Ned Boulting
gets lost in Coventry
“I was no longer lost. Because cyclists know each bend, each rise, each turn. They know the road”
Recently I was sent to Coventry. This is not a metaphor, but a simple statement of fact. ITV, for whom I still occasionally work, requested my presence at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry to co-present the Ladbrokes Players Championship of darts for ITV . Before you start to object, darts and cycling bear a surprising set of similarities. But that’s another subject for another day – or another 750 words for another column (makes a hasty note of idea for next month).
No, the reason I want to talk to you about Coventry is because of what happened to me one dank, misty Sunday morning.
The sun, lifting itself with absolute lethargy above the milky horizon, was only just illuminating the scene as I left the sliding doors of the Hilton hotel and headed reluctantly out for an early morning run. I run because, generally speaking, it’s over quicker than cycling. And it’s also the only thing I can do right now as I continue to recover from having smashed my arm to pieces by riding into the moat of a 12th-century castle in the dark.
The first obstacle in my way was the central reservation of the A46 dual carriageway. Once over that weed and litter-strewn nightmare, I spent the first 20 minutes battering down some overgrown ‘cycle path’ alongside a massive arterial route along which thunderous trucks were hammering. Then it started to drizzle. It was now nearly eight o’clock and barely light.
Eventually, I made it out into the lanes. The rumble of the M6 started to recede as the hedges reared up on either side of me, penning in acre after acre of wet, brown fields. The road narrowed and straightened. In the distance I could see a single light gently bobbing around like a flashlight as it grew closer. As I ran towards it, I soon made out the figure of a cyclist, swaddled up against the damp and the cold. As he rode past me, I offered him a cheery, “Hello!”. He replied with a smile and single raised hand.
Some commitment, I thought. I struggled to see the pleasure he was deriving from riding loops around Coventry on such a gloomy early winter morning in the kind of weather that never quite allows you to get warm. And then I remembered that I was doing something similarly bleak, only without the bike, and I started to pass judgment on myself.
On my pre-planned loop back towards the hotel, I passed further individuals, and occasional groups of cyclists, all grimly determined to get their rides done. I mentally doffed my caps to them as they passed. Then I got horribly lost.
Running into Coventry from the countryside, trying to remember the route I’d memorised, I realised that I’d missed a crucial turning and was now thoroughly disorientated. I stopped a fellow jogger to ask my way back. He scratched his chin. “No idea, pal. Sorry.” A lady at a petrol station said she knew the hotel and then instructed me to run in the opposite direction “until I reached the horses”. “Horses?”
“Yeah, you can’t miss them.”
I thanked her and ran on, ignoring her instruction. Then I spotted the cyclist at the side of the road mending a puncture and I knew I was safe. “The Hilton,” he mused as he wielded his pump. “Right. You need to go the next lights, then left, over a roundabout, right at the pub, left at the funeral parlour…” and on, and on, and on.
I thanked him and set off, with his instructions playing back on a loop in my inner voice. But, deep down, I knew I was no longer lost. Because cyclists know. They know each bend, each rise, each turn. They know the road.
I arrived back, exhausted, having run for an unplanned two hours, but curiously buoyed by the knowledge that where there is a cyclist, there is always hope.