A-Riding to Serve –
London to Edinburgh by bicycle

Back in the far off days of late autumn 2004, when first I heard the request to put our energies into raising funds for the new Bahá’í Centre in Edinburgh, I was struck with the desire to do something a bit different in this noble cause. Something which would reflect my own feelings.

Being a sporty sort of bloke, I hit upon the idea of cycling from London (Rutland Gate) to Edinburgh, joining up the existing centre with the new. I even hit on a suitable, if very corny, strapline I could use to publicise the endeavour. Surely nobody who had been at Scarborough could fail to be lifted by Shirin’s beautiful song ‘Arising to Serve’? So maybe I could set a small flame of my own in my challenge ‘A-riding to Serve’. It’s corny, I thought, but it might just catch on.

So there I was six months later, countless miles of practice in my legs, standing outside Rutland Gate on a hot May afternoon, ready to go. Along the way I had been most fortunate in picking up offers to help from three of the friends; Fardin Derakhshan and Peyman Agahi, without whom I would have had a much tougher time, were to be the support team, and great support they were. Few sights can be more pleasurable than a white van waiting in a lay by, that I knew contained words of comfort (if not a saddle), bananas, water, and a host of other things beside. And Mansur Mohammadi who, displaying his own inner lunacy, had volunteered to ride along with me over the last 250 miles or so.

And so I started. I only had 50 miles to do on day one, out to a little beyond my home in Stevenage. This stage I would do alone as it would be too difficult for any van to find safe waiting places along the way. I had no plan to go fast, just cruise along until I got home. I saw this leg as a chance for a final limbering, before the real effort got underway on Friday morning. So I got home four hours later, with a strong sense of commitment, and a slight ache in my toes. ‘You still have time to back out’, a little voice was whispering in my head, ‘just call the others and say something has come up, or your leg has dropped off, they’ll understand’. I refused to listen and called the team to confirm details for the next day.

No backing out now.

Friday arrived bright and with a tail wind, and at seven o’clock so did Peyman and Fardin. So, after a quick breakfast I said my goodbyes to Fariba and Elycia (my wife and daughter) and climbed into the van. As we drove to the starting place the voice was whispering again ‘Why not just stay in the van and drive up, nobody will know?’ Again I refused to listen and climbed out as scheduled 13 miles up the road on the A1.

This day was to be a 133 mile ride to a service station on the A1 near Pontefract. With only a couple of exceptions, I spent the next 7½ hours cycling along the A1. Nothing much to report along the way. I saw one man driving the wrong way along the fast lane, and prayed he realised his mistake before any lorries pointed it out for him the hard way. As I rode along I got occasional messages from Peyman and Fardin regarding Mansur’s progress – he was due to meet us near Worksop at a place called Tickhill.

In the end, as we were running rather behind schedule, Mansur rode on, as this would allow him to get a few miles of the next day’s ride completed as well. I rode on, and lost my team somewhere in the wildlands of Doncaster. We met up some 30 minutes later outside the racetrack. At the time I felt little like a horse I have to say. But they were a hard team and refused any rest time just taking me back to where I would have reached had I not gone the wrong way. And so I rode the last 25 miles or so on to our resting place for the night.

Messages reached me from Mansur that he had gone about 17 miles further north (partly up the motorway) to Wetherby, at which time his tyre had run out of air, though luckily not his lungs for we had a long day in the saddle ahead of us.

Service station hotels and food are not worthy of comment.

Saturday again dawned fair, and again we had a tail wind, though more of that later. After breakfast I began again, surprisingly fresh in leg and spirit considering I had 148 miles ahead of me. In the end it was only 142 as I took a wrong turn early on and missed out a big loop by riding up the motorway, which was fast, interesting and very noisy!

Mansur was some distance ahead of me (about 17 miles) on account of his extra miles the night before. So I decided to see how quickly I could catch him. Fifty miles later we were together, hurtling along the A19. The wind was still behind us, and the hills remained kind. So all was well with the world. Mansur had one or two more problems with punctures, which slowed his progress somewhat. Finally, about 10 miles south of the Tyne tunnel I rode on ahead, to scout out the land and see if there was any chance of our riding through.

No chance.

So I waited for the crew and we all went through in the van. There followed a brief rest for food and then we were on our way again. Now the wind had changed its mind, it was getting up towards gale force and was most decidedly a cross-wind. On more than one occasion it did its best to blow us over to the far side of the road, especially on the exposed flyovers. But we struggled on, grateful of the assistance we’d had over the first 100 miles of the day. We remained together over the next 25 miles or so, until we reached the A697 and the turnoff into the Cheviot hills towards our stop for the night at Wooler, about 40 miles north of Newcastle. At this point Mansur was beginning to find the going a little tougher than my more accustomed legs and we agreed that I would push on ahead whilst Mansur kept the support of the van, that and countless bananas and energy bars, until he was overflowing with banana and could take no more.

And that wind was really strong now, whole branches were strewn across the road, and the normally fun downhill sections became a little more uncertain experiences as the wind tried to deposit me in a ditch on the wrong side of the road. By now at least I knew I was in the final stages of the day and could count down the villages to visit as I rode on in splendid isolation – hardly a car passed me as I cycled through a beautiful windy evening passing Longhorsley, Longframlinton, Powburn, where I was almost brought to a standstill at the divine scent of wild garlic growing by the roadside. If ever a smell could revive the senses, then that smell did just so. I knew I had just eight more miles to go but it felt as if I was on the doorstep. Sixty minutes later Mansur was to be uplifted by the same aroma as he completed the final miles. He too was taken with a desire to stop, and thoughts of the beautiful food he could prepare with the garlic, but he had more pressing matters to consider, most specifically, the pressing of his bottom on an unwilling saddle!

And so we met again in our, much more comfortable, resting place at the end of day three, and dined on local produce of superb quality. A great way to refresh the senses after 7¾ hours in the saddle (a little longer for Mansur).

Sunday morning dawned bright and windy. I had hoped the wind would die down overnight, and according to the forecast this was the case. Only 10 miles per hour we were told, and from the south west. ‘Not so bad,’ I thought, a mere zephyr compared to Saturday’s gales and mostly in our favour too, a great help as we had by far our hilliest day ahead. We had abut 60 miles left and I reckoned that around 40 of them would be uphill, so a tail wind would be good assistance indeed. But who ever knew the forecast to be right when you really needed it? The ten miles per hour turned out to be about 25 and the south west turned out to be north east, right into our faces.

Feeling a little less confident of my claims that it would only take about 5 hours to complete the final miles, Mansur pushed on ahead, about an hour earlier. And so we strove on separately as the towns rolled slowly by and hills lurked ever on the horizon. We rejoined each other at about 35 miles and shared tales of struggle up interminable hills with tiny descents after them. But now we knew there was no doubt we were going to get there and pretty much spot on time.

We had been in regular contact with David Merrick, from the Edinburgh community all along the way, so they knew where we had reached and could begin to estimate how much longer it was going to take. By this time we were well inside the border, even had we not known by the road signs the hills would have told us!

We were coming in to the last section of the ride, we knew the A68 awaited us, just around the corner, so to speak, and this would lead us most of the way into Edinburgh. Again, I had pushed on ahead of Mansur by this time and so hit the A68 with a lightened heart, thinking, ‘This is it, the last leg.’ I should never have relaxed; what awaited on the A68 was a 2½ mile climb up to Dun Low wind farm, right into the teeth of the wind, which refused to become any gentler even now. But all the time I kept saying to myself, ‘What goes up must come down, so I must come down on the other side of this hill’.

And so we did, separately but joined in common purpose, Mansur and I pushing on over the last miles. We had agreed that whatever happened we would regroup when we got to Dalkeith, about seven miles south of Edinburgh, so we could ride into our destination together in our special ride T-shirts.

It was also in Dalkeith that we met Maureen from the Edinburgh community, who was to be our guide through the one-way maze of Edinburgh, after all it would have been a shame to come so far and lose our way right at the end. That little yellow Suzuki wagon must have had glue on it because we stuck to it over the next seven miles, whatever the traffic was doing!

And so we cruised into Charlotte Square, visited so many years earlier by ‘Abdu’l Bahá, there to be greeted by the proverbial sight for sore eyes, even if it wasn’t exactly the eyes that were sore at this time.

I felt truly uplifted, and slightly at a loss. I had spent so long thinking about, planning and preparing for the ride. And now it was over. Fantastic welcomes cannot be made too much of though, and this was very moving, especially as we concluded with a musical devotional of truly memorable order.

Thank you so much the Edinburgh community!

With loving Bahá’í greetings
Chris Oak, Stevenage community.

PS Must just add one or two things: