Driving Miss Cobi

UK WIDE TRAVEL ALERT – Long delays expected everywhere due to purple 7 seater circular bike travelling south from John O’Groats to Land’s End for Cancer Research UK – Tune into www.cobiuk.com for regular updates.

That’s right; the tour de Britain is only 2 days away. We left Brixton to the sound of the steel band and arrived at our nightly stopover in the Yorkshire dales to a rousing chorus of ……. silence .

Our minibus, which I have nicknamed ‘Peter the Great’(after Ed’s dad who drove it up from Devon) has been kindly donated by Exeter Cathedral School, and it has served us really well.

We stopped by the mythical town of Hemel Hempstead to collect vital supplies from Complete Outdoors, namely gas for the camping stoves and a couple of pints of pure faith diet (we are watching our weight).

The M1 was a real highlight, Ed driving and me taking urgent press calls from Scotland and my mum. Sadly the lady being channelled through the GPS had a breakdown and took us to an abandoned abattoir instead of the HQ of Get Cycling where we were picking up the CoBi. With a few gentle taps she apologised and took us to our destination, where we found the lovely, Ian, our support driver (think Driving Miss Daisy, relocate it to Rochdale and take away Miss Daisy).

Next to Ian stood the CoBi bike, what a woman – a deep purple shell, 7 legs and a spare tyre for good measure. I looked at Ed, Ed looked at Ian, Ian looked at me, I looked at Ed, Ed looked at Ian ….. OK you get the idea …. We didn’t say it but we all thought maybe this was all a bridge to far, perhaps even a Humber bridge too far.

We hooked Miss CoBi up to the bus and then loaded about ½ ton of juice, kindly donated by our official sponsor Juice Doctor, onboard.

So our strange convoy entered the Yorkshire Dales, with shocked looks on the faces of it’s residents (mainly sheep, otters and sparrow hawks). At every hill and dip we pondered if the bike would manage the climb, most ponderings were met with the same answer – head held in hands.

Someone how Ed negotiated the twists and turns and took us to his uncle's house, literally nestled at the foot of a mountain. He greeted us with food, water and an invitation to play croquet by moonlight (an invitation we declined). After helping to feed the lambs we went to bed.

Jack, Ed, Ian, Miss Cobi.