The clue is pretty easy, ‘Through this gate no gas will go, just ask old John Atyeo’ ‘Bristol Rovers used to play near a gas works, so City fans call them ‘Gas Heads’ or collectively ‘The Gas’. Incidentally Bristol Rovers fans call City fans ‘shit heads’ the logic, I think, being that city rhymes with shitty. (Though you’ll never hear it said on Match of the Day or even Geoff Twentyman Talks Back for that matter.) Sandman doesn’t even have to say the words, he just hands back our camel backs. Ramped up on Redbull, we’re off to Ashton Gate.
The lights are red so rather than risk death, we pour down into the underpass. Skidding my back wheel hard I barely make the 90-degree turn at the bottom of the slope and have to ring my bell furiously to avoid foot traffic. In the tunnel under the road we have to slow down and dodge around a guy on a dirty red blanket. He’s playing the penny whistle. He has a dog, one of those little black Staffordshire terriers. The Staffie is supposed to be a fighting dog, but I think they have kind, almost sad looking face. I always think of them as having a secretly gentle spirit, that they are a reluctant fighting dog perhaps. This particular Staffie has a slightly greying muzzle and a beatific, knowing smile.
Then we are into the BearPitt. The sunken centre of a large roundabout where four arterial roads meet. The pit is busy today. I guess that the shops in town have decided to stay open for the bank holiday. Down and outs gather around the side-walls in various packs, they seem like part of the furniture, camouflaged against the dirty grey concrete. One of them is lying on a raised flowerbed, apparently asleep. Her hand hangs down towards a Tesco bag full of bottles. I wonder why they come to places like this. Perhaps it’s because in places like this, places that no one really owns, they don’t get moved on. Maybe It is because this is the natural habitat for despair. It could also be they can make good money here, praying on the herds of dark blue business people that file past avoiding eye contact.
Gaps open up for us as we ride. Raised up on our bikes we weave in and out of the flock like sheepdogs. An old man, there is always one, starts to yell something about how we should get off our bikes and push, but then Sandman gives him a look and he shuts up. We move slowly, soaking up dirty looks. After a frustrating few minutes we are on the other side, going through another tunnel where another busker plays ‘The Rock Iron line’ on guitar.
He is at the point in the song where the train reaches the toll-booth and the man asks him what he has on board.
He sings ‘I’ve got all live stock, I got cow’s, I got goats, I got sheep, I got hens, I’ve got all live stock’.
And because I know the song I know he’s lying and that as soon as that train passes the toll he’ll reveal that he’s actually got a whole train full of pig iron, but he’ll be damned if he’s going to pay the toll.
People pass buy pretending they have no change in their pockets, some even pat them down for visual effect, give that little smile that says ‘Sorry mate’ all of them on their way to or back from the shops.
Another 90-degree turn onto the slope and we are onto a wider section of pavement. On our right, having taken the road around instead of going under, a group of riders wearing wigs and padded bras flies past us. Oddly enough, one of the new lead group is actually is a genuine woman, she is now a woman dressed as a woman. A woman squared. There is no time to ponder this.
We should not have gotten bogged down in the Pitt. It’s time to take back the lead. Sadly we are trapped by the railings and are forced to watch, helpless as they disappear into the distance.
Eventually we are able to peel off the pavement near the new Primark store, and push hard past the sailboat style 'meeting-place' they put up for the Millennium or something. Then we have to stop again as a bus comes out of the bus gate and cuts the road off completely, heading up past The Bay Horse pub and onto lower Maudlin Street. As soon as there is a gap behind it though we explode through it like blood from a wound, the red blur on our left is the old Bridewell Street Fire Station the white one on our right, is that weird office building with the strange digital tree in the foyer. I glimpse a man struck dumb, halfway through the revolving door. We are the second group of transvestite cyclists he’s seen in the last two minutes. There must me a glitch in the matrix.
The roads are wide here. They feel like computer game roads. On either side are large blocky buildings, there is even a concrete overpass for foot traffic. It is a once modern, retro 70’s, Meet George Jetson dream of what the future would look like, I'll bet they never saw us coming.
Keeping to the bus lane, and claiming the inside line, we glide around the long left-hander past an over grown traffic island come park. The lights for the zebra crossing leading to this patch of green are red, but luckily the man that was going to cross over here is in a similar state of confusion to the one outside the digital tree building. He just stands there and watches as we go buy. We are Aliens, a close encounter of the 4th kind.
Up ahead, held up at the lights is are our rivals dressed in all spandex and big hair wigs like an 80's metal band. We see feet unclipped and down on the floor. Strangely it is Mirtek that seems to feel it first and pushes his illegally geared bike further forward in the group, then we all get it, chances are that if we just keep going hard we can catch the lights just as they turn green and leave the Spandexers to make a standing start.
I grin as this idea spreads through the group. We are about to retake the lead with gut’s and glory. This one sweet move will strike a victorious power chord for truth and justice, and leave them flailing in our wake as it echos on and on around the world...
My joy suddenly turns to horror as I realise that the lights are not going to change in time. Milliseconds seconds pass and I find that we have accelerated through the point of no return; there is no longer room for us to stop. Without what you would call brakes we are about to be spat out into a mincing machine of free flowing traffic.
The way the road works down here, everyone except taxi’s and buses has to turn right, so baring them, if we can keep to the left and stay thin enough we might be ok. Then it's too late for calculations and we are doing it for real.
The double woman, screams ‘Holy Shit’ as we break the line. Car horns erupt, there is a taxi turning left but he slams on his brakes just in time, jerking forward against the seatbelt, other cars are forced to stop behind him. I am glad not to hear the tell tale sound of metal on metal, or flesh on concrete for that matter. I quickly check my six… by some force of a miracle, no one has been hurt and we are in the centre of town. The wide open centre with it’s impractical one way system that perplexes tourists for hours. After the storm it it feels serene and calm. but not for long as behind us the Spandexers are off the mark and hot on our heels, and then just as we think that they will catch us, they turn off up Baldwin street, while we carry straight on down the bus-only section of Broad Quay. ‘Why would they do that?’ Tom thinks he knows, 'The Spandexers are out of Towners, they may well be using a Sat Nav, it’s why they didn’t go under the Bear Pitt, but it’s also why they have no idea about the footbridge.'
They are off towards Bristol Bridge and then down past Temple Meads. They’ll be doing an extra half mile at least. My smile returns. It will be local knowledge that will allow us to win the day. Not guts after all.
We speed on unheeded beyond Broad Quay and down onto Prince street. Its an odd road this one it seems strangely like a New York back-alley. Everytime in come down here I half expect a yellow cab to stop over a steaming drain and yell at someone. Prince Street is sandwiched betweens Queens Square and The Harbour Side, so the buildings on both sides back onto it. Here you get to see the backside of a multi story car park, the back of a large waterfront Jurys hotel. It even has an underpass which looks like and entrance to a subway. There’s also a couple of office buildings with 'Central Perk' style bottom floor corner coffee shops, where the weekday trade fill up on lattes and Pannni’s. There’s a Stone warehouse that’s been converted into a 'Cheers' style pub where the earlier mentioned lunchtime crowd eats and drinks it’s dinner.
On the other side of Prince Street, there’s a pub called Ye Old Shakespeare, My brother used to work there, as it swings by on my right I remember a time when I popped in to see him at work and we staged a fight. I ‘started some shit’ and he threw me out. Apparently that little show of aggression earned him a lot of points with the office workers. They’re not used to seeing a man say no to a customer.
I’ve never really been a water-cooler type, I don’t know what it feels like to drop my BMW keys on a polished wooden table or order Tapas with a gold card. Sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out.
I’m so wrapped up in my memories that I almost miss the fact that a bunch of the guys from the Mud Dock cycle works have come out and come down the road to cheer us on. For a moment there is some confusion as a kid in combats on an orange BMX thinks they are cheering at him. He doesn’t look any less confused when we buzz him like a radio tower and leave him reeling like a drunk. He’d like to catch us up, I can tell, but there's simply no way he will on those tiny wheels. The Mud-Dockers laugh. The benches outside Princes Pantry are full of more of the Mud Dock crowd. I feel like I’m on a village stage of the tour de France. Tom who is leading the peloton raises his fist in a kind of cycle power salute, and with his arm as our vibrating standard, we push ahead towards the Bridge.
Just before Prince Street Bridge the tarmac road is replaced with cobblestones. Our racer thin tires are not built for this and I envy Mirtek whose suspension handles the bumps with ease. the bridge itself is A kind of Steampunk style swing-bridge a maritime leftover made from shaped metal girders. There is one Central Girder that goes down the middle of the road and neatly separates the two lanes. The side effect of this is that both lanes of traffic are remarkably thin and if you look for it you can see the mutli-coloured remains of the paint jobs of trucks that have failed to judge the gap.
On our right as we cross are the four big Canes of the old working dock. Now they are just sentinels for the Industrial Museum. Relics of the days when the shipping didn’t stop and Avonmouth but came all the way into the heart of the city. They look like dinosaur Skeletons and in a way I guess that that’s exactly what they are.
our own skeletons still being firmly rattled by the cobbles.
On the left is ramshackle collection of houseboats, moored all the way along the water’s edge. There seems to be no conformity as to style, I spy a narrow-boat, and a fishing trawler, even an old stream tug that looks like it belongs to pop eye. That must be a pretty cool. I'll bet this is a very different city for the people that live on the water.
Then we are past the river, and over the tram tracks and mercifully beyond the cobblestones that have rattled us like cutlery in stuck draw. All the way down Wapping road there are cheap built river-side apartments. Someone’s made a killing from developing this land and it looks like they made that killing as fast as they could. I think for a moment about what Bristol must have looked like before it got bombed to pieces. All I can think is that it looked like Tortuga from pirates of the Caribbean. Lot’s of wonky overhung Tudar pubs full of drunken pirates and bawdyhouse girls. My thoughts are not in any way accurate I am sure. At the end of Wapping road comes the Louisiana Pub. It’s Victorian I guess, with a kind southern style riverboat veranda. I’ve been there lots of times. It’s is a popular ‘new’ music venue, I must have seen a dozen friends bands here. Bassist’s, lead guitars, singers… even the odd would-be rap superstar. A man in his mid twenties caries a black guitar case towards the stage door entrance. His mate sits in the van, guarding the rest of the stuff. According to the poster The bands Tonight are The Setbacks, Panic Number and CCQ. The last band I saw here was The Badgers. Before that it was Seven Minute Abbs.
We avoid the classic mistake of going over the bridge to Commercial Road and instead straight-line the mini roundabout onto Cumberland. The writer part of me wishes Cumberland Road was Cult Street or Roots Avenue… something more like the opposite of Commercial Road so that I could seamlessly link it into the choice of directions a new band can take once they leave the Louisiana. but it isn't.
To be honest, in my experience, most of the bands I’ve seen here, even some of the good ones, tend to split up and go in all different directions, at best they seem to just drift off down Obscurity Lane.
We are not on Cumberland for long before we come to the afore mentioned footbridge that I hope will give us the edge over the Spandexers.
The Bridge is split into two lanes but to our horror, both are blocked by women with prams. We are forced to stop and wait for them to get over the bridge before we can carry on. This is far from ideal as half a mile does not take a lot of time to cover on bikes like these. to make things even worse the mother know each other and stop mid-bridge for a chat. No amount of bell ringing seems to get their attention and even sandman isn't going to yell obscenities at a mother and child. Eventually all the gossip has changed hands and slowly slowly we are able to get over the river.
Frustrated we decide not to get back on the road but to head straight up the pavement cycle-path that hugs the river almost all the way along Coronation road. Just as we are setting off, we hear jeering coming from behind us. It is of course the spandexers, they are on the road proper Skitching a tow from a scaffolding truck. We pass Dean Lane and Osbourn Road. They are forced to abandon the truck as it turns left onto Camden Road. We are forced to lose time around Beuley Road where a family out for a bank holiday walk see us a little late and have to move quick to clear a path. Once again it’s neck and neck.
We pass Greenway Bush lane and Greenbank road and then Coronation Road peels away from the river and things get a little more complicated. Traffic here is directed down Clift House road but we want to keep going down Coronation. In order to do this we have to cross the line of traffic and in doing so split the Spandexers into two groups as the back half has to slow down to avoid us, We then have to bunny up onto a traffic island before speeding the wrong way down a one way street. \
Luckily there isn't a game on today and I guess the Northstreet shops are shut because the road is empty and pretty soon we are legal again as we come onto Ashton road which borders Greville Smyth Park. More importantly Ashton road comes to an end at Ashton Gate Stadium. The gate through which no gas will go.
We come to a skidding halt at the now familiar set up of folding table and cycle couriers’ girlfriend that is the next check point. Seven seconds later the spandexers come streaming out of Greville Smyth park. Someone from the back end steps up to sandman, get’s right up in his face.
‘You think this is funny you prick!’
He’s pointing to blood on his elbow, I guess not all of them were able to come to a controlled stop when we cut the off on Coronation Road. It’s odd watching them square up. Two grown men in padded bras.
‘Alls fair in love and war yeah, so, keep your wig on yeah’
The more sensible members of the group separate them before things get the chance to really kick off. I hear the phrase ‘save it man, save it for the hill' yeah’ I feel like I have fallen into one of those testosterone fuelled adrenaline movies they made after the success of Point Break.
Do you feel alive!
Scuffles continue as they queue up behind us and one by one we are handed a flowery summer dress, a full pint of Scrumpy and some further instructions. ‘What’s the forfeit for not downing this?’ Says Tom, straight edge to the end. See that tent behind me? She says, ‘Your forfeit is in there.’
No comments:
Post a Comment