When I’m cycling alone in a wide open space, I sometimes start to imagine that my bike is stationery and it’s the planet that’s slowly rolling past my wheels.
One minute I’m enjoying the sights and I’m taking it all in. The next, I’m lost in my own thoughts. The best moments though are usually when I’m conscious both of the action of cycling itself and of my presence not just within the landscape, but as part of it.
Prior to doing the race, the route for me was just a line on a map. I could see that it might take me through a built-up area, up a hill, or next to a river, but that was more–or–less the extent of the information provided by the map itself. A touch more colour was added by the descriptions of the parcours given in the Race Manual. But these, in addition to my preconceptions and sketchy imagination, were all I had to go on to picture the route in my mind’s eye.
It’s only when visiting places that they really come alive. Maybe that’s obvious, and I guess that’s the appeal of travel — when the small two-dimensional stereotyped models in our head get replaced by the beautiful and brutal detail of real life. When you’re there in person, you truly know the lay of the land, perhaps better than anyone else, because you're seeing it exactly as it is at that moment.
But just like you can’t step in the same river twice, I think the same is true for cycling along a road. Even the weather and changing seasons will ensure every day is different. The road you cycled on yesterday won’t be the same road today. If you don’t think it’s different to yesterday, you aren’t looking closely enough.
Now when I look back at the maps, I see the slim thread of path that I followed through each country. Those lines are now pointers to memories. I also see all the roads that I haven’t travelled. With every new sight that travelling by bike provides me, I become more aware of how much bigger, more complex, and real the world is than the maps and models I have of it in my head.