It was at the end of the Porkers one year, during the merry feasting and frolicking and the jolly manic ribaldry that traditionally follows such an event
Amongst this bawdy bunch there came a spark of pure unadolterated malevolence, a sward of pure vitriol hung in the air, tangible to all the senses. A still small voice had shriven the aura of honest endeavour."Well" it said, "That's the 3 & the 4. When's your 6?" Malice was all around. Tinged I may add by some sense of pity for the poor chap. But I may well have been wrong here.
The banqueting table was groaning under the weight of the cakes, the plates, steaming mugs, elbows, torsos and things. That groan had a definite rythm. Not exactly Status Quo but close. One steaming sweaty mug of an unatural incandescent hue was investigating the phenomenon, his ear firmly pressed to the table top. Some less charitable chaps suggested that he was instigating not investigating the thing which was sort of confirmed as, with the clatter of cutlery in his ear he startled to attention in his seat and in the prevailing hush demanded"Whaaaat?" However, I digress.
The atmosphere was never the less, heavy. Too difficult to put on. Number of controls; opening times too long etc I mumbled to the general consensus. An orgasma of releif filled the room at the thought that the idea of a 6 had fallen on stony ground.
WRONG! Just a peck, nay a smidgeon of fertile ground was all that was needed. Dare we?
A 600km Randonnee all on one map avoiding most towns and classified roads.
Later that summer and on into Autumn the long darkening evenings were spent pouring over the maps and staring into copious quantities of bitter ale and, when the cash was spent, empty space. The seed sprouted and rooted and there grew a new presence in the land of Audax. A new pinnacle to scale, a new challenge to meet, a new philosophy to preach, pushing ever forward the barriers of possibility.
Is this the land of new experience visited by the ancients, the founding fathers of AUK?
Once free of Poole's urban sprawl it's villages and hamlets all the way to Sherborne in stage 3. Stage 4 and we stop in the outskirts of Exmouth. We cannot avoid Taunton's nightlife in stage 6 and we cross the Avon at Keynsham for Malmesbury. We sneak through Shaftesbury in the last leg. 600k with only six towns. The stuff of randonneurs dreams!
Pushing? Barriers? There was a mention of "pushing forward the barriers of possibility" just now I'm sure. What exactly does that mean? It's Wessex so it must be .......... climbs! 8,185 metres averaging 13.57m/km overall. Where's the barrier in that? Well, there are eight stages and five of them are less than the mean with one stage less than 10m/km: of the other three one has 22m/km. Stages 3, 4 & 5 together as a 200 would earn 1.5 AAApts. In a 600 truly pushing barriers.
It's dreamy peaks and vales by day; Gentle Dreams to conjure with the Nights Horrors. No quarter is given to the blackness of night. Not for us the main road bash during darkness. The night section is deep in the heart of rural Devon for most entrants; riding the narrow, sunken, winding, sand-strewn frame-shaking bone-jarring brain-rattling owl-hooting lanes through crowding woodland across storm ravaged heath, nagging frayed nerve ends red-raw.
That's how we spend our night! Now, about preparation; need I go on?
Where ?
Accomodation?
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Peter
Marshall writes 1995 /1999