Route Britannia, the Journey South: A Spontaneous Bicycle Ride through Every County in Britain

by Steven Primrose-Smith

  The rural joy ceased in Newport. It's sadly one of the burglary capitals of Britain as well as the McDonald's capital of Wales. Maybe it's because the robbers have nicked all their pots and pans that they have to eat manky takeaway. It's not a pretty place at the best of times and today the dense traffic made it worse. I weaved around the cars, heading to today's campsite, roughly five miles away. My stomach gurgled again and suggested a toilet break was necessary but not yet. It wouldn't take much more than twenty minutes to get there, even with the queues. Traffic jams are no obstacle to a bicycle. I had plenty of time.

  I hit the bank of the Severn Estuary. There were now only two miles to the campsite and then the horrible thing happened. My stomach suddenly and without warning went mental.

  “You need to find a toilet,” said my gut. “And I mean right now!”

  I looked around frantically for a pub. The few that I passed were shut or closed down completely. OK then, maybe a café or a supermarket. But I was in the middle of an industrial estate. Out the other side there was a Lidl but, from past experience, their toilets are usually behind closed doors and you need to ask someone and I didn't have time to negotiate.

  I was getting desperate now. I was clenching with all my might. Stomach pains were bending me over double. Sweat poured from my head. I saw a KFC in the distance and pedalled towards it, throwing the bike against its wall, leaving it unlocked. I felt another stab in my gut. I couldn't stand up straight in my attempt to hold my insides where they needed to be. I was ten metres from the door of the KFC when my body gave up.

  “Oh shit!” I thought, quite literally.

  The pains stopped instantly but I now had a different problem. At least the hem of my Lycra cycling shorts would prevent my biological mishap from exposing itself to others, I thought. They would act like a huge pair of incontinence pants, wouldn't they? Surely? Please? I looked down. The elastic hem had given up far too easily. The rapidly digested fish cake and those underdone chips had been converted into something far less palatable and it was running thickly down my legs. Whatever happened now, embarrassment of some sort had to ensue.

  Luckily, no cars were passing this part of the road, the only people about were some kids in the far distance, and the windows of the KFC were mercifully tinted. People inside might have seen me but at least I couldn't see them. I apologise if you were there having lunch that afternoon.

  What to do? What to do? I could see a wide grass verge on the other side of the road. I'd get myself there as quickly as I could, sit down with my bike as though stopping for a rest, of no interest to passing cars or people, and work out what to do next. I shuffled across the road, sat down with a squelch and starting to think.

  I suddenly became Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes. You know whenever he meets someone new and little graphics appear to pour from them providing him with all the clues he needs to work out who they are or what they do? This happened to me. I scoured my surroundings for anything that might save the day.

  The grass had been recently cut and it had rained in the night. Small piles of damp grass lay around me. On the other side of the verge was a banking descending downwards, although it was covered in nettles and thorns. I quickly grabbed handfuls of cut grass and cleaned my legs. It was amazingly effective, like a sponge, much better than the toilet paper I didn't have. Now at least I looked clean. But I still had to get out of these shorts and while in full view of anyone passing by. Going back to KFC wasn't an option. Standing up would have caused further leakage and I can't imagine I smelled too great either.

  I fished into my pannier for my clean pair of cycle shorts. This bit was going to be tricky. It's not easy to remove cycling shorts in a hurry because of the shoulder straps beneath your shirt. I slipped my hand under my top, slid down the left shoulder strap and bent my arm awkwardly to free it, and did the same with the right one.

  A ten-year-old kid on a bike cycled past, saw me and decided he wanted a conversation. He shouted something towards me. I yelled that I couldn't hear him over the traffic. I didn't want to approach him and get too close in case he said, “Oh mister, why do you stink?” He got bored at the loud, unproductive chat and cycled off.

  What I needed now was a swift, single action: shorts off, clean up, new shorts on. Two school kids were walking by. It would have to wait a minute or two. I gathered another pile of wet grass, this time larger than before. The two children disappeared but were replaced by three more. They were walking slowly down the road in little groups. I waited for about ten minutes.

  Then, at last, the pavement was empty. I slid down the banking, into the nettles. The shorts came off, the plants stinging my backside. I looked up the road and could see three Asian girls walking towards me. Please no! I didn't want to be charged with exposing myself to Muslim pre-teens. I'd get murdered.

  The damp grass was put to good use and I also rubbed my arse on the nettle-covered ground like a dog with worms. I was done! The fresh shorts came on and I jumped out of the nettles towards my bike like a man reappearing from a magic trick. The Muslim girls were still just a little up the road. No one had seen a thing.

  I hooked the straps back on to my shoulders, threw the old shorts into a nearby bin and was back on the road, trembling slightly at what had been a near miss. No one need ever know about this, I thought. Except you, obviously. And all the people in the KFC. And everyone with a CCTV camera in the vicinity.

  I very nearly didn't include this story – you probably wish I hadn't – but I did for two reasons. The first is that it was entirely out of my control. I mean, it's not like I deliberately curled one off on a pub's pool table, is it? It's no more a reflection on me than my brain haemorrhage back in 2009 or the last time I sneezed. But the other reason to include it is as a friendly warning. If you're out of a bike sometime soon you might want to steer clear of fish cakes and partially cooked spuds.

  Now what I wanted more than anything was to have a shower. I arrived at the campsite a few minutes later feeling surprisingly composed. The registration process took forever. I noticed a second woman, in her fifties, come out of a back room and look at my legs. I'd already had a couple of people comment on them. They're the only muscles in my body and after a spring in Spain they were nicely tanned. While I was checking in, she was checking me out. It was only once I'd left reception I noticed I'd missed a large, shitty smear on the side of my left leg. That's what she'd been staring at.

  After a shower and the confidence that I was sparklingly clean I walked to the local supermarket. In the car park at the front of it a cat fight broke out. A woman in a big, blue car leaned out of her window.

  “Watch where you're fuckin' going!” she yelled at a woman in another car.

  “It was your fault!” screamed back the second woman.

  “Fuckin' cow!” blasted the first.

  The second one thought for a moment. She clearly wasn't quite as used to public slanging matches.

  “Cow!” she shouted back a little weakly, knowing she could have been a bit more original.

  What a palaver, I thought. If the women of Newport were going to act like that then I didn't feel so bad about shitting all over their town.

  *

  As a county Newport is just outside the top ten most densely populated. Cycling eastwards through this urban hell, the jumping chain got worse and I knew I had to do something about it. I passed a Halfords but one that only dealt with cars. A guy working there gave me directions to a bicycle branch. I followed them and realised it was on the same shopping park as yesterday's KFC. Oh, such happy memories!

  The morning's greyness had been replaced by bright sunshine. Fully repaired I headed across the transporter bridge, one of only eight still working on the planet, to avoid the worst of Newport's busy roads. I now cycled the quieter, wider roads of southern Newport.

  Now in Monmouthshire I passed through Undy – half a pair of pants – Caldicot and Chepstow. As well as Undy, it's got a handful of other nicely named pl
aces: Mardy, Jingle Street and Bullyhole Bottom.

  Now free of the tiny counties of south Wales, larger Monmouthshire deserved a more thorough exploration but the rain delays in Cardiff meant I was already going to have to chop a day off both Gloucestershire and Wiltshire to stay on schedule even if I breezed through Monmouthshire without stopping. That was a shame because I quite fancied having a pint at the Skirrid Mountain Inn in Abergavenny, supposed the oldest and most haunted pub in Wales. It had an interesting story attached.

  Skirrid is a version of a Welsh word for “to shiver”. Apparently, in the hours after the Cruxificion of your fella in Jerusalem, the entire mountain on which the pub stands shivered. No one knows how powerful a shiver it was because, of course, this was in the days before we measured shivers on the Richter Scale. We should also consider that no one in Wales would have had a clue who Jesus was or when he was supposedly killed until several centuries later and so – who knows? – perhaps they were out by an hour or two.

  Anyway, Monmouthshire mostly and sadly ignored, I cycled on to the old Severn Bridge, a wonderful ride on a blue-sky day like today, crossing the wide expanse of the Severn Estuary and rolling once again into England. Farewell Wales! You were at times beautiful, frequently bleak but always bloody soggy. And sorry about the Newport thing.

  Chapter 7: The sanctuary of dead elephants

  Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Bristol and Somerset

  Back in England after my near-three week tour of Wales, I relished my re-entry into a world that permitted the use of vowels. Being able to pronounce the names of the places through which I was cycling and a third sunny day in a row was a little bit special. I celebrated in a Thornbury beer garden with a pint of pale ale and mild sunburn.

  Just down the road from the pub, I was given a vision of England in the form of a live cricket match. I leant against a dry stone wall beneath a tree adorned with pink cherry blossom determined to soak up a dose of Englishness on this lazy, hazy Saturday afternoon.

  Perhaps this area of Gloucestershire was an area of wide ethnic diversity but I doubted it. Thornbury had seemed as white of a Ku Klux Klan convention. Therefore, Thornbury Cricket Club must have been playing a bunch of visiting Asian lads.

  The bowler ran languidly towards the stumps and released the ball. The batsman swung and missed. He didn't seem too disappointed by this. It seemed to be absolutely normal. And indeed it was, as this inaction was repeated several times over a period of five minutes. The batsman managed to nick the ball once but sent it scurrying along the grass back to the bowler.

  I've never watched cricket. I mean, I might have seen a bowl or two on telly but then it would get turned over, or off, because why would anyone want to watch cricket?

  But here on a warm, sunny afternoon, with little birds singing in the tree above my head, I could see its appeal. It's hypnotic in an exceedingly dull way, like spending hours entranced by a tropical fish tank. You know nothing is going to happen but it's nice just to focus your eyes in its direction. But more than that, it's sunny. I assume that's why they don't play in the rain. It's not because they couldn't – every other sport continues during a shower – but could you really be arsed to experience so little action if you were getting soaked at the same time?

  A few miles down the road from Thornbury I saw a little supermarket, the first shop I'd seen all day down these flowery lanes. I bought some things for dinner and a Millionaire's Flapjack. It didn't say which millionaire, but I hoped it was Piers Morgan's and he was really angry that I'd snaffled it.

  I crossed the M5, a world away from the tranquillity of my route. As the din of the cars subsided, the land started to fold. The hills were at the limit of what my legs could manage. The lanes were lined with garlicky ramsons and I got a little lost. On one steep ascent I saw a father and son walking as I snailed my way upwards.

  “Is this the way to the campsite?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the dad replied, “but if you go at that speed it'll take you four hours.”

  “Thanks but sod off,” I didn't say.

  It didn't take four hours. It took five minutes. I set up my tent and sprawled out in the sun with my phone charging via my solar panel. This was lovely weather, certainly better than the kind they had just up the road in Berkeley in 2013 when it rained seaweed. Even Wales isn't that mean.

  I was hungry. I looked at the can of sausages I'd bought from the shop and then realised its tin was one of the old-fashioned ones that need an opener. I popped to reception and asked the warden if he had one.

  “No,” he replied. “But it's no problem.”

  He took out a huge knife, like the sort a Hutu would own, and proceeded to attack the tin. I got a bad feeling.

  “I can hear the theme music from Casualty.”

  I spent the evening eating sausages and bits of severed finger while listening to the Eurovision Song Contest on the radio. It's not as much fun when you can't see 'em prancing around in their daft outfits and you just have to focus on the music. Once again, the United Kingdom did terribly, receiving 5 points and coming 24th out of 27. It's almost as if they think we have no respect for the competition.

  *

  I set off on a glorious morning, meandering over the hills of the Cotswolds. This lumpy land and this sun-warmed, wind-cooled air is what bikes were designed for. I wanted to put on a dress, swap my bike for an old bone shaker and scream down the hills with my legs on the handlebars, the pedals spinning recklessly and showing my pants to the world.

  The intermittent trees provided both a strobe effect and a temperature oscillation. Hot and bright, cold and dark, hot and bright, the heat a welcome source of warmth after the coolness of the shade, the refrigerated air a welcome chill after each blast of sunshine.

  I passed through cutesy North Nibley, which sounds like a place middle-class rabbits go skiing. I had a hill to climb. A dead baby deer lay in the road. The cars coming down the hill steered to avoid it. Just as I passed the poor animal, a descending car hit it full-on, splatting its bloated carcass with a dull explosion that would have covered me in putrid venison and liver pâté had I been five metres farther down the hill.

  I arrived in Wotton-under-Edge, a lovely village with a beautiful, well-attended church this Sunday morning. Two young girls walked past me, speaking French. Suddenly, rather than Britain, I was in Brittany and that other land of lovely villages just over the Channel.

  Village after village, the place was gorgeous. Alderly had another attractive church. I passed the Somerset Monument, a lighthouse-like structure in memory of Lord Edward Somerset as opposed to a hastily erected tower accidentally built in the wrong county, and cycled through Sopworth, a village called Dunkirk and another called Petty France.

  I stopped in Sherston, a perfect English village just over the Wiltshire border. It has the appearance of a film set, its few pubs, shops and businesses all thriving. What were they doing differently here than in the rest of Britain's dying settlements? Maybe the community had decided to buy locally rather than drive to the nearest large town and give all their cash to the shareholders of Sainsbury's. That'd be a good start.

  After a morning of villages and lanes I hit the town of Malmesbury. The place has a couple of interesting firsts for Britain. In 1703 it was home to Hannah Twynnoy, the first person in the British Isles to be killed by a tiger on home soil. She'd been working as a barmaid in a pub exhibiting wild animals. The tiger didn't take too kindly to her teasing and so it gobbled up her. Hannah was also Britain's first ever pub meal.

  Between Malmesbury and Royal Wootton Bassett I inadvertently participated in a bike race. The police made me pull over to one side while the real cyclists came screaming through. A mile down the road I passed a race marshal. He looked at my bags and gave me a clap.

  “You're way behind the pace,” he said with a smile.

  My campsite was just the other side of Marlborough, my second cigarette town of the day, but only if you allow me the Sopworth Camel from earlier,
which you shouldn't because it isn't even spelled correctly.

  Marlborough itself seemed wealthy, a very Waitrose-y kind of place, the sort of town that might, and indeed does, host a jazz festival. Among the local shops on its wide shopping street, a Greggs sat conspicuously out of place, a little bit of Liam Gallagher amongst Marlborough's Miles Davis.

  I'd loved my first full day back in England, and despite its short distance away from Wales the two places felt so different. Wales is at its best when folded, rugged, the scars of recently dead or dying industries visible, preferably with a brooding sky. England is better when flatter, laid out like a patchwork quilt, rapeseed and pasture by turn, genteel to the point of repressed, with distant spires poking over clumps of trees. Wales is thick arm muscles and a pint of Brains followed by a lusty belch. Wiltshire's England is a vicar, a nice cup of tea and people pretending they don't fart.

  *

  According to my British stereotypes map I was moving out of the zone of the Self-Satisfieds into the land of Hippies. Today was a day for druids and mystical nonsense. This area of Wiltshire has a whole host of such features. I wasn't heading to the most obvious, Stonehenge, because I'd been there before and it felt a bit overrated. Besides, I'd recently been told it cost £16 to visit and I'd flown a TARDIS for that much.

  I set off in yet more beautiful sunshine, wondering whether I really could be this lucky with the English weather or perhaps I'd cycled through a rip in space-time and ended up in Mediterranean Italy.

  The first stop was The Sanctuary although perhaps The Field With Little Bits of Wood and Stones In It would have been a more accurate name. It took some stretch of the imagination to picture what it might once have been. Rocks and poles denoted the structure of, well, no one is really sure.