unknown.
After a 27 hour ferry across the North Sea to Bergen, we headed north up the extraordinarily beautiful coast of Norway, rippled with extreme glacial valleys and fjords; just imagine the Highlands of Scotland, but on steroids. We had to make quick progress in difficult terrain (an average of 140km a day) to keep to our planned schedule, but nonetheless our efforts made a depressingly small imprint on what became to be known as the 'evil' map; a 12 hour slog in the burning sunshine on windy roads registered only as one inch closer to our target.
Approaching Trollstgestein (yes the valley where trolls – those little toys with fluorescent hair – come from), about half way up the Norwegian coast, we were welcomed by six foot of snow as we reached the top of a 40km climb in a wind chill of minus 15°C. As the gradient steepened and the heart began to burn, we looked around us. This is where people die we thought to ourselves; any mechanical failure or injuries would at this point have meant a night camping in the snow and the four of us huddling in a two-man tent for warmth. The descent was one of the most painful experiences I have ever endured on a bike. Going down a near vertical rock face, resembling something out of a Tolkien novel, or Col de Mordor, as it affectionately became known, winding ferociously from side to side, it was so cold that we were unsure whether to slow down to stop the air passing through our sodden jackets so quickly or to speed up to get to shelter faster. Luckily the decision was made for me when my hands became too frozen to use the breaks.
After 10 days we had covered over 1400km and were within touching distance of the Arctic Circle. A sense of achievement was about to overcome us before we reminded ourselves that this could only mean one thing; the 24 hour ride was nigh. As if what we were already in the middle of was not a hard enough.
We left Mo I Rana, a small town 80km south of the Arctic Circle at 7.30am on the 17 July, armed with 10,000 calories of food each in our trailers in a light drizzle. After some early mechanical problems, and a continuous gentle climb through the rain, we had crossed the Circle by lunch time amid the harsh landscape of northern Norway. We paused to get the Arctic Circle stamp in our passports, and to chat to some incredulous French tourists ('C'est ne pas possible! Les cyclistes ici?!'). From there we continued north before taking the turning that would take us south into Sweden. Having crossed the mountain pass which marked the border, we then descended into the Lapland, a world of dense woodland, beautifully clear lakes, and long, straight, flat roads.
As we reached the half way point, we came across the magnificent sight of a herd of reindeer running down the road, which we chased for a kilometer. Much to our disappointment, no red noses or sleighs were seen amongst them. By this point our legs were apparently working independently of our brains, churning away the gears as our distance unknowingly accumulated. As midnight approached, the sun disappeared from view over the distant hills and a dense mist descended on the marshy land, but within half an hour it was peeping back over them once again; quite a spectacle.
So we reached the dreaded hour. After 20 hours of pedaling we came to a grinding halt on an eerily silent road beside a beautifully calm, crystal clear lake. We knew that the next town was 30km away, which would bring our total up to 322km. The problem we faced was that the town after that was a further 85km, which would be another 5 hours cycling at our slowing pace. That would have meant stopping at about 9 the next morning. It was this calculation that made us realise that to stop would be the best idea – a realistic possibility otherwise would be wild camping tens of kilometres from civilisation in temperatures below freezing point, without food or water to replenish the huge number of calories we had burnt since 7.30 the previous morning. Although we stopped short of our 400km target, we felt exceptionally proud of our achievement. We had been faced with a number of adversities, namely bike problems, the weather and gradient, and the sheer sparseness of northern Scandinavia. After 322km, we stopped at 3.30 in the morning in Argeplog, in disorientating, yet brilliant, morning sunshine. We passed out in our half erected tents.
While the journey north to the Arctic Circle was physically tough, the trip south to Stockholm challenged our mental resolve more than anything else. Psychologically, the trip south had always seemed relatively downhill as we sweated up the mountainous Norwegian coast. But the endless flat, straight roads going through hundreds of miles of deserted woodland if anything left us feeling more exhausted at the end of each day. The monotony of the landscape began to wear away at us, and we resorted to singing and telling jokes to overcome it (which adopted a monotony of their own). The 500km grueling slog down the busy main road that ran along the Baltic east coast did not make matters easier, with huge Lorries almost brushing our shoulders at times as we negotiated a foot wide section of gritty asphalt. We discovered on numerous occasions that the alternative routes south marked on the map would turn to gravel tracks without warning. All this contributed to moments of sheer insanity on the roadside, when we all suddenly start squealing Tom's name for minutes on end (to any passer by this must have been quite a harrowing sight). Nonetheless, whatever Sweden tried to throw at us, whether it was continuous rain, bike breakdowns, or exceptionally bland food, we maintained high(ish) spirits and pressed on. We could tell that our bodies were not terribly happy with the treatment they were receiving once they apparently fastened themselves to any object that could accommodate a body, and when we were beginning to confuse our arm warmers for our leg warmers.
Stockholm eventually came. All four of us crashed out on our beds, fully clothed, the moment we checked into our hostel. That bunk that we had yearned for in the 18th hour of that tortuous day was finally ours. Perhaps this was our bodies' way of saying, 'don't even think about getting on that bloody bicycle ever again.' Of course we won't listen to it. The trip was a remarkable experience for all of us, one that we will probably never get the chance to repeat. In 28 days we had cycled over 3400km, 23 days of which were in the cold Scandinavian rain and snow. During that time, we had willfully transformed our bodies into a three function machine; eat, sleep, bicycle. And would I if I had the chance? Trench foot, no civilisation for tens of kilometres at a time and bland sandwiches in gloomy bus shelters? Absolutely not. Give me the Dordogne any day.
And to all of our surprise this summer we are cycling in the hot and sunny Pyrenees, we are attempting the Raid Pyrenean a 720km cycling challenge from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean across the mountains to be completed in 100 hours with 11,000m of ascent. The route was established in 1950 and has become a cycling epic, taking in most of the big cols en route including Tourmalet and Aubisque, Regulars in the tour de France. This event is known as one of the toughest and most enduring physical challenges possible and will be an incredible achievement.
