phil.im

Blog Post Written On: 05.06.2010
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For quite a while now i’ve wanted to do the Coast2Coast cycle route from Whitehaven to Tynemouth, but i’ve always had the challenge in my mind of doing it in 1 day.

Last week I thought to myself, lets just do it. So the date was set. I would attempt the C2C in one day on the following Wednesday (June 2nd).

As many of you will know, on Wednesday there were tragic events in the Cumbrian region, when Derrick Bird went on the rampage, shooting dead 12 people. Of all the days to choose to visit Whitehaven for the first time in my life, it had to be the day i was in the area when all of these tragic events were taking place. My story below will go on to explain how i was oblivious to what was going on but due to my own mistakes, i quite possibly helped myself keep out of the path of this killer.

On the Tuesday (June 1st), i travelled over to the Whitehaven area with my family, and we camped overnight, so that i could get an early start the next morning.

The following morning i got down to the start line for 6am and was really excited for the day ahead, but the day wasn’t to turn out exactly as i planned.

My journey began, and all was going well for about 22 miles which had taken me 2 hours to complete. At this point i thought i had been happily cycling along the route towards my target of Tynemouth on the east coast, but when i came to the end of Route 72, i knew something was wrong. For some stupid reason, for the past few days during all my planning of the C2C challenge, i thought i was suppose to be following the Route 72 signs, and that would get me to Tynemouth. But no, here i was 22 miles from Whitehaven in Ravenglass, which is completely the wrong way from where i should have been cycling. I was gutted.

I now had to either cycle back the way i had just come, or i could find my own way back to the official C2C route. The thought of going all the way back i had just come wasn’t an option, so i decided to cycle about 15 miles to Kirkland where i would rejoin the C2C route. That 15 miles was hard, very hard.

In the end, i managed to cycle 80 miles, but that actually only equated to me getting to the 40 mile point on the C2C route at Troutbeck, after my little 40 mile diversion. I was done. I’ll try again in a couple of weeks i thought, and not get lost this time.

The end of my cycle though was when things started to get weird. Here i was sat in a pub garden in Troutbeck waiting to get picked up, when i first heard about the killings that had occurred earlier in the day, but it was later that night once i was home, when i read the full details of what had happened in the Whitehaven area that day, and then i started seeing the video footage on the news and i recognised all the places where people had been killed. It was shocking. Whitehaven, Drigg, Egremont Bridge, Seascale and Gosforth were all places that i had cycled that day.

But it was the next day when i was trying to work out how i had gone wrong on my C2C route was when the most disturbing realisation hit me. I worked out, that if i hadn’t taken a wrong turn, and followed along the C2C route in the right direction, i would have cycled through Lamplugh at about 7.30am, which is the place where Derrick Bird shot dead his twin brother. I’ve read reports that this killing happened at about 7.30am.  I could have quite possibly been in close proximity of this incident, and then when i read that he shot a random cyclist later in the day, it just made my stomach turn.

I truly believe that everything in your life happens for a reason, good and bad. On that day, i made a wrong turn which led me 22 miles in the wrong direction on a bike, and when i found out my mistake it brought tears to my eyes, but now i feel very lucky for being an idiot and making that mistake, and at the same time i feel so sorry for those that died on Wednesday.