Lessons in bike-packing with a disabled young person

‘If this new route, the Rebellion Way, is suitable for adaptive bikes, that means I could do it with CeCe’. That is literally the thought that popped into my head on the day Cycling UK launched the Rebellion Way in Norfolk. Of course, what they consider to be accessible and what is realistic for a 47-year-old Mum and a 17-year-old girl with learning and physical difficulties is two different things, but it felt like a challenge I couldn’t ignore.

After completing the Badger Divide last year and damaging my mental health in the process I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ‘cycling routes’ and how I interact with them. There’s a part of me which feels drawn to the ‘complete it and be damned’ challenge of long days on the bike, yet I’ve shown that that doesn’t work for me. Likewise, with CeCe I am very aware that she feels physical exertion differently and I don’t want to put her off things. CeCe is a determined young woman and once she’s fixed her mind against something it is incredibly hard to persuade her otherwise.

What did this mean for our adaptive approach to the Rebellion Way? Well for starters, unless we were up for at least 2 weeks of bikepacking there was no way we were going to be able to complete it all in one go. Before this trip the furthest we had ever ridden in one day was 24km. This relieved the pressure of doing it all, but how do you cherry pick sections to do as smaller bits and how do you do a short circular route without either riding back the way you came or encountering hideous roads that the longer, official, route avoids in it’s wide arc of the County.

‘Do you fancy bringing your tiny baby and doing a Mums bikepacking trip on the Rebellion Way?’ – most people would respond with horror to that question, but the gorgeous Phoebe Sneddon is not most people. A paediatrician with a 6 year old, 2 step children and a 5 month old baby, Phoebe was the perfect partner for the challenge. Having already taking her brood bikepacking in the late autumn, I knew she had a similar mentality to me and would be fun to ride with. We brought in Kell Collinge and Atlas (2 years) to complete our trio of Mums and trailers and started planning a trip in the late Spring early Summer.

On hearing of the trip Kell was all in, no questions asked, and we were discussing it at Kendal Mountain Festival when Rachael Walker from Cycling UK mentioned that they had some budget to make a training film about adaptive cycling. The only issue was that the budget needed to be spent by the end of January so we’d have to do the ride in the depths of winter. The plus side was that although we wouldn’t be paid, Cycling UK would provide us with food and accommodation for the trip meaning that all we had to do was plan the route and turn up.

Lesson 1 – Route planning – it doesn’t have to be long to be an adventure

Creating a route which is interesting but short enough to be achievable is not easy. Phoebe, a master of Komoot collections, ended up our chief architect with Kell and I chipping in that the first draft was possibly still too much riding each day. Route planning is joyful in terms of pouring over maps, but it’s thankless when you’re trying to balance the needs of such a diverse group as ours. In the end, Phoebe took the original Rebellion route and created 3 taster days, setting off from and returning to Kings Lynn. The first two days were due to be 30km and the final one where we made our way back to base was a mammoth 50km but more about that in a bit.

It's funny, I thought that riding by the sea and through Hunstanton would be one of my highlights but in the end it wasn’t. It felt so like riding round the Kent coast that it held little attraction for me at all. The hidden charms of riding through big estates like Sandringham and Holkham Park were what really made me come alive.

I learned that cycling with disabled people and children is far more about the short distances and quiet or traffic free roads with warm and welcoming stops.

Although we knew that the final day was likely to be a struggle we were all happy to trust that we would find a solution somehow and go with it for now, which brings me on to lesson 2.

Lesson 2 – choose your partners wisely

The pit-of-the-stomach disappointment at finding our pitstop café closed for the off-season quickly lifted as Phoebe got off her bike and lifted Torben from his trailer. Sitting on the edge of a bit of grass under the carpark sign she fed him while CeCe cuddled alongside them eating one of her cereal bars.

Day 1 had been about finding our feet – we’d relocated the start to a farm shop on the edge of Kings Lynn and negotiated 3 days of parking for the vans, we’d then waited until late morning to ride when most of the ice had thawed and at the end of the day we’d cut our route short in order to reach the hotel before darkness fell. This was Day 2, the day we were going to finish Day 1s route, have a quick café stop, push on to Burnham Market for lunch, then pause in Holkham Park for photos with the animals before free-wheeling serenely into Wells-next-the-Sea for teatime. That was the plan at least but early punctures and now closed cafes were already ripping up the timetable for the day. Riding with people whose mindset matches or complements your own is so crucial to happy bikepacking. Rather than fret about not reaching Burnham Market for lunch or channel machismo and push on regardless, we simply stopped, fed our children regrouped and replanned. It was 11am, we had 4-5 hours of daylight max and at least 30km of riding ahead of us. First priority was lunch and second priority was making it to Wells by darkness. That was all that mattered.

At the end of Day 1 our videographer, Monet Adams, had hopped on a bus back to Kings Lynn and collected her van. This was going to prove vital to the success of the trip and gave me Lesson 3.

Lesson 3 – accept help when you need it, being a purist isn’t important

After our seaside carpark pitstop we engaged Phoebe’s Culinary Compass and located The Lodge a warm, welcoming pub about 15 mins cycle away. We descended on them with the noise and hubbub of a flock of starlings, 30 mins before they started serving lunch. Cold and hungry we were not to be deterred and ordered coffees, sugary drinks and food as soon as they were able to. By 1pm we were back on the road.

With my old habit of wanting to do everything myself and complete it or be damned (where do you think CeCe gets her stubborn determination from?!), I was reluctant to make use of Monet’s van for support. I wanted the film to be realistic and to show the realities of cycling a loaded bike, heavy trailer trike and with two humans weighing 65kg each, of whom only one pedals most of the time (don’t tell CeCe I said that!).

Consequently, having briefly said I would unload our bikes so that we were carrying less for the 30km ride (including a solitary killer climb) to Wells, I promptly kept quiet and pedalled off determined not to be the one who ‘let the side down’ (please note, these are my negative thought patterns, not anyone else’s words!).

‘What’s wrong Mum, have I upset you?’ – after an unusually quiet first 10 mins of riding CeCe made me realise how my decisions impact her. How, focusing on my own insecurities, had started to do the one thing I wanted to avoid at all costs: make CeCe feel uncomfortable on the trip. I forced myself to smile and sing – classic faking it, till you make it – but couldn’t quite shake the feeling that we were not going to get to Wells before dark and that I needed to prove how fast I could cycle. Phoebe and Kell chatted away behind us while CeCe and I resorted to favourite songs to keep us going. Every so often CeCe would ask Phoebe how far it was to the next place and Phoebe told her the distances. While CeCe had no concept of the distance the sense that it was decreasing was important. When it came to undulations in the road CeCe would call out to Kell and Phoebe to cheer her on and they responded with alacrity. Phoebe’s encouraging count down of pedal strokes was a new one to me but it worked a treat to get CeCe up the hills.

By Day 3 I had accepted that it was ok and actually important, to accept help. That maybe the solution to bikepacking with disabled people and younger children is that you have a support van which can take some of the slack. They can carry bags, extra nappies and tired riders when it’s needed. If you had a campervan one rider could move the van while the others set off and then pedal back from the new base camp to join the ride midway through.

We get so tied up in what things ‘should’ look like that we forget the joy that is to be found in making it work for you. Life does not have to be a suffer-fest and there is adventure to be found in the shortest of rides.

As we reached the top of the ‘big climb’ on Day 2 we found ourselves pulling into Holkham Park. CeCe had pedalled her socks off and hailed the hills as ‘disgusting’. She was tired, I was tired but all we had to do was follow the tarmacked driveway to the Obelisk we could see in the distance and then drop down into Wells. We had no idea what a treat we were in for.

Laughing and joking we cycled anti-clockwise round the Obelisk, creating the illusion that we were on the Continent and therefore on holiday only to be dumbfounded and silenced by the view. Ahead of us Holkham Park was bathed in a golden light as the last of the day’s sun caught it. Sitting lower than us, we recognised the ingenuity of the original creators who’d built the Obelisk on a mound to make sure that no prying eyes saw the Hall until they got the big reveal. I don’t think we could have seen it at a better time of day. We began to freewheel down towards the Palladian beauty and CeCe’s assessment of the day changed to ‘the best day ever cycling with the best friends’!

Our challenges weren’t over for the day as we had a final puncture to contend with (making the day’s total 3) before we were able to set a course for Wells. The town sign for Wells-next-the-Sea declares it to be ‘A Safe Haven’ and that was precisely what it felt like. We’d been spoiled with birds along the route but it was a large barn owl hunting in the field to our left that secured Wells’ place in our hearts.

Lesson 4 – sharing vulnerability with your children

The morning of Day 3 brought another slower than expected start. We’d already made a plan that we were going to cycle to Burnham Market where we’d find a warm café or restaurant to make a base while Monet and I drove back to the farm shop to pick up my van and two car seats for the boys. A markedly shorter day than the others but we were tired and the thought of climbing back up the hill from the river in Wells to the ridge above Holkham Park was depressing.

‘Are you worried about that hill, CeCe?’ – ‘yes, Mum’ – ‘that’s ok, so am I, but we’ll manage it’. CeCe and I were doing a bit for the GoPro that Monet could use as a reminder of the journey when she was creating the film. I’ve learned from riding mountain bikes with my son that parents don’t have to have all the answers. It’s important to show our vulnerability and our fears so we can then model how to approach them. It can be scary at first but how do we expect our children to learn to deal healthily with their own fears if we pretend they don’t exist for us. It’s taken time and it relies on you knowing your own child so that they aren’t triggered by your anxiety but it’s so powerful. In my experience it’s given a mutual respect and depth to my relationship with my son that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. Now was the time to embrace it with CeCe.

Giving CeCe the chance to ride in the van up the first part of the road to Holkham Park saved her legs and helped her feel she wasn’t having to tackle the entire hill. Monet wanted to film us as we rode through the Park so CeCe needed to be onboard. A deal struck, we headed out of our ‘safe haven’ and back on the road.

Of course, the climb up through the Park was gentle and winding – it had been designed for horse-drawn carriages after all (why hadn’t that occurred to us previously?!) – and we cleared it with no trouble. Before long we were back near the Obelisk waiting for Monet’s signal that we could continue under the drone. By the time we reached the exit to the Park a freezing drizzle had started so we popped CeCe back in the van with our luggage and Kell, Atlas, Pheobe, Torben and I started for Burnham Market.

Although we’d only cycled a total of 75km by that point, I was reaching the same tiredness levels as I had on the Badger Divide. I needed reminding to stop and put on my padded jacket before I got too cold and all I could think about was stopping for lunch.

We rolled into Burnham Market and spotted Twenty9 – a sanctuary for tired Mums, offspring and filmmakers. In the end we spent several hours there shuttling between the bar area (with fire and comfy sofas) and the restaurant. We’d chosen to finish our trip in one of the most desirable towns in the UK – once again Phoebe’s Culinary Compass had done us well.

Lesson 4 – it might be time to get an ebike

Whilst I love the feeling of power and strength in my body that comes with towing CeCe, I have also fallen in love with these longer trips and I recognise that as a peri-menopausal woman it’s not good for every ride to be the equivalent of an endurance event. I’m still not 100% sold on it, but I’m going to start exploring the ebike options for towing CeCe. I would like to see if they take the sting out of the hills and give us that little bit more comfort. After all, if it means we can go further and on greater adventures together who knows were we might end up? I’ve heard that Aberfoyle has some great adaptive cycle routes but Scotland is most definitely not flat!

Postscript

While we relaxed and recovered from the ride, Monet created a beautiful film of our adventures which was then entered into The British Mountaineering Council’s Women in Adventure Film Competition 2023. The results were announced at Kendal Mountain Film Festival last weekend and we were thrilled to learn we had received a Judge’s Special Mention for the film.

We would like to thank Monet Adams (Pencil Mountain) and Rachel Walker, Cycling UK for all their support with the project.

You can watch the film here. We hope you enjoy it.