Chase the Sun 2025

So this was it: the night before The Big One. The culmination of hundreds of miles, several chain lubings, and at least one spiritual reckoning with a jelly baby. Final kit check complete. 

Weather forecast: unhelpfully hot. Morale: medium. Dinner? A tragic downgrade from Charlie Bigham's artisanal splendour to Sainsbury’s microwaveable mush, on account of the chalet’s medieval amenities.

My wife, in a twist of either affection or sabotage, had also secured actual Bassett’s jelly babies. This would later prove controversial.

The bike was freshly chain’d, rear wheel swapped due to a sheared spoke, and everything was theoretically functioning. Spirits lifted, I boarded the train south, joined gradually by a rising tide of cyclists until the HS1 carriage resembled a budget peloton. I met a fellow rider and, high on optimism and ignorance, told him I was aiming for a 16-17mph average. Reader: I did not achieve this aim.

After a successful check-in and scenic trek to my digs on the far side of the Isle of Sheppey, I microwaved the pasta (as disappointing as expected), watched some baffling Tony Bellew reality TV, prepped sandwiches, and tried to sleep.

Alarm: 02:50. Time I actually got to the seafront: 04:30.
Operational efficiency: suboptimal. I still don’t know how it took me so long! Although it was a 20 minute ride down to Minster and there was a queue to check in my bag.

Caught the sunrise. Lovely. Failed to leave before 5am. Less lovely.

The opening miles were smooth… until the gravel trap from hell at mile 25 decided I needed a character development arc. A puncture. And my pump failed to deliver pressure above the level of a firm sigh. Everyone disappeared by other than one group who fortunately had a functioning pump.

Solo riding through Kent and London, emotionally buoyed only by a kindly rider’s electric pump outside a Costa, and a morale-saving bacon sarnie with a mate at mile 50. 

Still, London was a stop-start nightmare and between miles 50 and 65, human contact dropped to plague-film levels.

A random bloke on a local ride dragged me five glorious miles to Chertsey (hero), and around the 90-mile mark, two riders on aero bars appeared like caffeinated angels of mercy. I clung on.

No food at halfway. Just one of my lukewarm compacted sandwiches, a can of Fanta, and some light despair.

The second half began with drizzle but soon upgraded to sun-drenched suffering. Pewsey café was a divine intervention. I skipped their “energy loaf” and went full grandma with a slice of Victoria sponge. It saved me.

A rider from Colombia told me his support team had crashed their car, leaving them to wing it unsupported across 130 miles. I offered sympathy and, internally, a prayer of thanks for my flapjacks.

By now, I had completely turned on the Bassett’s jelly babies. Soft, gloopy, and morally inferior to the supermarket version. The flapjacks, however, were divine — chewy cubes of hope in a world gone mad.

Meanwhile, my quad was holding up and the climbs kept on coming-relentless, demoralising, and not even that scenic.

Looking deceptively cheerful in this photo.

At 175 miles I planned to stop at the Jolliffe Arms… but limped in early at a pub at 168 miles to try to recover with crisps and a Pepsi. I was full Simon Yates (2018 Giro) at this point—vacant stare, slow chewing, the lot.

But somewhere between that pub and Cheddar Gorge, I began to revive. Maybe it was the crisps. Maybe it was spite.

I climbed. Then climbed again. And again. Mercifully, multiple water stops appeared: a family in a layby, a house with a hose, and an official refilling station where a seasoned marshall gave me the equivalent of a pub-side TED talk: “All the hard work’s done, just get to the finish.” I believed him.

Cheddar Gorge: atmospheric, but frankly a bit underwhelming and full of boy racers. No matter. The sun was dropping fast, I channelled Simon Yates 2025 edition and the final 10 miles turned into a bit of a time trial. I hit 916pm at the finish, convinced I’d just scraped it before sunset… which, it turns out, was actually at 9:30 🫠.

Final tally: 206 miles. 9,100+ ft elevation. 15.3mph average speed (LOL). One broken pump. One sheared off bottle cage towards the end of the ride (how does that even happen?!). Zero regrets.

A bientôt.