Cycling proficiency: The Road To Recovery

Hello! Before I dig into the dough, I want to say a huge thanks to Alastair for inviting me to do this blog piece. I’ve never written one before, so I hope its not too cheesy. Although who doesn’t like cheese! I say this as a vegan of 10 years.

I’m Alice, author and illustrator of Cycling proficiency: The Road To Recovery, and general enthusiast for life and early mornings. The book follows my 4,842 mile pedal-powered journey around France, Spain and Italy, a trip which (cheese alert!) was probably the starter culture of the life I have today. And to think, I left for that trip not having a clue how to fix a puncture.

As I write this, I can’t help but feel emotionally jet-lagged. Here I’ve landed with a published book, a second one in progress, and thousands of miles of adventure stuffed into the pockets of my heart. I can’t help but look down at my legs, and say a little prayer of thanks. Even though this is misdirected credit. If anyone deserves a thanks, it’s the trip-ups of life for throwing me into things that would have otherwise never crossed my agenda. 

Tempting as it is to beat around the bush, here is the bush: I went on this trip because I was mentally ill. It amazes me to think I didn’t know that at the time I set off –my post-hospital paperwork had told me I was fine, after all – but life is just not that simple. As I pedalled into Europe, fuelled by baguettes, gazpacho and espressos, sleeping on beaches and taking life as it came at me, I began to realise that I had not been well. And in the two years (yes writing takes a bloody long time, turns out!) it took me to write my book, I went through a whole another journey that made the trip itself feel as easy as a lemon-squeezy picnic in the park. Weeks into the project, I came to a T-junction in my writing. I had two options: write a travel memoir, or write an honest travel memoir. Toes curled, I picked the honest option. 

The impact of both the trip itself and writing a book about it, was beyond my wildest dreams – even though I lost three cats lives and was heart-broken by a French boy. I fell in love with the world. Even now (and my boyfriend will testify for this), I cannot walk straight and will trip and fall because I am just so dizzily head-over-heels for life. Of course, I still no finished product. But with my bicycle and the world parked just outside, I think I will be okay.

And so, if you’ve made it this far then perhaps you might like to read a sample. This excerpt is from a chapter in Spain,. It follows the moments after my romance with a french boy had come to an end and I pedalled off alone…

Is this the desert? Maybe. It has all the stereotypes: dryness, dust, cactus plants, profound sense of desolation. And just like in the movies my phone is dead, my water bottle empty. I pedal on steady and silent. 

A village appears on the horizon and I dismount as I near it, walking The Insect beneath ghosts of laundry strung between villas, into its un-beating heart. There is no sound, no chatter, footstep or sizzle of chorizo sausage. Even this strange bunting of t-shirts and dresses lacks the courage to flap. It is, I think to myself as I begin panting, the best place in the world to die of sadness.

I let go of The Insect’s handlebars. He clatters on the ground, disturbing a dust that rises in mustard clouds, and I fall to my knees beside him. Seizure-like waves of sobs thump out of me. How could he do this to me? Then again I should have learned that they always leave me, they always leave me when I go wrong. 

‘Stop. Stop screaming. Youʼre upsetting everybody.’

 ‘I just want one day without you in it.’

‘Look at you! It’s like fucking a skeleton.’

‘You have no idea the misery you’re causing everybody.’

‘God… It’s like you’ve taken to your skin with a cheese grater.’

‘You’re dead to me.’

‘Stop it, be quiet, stop screaming. Everyone is going to look at you.’

 ‘I think I want to move on now. Just leave me alone.’

‘I zink I want to travel alon.’

My stomach is reeling, eyes sore and flooding. Just me and The Insect curled up together: the end of the world.

Then a soft, elderly voice trickles into my ear. I peer over my fingers at the man standing above me, his chequered shirt tucked neatly into his jeans like an old cowboy. He has dark pebbly eyes, kind eyes, a golden collection of wrinkles rippling around them.

‘Perdón. I’m English,’ I sniff.

The old man rambles on, lisping through a toothless mouth. 

‘So sorry, I’m English,’ I repeat. 

The old man’s brow squeezes into a dense crumple, then he changes tactics and starts speaking in French: why am I crying, have I had an accident? No accident, I’ve just been abandoned by a beautiful French boy, I explain. He points, horrified, at my knee – oh, it’s bleeding –then scuttles off, his small steps kicking up dust. 

Oh how I’d wished Loic away on that first day in the Pyrenees, how that wish had flavoured every day since. Dare I the right to be sad? But I loved that boy. But I guess love isn’t made for broken monsters like me, but for pretty girls who cry quietly, delicately, in controlled drip-drops.   

Before the dust has had its chance to settle, the toothless old man returns with a couple of policemen, thumbs poking out of the breast pockets of their unnecessary bulletproof jackets.

‘Passeporte?’ asks the taller one. 

The other policeman cowers behind, looking very grateful for his jacket. 

I hand over my passport and after a teenage-girl whisper session, the two men turn back around and nod at me. 

‘Sí,’ says the taller one, handing it back to me. 

 Not sure what else to do with themselves, they trundle off, at once disappointed and relieved to be left without an excuse to arrest, chase or tussle.

Still lisping, the old man props up my bike, then me, and escorts us both into a bar. Inside, a woman is dragging a cloth over the bar, her other hand propping up her bored head of badly cut hair. She looks up, immediately alarmed by my leaking state (blood and tears) then quickly relieved at the sight of the old man stood beside me. Spanish conversation rattles in the room; I understand only ‘señorita’.

‘PUE-DES QUE-DARTE EN MI CA-SA ES-TA NO-CHE,’ says the lady, loud and slow.

No luck. She repeats herself, louder and slower with the additional theatre of charades until I realise she’s inviting me to stay. Touched, I nod and start to cry again. The old man responds to this by loading my arms with food and giving me the most aggressive kiss of my life. He scuttles off, satisfied. 

I spend the rest of the day in the bar, growing fonder of the barmaid’s charming wonky teeth and chaotic hair (I used to have hair like that, when I was seven and I borrowed Mumʼs scissors). At times I remember Loic and the sting of it finds me hysterical. But sadness eventually gets boring; I blow my nose on my t-shirt and start to eat. And eat. And… eat. I chomp through five bananas, seven apricots and a tomato baguette, realising that my arms look different, less…soft. In fact, all of me is slightly less soft: my knobbly shoulders jutting like two tennis balls, my collarbones like twigs and my spine, as starkly bumped as an old cat’s. My clothes seem to hang. My skin, even, seems to hang a bit. How has this happened? At this point I also realise Loic has pedalled off with all the food, including the two-kilogram box of Medjools I’d bought us yesterday. I chuckle at the cruel humour of it: no date and no dates. I never want to see that boy again. 

 Deciding that I’m over it all – Loic who, sorry? – I begin humming cheerfully, swinging my legs as I thumb the pages of my Spanish phrase book. I try out a few phrases on the Spanish lady and we manage an almost conversation.

‘Los chicos son malos. mejor solo.’ I say, banging my fist on the table. 

‘Sí. Mejor solo,’ she says.

 I cry, drink coffee, speak more bad Spanish, cry, take a wee, cry again. Perhaps this is where my life ends: as a legend of this ghost town, the strange girl who turned up reeling until her crying eyes shrivelled up and her aching heart refused any more languished beats. Or maybe I’m just too sad to die. 

It is 5pm and not a single customer has been in the bar. So we call it a day and head to the Spanish lady’s home. 

The Spanish lady’s home is as gleefully chaotic as her hairdo. Imagine a tornado of Tasmanian devils on cocaine had hit a charity shop, and square it. Huge mounds of toys, clothes, papers dumped on every level: the floor, the sofa, in corners, on counters. Itʼs actually worse than my bedroom at home, which is extraordinary.  Her children come home from school aggressively manic, though less so after a snack, and even less so in my company. They follow me and sit close next to me yet pretend not to notice me at all. We watch Peppa Pig. Daddy Pig has lost his glasses, typical. Daddy Pig finds his glasses and this makes my tear ducts explode.

We share a skillet of rice and courgette for dinner, great mounds of it, impressively both under and over cooked. I crunch on the mushy lumps, thanking the woman again and again.

‘De nada’ she says.

I even have seconds.

Comatose by indigestible rice, I stumble towards bed. But a tiny bronze girl (about four years old) jumps ahead of me and gives me a little pink pot about the size of a two-pound coin. She puts her finger on her bottom lip and I mirror her, my finger landing on a sharp red slice (sun-burn had bust my lip open). I wince, she winces.

‘For me?’ I ask.

She nods and scrambles off before I have the chance to cry all over her. 

I smush the pearly lip balm over my busted lip and wait for the sting. A sharp throb of pain slices my bottom lip, sweet and metallic with the taste of blood. 

I collapse into bed, feeling dark and rotten, wondering how to sleep with a heavy heart, wondering whether I should sleep at all. Tomorrow I am on my own. Perhaps I will die in the night, as the last of my heartstrings are snipped. I cuddle my ribs (an old habit) and wait for the oblivion of sleep to put the worst day of my life in the past.