Who greased the pole?

I'm typing out this blog with my hands and arms covered in grease - a stain that all the power of cheap soap and a dilapidated wire scrubber can't remove. I'd like to believe it makes me look like a hardened cyclist but agree this is unlikely.

Since my rear skewer snapped yesterday morning I've been wrangling with my bike, which is starting to squeal and squeak, twitch and grind unnervingly. I'm worried that some crucial part will fail in the remote depths of the Scotland mountains, but having reliably carried me nearly 1000 miles so far I'm also holding out hope that it will survive another couple of hundred.

However, on arriving in Aberdeen we locked up our bikes and set out on foot to find our patient interviewees. Firstly, we foreswore wedding fever and took part in Royal Weeding Day, which led us to meet the friendly Kenny and help him out a little on his vegetable patch hidden behind a Chinese takeaway in Aberdeen. We then met Alan, who manages a community garden run on permaculture principles.

In fact, such was my faith in my bike's Chinese workmanship (and my technical skills) that this morning we took the bus to Drum Castle this morning to help put up that quintessentially British (but almost exclusively English) and quixotically phallic symbol of springtime awakening: a maypole. Perhaps the seven weeks spent looking at the world from a saddle have elevated a bus trip into an exciting adventure or maybe we've simply forgotten how to perform ordinary everyday tasks, but by the time we'd found the bus and got to the castle the pole had already been (for want of a better word) erected among the daffodils.

So I made the executive decision that on tomorrow's journey to Huntly we would pass by the castle's May Day celebrations in full swing, even though we have around 45 miles to cover as it is - what could possibly go wrong?

For those about to read this (I salute you)

Yesterday we found ourselves at RSPB Vane Farm, a nature reserve and wetland area on the shores of Loch Leven. As Matt tried to film some of the local birds (and the wildlife too) I nearly ended Chasing Spring by grabbing a high voltage electrified fence. Thankfully it wasn't a live wire and the shock was purely psychological.

We then made our way to meet Enid, a beekeeper whose yard has been taken over by fluffy chickens. Matt and I donned beekeeping uniforms and, looking like overgrown space cadets, filmed Enid take apart a hive as its inhabitants swarmed angrily around us (what do they do for money? Honey.)

As Enid doused the bees in smoke to calm them down I wondered if she would give me a puff too; I was terrified the bees would smell my fear and launch an attack, and I refused to get too close to the hive (problematic as I was holding the microphone). It was a touch too much for me and I was left shaken, a feeling that lasted all night long.

Back in my black cycling gear we made our way to Dundee along a hellish highway. The hostel we stayed at was decent, although its inhabitants could only name two features of the city: the location of Games Workshop and a "dirt cheap" pub (does the dirty deed, presumably).

The mattress was rather uncomfortable though - hard as a rock, you might say - but I thought I might as well let it be. After all, I'd drunk a whole lot of Old Rosie by that point.

Despite waking up feeling as if I'd been kicked in the teeth, I warmed to the day as the day warmed up. Today's interviews fell through as I wrangled with the petty bureaucracy of press offices, but we got some nice footage of the waterfront.

Out of Dundee, it was a long way to the top of the hill but then the route curved through brilliantly green fields of crops and smooth pastures - we even spotted a hare.

It has a dubious name, but the sight and smell of a field full of oilseed rape in full bloom is wonderfully uplifting, like a scene from the Wizard of Oz but without the terror of the munchkins. It's as if the whole field has been shot down in flames, fired on by a gunman shooting to thrill passersby with its glorious glow.

We're now the guests of a cycling couple in Kirriemuir, the town where JM Barrie was born. Oh, and Bon Scott lived here too.

Sunny side up

When I started Chasing Spring, the Saturday after Ash Wednesday, I joked that I would be giving up living at home for Lent. Now that Easter has come and gone and I've spent over 40 days on the road away from home, family, friends, my own bed and hob, and privacy (blissful privacy!), I'm wondering whether there was more to that throwaway comment than I realised. I think there's value in the idea of depriving yourself of something, as long as it's approached with the right attitude - and that doesn't have to be a religious one. Being away from home has often been a stressful and lonely experience, but hopefully I'll appreciate it more when I return.

In the same way, I think a celebration such as Easter has a meaning above and beyond the religious one. It can't be a coincidence that most faiths have major festivals around this time of the year. People celebrated the end of winter and long hours of darkness, announced and divided the spring harvest, feasted, danced, sang, gave thanks and made promises for the coming year (which are easier to make in the sunshine). And they would have done all this together.

Shared events, festivals and celebrations are still an excuse to get together as families - nuclear and extended - and as local communities. They also make us feel part of a wider community, knowing that thousands, even millions, of people across the world are doing the same thing at the same time. Which is why I went to church yesterday morning.

We were staying in a suburb of Dunfermline, a town that's generally run-down and pretty deprived, so I approached not knowing what to expect. But the church was packed, sizzling with heat and spring flowers, and alive with children's laughter and tears. It was a genuinely joyful place to be, even if many people came solely for the Easter eggs dished out to the kids at the end. I wasn't with my family but somehow being in this church, side by side with families of strangers, I felt closer to them than I have done in weeks.

Afterwards, as if to compensate for the newly solemn mood, Matt and I tried to find and interview the Easter Bunny. I'd been told he (or she?) would be bouncing around the town but apparently they'd been through on Saturday and probably spent Easter Sunday nursing a pint (for the hops, yeah?)

So Easter has come and gone and my strange springtime pilgrimage continues. 

Siege mentality

Chasing Spring is back on the road, loud and proud and comin' atcha like a bunch of wet daffodils to the face. Except that the daffodils are no more, they are desiccated, deceased and destroyed - they are ex-daffodils. The season has moved on and so must we.

Just before we left the Scottish capital yesterday we dropped by the famous Edinburgh Farmers' Market to interview traders about their seasonal produce. There I saw a man dressed in a kilt carrying a rucksack stuffed with bolts of fresh rhubarb which looked like a set of bagpipes. It was like the pacifist's version of a sensory siege weapon.

Afterwards we visited a church to film a traditional Polish (and Eastern European) Easter tradition where children bring pretty decorated baskets of food (coloured eggs, lambs made of sugar, bread) to the altar be blessed by a priest. The idea is that this food is eaten at a big Easter breakfast but I had a sneaky peek inside (most are covered with a little lace cloth) and saw some odd contents: half a jar of mayo, a nibbled piece of carrot, a Mars bar.

The journey to Dunfermline, mostly along the NCN1, was uneventful except that the crossing over the Forth Road Bridge rivals the Severn Bridge in grandeur and beauty.

We're now staying at the house of Lin, a cycling enthusiast who did Land's End to John o'Groats several years ago, and who very kindly agreed to put us up for two nights. We're going to need all the strength we can muster over the next couple of weeks. People are trying to reassure me that I'm 'nearly there', but some of the hardest parts are still to come. So I'm getting an early night and will update you on today's shenanigans tomorrow.

Don't get your cycling knickers in a twist. Seriously.

The last time I was in Edinburgh, last August, to see a friend's show at the Fringe festival, I never imagined I'd be back in less than a year - and that I'd have cycled all the way here. Chasing Spring was then but a twinkle in my mind's eye. I didn't even own a bike.

Now it has a life and momentum all of it's own, but it's still in its infancy and requires a great deal of nourishment and encouragement. That Twitter feed doesn't write itself, y'know.

Which is why a couple of days stopping in Edinburgh have done me a world of good, giving me a chance to explore, wander, think and, most importantly, not to be sitting on a saddle for two days straight.

Having said that, I've been pretty busy. I had a good day today interviewing Ally from local environmental charity Greener Leith, and in turn being interviewed by him for STV (www.stv.tv). I then took the camera around the mist-shrouded city, watching the clouds billowing across the ground like the Scottish version of tumbleweed, and filmed an orchard in Leith Links planted by local kids through Greener Leith. I even managed to introduce a couple of druggies to their local park and gave detailed directions to two Spanish tourists. For someone who doesn't live here I feel I've done a pretty good job.

There are some great community and grassroots projects here; it really seems to be a place where such things thrive. There's been a big emphasis on cycling, for example, which may seem surprising in such a hilly and cobbled city. Unfortunately, despite the large number of bike shops, well signposted paths and widely available maps, I haven't seen that many cyclists, certainly not compared to London or even Manchester.

Still, there's a good vibe around that will hopefully grow. (NB - To the neighbour who left a prickly note on my bike saying that it had to be moved from this flat's driveway because it was chained to THEIR side of the fence - take a chill pill. Preferably as a suppository.)

So two thirds competed, one third to go. We have one more night in Edinburgh, where Matt's cousins have very kindly put us up and put up with us, and then we're plunging headfirst into deepest darkest Scotland for the last three weeks of the journey. Watch out for some Easter-themed blogs this weekend and enjoy the bank holiday!

Can't see the wood for the trees

Something I hadn't anticipated about Chasing Spring was that travelling with the season makes it more difficult to spot the signs of spring. You spend your whole time drinking in so much new scenery that you don't, and can't, notice what's been growing and changing - to the casual traveller everything is new. So I've had to force myself to see the little signs that spring is developing. 

The last couple of days have been spent cycling through the forests of the Northumberland National Park. I've always been fascinated by forests, which promise mystery, magic and danger. I think they still pervade our cultural mentality, despite so few forested areas actually remaining.

But although Kielder Forest is the largest in England, there is no real sense of danger here. It is a working forest and most of the spruce and pine trees are planted row upon row, equally spaced and unthreatening. The only real threats are decidedly human: the gravelly paths desperate to displace our bikes or the possibility of getting crushed by a runaway log. There are adders, apparently, but we didn't see any. That isn't to say the landscape isn't stunning; it truly is, with the dramatic Cheviot hills, the sheer unalloyed joy of Kielder Lake and the endless near-empty dust roads that seem American in scope and ambition.

Even the uniform trees are beautiful in their sheer number, like an army during peacetime waiting to be called up but never really believing it will happen. But what thrills me is seeing nature creeping its way back; the fir tree seedlings poking gamely through the gravel where they're not supposed to be; the unruly daffodils spread by pollen from manicured lawns onto the roadside to make drivers smile.

Because the park is relatively high above sea level, spring takes slightly longer to reach this area, bringing us Spring Chasers roughly back level with the season. Which is why I've been gawping at lambs so newborn that they're being licked clean by their mothers and still have blood-red umbilical cords dangling from their bellies. On the other hand, the swallows have been accompanying us for much of the last few days and they're a relatively recent addition to the springtime repertoire. 

I've also been following the appearance of bluebells throughout the country on Twitter (#bluebellwatch) and seeing the beautiful photos being posted. I'm in two minds about this; I'd love to get some footage of springtime bluebells in the woods but that would mean the season has definitely overtaken us. But if we get to John o'Groats in May it's possible I won't get to see any this year at all!

Amid all this visual drama, I have started to worry about the lack of formal interviews we've done over the past few days. I've had to remind myself how much great footage we've already got, and that sometimes just getting to our hostel for the night is a real achievement, but sometimes it's difficult to see the larger picture when you're struggling to get through each day in a haze of exhaustion.

Yesterday it all got a bit too much me and I almost collapsed (see Matt's blog for an alternative retelling), which has given us some real 'gritty Bafta' footage (not that I was so pleased at the time). I am mentally and physically drained, and l know the next few days will be hard. But it's hard to stay in that mood when you're in such a gob-smackingly beautiful place.

Problematique of the Map

When I started this journey my mental map of Britain had marked everything between Leeds and Edinburgh with a big question mark - terra incognita? - which is now quickly being erased and replaced by bright green fields, red brick houses and generally friendly folks surrounded by daffodils. I've mentioned before that people are strangely possessive about their daffodils; in fact many seem to believe that no daffodils grow further 'insert town name 5 miles north of wherever they live'. This is always entirely untrue - there are daffodils bloomin' everywhere.

My mental map is only a tourist's map, of course, so it also has the sparkling Sage centre in Gateshead and Durham cathedral in all its splendour marked in technicolour. But I've added in my own colour too: a couple of Sikh temples and the location of every Greggs bakery within 100 miles.

Today we also passed the Angel of the North, Gormley's glorious celebration of human imagination and brawn, which was a definite and dramatic sign of being in the North. It's an apt time to pass it, because yesterday we hit the halfway point of our journey time-wise. In terms of mileage, however, we're well over halfway, which is why we've been slowing down a bit and taking the opportunity to stay more than one night in some places.

Last night was spent in the relative luxury of a room in one of Durham university's colleges - St Chad's - directly opposite the cathedral. In the morning we met a professor who described the meteorological recordings being taken near the university's 19th century observatory (originally housing a telescope) and what these revealed about spring. As he left, we were invited into the old observatory by the caretaker and given a guided tour. The lovely old building is sadly sinking into disrepair and occasionally gets vandalised but is still used for Gamelan (Indonesian music played on beautiful instruments) sessions and to house the caretaker's plants. The original domed roof is also still there, including the mechanism that would once have swung it round to align the telescope, as a reminder of the cutting-edge science of Victorian England. Apparently bits of it have had to be cut out because wasps were nesting in it...

Unfortunately it does seem as if spring has started to overtake us; the oilseed rape is in flower, the bluebells are making an appearance when they definitely weren't around further south, and some varieties of daffodils are on their last, bristly brown, legs. This is partly due to my timing miscalculations (thanks for mentioning it so subtly Matt), partly because the weather has been so good and partly because spring does not move fluidly up the country. I can feel the desperate blossoming and bursting of March, which fuelled the frenzy of the first weeks of Chasing Spring, starting to mellow and bed in, and it has been reflected in our slower pace of travel.

Now comes the hard work. From here on we're ignoring the flat, easy route to Edinburgh and pushing through the forests of the Northumberland national park; this is currently a generic green blob on my mental map and I'm looking forward to changing that. If we don't update the site for several days it's because we have no reception. If you never hear from us again it's because the wolves, or possibly bears, have got us.