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where there's a will. emily chappell. pursuit books hardback 288pp £14.99

where there's a will - emily chappell

on the first sunday of august each year, we hold our annual 'ride of the falling rain', the full parcours covering pretty darned close to 100 miles. those who undertake the full course usually complete the distance in around six hours, including a short stop at ardbeg distillery's old kiln café. they'll even offer a dram of their finest, if you ask nicely. this, you will doubtless agree, is hardly the most onerous day out on a bicycle, particularly in the light of islay being relatively flat. that said, if the rain pours and the wind blows, it could turn out to be one of your worst days on the bike (just ask those who rode in 2017).

however, once it's done, it's done; 'tis but a case of a brief bout of froth supping before heading home for a warm shower and a fine repast. any aches and pains will be quickly forgotten and on reaching work the following morning, there will be scant evidence of the weekend's strenuous activity, though quiet self-congratulation will probably continue until lunchtime.

there is, however, a portion of the velocipedinal venn diagram for whom such a paltry distance would scarcely be worth taking the bike out of the shed. i'm thinking here, not of the eager beavers who ride from london to paris over the course of three or so days, but the real hard corps, who enter ultra endurance events like the legendary transcontinental, entailing 4000km across europe in search of bragging rights that would put most of us in the shade.

one such individual is emily chappell, a former london courier who swapped the delights of metropolitan traffic on a fixed wheel, for the wide open spaces of the more obscure parts of europe.

though, as with many cycling related books, the opening chapter is entitled prologue, there is nothing by way of introductory pre-amble. "I woke up on my back. All around me the long grass quietly tossed and turned in the wind, and above me the moonless sky was fading from indigo to grey."

by the end of this short (four page) introduction, the difference between emily and most of the rest of us has already been underlined, alluding at one point to the fact that her destination of istanbul was but a week's riding, and the thought of such a distance was one being broken down into more manageable chunks, just to make sure she would actually arrive. it's worth pointing out that the transcontinental is a race and not just an extensive, if self-supported bicycle tour.

emily chappell, like many who go onto ride such unfathomable distances, was introduced to the genre via the well-worn audax path, however, it transpires that this, her first entry into the transcontinental was not going to bring victory. riding from belgium to istanbul was never going to be an easy ride, nor one that that brought the audience and kudos associated with events such as the tour de france. "...the Transcontinental had no publicity caravan, and almost no spectators..."

cleverly, there is no indication in the narrative featured in the first few chapters, that her race about which we are reading, ends prematurely and a touch ignominously. in almost a reprise of the book's first sentence, "A couple of hours later I woke up on my back, in the corner of a wind-tossed field, and found that there was almost nothing of me."

this unfortunate state of affairs led to a hospital visit in lubljana with her bike some 50km away at a guesthouse. the cause of her untoward hospital visit had been pain in her chest, one that gave her cause to believe it might be a heart attack, but turned out to be a non-life threatening muscle strain.

by that time, she was out of the race.

oddly enough, constant sleep deprivation, occasional bouts of hunger and a plethora of aches and pains while attempting to win a 4,000km race, were insufficient to keep emily (and others), from repeating the process. in the interim, however, she returned to her parents' home in mid-wales to escape from the claustrophobia of the metropolis. occupying the intervening months, she participated in north scotland's twenty-four hour strathpuffer mountain bike race and was asked to crew for a friend on the race across america.

in a meeting that would subsequently prove a major influence, in london, chappell came across endurance riding legend, mike hall, who, coincidentally, had won the strathpuffer mtb race in 2011. hall's presence in emily's cycling career would soon become particularly significant.

meanwhile, she had entered the following year's transcontinental, now a more experienced and perceptive rider, planning this time to complete the route from geraardsbergen to canakkale in twelve days. the event organiser was mike hall. it would not be unusual to suppose that anyone undertaking such an extensive bike ride would be well-versed in the intricacies of bicycle mechanics, particularly in the light of the self-supported nature of the transcontinental. however, according to emily "I was not a person who tinkered with her bike for fun, or who compulsively took things apart to see how they worked. My obsession was with the feeling I got when they worked."

this time round, emily chappell arrived at the finish, victorious, having won the women's section of the race by a substantial margin. "My winner's jersey didn't fit well, and the pale-grey merino it was made from strained across my broad chest when I did it up. Clearly the sponsor had assumed that a woman capable of winning the Transcontinental would be smaller."

after her victory, chappell returned to the solitude of wales, joined, only an hour's ride uphill, by mike hall and his partner, anna. over the ensuing days and weeks, chappell and hall completed many lengthy rides through the welsh countryside, climbing its many ascents in the pursuit of pedalling nirvana. hall and his partner soon split; while working on the route for the 2017 transcontinental, it appears they had many disagreements and the relationship had faltered. with mike staying on in his welsh retreat, there were plenty of opportunities for chappell to learn from his greater endurance riding experience.

hall was using their continued and extensive riding as preparation for a new australian race, the indian-pacific wheel race, while chappell had entered the irish transatlanticway race. without wishing to reveal too much of those remaining few chapters of 'where there's a will', mike hall never reached the finish line of the indian-pacific wheel race. not every book has a happy ending.

personally, i have no desire to undertake any bike ride more demanding than islay's falling rain, but chappell's book is one that surely ought to be read by anyone with almost any type of bicycle in the bike shed? her writing is impressive, clear, concise, self-effacing and utterly free of anything approaching self-congratulation. riding thousands of kilometres is simply something that she does. the narrative is beautifully constructed and has everything to do with life and impressively little to do with bicycles. james spackman's pursuit books deserves every gramme of approbation it is likely to receive.

worry not if your longest trip on a bike is from home to the shops; there is much to be gained from reading emily chappell's 'where there's a will'. learning, enjoyment, despair and bike riding; real life in 288 pages.

an interview with author, emily chappell, will be published in tomorrow's post. where there's a will is published on thursday 7 november.

wednesday 06 november 2019

twmp ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................