It’s 7.30 on a Saturday morning and I’m standing outside a deserted livestock market in a small town in the Northumbrian borders, surrounded by hundreds of people dressed in figure-hugging lycra. That’s not a sentence you read very often.
But today is the Wooler Wheel Borderlands sportive and this is the queue for registration. I’m about to put my four months of training to the test and ride 100km – the middle distance of three routes on offer here.
The evening before, helmet, food and water bottles are neatly lined up in the hall. I’ve worked out we’ll have to get up at 5am to drive to Wooler, so every task carried out the night before equals five more minutes in bed.
The ride seems incredibly well-organised. The detailed pre-ride information even includes instructions on what to do in the event of an encounter with a wild animal. It says if I collide with a deer it will hurt.
After the hustle and bustle of the registration area, there’s an almost eerie silence as I ride to the start line through the empty livestock pens. A handful of the event organisers are on hand to cheer us on our way. One of them has brought a cowbell. I like this event already.
The well-signed route takes us through north Northumberland, with tantalising views across to Holy Island and Lindisfarne Castle and then briefly across the border into Scotland. It’s fairly lumpy; 1400 metres of climbing in total. When I saw all the people signing on at the start I imagined we’d be riding in some kind of huge, meandering peleton, but actually we have plenty of space and only really catch up with groups of other riders when we reach a climb. The roads are, on the whole, incredibly quiet. I manage not to collide with any wild animals.
The first 40km seem to fly by with a few short climbs to warm up the legs. When we reach the top of the first big climb we find a friendly marshal dispensing words of encouragement and jelly babies. Photographers pop up occasionally along the route, but smile at your peril; there are a lot of flies about. After about 50km we reach the first feed station. I feel I should apologise to any riders who arrived there after me to find seriously depleted stocks of flapjack. I may have had more than my fair share. But it was delicious.
I’m impressed with the route. Just enough climbs to be challenging but with some welcome downhill sections towards the end. It’s only when the headwind kicks in that I start to feel tired. Luckily, I’ve brought along my very own domestique to give me a tow. After a raid across the border into Scotland for more flapjack and bananas, we’re on the home straight. I put my head down and plough through the last few, flat miles back to Wooler and cross the line to find I’ve completed the 106km ride in four hours and 11 minutes, which isn’t too shabby. Back at the livestock market hot soup and cups of tea are being dished out. Meanwhile outside, in one of the cattle pens, free massages are on offer to ease aching muscles.
There was really only one thing about the day that made me unhappy. Why do some cyclists think it is ok to drop their gel wrappers in the road? If, after consuming your gel, you can’t even muster up the energy to put the wrapper back in your pocket then perhaps you need to train harder.
Top marks go to the volunteer marshals who stood for hours at road junctions, everyone at the feed stations who filled our water bottles and the young lad who slipped us extra portions of flapjack. I’m sure there’s a lot of time given to making sure these rides go smoothly, and what you see on the day is only a small part of it.
So if you’re looking for a friendly, well organised sportive on quiet roads in beautiful surroundings then you can’t go wrong with the Wooler Wheel. According a leaflet in my goody bag there’s a Wooler Wheel Classic planned for October. Plenty of time to get training then.
