Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country

by Tony Hawks

  ‘Titch looks wide awake,’ I said, testing the water. ‘But that’s because she slept all day whilst I cycled. Would you mind if I go to bed early?’

  ‘No problem,’ replied Nicky, ‘I’ll make sure Titch is in her little bed before I turn in. Sleep well.’

  ‘I will. I’m so tired, I’m sure I’ll sleep like a baby.’

  This had been a ridiculous thing to say. If I were to sleep like a baby, that would mean that I would wake every few hours screaming at the top of my voice, and then shit myself. I didn’t want to do that. Not until I knew Nicky better.

  I climbed the stairs, relieved that I had escaped more conversation – not because it was tiresome, but because it was tiring, to an already exhausted man. As I crawled into my wonderfully snug bed, I smiled to myself as I heard little snorting and grunting sounds from downstairs. Titch, adaptable as ever, was bonding with her new companion for the night. I felt consciousness easing from me. Restorative sleep, healing sleep, was only moments away.

  ***

  ‘Did you sleep well?’ asked Nicky, as she prepared breakfast.

  ‘Slept soundly, thank you. I see Titch is still sleeping. How was she last night?’

  ‘As good as gold. She’s a lovely little pig, that one.’

  Nicky was right. Of all the pigs in the world, surely I couldn’t have chosen a better one to have had as a travelling companion. Once people laid eyes on her, they became transformed. They turned from honest, decent citizens going about their business, into people desperate to do everything they could to help. At least, I assumed that this transformation was caused by the ‘Titch effect’. Perhaps I was underestimating my own boyish good looks and cheeky charm.

  After breakfast Team Hawks kicked into action. Nicky drove us to Derek’s house where the bike was removed from the garage, and where Derek and his wife helped me pack the bike. Pleasingly, they struggled just as much as I did with the ratchet strap. Ken had made its operation look so straightforward, and yet this strap seemed to reveal something about the way our brains are formed. Evidently there are two kinds of people in the world – those who can operate ratchet straps, and those who can’t. Derek was in the second category but, unlike me, was unwilling to accept it. He struggled away with a dedication and zeal that only served to make his disappointment more profound.

  ‘I’ll just wedge my rucksack underneath,’ I suggested, after a full five minutes of uncomfortable struggling had failed to release the strap.

  Bungies were added to further secure the bag, and I announced that Titch and I were ready to hit the road. After a round of last goodbyes, I tucked Titch into her sling, zipped up my coat and set off.

  The weather today was considerably drier. The forecast was better too. Good. Today was set to be a tough day, as I was booked into a hotel in Tavistock and getting there would involve over fifty miles of tough cycling.

  As I headed up Great Torrington’s High Street, I had a good feeling. Everything seemed in place for a smooth day ahead.

  How wrong I would turn out to be.

  12

  Allez Tony! Allez Titch!

  ‘You sodding, sodding thing!’

  I’d only been back on the Tarka Trail for five minutes when the battery on the bike had completely cut out again. As usual, I was doing my best to solve the problem by shouting at the bike. It was a method that has never, and never will, work. Nonetheless, I continued.

  ‘You’re a bastard battery! Bastard, bastard battery! You’ve been charging up all night, so what possible reason could you have for not working??!!’

  No answer was given. Presumably because the battery was out of power.

  I resorted to a tactic that I use whenever anything technological fails on me and, given its absurd simplicity, is surprisingly successful. I turned the battery off, and then back on again.

  It worked.

  Seconds later we were back on the road (or rather trail) again, and I was feeling rather sheepish about the way I’d spoken to the battery. I had overreacted and there had been no need for the shouting. The full power of the electric ‘pedal assist’ was sweeping us forward at a good pace towards a walker in the distance with two large dogs.

  Despite ringing the bell on my bike, the walker made no attempt to move to one side of the trail and to gather in his pets. As a result, I had to slam on the brakes and I lost all momentum. The bearded, long-haired man, who was younger than I would have expected to see out walking at this time, apologised profusely.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I replied, as I wobbled past, nearly all of the valuable speed lost.

  Momentum is a precious thing on a bike. No wonder town cyclists hurtle through red lights on pedestrian crossings, carefully steering their way around the walkers, only to be chastised with an admonishing:

  ‘Can’t you see that’s a red light?!’

  In our life on the streets, we humans readily join clubs. On foot, we’re pedestrians. On bikes, we’re cyclists. In cars, we’re drivers. It’s important for each group to hate the other and to consider them idiots. This is the way things work, and it’s best not to meddle with it. Such is our schizophrenic nature, even when we switch clubs (as we do regularly, the cyclist becoming a pedestrian once dismounted), we instantly align ourselves with the bigoted views of the new club.

  I was currently pissed off with pedestrians, especially when I realised that the power in the battery had cut out again. Whatever had happened during the deceleration required to pass the man and his dogs, this had been enough to upset the fragile temperament of my bike battery. It was behaving like it was hung over. Had it been on charge overnight? Or had it been out drinking in Great Torrington with Derek and his educationalist mates?

  Feeling the heavy weight of the bike in my already aching legs, I let it drag to a halt, and I dismounted. I began fiddling with different cables in a hopelessly uninformed way. Once again, I opted for the sophisticated ‘turning off and on’ method, as used by NASA and air-traffic-control technicians. But I didn’t leave it at that. I crossed my fingers, too. No point in leaving a job half-done. I was just about to swing my tired leg back over the saddle and test the efficacy of the process, when a voice interrupted me:

  ‘I’m terribly sorry about that, I really caused you to lose momentum there.’

  The bearded, long-haired, dog-walking pedestrian had caught me up, and was now displaying a surprising understanding of cyclists. Not that it mattered anyway, as I’d dismounted now and could talk to him pedestrian to pedestrian. We chatted politely and he actually proved to be very helpful, especially when I played my trump card of revealing Titch. When I explained that I was supposed to do an interview with Radio Devon quite soon, and that there appeared to be no phone signal down here in this scenic valley, he introduced himself as Simeon and explained that he had a cafe a few miles further down the track.

  ‘It’s normally closed this time of year, but I’ve finished walking the dogs now, so I’ll drive up there and open it up for you. You can make the call there.’

  He then left the trail with his dogs, to get on with the job of opening up a cafe especially for me.

  I should travel with a pig more often.

  The NASA technology worked, and I made it to the Yarde Orchard cafe and bunkhouse, as it billed itself, without further technical glitches. Simeon was waiting in the doorway of the wooden hut that appeared to be the cafe.

  ‘Come on in, the coffee is brewing,’ he said.

  I was rather pleased now that he’d not heard my bicycle bell, causing us to meet on the trail. The Yarde Orchard was a cool place. Simeon explained that in spring and summer they host people who are doing the coast-to-coast trail, either putting them up in yurts, the bunkhouse, or in their own tents. I was pleased to learn that they provide freshly cooked breakfasts, using ingredients that are only sourced locally.

  This has to be the future of the way we do things on this planet. Quite how we came up with an econom
ic system where it is sometimes cheaper to buy something that has travelled from the other side of the world, than a product that has been produced around the corner, is baffling. We need to re-embrace concepts that have been far from the zeitgeist in the past fifty years. For example, we can celebrate the fact that simple is good, and small is beautiful. It’s taken me long enough to wake up to this, but wake up to it I have. In the past, most of my selections in shops and supermarkets were based on price, without realising that the cheap product wasn’t necessarily cheap at all, the cost was just hidden. You simply pay later, when the full cost of the environmental and social damage is totted up.

  ‘Do you want a bacon sandwich?’ asked Simeon.

  I coughed and pointed to the small creature who was sniffing around beer bottles in the bar area.

  ‘Oops,’ said Simeon, with a smile, ‘take your point.’

  ‘All this talk of local ingredients might be making Titch nervous.’

  ‘Quite agree. Toast?’

  ‘Toast sounds more like it.’

  Just like Paul from the Fremington Quay cafe the day before, Simeon had moved down to Devon to enjoy a life where nature and the outdoor life was prioritised. And just as with Paul, the benefits of this showed clearly in his face. Happy, open, stress-free.

  ‘Where are you hoping to get to by tonight?’ Simeon enquired.

  ‘Tavistock, if I can.’

  Simeon inhaled sharply, much as mechanics do when they’re about to relay unwanted news regarding the state of your carburettor, or similar.

  ‘That’s quite ambitious.’

  ‘The Bedford Hotel have offered me and Titch a complimentary room for the night, so we want to make it there.’

  Raised eyebrows now.

  ‘The Bedford? Lucky you. That’s a very nice hotel.’

  Simeon then directed me to the cafe’s telephone and I got on with the job of updating my progress with Radio Devon. As I waited for a suitably anodyne piece of mid-morning radio music to finish – it was Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall wanting to fall from the stars straight into his lover’s arms, a reckless act if ever there was one – Simeon pottered in his kitchen and oversaw Titch’s explorations behind the bar. When we went on air, Judi announced that we had already reached half of my fundraising target of £10,000, and she put out another appeal for donations. Simeon listened proudly, as I plugged his fine establishment. Then, interview over, he gave me some helpful hints on the best route to take from here (the trail divided in a couple of places), and by 10.30 a.m. Titch and I were on the road again. Revived, refreshed, rejuvenated.

  ***

  Evidence of the storms that had raged during the night came in the form of a tree that had blown down and was blocking the trail. Passing it involved a lot of clambering and bike carrying, all of which disturbed Titch in her sling (she’d not yet settled from the recent excitement of beer-bottle foraging). Never mind, I was in such good spirits that I managed it all without even a hint of a ‘tut’ crossing my lips.

  A return to verbal abuse of the bike came seconds later, though, when it became apparent that this loss in momentum had once again resulted in the battery packing up. This time, turning the battery off and then back on again didn’t work its magic. Given this failure, I was keen to avoid what for me is usually the next stage – becoming tearful. Clearly there had to be some fault that was caused by the bike stopping and starting. Blessed with a mobile phone signal, I called Peter from the electric bike store. Unfortunately he wasn’t there, but Luke, his young apprentice, talked me through some possible checks I could do, and suggested cleaning a few contact points on the bike where the electrics might have been effected by the extreme weather.

  I knelt down beside the bike and got my hands dirty. Literally. One of the points that needed cleaning was behind the bike chain, and soon my hands were blackened with oil. Once peddling again, I learned that whatever I’d just done was effective enough to make the battery work on a kind of ‘part-time’ basis. It kicked in at times, and at others it flatly refused. There seemed to be no logical reason for its irrational behaviour. It just seemed to be in a mood.

  With Titch now happily asleep in her sling, my legs laboured and edged us ever onwards. We passed through a small, sleepy village called Sheepwash. I assumed it had got its name from being the place where they used to wash the sheep. No doubt I would be cycling through Sheepshear next, and then Sheepshag – where I wouldn’t be stopping for lunch and getting to know the locals. For about the fifth time on my travels, I cycled past an impressive-looking property called ‘The Old Rectory’. I began to wonder why I’d never seen a building called ‘The Young Rectory’. Or even ‘The Middle-aged Rectory’. It seemed that for some reason no rectory construction had taken place in recent years. This raises an important question. Where are we housing our young rectors? Clearly some kind of rectory ‘new-build’ scheme is needed in the English countryside, and fast. But do we hear this debated in the British parliament? Is it any wonder that people are becoming disillusioned with our politicians?

  It was right in front of the muddy entrance to a farm, a few miles outside a place called Hatherleigh, when the chain decided to come off the bike. Cyclists will know that this happens from time to time, for no apparent reason, but quite possibly in proportion to the number of red lights one has ignored in the previous fortnight. It’s vengeance from the Greek god of sensible cycling, Cyclips. I had jumped no red lights, and this act of retribution was therefore unjust and simply spiteful. Gods can be like that, though. It’s their prerogative. It’s what makes them god-like. If they were consistent and bound by the rules, they’d be far more like civil servants, and less likely to strike awe into our hearts.

  Putting a bicycle chain back on requires manual dexterity and patience, neither of which has been granted to me in abundance. My first attempt didn’t get off to a good start. I lifted the bike onto its built-in bike stand and then looked on as an untimely gust of wind meant that it immediately fell over. I lifted it back up again, noting that the tumble had dented one of the brake levers on the handlebars. For me, this is one of the most disappointing aspects of trying to do practical things myself – the fact that I so often make things worse, rather than better. Good intentions fail to convert into results. I hate having to admit this, but I am a hopeless liability, and there can be few tasks that expose this failing more efficiently than the one of having to put a bicycle chain back on.

  On my hands and knees, I did my best. I grappled with the chain. I wrenched it. I gently manoeuvered it. I shoved it, guided it, forced it, eased it, twisted it, bent it, and then, when all else had failed, I shouted at it. My hands were black with oil. With each failed attempt, my spirits nose-dived. It began to rain. Consecutive gusts of wind blew the bike over three more times. A man who had been watching from a distance approached. He was dressed like a farmer, and given his current location, there was every reason to suspect that he was one.

  Just as he drew near, Titch seemed to take this as a cue to try and escape from the sling. Perhaps all my awkward movements had woken her, or maybe she needed a bathroom break. Whichever it was, she wanted out, and she wanted out now. Fearful that bringing Titch into contact with a real-life farmer, at the entrance to a real-life farm, would be in severe breach of the livestock movement orders to which I’d agreed, I supported Titch with my left hand and attempted to calm her.

  ‘Problem?’ said the rather stern-looking farmer, combining brevity and shrewdness in equal measure.

  ‘Yes, I can’t seem to get my bicycle chain back on,’ I said, using the word ‘seem’ quite needlessly.

  ‘Here,’ said the man, falling to his knees and seizing the initiative.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  The man began grappling with the chain, much as I had done. Simultaneously, Titch redoubled her attempts to escape. I gripped her firmly, but couldn’t prevent her from letting out a couple of protest snorts. The farmer immediately stopped and looked at me. I returned his
gaze with a kind of apologetic look and patted my stomach, as if to explain away the noises as my own gaseous emissions. The farmer eyed me guardedly. Presumably, as someone who worked with livestock on a daily basis, he knew the difference between a pig and a fart. (It may well be one of the final tests they set you before you’re admitted into the National Farmers’ Union.) However unlikely, supposing that the noises were caused by a fart was still less of a jump than believing I had a pig stuffed inside my anorak, so the farmer shrugged and returned to the job in hand.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing to a chain successfully back in place, and completing an interaction with me in which he’d lavished all of three words.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I said, as he idled off.

  I felt a mixture of relief and irritation. It was splendid news that the chain was back on, but yet again exasperating that I had been unable to complete the task myself. I remounted the bike, feeling like a failure. The rain strengthened, and the battery decided that spasmodic working was now too much for it. The hill ahead looked daunting.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, accurately summing up the kind of day I was currently having.

  I decided to try and make it to the next village or town and phone the bike shop. Reaching Tavistock before it got dark now seemed a distant prospect – a great shame, since I had been so looking forward to a night in a luxury hotel. The chance seemed to be gone to show Titch just how different this quality of accommodation can be to a sty.