Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain

by George Mahood

  It was 6pm on a Tuesday and there was no sign of a market in Milnthorpe. But it could have had one, you know, if it wanted to.

  We reached the main square, which was also presumably known as the ‘market square’, as it looked like the sort of open space that could host a market, should Milnthorpe decide it wanted one. The square was deserted apart from a group of five teenage Goths squashed onto a bench. They snarled at us as we approached. Actually, it was more of a harmless giggle, but a snarl seemed to suit their image better.

  ‘Yo, dudes,’ said Ben, trying to be cool, ‘do you know of anywhere in town we could stay tonight... for free?’

  They all smirked at each other. Sorry, I mean growled. They all growled at each other.

  ‘No. Why? Are you tramps?’ asked one of them.

  ‘No. We’re cycling to Scotland and we’re not allowed to spend any money,’ said Ben.

  ‘That’s messed up, man,’ said one of Goths.

  ‘Yeah man, totally,’ said Ben, sounding totally uncool.

  ‘Can we stay with any of you guys?’ I asked hesitantly.

  ‘Nah, man, my pad is too small,’ said the head Goth.

  ‘You mean your mum wouldn’t let you,’ said one of the girls. ‘You don’t have your own pad.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. Nor does none of you.’

  ‘Alright, homies. Keep it real. Word to your mothers,’ said Ben, turning to leave. As he did, he caught his leg on the pedal of The Horse and stumbled a few feet before becoming entangled in the bike’s frame and falling head-over-heels onto the cobbled pavement. Just seconds before, he had tried to be all ‘down with the kids’ with a group of teenagers and then, right in front of them, he had managed to spectacularly fall whilst pushing his bike along a pavement. As Ben lay crumpled in a heap with his bike on top of him, I looked on, unable to breathe as I was laughing so hard. The Goths howled with laughter. I mean literally howled. Like werewolves. At the moon. That’s what Goths do, right?

  ‘Alright, cheers for helping me out,’ said Ben sarcastically when he was back on his feet.

  ‘Sorry, I couldn’t breathe.’

  ‘Yeah, well I’ll remember that. Quick, let’s get out of here.’

  The Cross Keys Hotel was an imposing building that stands on the corner of the main crossroads in the town.

  Ian the manager was unable to offer us a bed for the night, but said that we were welcome to pitch a tent in the car park, if we could find one. He also offered us a pizza each if we came back later.

  About 20 metres down the road, a lady was cleaning her front windows. The house fronted directly onto the street so we had to walk around her to pass.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Ben, ‘this is going to sound like a really strange question, but I don’t suppose you have a tent that we could borrow for the night?’

  ‘You want to borrow a tent?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s a long story, but basically Ian from the hotel up the road said that we can pitch a tent in his car park if we can get one.’

  She paused.

  ‘Well, I have got a tent, but how do I know that I’ll get it back?’

  ‘I can promise you that we’ll take great care of it and return it to you first thing in the morning,’ said Ben. She considered this for a moment.

  ‘Ok then. I don’t see why not. Wait there, I’ll go and see if I can find it.’ She went inside and returned a few minutes later with a tent, and her husband, whose job it was to stand in the doorway and look intimidating, in case we had any doubts about returning the tent.

  ‘I need it back tomorrow by 8.30am. That’s when I go out to work,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve got a deal. Thank you very much indeed.’

  ‘Hi Ian. We’ve managed to get a tent. Is the offer of your car park still open?’ I asked in the Cross Keys, five minutes later.

  ‘Blimey, that was quick. Where did you get that?’

  ‘From a lady just down the road. She was the first person we asked.’

  ‘I’m very impressed. You guys are good. Yes, of course you can pitch your tent in the car park. If you don’t mind, I would prefer it if you could wait until it gets dark. It might be a bit weird if you’re putting a tent up while everyone is still arriving at the pub. I’ll bring you a couple of pizzas when I get a minute.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to be a bit cold in the tent?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Why? Are you claiming the sleeping bag AGAIN? I haven’t used it once yet.’

  ‘You can use it if you want, but it smells of me now.’

  ‘I don’t care. I nearly froze to death at Mrs Rogers’ house.’

  ‘Fine. You can have it then. But I’m warning you, it may have a few sticky patches in it,’ he laughed.

  ‘Oh, you’re a sick fucker. Keep the bloody sleeping bag. I’m going to go and ask at that other pub across the road if they’ve got a blanket or something I can borrow.’

  The pub across the road could not have been more different. It looked exactly the same as it would have done in the 1950s; lots of brass, very few lights, and - judging by the three old men at the bar - probably the same occupants.

  ‘I’ve got a duvet you can borrow,’ said Chris, the man behind the bar. He was in his mid-thirties with spiked hair, pierced ears and a fluorescent shirt, straight from a 1980s disco.

  ‘That would be perfect. Thank you. I’ll drop it back in the morning if that’s ok,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he said, pushing me in the shoulder in a flirtatious way. ‘If you need anyone to keep you warm in the night, you know where to come.’ The men at the bar laughed.

  ‘Thanks, but I’m already sharing the tent with another man.’

  ‘Even better. Threesome!’ he laughed.

  ‘I think I’d better sleep with one eye open tonight with you just across the road.’

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ he said with a wink.

  When it was dark we started to put up the tent. I am rubbish at putting up tents. Even in daylight. There is only one person in the world worse at putting up tents than me, and unfortunately he happened to be in the pub car park with me. In darkness, we were completely incompetent.

  Ben and I came very close to strangling each other during the tent’s erection. Let me rephrase that, as it sounds like a sadomasochistic version of Brokeback Mountain. We came very close to strangling each other during the course of putting up the tent. There, that’s better.

  ‘What are you doing?’ screamed Ben.

  ‘I’m putting pegs in. What does it look like?’

  ‘Don’t bother pegging the inner bit. Just peg the flysheet.’

  ‘But then the flysheet and the inner will touch and we’ll get wet.’

  ‘Bollocks. That’s an urban myth.’

  ‘No it’s not! It’s a fact. I’ve been in plenty of tents that have leaked.’

  ‘That’s because you’re so shit at putting them up.’

  ‘Why are you being so miserly with the pegs?’

  ‘There’s no point in using pegs for the sake of it.’

  ‘Ok,’ I said, and then pegged the inner tent anyway, whilst he was struggling to undo the zip.

  After about 45 minutes, we had muddled the tent into some form of basic shelter. Thankfully there was no wind, and rain seemed unlikely. I had tried to attach the guy ropes just in case, but Ben had snatched them away saying, ‘there’s no way are we having guy ropes. Guy ropes are for gays. They should be called gay ropes.’

  I will never get bored of the excitement of climbing into a tent. It is one of those moments that bring about extreme feelings of excitement and nostalgia. In the pitch black, we fumbled our sleeping bags, duvet and possessions into some sort of order and lay down to go to sleep.

  Day 12 - The hitman

  Milnthorpe to Carlisle - 50 miles

  We awoke to the sound of drilling.

  ‘What the hell is that noise?’ asked Ben.

  I undid the zip and poked my head out of the tent. Four workmen w
ere drilling into the tarmac of the car park less than three metres from the tent. The guy with the drill acknowledged me with a raise of the eyebrows but carried on with his work.

  ‘Some workmen are drilling just outside the tent,’ I said to Ben.

  ‘It feels like my head is going to explode.’ It was all quite surreal. We went to sleep in a tent, in a pub car park and woke up in the middle of a building site.

  ‘How did you sleep?’ I asked.

  ‘Brilliant. Didn’t wake up once. How about you?’

  ‘Not great. I had to fold the duvet in half so that I wasn’t sleeping on the tent floor but then my feet poked out the bottom.’

  ‘Oh well, you should’ve swapped for the sleeping bag. If you were given a four-poster bed and a feather duvet, you’d still whinge about how badly you slept.’

  We took the tent down in record time and squashed it back into the bag, just as it began to rain. ‘There’s nothing worse than a wet tent,’ or so my dad claims.

  Ben returned the tent to the lady down the road, whilst I returned the duvet to my admirer in the neighbouring pub. Thankfully, he was still asleep upstairs when I called, so I left it with a lady who was cleaning the bar.

  We then went to retrieve our bikes and say thanks to Ian.

  ‘Why don’t you both come in and have some breakfast in the hotel?’ he asked as he unlocked the cupboard that housed our bikes. ‘Just go and get a table whenever you’re ready. Order whatever you want off the menu and tell whoever serves you that it’s been cleared with me.’

  We felt more than a little bit out of place in the hotel restaurant. The tables were full of well-dressed elderly couples preparing for a day’s tour of the Lake District. We were sat at a table in the corner, unwashed and unshaven, wearing the same clothes we had been wearing for 11 days.

  ‘What can I get you?’ asked the waitress.

  ‘I’ll have the Full English, please,’ said Ben.

  ‘I think I’ll go for the kipper and poached egg please,’ I said.

  ‘Kipper and poached egg? What the fuck?’ questioned Ben when she had left.

  ‘I just thought I would go for something a bit different. We’ve eaten so much crap this trip I don’t think I could handle another fry-up.’

  ‘You’ll regret it. I’m not going to give you any of mine.’

  Sure enough, I regretted it deeply.

  For some reason, I half expected Ben to be the envious one, but it turned out there was no competition. For some reason I thought that ‘Kipper with Poached Egg’ would be more than just a kipper with a poached egg. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe two kippers. Or perhaps three. What is the collective noun for kippers? Anyway, I was given a kipper and a poached egg. Just like it said. It was very tasty, but I have never felt greater envy than I did at the sight of the plate of steaming greasy bacon, sausage, beans, fried bread, hash browns, mushrooms, tomato, egg and black pudding that Ben was served. I came close to crying.

  Thirty seconds later I had eaten mine, and I then had to sit and watch Ben orgasm over his Full English. Not literally, of course. That would have been revolting.

  We set off on our bikes, just before 9am, at the peak of rush hour. Rush hour in Milnthorpe consisted of an old lady on her way to the greengrocers, and a farmer tightening the straps on his trailer. Imagine how busy it gets if Milnthorpe decides to have a market. Because it can if it wants, you know.

  Milnthorpe sits right on the edge of the Lake District. As soon as the buzz of that small ‘market town’ had faded, we were surrounded on all sides by ‘the loveliest spot man hath never found,’ according to William Wordsworth.

  It felt like we were on holiday. Technically, we were on Day 12 of our holiday, but this was the first time that we truly felt it.

  For the next 15 miles we saw no more than half a dozen cars. The rain had stopped, but the air was still damp with thick low-lying cloud. It made the scenery look even more spectacular. Dry stone walls weaved their way across fields before being swallowed up by the mist. Eerie derelict stone barns were partly visible, and sheep moved like ghosts across the hillside.

  There is also something poignant in the fact that much of what makes the Lake District so beautiful is man-made. I don’t mean the sheep and the clouds - I’m pretty sure man didn’t make those. I mean the stunning dry stone walls, the derelict barns, and the picture postcard villages that punctuate the area. The landscape itself is obviously spectacular, but it is man’s additions that really give it its character.

  We passed through the villages of Brigsteer and Underbarrow which seemed to both be asleep. I paused momentarily to look at the directions.

  ‘Why do you have to keep stopping to check we’re going the right way?’ asked Ben. ‘There is only one road in the Lake District and we are on it.’

  ‘If there is only one road, then how come we are at a junction?’

  ‘That road up there doesn’t count. That’s someone’s drive. It’s got to be down this way.’ He set off down the hill through the village and I folded up the directions and followed him without double checking.

  ‘This doesn’t seem right, Ben,’ I said, a few minutes later.

  ‘You hate it when I’m in charge don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes. Especially when I’m the one with the directions and your sense of direction has been proven to be shit.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’ve got a great sense of direction.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re like a homing pigeon,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘Well you’re like a homo pigeon.’

  I studied the route.

  ‘You know that road that you said was someone’s driveway?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Well according to this, that’s the road we wanted.’

  We trudged back up the hill in silence and then took the correct road.

  Our route book warned us about a hill after Underbarrow that would ‘probably require dismounting’. Well, not for two finely tuned athletes like us. We cruised up without even breaking sweat.

  Actually, Ben had said that there was ‘no way The Falcon was going to make it up the hill,’ which made it the most important challenge I had ever faced. Ben was then forced to respond by powering The Horse up, too. We collapsed in a heap at the top, sweaty and exhausted.

  The next three miles were all downhill into the town of Bowness-on-Windermere, which sits, unsurprisingly, on the banks of Lake Windermere – England’s largest lake.

  After 15 miles cycling through the quaint country lanes, Windermere was a big shock to the system. It looked pretty – from a distance – but was fairly horrible. The pavements were crawling with coach parties visiting the overpriced shops, buying overpriced tat, and filling their faces with overpriced food. The roads were congested with through-traffic, tourists and coaches.

  We found a spot of grass near to a tacky kiosk selling ice-creams and souvenirs. Ben spotted an outside tap by the kiosk and went to fill up our water bottles.

  ‘UH, EXCUSE ME! You can’t use that tap. It’s for customers only,’ shouted a voice through the kiosk’s hatch.

  ‘Oh, sorry. We’re just filling up a couple of drinking bottles. Is that ok?’

  ‘No. They’re for customers only. Are you planning on buying anything?’

  ‘Sorry, we don’t have any money.’

  ‘No tap then,’ he said.

  Soon after leaving Windermere we saw a sign warning us of something that we had been dreading since getting hold of our route book: Kirkstone Pass.

  The route that our book detailed took us over Kirkstone Pass, which is the highest mountain pass in England and would be the ‘toughest climb of the tour’. The road gains 1,300 ft in six gruelling miles, and promised to be unlike anything we had ever attempted.

  In reality, it wasn’t too bad. By this, I mean that we didn’t have to get off and walk at any stage. We did, however, swiftly remove our t-shirts after the first half-mile struggle. A well timed break after about four miles
broke up the journey nicely, too. We sat against a stone wall at the side of the road and ate our lunch.

  Using the stale bread that the lady had given us in Lancaster and the bags of crisps from Bob – the student - we built two epic crisp sandwiches each.

  The final two miles passed without any incident, and on reaching Kirkstone Inn – which marks the top of the pass – we had to ask someone if we were actually at the top.

  We stopped to take in the view, which was stunning in every direction. The road behind us snaked its way back down the valley towards Lake Windermere, and then beyond us in the direction of Scotland. The sun was out and the visibility was excellent. It is apparently common for End to Enders to reach Kirkstone Pass and not be able to see anything because of fog.

  We could see a lake at the bottom of the valley in the direction we were heading and it taunted us with its shimmering, cool, refreshing quality. Hot, sweaty, dehydrated and on the top of a mountain, the scenery was suddenly of little interest. We were in desperate need of a swim.

  The descent from Kirkstone Pass was undoubtedly the fastest I have ever been on a bike. It was possibly the fastest that man has ever travelled, in any form of transport.

  If The Falcon had had wings, I swear she would have taken off. It was one of the scariest, but most exhilarating things I have ever done. Braking wasn’t really an option for me, as The Falcon’s brakes only had any slight effect when travelling at a ridiculously slow speed, or uphill. I just gave in and let The Falcon do what she was best at doing - not stopping.