Cycling

Cian anseo

As Dave mentioned, I have a... handicap... as regards this adventure. A secret shame, dear reader.

Many of you will know this already. Others may be shocked. Perhaps it’s best I just come out and say it:

I can’t cycle.

Was never taught, never learned, completely bicycle illiterate and have been avoiding this fact for many years.

This, naturally, will present its own unique challenges in a cross-European and trans-Alpine cycling scenario such as this. Since wheeling the bike along 50 miles behind Ross and Dave is probably not an option, I will have to learn how to cycle at some point in the next two months. Preferably alone, at night, in a hidden place, to avoid the inevitable jibes and jeers of small children.

Step one will obviously involve finding a bike. May have to bend the rules of no money here a little bit and buy a dirt cheap second hand one, since it’s fairly imperative I get a bike in time to have some experience of cycling before stepping off the ferry in Dieppe. Then it’s a question of finding time between my dissertation, coursework, real work, drinking etc., to get fit and learn my way around this bicycling lark.

So if you’re the kind of person who likes watching YouTube clips of idiots hurting themselves, stay tuned to this blog for an upcoming literary version as I regale you all with tales of my no doubt disastrous progress in biking. Or Dave and Ross regale you with the gruesome tale of my unfortunate demise at the hands of 18 wheeler. Either way, you won’t be able to tear your eyes away.

Non judgmental biking instructors in Brighton welcome to comment with details for secret meeting below. Discretion needed.

The Protagonists

Dave here. I like this idea very much and will be claiming credit for it even though all I did was moan about an upcoming exam. It should be mentioned that the three of us are ideally suited to the task of cycling 500 miles across Europe owing to our extensive experience in generally dicking about. Here follows a brief summary of our relevant attributes as I see them I blithely (Possibly accurately) list the protagonists/heroes/future-murder-victims in descending order of competence.

Cian Hargrave-Murphy
• Experience as a scout leader (in the Ian Hislop sense, not the Aragorn sense)
• Was awarded the explorer belt and in doing so learned a considerable amount about Samuel Colt
• Speaks German and may actually speak the best French of the three of us
• Knows what the appendix is for
• Uniquely in the group is unlikely to attempt anything just because he is double dared to
It should be noted there Cian does possess a handicap as regards this challenge, but I leave that to him to discuss

Ross Michael Gerard Francis Frenett (QC)
• Has read Lord of the Rings
• Once cycled into a tree
• Has experience in the RDF so has the ability to walk long distances and sleep outdoors
• A facility to talk us out of difficult situations in mangled French
• Travelled around the Middle East on a pittance
• Is conveniently travel sized

David James Cornelius Coughlan (Mrs)
• Once walked halfway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before being picked up by the Israeli boys in duck egg blue
• Trained for a marathon in 5 weeks, more or less by accident
• Hitchhiked home from summer camp when nine years old
• Hates Bikes with a burning passion
• Knows the Klingon word for “Mountain”
• Likes the travelling scenes in The Man Who Would Be King
Still, no worries eh?

The Concept

On the 14^th of April 2010 David J Coughlan posted this on his Facebook wall:

“I could really do with an adventure. I've had enough of this, time for mountains, endless fields and some bloke with a sword guarding a bridge. But CE 4010 stands in my way, bloody typical.”

Initially this made me yearn for simpler times. While in school Dave, Cian and I had set out for Venice with a chess board and very little money. In the years following we travelled to Prague, London and the Middle East. Since then the economy has collapsed and we’ve become far more settled, with Dave in final year Civil Engineering, Cian doing a Masters in Development in Brighton and myself settled down doing a Masters with a long term girlfriend in London.

With Vic working and money tight, I couldn’t justify spending anything running off travelling with school friends. This is when a thought struck me… I asked myself the question as to what turns a ‘trip’ into an ‘adventure’. Adversity.

What if we were to go for a pint with a friend in a far off city, while spending no money to get there? That injected adversity, turning a trip into an adventure, and alleviated any guilt as the whole point was that no money be spent!

We chose to go to Zurich as it’s roughly the right distance away, none of us have ever been there, and the trip there fulfills two out of three of the criteria set out by Dave: “mountains, endless fields and some bloke with a sword guarding a bridge”. You never know, we might fulfill the third!

So here are the two simple rules:

1. No money at all to be spent on the trip. This includes for food, accommodation or transport

2. Little or no money to be spent in preparation for the trip with all we need ideally being recycled or donated

The exception to these is that we will almost certainly going to have to spend a little on a) getting across the channel and b) flying home from Zurich.

The purpose of this blog is to keep people informed of our plans and preparations to generate ideas as to how to save money and to encourage people to donate or loan us the materials that we’d need.

Ross