Cultureshock

You need Adobe Flash installed to watch this movie.
Get Adobe Flash

Video transcript

That's me, on the left hand side of the photograph. I'm just about to cross the finish line after a two day mountain bike event and believe me when I tell you, I felt exactly how I look in the picture. This is the first endurance race that I'd competed in and we placed 52nd out of 120 odd competitors, which I feel pretty good about.

Here's me again, but a few years earlier this time. I’m on the back of my Mum's bike somewhere in the South West of Scotland, at sometime in the late 1970s. Perhaps this was the first time I'd been on a bike and perhaps this is where I got a taste for cycling...

As a child all of my bikes were reclaimed by my Dad from skips or lying by the bins in the back lanes behind our house. He'd bring home these battered, punctured, rusty old bikes then spend weeks stripping them down, cleaning them, buying new parts and putting the whole thing back together again. By the end it was as good as new and ready to hit the road and we'd go on long cycle rides at all times of the year and in all sorts of conditions, rain, hail, snow or blow.

He taught me loads of things from how to oil my bike, how to fix a puncture, how read a map, to eat little but often, many's the time we'd be sheltering under some trees or in a bus stop, out of the wind and rain and have a quick snack before setting off again in our bright orange cycle capes, more often that not into a head wind and driving rain and to enjoy the uphill as much as the downhill. Not to mention all the benefits to my health and wellbeing!

I still use all of these skills and knowledge today, though it's mountain biking rather than road cycling that appeals and, thankfully, I no longer need to reclaim my bikes from skips. But, what endures is the idea of going on adventures, cycling into remote places, the banter and camaraderie with friends and the personal challenges and battles to get to the top of the next climb, to laugh off the falls and hang on for dear life on the descents. And of course to get to the finish line in one piece!