Excuses first. When it comes to misery and riding bikes, I’m gold-stamped and time served. While I’m rubbish at suffering, I’ve still suffered mightily over the last thirty years. Rain, hail, snow, gales, endarkenment, blood, sweat and many, many tears. Really I’m done with it. Type 2 fun can go fuck itself while I hide inside.

Which is why as of 8am this morning three of us were not riding the King Alfreds Way (KAW). As of 8am a week ago we called it. Six weeks of rain and the prospect of hard precipitation for another seven days was enough for at least two of us to play the ‘sod that‘ card.

Almost four years ago Adam and I spent three days being blown off* a smorgasbord of Welsh mountains.  At the end of which I made it absolutely clear that was the last bloody time we let man-logic rule proper meteorology. Sure I look back at the Trans Cambrian with some affection. Back being the key word here.

Looking forward to the KAW was quite a thing, After the brilliant experience of riding the Lon Los Cymru, 2020 was slated for a crack at the west coast of Ireland. The guidebook for the Wild Atlantic Way looked epic and we got close to booking flights before, you know, that whole global pandemic thing.

So when the KAW was trumpeted as a whole new semi-off-road experience, we were all over like a cheap suit. Ads is more your ‘Yep that sounds good‘ type of planner, where I’m deep into the the details with multiple spreadsheets. We took a punt on post lockdown opening times and booked three pubs on the route. A route that’s pushing 350km and a whole lot of elevation.

Instead of training for riding proper trails over four days, I invested in new kit. Heavier wheels and fatter tubeless tyres. A new bar mounted nose bag. A smaller chain ring panically purchased after a proper review of the route profile.  All of this was tested during the cold but dry April when my main worry was how unyielding the tracks might be.

Hah. Careful what you wish for. Rain arrived Easter Monday and shows no sign of leaving. Came for the downpour, stayed for the hail. Social media hash-tagged the route with broken mechs, fourteen hour days, misery compounded by desperate entreaties the weather might be better tomorrow. Of course it wasn’t.

Of course we vacillated. This was not our first rodeo. Even so, riding fully laden gravel bikes on the wet chalk of the Hampshire downs was not filling me with joy. The stories afterwards would be reassuringly epic. The actual daily experience reliably shit. We could get it done, but I’ve enough of those memories and not enough time in front of me to collect many more.

So we jibbed. Additional context was Ads hadn’t recovered from crashing his MTB a few weeks earlier, and I was shuttling up and down the motorway worrying about an ageing parent. But honestly if the sun had been shining these last few weeks we’d be sat in a pub right now, some 80km into the route, congratulating ourselves on a day well done.

Instead I’m sat at home with a glass at my left hand wondering about what might have been, Sure we’re talking about postponement not cancellation. We’re not giving up, merely picking a better time because this is meant to be fun not some homage to purgatory.

Even so, it feels like failure. Is this how the end starts? Faking adulthood to avoid tackling what might be defining? Too old to learn those new tricks? A bit nesh in the face of difficulty? Or wise enough to wax the board and wait a few weeks?

Whatever we’re not doing the thing I was really looking forward to doing. Regardless of the crap Spring, I’m pretty fit and ready to go. But not ready to go and endure four days of misery. Yet I need to be sure there will be more adventures coming soon. So I’m not filling the next four days wondering about what they might be,

Instead I’m going to ride that bike as a proxy to what we didn’t do.  Or at least what we didn’t do, yet.

I expect it’ll be the standard life affirming riding bike thing. Tinged with a little bit of guilt and regret. Whatever, It’ll all be clearer when the rain finally stops and the riding starts.

*this is not any kind of metaphor. It was way less fun than that.