Serialisation of Hill’s Ups and Downs by Tony Hill
Introduction
What do you do when your partner dies? Tony Hill decides to cycle to the Shetland Isles from his home town in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. He wants time to reflect, out of the sad spotlight that inevitably falls on the bereaved. Away from the well-intentioned visits of familiar friends and family and into an anonymous world of unknown places with unknown people.
With an average level of fitness, the prospect of 1000 miles of pedalling and a first ever case of piles, the outcome is always in serious doubt.
This is the story of one man’s quest to get to the northernmost extremity of Britain on an old mountain bike and on the way, maybe find answers to some of life’s most imponderable questions. The trials are physical and emotional but rewards are found in the warmth of strangers and the discovery of inner peace. Exposure to all weathers is inevitable compounded by nights spent under canvas. Supermarkets, garages, cafes and most of all pubs provide welcome sanctuary and the opportunity to break the loneliness of the road.
Prologue
Immediately after Cherie’s death, I had not had the house to myself. Then, suddenly, the house became silent, except for the sounds caused by the machines and me. A little singing or whistling, the sharpness of cutlery and crockery being transferred from dishwasher to cupboards, the muted sounds of BBC News 24, the rumble of the tumble drier and the occasional shock to the system brought about by the phone ringing. There was a strange realisation that this silence of a sort was now a permanent feature of this household.
So, I busied myself with preparations for my cycling trip from Merthyr to the Shetland Isles. When Cherie had first started to get ill, after a bowel cancer diagnosis 19 months before, I had attempted to purge my worries by taking to the local hills on my mountain bike. In between frequent hospital visits, I would cycle for miles, getting some relief for my torn emotions through the physical exertion of pedalling up long inclines through pine-scented forests. The magnificent views from the crests and ridges caressed my soul and set my tired body to sleep at night in a way that might have eluded me had I tried a more sedentary solution. I had not kept as fit as I would have liked over the past nineteen months or so, but I had continued cycling to work, a round trip of eight miles a day, interspersed with random trips to the gym, occasional runs and the long therapeutic mountain bike jaunts. I used physical exercise as a way of helping to exorcise tension.
On a whim one day, I said to Cherie, ‘When you’re gone, I think I’ll cycle to the Shetland Islands.’
Cherie thought it was a good idea and it became cemented in my mind. The ‘Land’s End to John O’Groats’ trek didn’t appeal to me; I didn’t like the idea of being carted by someone all the way down to Cornwall for me to then start pedalling back the same way I had just come. It wasn’t the way I wanted to begin my sojourn — I wanted to cycle from our house and just keep going, Forest Gump fashion, as far as possible.
The time had come.
I changed the tyres on my mountain bike from the knobbly rough-terrain type, to smooth road tyres — I needed all the help I could get and a mountain bike was not really the kit I should have been using for such a trip — too heavy and not designed to reduce wind drag. I didn’t bother with any proper luggage carrying panniers for the bike; I already had a back rack and I hoped that my medium sized rucksack would fit on to it secured by bungee cords. I bought a good quality sleeping bag that I trusted would keep me warm; an expensive, but very light weight, all weather, one man tent; and, a semi-inflatable sleeping mat that I expected to be a comfortable base for my weary body after a day in the saddle and a probable night in the pub.
The only thing left to do was visit my doctor. After a night in the hospital, trying to sleep on the uncomfortable chair by Cherie’s side, I felt the daunting presence of what I later discovered to be my first case of piles. The closest I had come to piles before was as a spotty teenager. For a whole week I had used Father’s piles cream on my face, mistaking it for my acne treatment. With all my attention focused on Cherie and then her funeral, it was several weeks after the appearance of the haemorrhoid that I finally got around to making an appointment to see the doctor. I had delayed the visit to the doctors’ surgery until the last possible day.
‘What time’s your flight tomorrow?’ asked the doctor. His jaw dropped, his eyebrows rose and his eyes widened with momentary shock as I told him I was cycling and not flying. When I further pointed out to him that I was cycling to Scotland and beyond, he cocked his head to one side and asked me to repeat what I presume he couldn’t believe he heard right first time.
‘Scotland,’ I said. ‘The Shetland Islands, in fact.’
At this point he uttered the words which inspired the poem I later wrote*: ‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’
But, it wasn’t an unequivocal rebuttal, so I didn’t have to face up to the prospect of failing before I’d got to pedal my first revolution. I was still worried though. I hadn’t even taken the trouble to get on my bike and try pedalling down the road to see what the haemorrhoid felt like when bisected by a positively non-gelatinous saddle. The prospect of cycling with piles was daunting. My bum got uncomfortable just sitting on the settee so I suppose I was applying the ostrich strategy — burying my head in the sand. It wasn’t so much that I thought it would be ok — it was more the case that I didn’t want to think about it. I seemed to remember someone telling me that piles could be dangerous if they burst — lots of blood. If one thing was going to burst a haemorrhoid short of stabbing the little bastard with a pin, it was cycling eight hundred miles to the Shetlands.
‘Head back in the sand, Laddie,’ I thought to myself.
By seven o’clock that evening, everything was sorted and packed and my checklist had all been crossed off, save for the toiletries and a few other things I needed in the morning. I had my usual 10–20 minute catnap then got ready to go to the pub with Yogi and Ken. The company and banter of my friends was mixed pleasantly with five or six pints of Guinness and a few cigars, before I headed for home, earlier than usual. It occurred to me that it would probably be some time before I would see anyone I knew again, and a sensation of loneliness melded with my feelings of anticipation, trepidation and excitement, at the prospect of what was to come in the weeks ahead.
Cycling to the Shetland Islands. I had told many of the people I knew, of my plans, including friends, relatives and colleagues. I was determined to succeed, even though I had resigned myself to the fact that I might have to take the train if the physical exertion became too much.
‘How far will I get?’ I wondered, as I fell asleep in my lonely bed, in my empty house.
A steroid for my haemorrhoid in the cream, I do believe,
Is what the doctor gave the day before I was to leave.
Emergency appointment — he didn’t seem to mind:
‘As long as you’re prepared to wait, and wait, and stay behind.’
I said, ‘I’m off tomorrow and in need of some relief.’
‘What time d’you fly?’ he asked and then gaped in disbelief,
As I said I was to cycle up to the Shetland Isles
‘I wouldn’t recommend it, not with that case of piles.’
But he said to me, ‘You go, if you feel that go you must.’
He didn’t make it clear if the thing would grow or bust.
Not that I have seen it mind, just felt it with my thumb,
Bit like a dangleberry, hanging from my bum
‘Put the cream on twice a day but do not rub it in,
‘An applicator is supplied for you to go within.
‘If it’s still there in seven days, don’t use it any more,
Just hope the damn thing doesn’t grow and drag along the floor.’
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Serialisation of Hill’s Ups and Downs by Tony Hill with permission. The book is published by Cambria Books and is available to buy HERE.
