Free Country: A Penniless Adventure the Length of Britain

by George Mahood

  There was surprisingly little traffic in either direction, which meant that we were able to take the ‘racing line’ through the many twisting bends. Cars would be unlikely to reach such speeds on such a winding downhill stretch, so it meant that we didn’t have to contend with any cars trying to overtake us. I flew past Ben, who swerved and nearly had a heart attack when he saw me pass.

  The road slowly levelled out at the bottom of the valley, and I steered The Falcon up a grass verge to come to a stop. It was at least ten seconds before Ben reached me.

  ‘How the hell did you go so much faster than me?’

  ‘I told you. The Falcon is an elite racing bike.’

  ‘No, you’re on a crappy child’s bike. I didn’t brake once down there yet you still flew past me.’

  ‘Never underestimate The Falcon.’

  ‘It’s because of your weight advantage,’ said Ben.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re fatter so you get more momentum down the hills.’

  ‘Shut up. You’re just slow because the massive knob on your head creates lots of wind resistance.’

  ‘Well your man boobs flap around like aeroplane propellers giving you extra speed.’

  Conversations between Ben and me were rarely more mature than this. We did once have a discussion about politics, but it was based around the unlikely scenario that we had to shag either John Prescott or Margaret Thatcher in order to save the human race. We both reluctantly agreed on Maggie.

  We reached the village of Glenridding at about 3pm. We referred to it as ‘Glen-rid-a-ding-ding’ because we thought it was amusing. Looking back, it is less so now.

  Glen-rid-a-ding-ding is a little village on the edge of Ullswater – the second largest lake in the Lake District. Many people consider Ullswater to be the most beautiful of the lakes, and Wordsworth described it as, ‘the happiest combination of beauty and grandeur, which any of the lakes affords.’

  As well as the lure of Ullswater, Glen-rid-a-ding-ding (maybe it will get funnier if I repeat it) is also a popular base for hikers, as it sits at the bottom of one of the popular routes up Helvellyn – England’s third highest peak, behind Scafell and Scafell Pike.

  The village (Glen-rid-a-ding-ding, that is) was a pleasant mixture of traditional buildings and modern convenience, with an outdoor store, gift shop and a tourist information.

  We parked up on a patch of grass just beyond the village, and stripped down to our boxer shorts. We then waded into the water up to our waists. It was ball-clenchingly cold. Within nanoseconds my testicles had retreated up inside of me and my Glen-rid-a-ding-ding had shrivelled to the size of a cigarette butt. I squealed like a girl.

  ‘Looks nice in there?’ said an elderly lady who was walking along the bank with her husband.

  ‘It’s... ah... ah... certainly... ah... ah... refreshing,’ said Ben.

  ‘You should join us,’ I said.

  ‘Maybe next time,’ she laughed.

  The Glenridding Mini-Market was an unbelievable shop. It was packed to the ceiling with everything that you could ever want to buy, and plenty of stuff that you would never want to buy.

  ‘We get some odd-bods in this shop, but we’ve never had people doing what you’re doing?’ said the lady behind the counter, after we told her our story.

  Her name was Avril and she looked like she was born to run a village shop. I don’t mean that in a belittling way. She just looked like exactly the sort of person that you would want to buy your daily paper or provisions from; a warm and friendly smile, a calming relaxed manner and all the patience in the world to stand and listen to two scruffy young men beg for food from her. She was like a younger Mrs Goggins from Postman Pat.

  ‘Would you like one of these pies? I’m unlikely to sell many more of these, as it’s getting late in the day. We’ve got a large chicken pie here... this one’s a steak pie... and that one is apple.’

  ‘That’s very generous of you,’ said Ben. ‘Which one shall we have, George?’

  ‘Oh go on, take all three,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find room for them.’

  It was nearly 6pm by the time that we left Ullswater.

  ‘Where are we going to stay tonight?’ asked Ben.

  ‘Not sure,’ I said, taking a look at the route book. ‘We’ve only done about 25 miles today so it would be good to try and do as much as we can in the time that’s left.’

  ‘But it’ll be dark in an hour.’

  ‘Looking at this, it seems that there’s nothing between us and Carlisle, which is another 25 miles away.’

  ‘Carlisle? But that’s in Scotland isn’t it.’

  ‘No,’ I said confidently, only because I had the book in front of me and was able to check. ‘Not quite. I think it might have been part of Scotland once, maybe.’

  ‘We’ll never do another 25 miles today. Especially with these bastard hills.’

  ‘According to the book, there’s a short section of uphill coming up, and then it’s downhill the entire way. Let’s give it a go.’

  ‘Alright, but I don’t want to end up having to sleep in a bloody field tonight.’

  The route left the Lake District and followed back roads through the villages of Greystoke, Little Blencow and Hutton-in-the-Forest, tracing parallel to the M6. The route book had not lied; it was downhill the entire way and it made us feel like proper cyclists for the first time. Well, it would have done, had I not had to stop every few minutes to reattach The Falcon’s chain.

  It was dark by the time we reached Carlisle.

  ‘Bloody hell. Why did the English fight for this place? The Scots can have it back if they want?’ said Ben.

  ‘Yeah, it does look like a bit of a dump, but maybe we’ve just come in on its worst side.’

  Within the first five minutes of arriving in Carlisle, we had been told we were ‘a couple of fookin bike poofs’, were asked if we wanted to buy any acid, and then preached to by a born-again Christian. This was three separate incidents, by the way, not just one lunatic with his finger in many pies.

  We did a few laps of the town centre on our bikes to try and get some inspiration of where to try for accommodation. Carlisle was by far the biggest town we had tried to stay in, and we didn’t really know where to start.

  At the top end of town we walked past an extremely posh looking hotel called the Crown and Mitre. It was so posh that it had a doorman. I have never stayed in a hotel with a doorman.

  ‘Excuse me. Is it ok if we take our bikes into the lobby?’ Ben asked the doorman. He stared back at Ben with a look that didn’t say no, but didn’t say yes.

  ‘Or would you mind just keeping an eye on them for a couple of minutes if we left them outside?’

  He continued the same stare and didn’t say a word. We wheeled them up the steps and into the swanky foyer.

  The receptionist looked up from her computer with the automated smile that she would greet all guests with, but this soon dropped and her eyebrows raised with a look that said, ‘how did you get past security?’ Ben gave her our spiel.

  ‘No, we won’t be able to help you, I’m afraid,’ she said, before he had finished.

  ‘Oh, ok. Would it be possible to speak to the manager at all, just to check?’

  Her face didn’t alter. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why did she look at us like that?’ asked Ben when we were outside.

  ‘I guess because we look like a couple of tramps.’

  ‘Yeah, but we could’ve been millionaires, for all she knew.’

  ‘But we look like a couple of tramps, and we were asking for a free room.’

  ‘True. But, even so.’

  We tried another hotel – The County Hotel – and got a similar response, albeit this time with a smile. The receptionist was working alone and had no authority to offer a complimentary room without a manager’s consent. Unlike at the Crown and Mitre, it was clear that if she could have helped, she would.

  We then tried the
Ibis on Botchergate, which seemed to be Carlisle’s main commercial street. The receptionist was stunning; blonde, Swedish (probably) and had a name that neither of us could even attempt to pronounce. The more we looked at her name badge, the more it seemed that we were staring at her breasts. She thought the whole idea of our challenge was hysterical, and kept asking to hear more details about it.

  ‘So you slept in a barn with a bull?’ she asked in perfect English but with a hint of Scandinavian sexiness. ‘You guys are hilaaaaarious.’

  ‘Do you think you might be able to help us with anywhere to stay tonight? We don’t even need a room. We could sleep in the cleaning cupboard,’ I said.

  ‘Hold on, I’ll check for you.’

  ‘The manager says the best he can do is £30 for the two of you,’ she said. ‘The normal price would be about £60 so this is a very good deal.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said ‘That does sound like a very good deal. Unfortunately, we don’t have any money at all. We’re not allowed to spend a single penny.’

  ‘Hold on. I will try him one more time.’

  A few minutes later, she returned.

  ‘He said he could offer you both a room for £11. This is the staff rate, I think, with an extra discount added.’

  Ben and I looked at each other with the same feeling of helplessness. We were being offered a room in a bright, clean, comfy, fresh hotel with hot showers, big beds, and no workmen drilling metres from our heads, for just £11.

  We said farewell to the Swedish beauty, and she waved us off and wished us good luck.

  It was 9.30pm and we were still standing in Carlisle town centre. It began to rain.

  ‘Eleven sodding pounds. We were so close. We could be having a bath in our hotel room by now,’ said Ben. ‘I feel like I could cry. I love the Ibis.’

  ‘I would rather be standing out here in the rain, than having a bath with you,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t mean together, you bellend. What’s the plan now?’

  ‘How about we go to a pub and just ask people if we can go and stay at theirs?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like we have many other options.’

  Walkabout is a chain of Australian themed bars. Not just any old Australian themed bars, they are OFFICIALLY the coolest Australian themed bars this side of the planet. Well, that’s according to their website anyway. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been to an Australian bar in Britain that was not a Walkabout, so the competition isn’t huge.

  There were picnic tables outside the front of the pub, and a few groups of people were sat under parasols in the rain watching Manchester United play a Champions League game on a screen through the doorway. We surveyed the groups of people and decided on our plan of attack. We headed towards a group of lads who looked like students.

  We asked if any of them would be willing to put us up for the night, but nobody was forthcoming. We tried the same approach at another table of guys who were too absorbed in the football to even acknowledge that we were speaking to them.

  ‘Yous can sleep at mah hoose,’ said a Scottish voice from the other end of the table. We turned to see a man in his early seventies, with tightly cropped grey hair, a badly rolled cigarette hanging from his mouth and a woollen jumper that looked like it had been knitted by someone with severe colour-blindness. His eyes were wild and piercing. They were magnified by a pair of badly sellotaped glasses that made him look genuinely terrifying. I doubt he had ever lost a staring competition in his life.

  ‘Really? Ok, great. Thanks. That’s very kind of you,’ I said, looking at Ben for some sign of acknowledgement.

  ‘Thanks, that’s really good of you. But we really don’t want to put you out,’ said Ben.

  ‘Aye, it’s nae bother. Yous both need somewhere to sleep. I have space. It's th' leest ah can dae. Nae bother,’ he said, knocking back the shot of whisky that sat next to his half-finished pint of Guinness.

  ‘But we might be a pair of serial killers,’ joked Ben.

  ‘That’s awe rite. I’m a serial killer tay,’ he said flashing us a glance that made Hannibal Lecter look like a teddy bear. He then burst out laughing and we laughed, too, although somewhat less convincingly.

  ‘The name is Mick. Here, go get yerselfs a wee drink,’ he said, handing over a £10 note.

  ‘That’s very generous of you, but we’re ok,’ I said.

  ‘C’mon ya pussies. I insist. Get me another pint, too.’

  ‘This is going to sound really stupid,’ I said, ‘but we’re on this challenge to cycle the length of the country without spending any money.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ said the man. ‘Aam askin’ you ta spend mah money.’

  ‘I know, I know, but part of the deal is that we’re not allowed to use money at all – even other people’s money.’

  ‘Ah for fuck sake,’ he said, grabbing the arm of a guy sat watching the football. ‘Go and get these wee lads a fecking drink. And one for me and yous, too.’ He fumbled in his pocket and handed the guy £20 instead.

  The young student didn’t know what to say. He was just being ordered to go and buy drinks by a drunk Scottish man. You could see him weighing it up in his head, and then it suddenly clicked that he was getting a free drink.

  ‘Alright. What will it be then?’ he said.

  ‘Two pints of Guinness please,’ I said.

  ‘Ack, that’s more like it,’ said Mick. ‘Yous gotta stop being such southern nancies.’

  What followed was, without exception, the strangest night of my life.

  We sat talking to Mick on the bench outside Walkabout for another hour. During that time, he sent the young lad at the end of the bench to buy another round. It transpired that Mick had been an alcoholic for many years. He had managed to stay ‘dry’ for five months up until the day we met him. That morning he had been to the doctor to receive the results of some tests. He was told that the cancer that he was being treated for had spread throughout his body. Mick then arrived at Walkabout just as it was opening, and had been there ever since. Ten hours of solid drinking had caused his words to slur slightly, but it hadn’t hampered his energy or his memory.

  ‘Aam the greatest living English-speaking poet in th’ world today,’ he declared.

  ‘You’re a poet?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah huh.’

  ‘Cool,’ and before I even had a chance to ask him, he launched into a recital. Much to the annoyance of the other drinkers.

  ‘This one’s called The Gargoyle,’ he said.

  The Gargoyle

  Has wings…of stone

  He’s alone and feeling

  All those things

  No mortal creature knows

  The clothes, of dreams

  He shows

  As though to seem to mean to see.

  Belief – in fantasy – be fact

  And acting out its part

  The rain

  Wears out his tears

  With deadly animosity

  Yet he succeeds to be

  Totality

  And passes, temporary

  Man.

  I was genuinely speechless. I don’t know why, but I had expected his poetry to be, well, shit. I didn’t fully understand the poem the first time I heard it – I’m still not sure I do - but the way he recited it from memory with his prominent Scottish accent, intense stare and perfectly measured delivery was incredibly captivating.

  Mick then took us to the pub across the road, and we took a seat by the window so that we could keep an eye on our bikes that we had pretend-locked to a lamp post just outside. The place was huge, but almost empty, apart from a group of about 15 blokes standing on an otherwise deserted dance floor. The music was so loud that Mick’s Scottish accent became even more difficult to understand. He bought us both a shot of whisky and another pint, and also ordered us a burger and chips each, without us having time to protest.

  The more he drank, the more he opened up about himself to us. He told us that he was gay, but had never disclosed
this to anyone throughout his life, nor had any sort of relationship with anyone.

  ‘When ah was yoong you could be pit in jail for being a buftie like me,’ he said. ‘Ye ken whit aam sayin? Aw mah life I've hud tae pretend aam somethin' aam nae.’

  He talked a lot about ‘God’s will’, too, and he gave us the impression that he was ashamed of his homosexuality, and felt that he had betrayed God.

  ‘Ah dornt fancy either ay ye, by th’ way,’ he said, necking his whisky.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Ben, slightly offended. ‘What’s wrong with us?’

  ‘Well you ah not my type, and his legs ah too hairy,’ he said pointing to my exposed white thighs.

  ‘I’ve killed people,’ he then said a while later. ‘I’ve killed lots of people.’

  This was a conversation-stopper like no other.

  ‘It was mah job,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Aam nae proud ‘bout whit ah did.’

  ‘What do you mean it was your job?’ I asked hesitantly.

  ‘Ah worked fur th' british government killin' terrorists. IRA mostly.’

  ‘Surely that’s an admirable job?’ said Ben.

  ‘Aye, you would think so, wooldnae ye? All mah life I've hud aw thes guilt inside me abit th' things I've dain an' th' things I've seen. I've never talked aboot this tae anyone before. Aam nae supposed tae. But after whit happened at th' doctor's this morn, ah cooldnae give a fuck anymore.’

  He told us more about the places he had lived and the things he had done. At one point he started talking in Russian – a requirement for one of his missions, apparently. Ben and I were both totally gripped by his stories. We had met some interesting characters on our trip, but Mick was in a league of his own.

  We were then faced with the moment of having to go back and sleep at his house. We suddenly longed for the easy, unthreatening nature of the other people that we had stayed with - Monica in Ludlow, or David and Annie in Nanstallon – rather than facing the uncertainty of a night with Mick.