The Second Toughest Cycle I Ever Did

My brain is being overactive, much like the Duracell bunny, so I’ve decided to do another blog post, even though my last blog post was yesterday. This is on the second most difficult cycle I ever did.

So why did I do my first cycling blogpost on my toughest cycle? Now this blogpost is going to seem weirdly anti-climatic isn’t it? Well this is better than the tale of Icarus, because not even Icarus cycled up a really steep hill during a heatwave when the gear shifter barely worked, so there!

This was the route of my even better story than the tale of Icarus cycle:

Day 1: Ramsey Hill to Schull

Day 2: Schull to Three Castle Ahead and Mizen Head then Back to Schull

Day 3: Schull Back to Ramsey Hill

I was staying for a few weeks in Ramsey Hill at the time. All in all it looked like a fairly straightforward cycle, except the big problem is the one that always seems to come up whenever I want to cycle somewhere, there was a heat wave!

This cycle has a strong significance to me. It’s because a failed expedition to Three Castle Head is the reason I started cycling. Four years previously, I was trying to find Three Castle Head, and visibility was very poor. So I went up a big hill to get a better vantage point in order to see Three Castle Head in the distance. (If you’re thinking none of this is wise, you’re right.) I didn’t see it, and on the way down, slipped and sprained my ankle. I was on crutches for a while, and didn’t want to go through that again, so I decided no risks, I would wait a very long time before I went running again, so as not to risk re-injury, so in order to keep exercising, I got a bike, and that’s how it all started. Without a disastrous expedition to try and find Three Castle Head, I may never have started cycling, so it seemed more than appropriate that my first ever visit to Three Castle Head would be by bike.

To my surprise the actual act of cycling in the heat proved easy. Two problems came up, the first was that about half way between Ramsey Hill and Clonakilty, the bike decided to do the thing that bikes always do because they’re temperamental gits. And that is, the chain not only came off, but the chain went behind the gears. This is one of the most annoying things that can happen on a bike. It took me ages to pull the chain out, I was worried I would have to call off the cycle because of this, but I managed it. But then I was covered in chain oil. Chain oil gets everyone, I don’t know how, chain oil must have deep and Satanic power. Because when you’ve got a load of chain oil on your hands, and you’re pretty sure you were careful enough to not touch your face, somehow chain oil ends up all over your face. Chain oil is evil and must be stopped through even the most drastic of means. So I had to find a supermarket in Clonakilty, and find a bathroom to wash my face, before anybody would see that I looked like a hellish being with hellish intent.

Then, when I was a short distance from Schull, the mechanism for changing gears started to fail, and it became extremely difficult to reach the lowest gear on the back wheel. This would prove a problem, if it got worse a potentially trip ending problem.

But weirdly enough, the heatwave caused no problem at all. Ramsey Hill to Schull is actually well suited to this kind of cycling, because there’s a town or village less than every ten miles. So you’ve plenty of opportunities to get provisions and take a break from the heat. I arrived in Schull well before it was time to check into my hotel, so I headed towards Mount Gabriel. There is a road up to the top, and I had been entertaining the idea of cycling up, as this would be my first ever time cycling up a mountain. But ultimately I decided against it. A kind of rule I have is, don’t cycle in a heatwave, but if you must, energy conservation must be your first priority!

So I got to my hotel. Even though the hotel was only a mile from Schull, it might as well have been ten miles out, so peaceful and serene was it, with an excellent view of the sea. My usually overactive brain calmed right down. Ahhhhhhhhh.

The book I read on this trip (there’s always a book!), was This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. At the time I was on a quest to understand music. I go through phases with music. Sometimes I want to understand it. Other times I want to learn the history of it. But more times, more than ever, I want to listen to music, and create my own. Daniel Levitin has also spent a lot of time studying the phenomenon of absolute pitch, where a person can identify a musical note without a reference point, which I am able to do. There’s a bizarre myth that having absolute pitch makes you amazing at music. I’ve lost count of how many people have told me they’d give anything to have my musical ear even though by any reasonable metric their ear is better than mine. While I do think I’m good at music, this has more to do with my skill profile being all or nothing, good or bad with nothing in the middle. To ask me to complete a task is to role some serious dice indeed.

Later I took a bit of time to walk around Schull and have something to eat. It was a beautiful afternoon, and then a beautiful evening. I got some much needed sleep, tomorrow the real adventure would begin, and I didn’t know it at the time, but the hardest day of the trip.

The next day I ate my breakfast and headed towards Three Castle Head. On the way I stopped off at Altar Wedge Tomb, a tomb I visited as part of the Three Castle Head Disaster (that’s what I’m calling the ankle spraining Three Castle Head trip). It was built about 2500 B.C.E. It is incredibly ancient. When the Wright Brother’s plane took off in 1903, it still qualified as incredibly ancient. When the United States was founded, it was still incredibly ancient. If you want to go back to even half its current age, you are talking about before the Roman Empire. The people who built this tomb had no idea what their creation would survive through.

So I got on the bike and kept peddling, along mostly flat roads, mostly. But the road leading to Three Castle Head was steep, but downhill. This would be a problem on the way back, I’ll speak on this later.

Three Castle Head is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, a quite magnificent landscape. It’s got a wonderful lake, a very well preserved castle, and a cairn that looks over the sea. I went for a good walk around, and then just lay down on the grass, and stared out a the sea. I could see the Fastnet Rock lighthouse in the distance, I would love to visit it some day.

In Cork we have a simple folk tale called the Young Offenders, passed on from generation to generation. In the tale, the Three Castle Head castle is where Conor and Jock stole the cocaine from Ray. Thank you for being willing to learn about our customs, we are a simple people in Cork, but we love when others take interest in our rich cultural traditions.

I took a break from writing this blog to go cycling, so it’s the opposite of my first cycling blog where I didn’t go cycling in order to finish the blogpost. This piece of information is of no interest to anyone but me, and yet I still told you, for reasons even I don’t fully fathom.

So you might by thinking, “this blogpost is called “The Second Hardest Cycle I Ever Did”, and yet you seem to be having a fairly splendid time, what ever is the deal?” Okay be patient hypothetical person, I’ll get to the part where things went a bit wrong!

As I was walking back from Three Castle Head, something occurred to me about all my cycling adventures. The human body is like a battery, except unlike your phone, there is no indicator of whether your level of energy is 90%, 50%, or 10%, it’s a complete mystery what’s going on in there, you could be about to conk out and not even know it.

The problem started when I cycled up the incredibly steep road leading away from Three Castle Head. At the time I had two policies designed to maximize the challenge of cycling. These were, no coasting (stopping pedaling and letting the forward momentum take you a bit of the way), unless you are travelling so fast you need to do so in order to be safe. The second, and this was the problem, no walking up any hills ever, no matter how steep, they must all be cycled up! I don’t stick to either of these policies so rigidly any more, for me now the challenge is getting there through muscle power, and if you’re lucky gravity and a favourable wind, so coasting is fine, and while I still try to avoid walking up hills, I’ll now do it if attempting to cycle up would be counter productive. But I really shouldn’t have cycled up this hill, should have just walked. It was a bad idea to try this hill anyway, but especially since I was unable to reach my lowest gear due to the mechanical fault already mentioned. I got up the hill, but when I got to the top I was close to conking out.

I cycled, slowly, towards Mizen Head Signal Tower. My original plan was to maybe stop by the Signal Tower if I hadn’t had enough excitement at Three Castle Head, but now it was vital to get there. While it would be nice to see the signal tower again, I mainly had to get there in the hope that a bit of a rest and a meal would bring my energy levels back. As I approached the signal station, I had no idea if I’d be asking them to ring me a taxi to get back to my hotel.

I sat inside the restaurant and ordered a sandwich and a pot of tea. This could be a problem, extreme over exertion on a bike can cause you to well, vomit, so maybe in a few minutes I was getting a lifetime ban from the signal tower. Luckily I wasn’t that bad, but now the problem was, my legs were in ruins, but I didn’t want to pass up a chance to see the signal tower while I was right there. So I explored the signal tower, while the whole time my poor legs cursed my existence.

While the walk around the signal tower was quite exhausting, it was relatively low exertion, so my energy levels returned. I started the cycle back to Schull. I unintentionally took the longer route, which was good, it was the more scenic route.

Was glad I accidentally took this more scenic and interesting route.

My energy levels were still low, but I managed to get back to Schull in the evening. And a wonderful evening it was, so I had my dinner in a restaurant, then rested, there was a big cycle ahead of me the next day.

The next day after breakfast, I managed to get in contact with a bike repair shop in Skibbereen (or Skib as the cool kids call it.) who agreed to fix my banjaxed gear shifter. Hurray! Only ten miles of cycling without being able to reach my lowest gear! With that out of the way it was a fairly straight forward cycle. Still a very hot day, but not too challenging. And I got back to Ramsey Hill. And barely moved the next day.

So does this story have a moral? Em, let me see, don’t cycle up a really steep hill during a heatwave especially when your gear shifter has collapsed in on itself. A lesson for the ages! Perhaps four thousand years from now, when hopefully Altar Wedge Tomb is still standing, people will remember my tale of, eh, going up a hill!