Just before Kay and I set off on our cycling trip across Devon, she strapped on her new helmet. MANGO, it said in large type. Mango, it said in slightly smaller type as I accelerated away from her on the way to Paddington. But, really, who in their right mind would name a crash helmet after a soft fruit? Why not just call it POTENTIAL ROAD KILL? 'I look like an egg,' said Kay. But she didn't: she looked like a vulnerable speck when she stopped repeatedly to adjust the cushion she had tied to her hard, narrow saddle. A little speck made up of soft fruit and soft furnishings that could easily be squashed by the mighty 91 buses that whistled by her wobbling self.
But the horror of inner London cycling is as nothing compared with trying to get your bikes on a train to the West Country. There are quite probably at least 48 different rail fares to Barnstaple from London. Among these are the super saver, the super duper saver and the if-I-said-you-had-a-beautiful-body-would-you-hold-it-against-me saver. When I rang to reserve two from this range, the man from Great Western Railways explained with a careless laugh how difficult it was going to be to book the tickets and giggled hysterically when outlining the problems of making reservations for the cycles.
Even when we finally scaled that Everest of inconvenience, he chuckled, the bikes would only be booked until Exeter and their fate thereafter would be at the mercy of individual train guards, and dependent on the unlikelihood of an international cycling expedition descending on Devon. There are only six berths for each train from Paddington to Exeter, which doesn't help.
After 25 minutes of bumbling, confusion and mounting phone charges, two people and two bikes were booked for a return journey from London to Barnstaple. The only problem was that we wanted to come back from Plymouth. After hanging on the line listening to people debating in the background the sanity of a person who wanted to travel to one place and return from another, he told me to buy single tickets from Plymouth to Exeter and - again - take our chances on getting the bikes on board.
Then he lost the final price details from his screen and was unable to tell me how much he had charged to my card for the tickets. It's this kind of incompetence that undermines the efforts of Sustrans, which has set up cycle routes around the country to encourage people to leave their cars at home when they go on cycling holidays. How can such sustainable holiday concepts become real when our mainline rail network is designed to serve only the needs of fat bastards in cheap suits who tolerate the outrageous rubbish from the buffet and have gas-guzzling hire cars waiting at the station? By the time we got on our train at Paddington, strapped the bikes in the guard van, had a row with the ticket inspector about the dearth of seats in standard class, and ousted a woman from our rightful thrones, we had the appetites of Enid Blyton characters. After two pain au chocolats, bacon and eggs with all the trimmings of which Great Western Railways is capable, plus tea and orange juice, we were ready for our main courses.
At Exeter station, I unleashed my mighty steed from its mobile stable and Kay got her bike off the train, too. Christopher, the man who works at the help desk at Exeter, told us that we might have trouble getting our bikes on to the branch line to Barnstaple. You cannot reserve a space for your bicycle on this service, he said, with the kind of smile that really was more than unwelcome.
Despite this, we got the first train to Barnstaple.
The only other cyclist was a Friday- afternoon painter with a box of paints and a little easel strapped to his crossbar. Chulmleigh, Kings Nympton, Umberleigh, Yarnscombe all pressed their charms on us. The countryside rolled, the place names entranced, the train rattled and we started to think of a short pedal to a long lunch.
At Barnstaple, we were soon off-road and cycling two abreast. If Kay had had a basket and a pleated skirt and I had had ruddy cheeks rather than harassed urban pallor, we would have looked like two of the Famous Five as we pedalled along the dandelion-fringed Tarka Trail towards Bideford. Instead of diesel fumes, there were sea smells from the estuary to our right, cow smells from the fields to our left, and all around heady floral perfume. The Tarka Trail was a railway line from Bideford to just beyond Torrington that closed in 1983. There was some pathos for me in cycling this route - public transport has been reduced to an impressive leisure opportunity. Later, crossing viaduct after lovely viaduct on the former railway outside Plymouth, I had the same feeling, although it was tempered by gratitude for the low gradients that old railways offer to new cyclists. Oh, Doctor Beeching! How could you have made us so conflicted? That night we stayed at the Commodore Hotel in Instow. They locked our bikes in an anteroom to the walk-in freezer, and I carried our two panniers to our room. There are, apparently, firms that transport travelling cyclists' luggage from hotel to hotel. When we arrived in the dining room, we knew we should have taken advantage of this service. We had creased T-shirts and muddy trainers, but the rest of the room was filled with elderly men in collars and ties and ladies in floral print frocks. The waiters eyed us snootily, silently and served us as though we didn't belong there. Which was nice.
Once we'd defrosted our bikes the following morning, we rejoined the trail. Only after Petrockstowe did we begin to realise that Devon is a very hilly county. Its relief map is like Anita Ekberg's chest circa 1957, or it would be if she'd had 82 breasts.
Ah, Petrockstowe. There's a name to fill you full of Devon cream; my favourite Devon village name, though, is Pennycomequick, though after our progress along the vertiginous single track lanes between Sheepwash and Yelverton, it will have to be renamed: Pennycomeslowifindeedatall.
No longer did Kay and I cycle two abreast; we entered our own private worlds of pain in the massive ascents. Once more, Kay was often a speck in the distance, while I raced ahead to lean on a gate and take in a reliably wonderful view. She got rather annoyed that I kept producing the camera just as she joined me, red faced and sweaty, at the top of a big hill. I can't think why.
I thought I knew Devon. When I was a boy it was a Wulfrunian's birthright to sit in gridlock on the A38 and, latterly, the M5 on our way to the delights of the West Country. Childhood holidays to me meant the crash of surf at Woolacombe or the crash of small change at a Dartmouth amusement arcade. But I didn't know Devon at all. There are wild roses, honeysuckle, hawthorn and lots of other nice things in the hedgerows we used to ignore as we drove by in our Hillman Avenger. And that large metal thing racing down a steep single-track slope between the high hedgerows, that's a tractor and it won't stop for the likes of you, sonny. Pedal out of its way. Pedal like the wind! At Hatherleigh, after the first but by no means last cream tea of our journey, Kay decided her limbs had clotted and that she would catch the bike bus. This service shadows the cross-Devon route and seduces raw-bottomed cyclists into putting their bikes on the bus and their bottoms in upholstered luxury. My soft fruit of a partner rang our Okehampton guest house to say she would be late. But only 10 minutes later, Gordon from the guest house turned up in his estate car, chucked Kay and her bike in the back and left me to ride all the 10 lovely, lofty miles through the mid-Devon evening.
Gordon and Jane's Heathfield House is a marvellous place but, really, did they have to put it at the top of Devon's answer to the north face of the Eiger? Kay, showered and refreshed, was sitting in a window seat watching me drag my impressive steed up the slope. It was at this point that I realised that Kay had left all her luggage on my bike.
But Jane had a surprise for us: at the back there was an outdoor swimming pool. After Kay pushed me in, I realised that it was heated only in the same sense that the North Sea is. But years of brave runs across English beaches into sea so cold it can make you cry prepared me for this water. And all those pains in my neck, shoulder and thighs were soothed.
After that, I was ready for food. Which was just as well. At the big dining table, dinner was as hearty as a Blytonian meal. All that it missed was lashings of ginger beer. The main courses consisted of cheesy leeks, chicken in mustard sauce, green beans, honey-glazed carrots, three different potato dishes, a moussaka and 17 other dishes I can't recall right now. For pudding, there was hot rhubarb trifle with meringue on top. There was marmalade bread-and-butter pudding. There was a vast cheese board that was impressive apart from that ludicrous oxymoron, Somerset brie. There was a chocolatey fridge cake, a nutty thing which would have gone straight to my bruised, skinny thighs had I made the mistake of cutting off a slice.
This was the chief problem during our four-day break: we didn't have the constitutions to shove down the vast portions of all that Devon allows - its cream teas, Sunday roasts, thumping great dinners, its intriguing offerings of ales so real that they often come not only as warm as the tea but complete with brewer's toenails - and then perform the physical tricks that are necessary if one is to complete the 90-mile Sustrans route from Ilfracombe to Plymouth. It's a tricky route at the best of times, not least because Sustrans is still in negotiations with some landowners for cycle access to their flat acres.
Once, after a long, painful ascent from Tavistock, we headed down into the River Walkham Valley. Oh, how we shrieked with joy as we raced down the one-in-two slope, a cooling breeze racing fast between our collective legs! Oh, how we wept as we dragged our bikes up the other side of the valley! The Sustrans map instruction at this point puts the matter euphemistically: 'Very steep and muddy path, please walk.' Please walk? - as if there was an option. No one in the world, no one I tell you, can cycle up a one-in-two path across the broken rocks of a former stream. At the top, we basked in our achievement and looked smugly at the Dartmoor mares and foals that frolicked in the noon-day sun. They looked knowingly at us, too, as if they understood how much we had suffered to see them.
But otherwise this is a fantastic route that contrives to achieve some marvellous things. It makes Plymouth beautiful, for a start, which, for those used to its grisly inner ring road, is no mean feat. There are Keatsian idylls teeming with rills, globed peonies and, quite probably, fairies eyeballing you from behind the purple scabious. But most impressively of all, from this week, cyclists can ride over the the Meldon Viaduct just south of Okehampton. It's a beautiful span, one of the great achievements of railway architecture in this part of the world.
Cycling in Devon is about fresh air, nice mountain biking families waving cheery greetings and not a hint of stress. After four days, perversely enough, we'd had enough of this and were glad to get back to London where the air is bad, men shout rude things at cyclists and there's an intoxicating edge on the streets. You've got to be hard here. Which is why Kay will have no use for her MANGO helmet or her noncy cushion again.
The practicals
The Devon Coast to Coast cycle route follows the Sustrans map available from the Sustrans Information Service, PO Box 21, Bristol, BS99 2HA. More information from www.sustrans.org.uk Heathfield House, Okehampton (01837 54211). B&B from pounds 20 a night. Commodore Hotel in Instow (01271 860347), B&B from £45.
