25 Nov 2008
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Gold Member
Veteran HUBBer
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: England
Posts: 277
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Tan Hill: Notes From a Big County.
Story of my ride down to Tan Hill for the HUMM meet there last week. P2 to follow toot sweet.
I was somewhere around Bracebridge on the edge of Lincoln when the lethargy began to take hold. The Cub is many things, but it isn’t exciting to ride around England’s grey and unpleasant hinterlands.
The Horizons Unlimited Northern meet had been organised for the weekend of the 14th November, at a place called Tan Hill in North Yorkshire. I had heard of North Yorkshire, I vaguely knew where it was; surely it sat on the shoulder of Lincolnshire? It couldn’t be a particularly arduous ride? I’d never heard of Tan Hill, neither had Google maps, something which cannot be a good sign. If Google doesn’t know something, then can it actually exist in this day and age? As a result I had a rough map, showing the North of England on one convenient A5 sheet. Something akin to trying to navigating Russia with a tourist beach towel. Never mind that the area that should show Tan Hill, only showed blank green, and the closest marked place was more than 50 miles away in either direction. How hard could it be?
So many naïve questions, so many half assumptions. If I am going around the world I need to curb this naïve enthusiasm, and stop this assuming. It only ever makes an ‘ass,’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’
The morning of the 14th dawned dry, and as the sun came up, it brought with it a horrible hangover. I rolled out of bed, and kicked a pint glass of water on to the floor, if only I had drank it the night before, instead of watering my carpet, it might have stopped my head from falling off from the inside out.
Change littered my carpet. As I stumbled around my room, the Queen’s cold face kept sticking to my clammy foot and I kept trying to kick her off. I’m sure some archaic law would sentence me to hang for it, but I couldn’t face bending down to peel the sweaty coins off of my cadaverish hoof, for fear of my head exploding, so I went for one last kick to try and remove them. CLANG! The pain rushed up my nervous system and punched me in the head before I had even realised what happened. I then got assaulted by a volley of books falling from my bookcase, pelting my head and shoulders as they lemminged from the top shelf. I stood in my pants, little toe throbbing where it had split from the rest of my foot around the side of the bookcase, wishing the day was 3 hours younger, and wishing I wasn’t about to jump on the back of my Cub.
A quick cigarette and cup of tea breakfast made life substantially better. In slow time, I threw panniers and top box on the back of the bike, a job made easier by the recent very home made single seat conversion, and tried to think about leaving. I fiddled with straps, played with bungees, changed my jacket twice, had another cup of tea, and then tried to think about leaving again.
After a few mental run throughs of the whole leaving thing, I finally swung a leg over the Cub, and kicked the start. The engine laughed at me. I kicked it again. And again. Surely there could be no mechanical problem with the immortal Cub? I performed all the checks in my mechanical repertoire. Tyres kicked; still made of rubber. Oil checked; still black, still oily. Chain; still on. Choke; on. What on earth could it be after all that is checked? I sat back on the bike to try the kick start again; no response. I did a couple of paddling steps forward and tried to bump start; cough, wheeze, dead.
By this point I was sweating, I needed to get moving, I was far too overdressed for this lark. I looked down at the fisher price dash, looking at its chunky numerals and dial; a seventies vision of how everything was going to look in the 21st century. Jackpot! The fuel needle had was buried deep in the red end of the gauge, that would be a fairly solid reason for the lack of enthusiasm the Cub had displayed for forward momentum. A quick trip back to the garage for a fuel can was a simple fix for the malady. I also threw a 5 litre jerry in the top box to give me a greater range, and make refuelling quicker than stopping at a petrol station. It also meant that I could accurately find just how far a tank of unleaded would take me before the kitten died of thirst.
Fuelled and packed, second time lucky, I made it out of the yard and on to the road proper. First leg; Boston to Lincoln along the terminally boring A17, then the A15 through Lincoln to the Humber Bridge.
As I set off, the early morning fog was clearing while the people of Boston were waking up to go to work. Well, some were, the majority were probably on their way to the offie or the job centre. The Cub buzzed quietly against the bustle of the town, as we bounced down cracked and pitted roads down by the ports. It is the only major port still operating in the East Midlands, and despite apparent dereliction, it is the major source of income to the town. The other USPs are that it is home to the Boston Stump, the biggest parish church in England, and the Pilgrim Fathers who tried to escape from Boston in 1607 with the intent of finding religious freedom in the New World. They were caught in a sting, locked up, and they failed to get away until 1630. Despite all this history, it is probably more famous for being the fattest town in Britain, and the one with the largest proportional immigrant population, probably the one with the most fat immigrants too. Riding through, you don’t need to know the stats, eyes alone can register the huge number of waddling fatties, swinging their guts before them as they wheeze their way down the street. Foreign tongues are almost as common to hear as British, and many of the shops serve exclusively foreign food. As a by product of the high immigrant population, it is also one of the BNP’s strongest footholds.
I have travelled the Boston – Lincoln road more times than I care to count, and it never gets less boring. By the time I had reached the outskirts of Lincoln it was time for a cigarette and a skip around, to allay the wiggling and jiffling for a few dozen more miles. Lincoln is a pretty and friendly city, with a magnificent cathedral, and more importantly, some of the best pubs in the country. It still has plenty of that dying breed of pub, the one that doesn’t play music at deafening volumes, and refuses to sell cocktails. Pubs with more wood than plastic, and dozens of  s that you can’t see through, Unfortunately for my hangover, I wasn’t stopping in Lincoln, as soon as my cherry had touched my butt, it was time to hop on the Cub for the bimble to the Humber.
Coming out of the back of Lincoln, through the out of town retail parks and industrial estates that seem to have sprouted up identically in every city in the country, the ones that make me wish I had access to a big ass dirty bomb, I found my mind drifting. It always happens to me, after a few dozen miles, my concentration lapses, and I find myself lost, both mentally, and usually physically, when I realise that I have gone four junctions further than I was meant to; it makes the adventure. My body and bike were definitely in Lincoln, my head was in the heart of Africa, drifting through billowy colonial outposts, sleeping rough on sandy slopes, being held at gun point by smacked up kids in Man United shirts in disunited nowheres.
‘You terrible, terrible bastard! Ouch, that really bloody hurts!’ I was smashed out of my reverie by a rude spray of neat anti freeze straight into my open visor. A car going in the opposite direction had picked the perfect time to clean his window, and his badly set up jets had shit shot the fluid across his window and right into my eyes. I screeched the overladen kitten up beside the road and rubbed at my eyes while unleashing verbal death on alcohol based window cleaning fluids. Well; that woke me up nicely, time to keep wondering and wandering.
Not five miles down the road, I had lapsed into daydreams again, when I looked up at the sky, into the most bizarre cloud formations I had ever seen. The cotton wool scribbles looked as if a gigantic child had doodled them in blunt chalk against the steel slate sky. Delicate and soaring, the edges of the floating tendrils had bled into their backdrop as ink dropped in water, the furthest ones almost totally melted back into their vaporous kin. The trails towered and twisted in sinuous loops, knotting themselves together and losing their starts and ends in one huge tangled mass; like looking into God’s draws, and finding his string gets as tangled as everyone else’s. Looking up at the crazy clouds, and trying to concentrate on not hitting the car in front, my ears suddenly exploded with the clamour and after pressure of two turbine engines blasting above me at tree height. Either side of the road, two of the British Red Arrow’s Hawks had screamed past at speeds far in excess of Cub cruising speed. The jets spiralled into the distance, climbing and cork-screwing together, locked in a deadly dance where margin for error is measured in milliseconds, before disappearing over the horizon in a stream of vapour. For just half a moment, the Cub and I had been flying in formation with two planes from the world’s foremost aerial acrobatic team. As they passed me, my red and white steed was part of their team, my 3 horses flanked by their fellow red and white liveried 1200.
I passed a number of signs for Scunthorpe, but only passed tantalisingly close, within 5 miles. Such a pity, I have always lived in the same county, but never visited. I have no particular urge to see anything in particular there; I just want to put the 2nd to the 5th letters in its name. I feel I could put myself there and answer the question ‘who put the ‘c***’ in Scunthorpe?’
The Humber Bridge soon loomed to the South of Hull, its giant concrete supports sticking out of the ooze of the river, linked by 43000 miles of flowing rollercoaster wire. The wind coming across the estuary blustered along the river, and made crossing the bridge on a 70 kg moped a task for the foolish or brave. Like any suspension bridge, it sways; an unsettling feeling on a bike, 3 metres left to right may not sound like a lot, but to me, that is a long way for 480000 tonnes of concrete to swing around suspended by wire. The view from the bridge is incredible, only marred by the amount of effort spent trying to wrestle the errant Cub back on line. Both upriver, and down towards the estuary, vast expanses of mud flats are visible, melting into Lincolnshire on one side, and Yorkshire on the other. It is possible to wade across the mile of mud; some crazy fool has performed the task twice, once on the show ‘Top Gear.’ Today however, I didn’t fancy wading with the Cub in tow, so felt quite happy using the bridge and merely looking out at the slimy sandbanks and muddy mires. As I crossed, the sun was fighting to make its presence felt through the thick clouds, and the river became a blinding mirror underneath me. Intermittently, factories and warehouses on the far bank caught the rays, and flashed like lighthouse beacons guiding me into Yorkshire. Looking out at the muddy estuary, I couldn’t help but think of lazy wasted days as a child, spent looking for King John’s treasure in the swampy Wash estuary, 75 miles South. I always harboured fantasies of being the one who could stumble across the hoard of unimaginable worth, lost 700 years previously by the foolish and unlucky King John, somewhere in those treacherous marshes.
I was under the impression that the bridge was free for motorcycles, and there was only a toll for cars. I was wrong. I reached the booth expecting to be waved straight through, but the hollow faced automaton sat behind the glass stopped me, ‘£1.20,’ he monotoned at me. ‘Shit, sorry mate, I didn’t realise it was a toll bridge for bikes.’ I blustered, hoping that he would take pity and let me sneak the Cub around the edge of the barrier. Not this maudlin gent, he was going to extract the vital quid off of me, he just repeated his demand for cash in that deadpan voice. I begrudgingly took my glove off, undid my jacket, and fumbled under it looking for change somewhere in the bottom of my fleece. The change had fallen right to the end of my pocket, and I had to root around, making myself sweat, while I grasped and grunted like a pervert in a pants draw. Cars were drawing up behind me, and I heard the tell tale sound of an impatient honk behind me. ‘Surely the attendant is going to get bored soon and let me by?’ But no, he just carried on staring at, or possibly somewhere through me, until I found the requisite change, and he allowed me to use his barrier. To avoid annoying the drivers behind me any more than I already had, I freewheeled the bike past the barrier, and parked up to sort myself out. Gloves back on, jackets and pockets closed up, I was ready to start leg two. The going was good, I was in Yorkshire now, it was barely midday, and half my journey was almost done.
Only a few miles past the bridge, with Hull behind me, the Cub whimpered and gave a rheumy cough. A few yards more and she hiccupped and rolled to a halt. 89 miles from home, my 3 quid’s worth of petrol had ran out. Quite fortunate for my mathematical skills, for the sake of simplicity we will call that 30 miles for only 1 of your British pounds. I took the petrol can from my topbox, glad to be getting rid of some of the top heavy load that had been causing me to flip flop left to right, turning corners into jerky fifty pence piece angles. Of course, I didn’t want to pour it straight into the bike, so I took the opportunity to pour half of it down my legs and into my gloves, and rode off feeling pleasantly high, but nervous about lighting my next cigarette.
The next series of roads passed me by almost unnoticed, I believe I was there at the time, but I must have been in the zone, I can’t even remember their names. The next thing I knew, I was in York. Or Eboracum, or Eoforwic, or Jorvic, depending on which century you arrived in the walled capital of the North. My only memories of the city are of childhood visits to the Viking museum there, with its waxwork warriors and authentic shitty smells, so to me, that is the smell of York. I wasn’t visiting museums today; I still had miles to eat if I was ever going to get to Tan Hill, however, getting to York was definitely breaking the back of the journey, and the fates and the weather still favored Cub pilots.
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Check the RAW segments; Grant, your HU host is on every month!
Episodes below to listen to while you, err, pretend to do something or other...
2020 Edition of Chris Scott's Adventure Motorcycling Handbook.
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Lots more comments here!
Diaries of a compulsive traveller
by Graham Field
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Back Road Map Books and Backroad GPS Maps for all of Canada - a must have!
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