Nottinghamshire cyclist races across Europe

And so started Andy’s quest to ride in the infamous Transcontinental Race, one of the hardest cycle endurance events in the world. Each rider has to plan their own route, albeit with seven compulsory segments over remote mountain passes and on treacherous gravel tracks, and race completely unsupported – no safety vehicles, no organised accommodation or assistance.

Reality dawned on 21 July when 300 racers assembled at the famous Roubaix velodrome near Lille in northern France. An evening start launched them into a night ride across the steep cobbled lanes of Flanders. Andy found this section very hard, vibration pounding his bike and, in the dark, the cobbled surface randomly throwing the bike in all directions. Then a short bout of sickness the following morning. Andy’s first thoughts: ‘what have I let myself in for? And this is only the beginning!’

But in the first 24 hours he had covered an incredible 300 miles and took a break…a few hours kip in a Belgian bus shelter. Then, riding day and night, Andy pushed on through Luxembourg and ended his day in torrential rain in southern Germany, despite a closed road that forced him over an unplanned mountain pass. Andy said, ‘by this time I was nodding off as I rode along, so took a short nap in the woods outside Munich. My phone was now dead, and I had no idea where I was placed in the race…the gremlins in my head were saying, 'you must be last!’

At dawn Andy entered Austria, and with saddle sores caused by yesterday’s wet conditions opted for a short hotel stop to recover and recharge equipment before heading over the first big mountain pass of his route, the Grossglockner at 8,215 feet – 13 miles of steep climbing, with an average gradient of 8.3%.

Then the second of the compulsory challenges loomed. Entering Slovenia after three days of pedalling, Andy was tasked to ride two massive technical mountain passes, the ferocious Mangartsko Sedlo at over 6,400 feet, with pitches of 17% gradient and five unlit tunnels to pass through. And, if that wasn’t enough, he was tested overnight on the Vršič Pass, the highest in Slovenia, with cobbled hairpin bends which pummelled Andy’s hands as he descended in the early hours of the morning.

Now into the fifth day of the race with just a little over four hours of rest each day, Andy had covered almost 1,000 miles and it was time to pass through Croatia. Here road surfaces deteriorated, and his safety was challenged by impatient local drivers. Traffic flow in the capital Zagreb meant that a 4-mile leg took almost three hours. But at this point, Andy was still averaging an incredible 200 miles a day!

Entering Bosnia-Herzegovina at midnight, it was time for a short rest in a field, and then off again at first light. The race organisers had banned sections on normal roads, so riders were required to suffer on the gravel roads that were to take them high into the Balkans. This made for very slow going, Andy often having to dismount and walk on the very roughest of sections, destroying his cycling shoes in the process. Andy said: ‘this was an exhausting day, so I took a four-hour nap in a sleeping bag behind a mosque, only to wake and find that my sleeping bag was covered in slugs!’

By now, Andy was just beyond Sarajevo, facing the third compulsory segment, the off-road ascent of Bjelašnica - the highest peak in Bosnia, and host to the 1984 Winter Olympics. A 48 mile climb, relentlessly steep in places and on very rough gravel, Andy was forced to push his 23kg bike up the hardest slopes. He rested at a control point at the summit, and then it was time to descend and head towards Montenegro. But a short stretch of tarmac quickly turned into rubble again, and as darkness fell, Andy crashed three times in quick succession as he headed towards a remote village, the last occasion flipping him over the handlebars.

Both hands now in bad shape, Andy rested in the village playground and, on waking, found that he could not move his fingers, both hands swollen, bruised and blistered. He even struggled to open the zip on his sleeping bag, so it quickly dawned on him that he would be unable to hold his handlebars or apply the brakes.

Regrettably, this was to be the end of Andy’s race.

Later in the day, Andy managed to get a lift, in a bakery van, back to Sarajevo, where a three day wait for a plane home gave him a chance to recover a little and reflect on his achievements over the last week or so.

In total Andy cycled 1,320 miles in just over five days, over halfway to the finish. The many hills and mountains along the route meant he climbed 76,700 feet – that’s over two and a half times the height of Mount Everest.

Andy, 50, who lives in Rainworth, is now back at work at Rode Cycles and sanguine about his forced retirement from the race. “I set out to do the best I could, and it was only an unforeseen event that stopped me from finishing. But it has been an experience like no other, crossing eight countries using your own will and ingenuity, not just viewing the landscape, but being part of it. You feel that you’re really part of the world, and realising what you really need from it. Not the big material things that enslave us, but it’s the smaller things…I feel richer in myself, with my wife and my family, realising the power of self-reliance and how to use the world around you to your advantage”.

Footnote. Only 160 out of 300 riders completed the race. The race was won by 26 year-old Swiss rider Robin Gemperle, an ex-professional. He arrived in Istanbul, Turkey having cycled 2,530 miles with 7 days 8 hours on the bike plus 39 hours stopped. Chapeau!