Appetiser:

Over the last couple of years your intrepid adventure heroes, Grant Wyatt and Carl Beetham, have thrown themselves head-long and head-first into various escapades including the UK’s most difficult mountain marathon, cycling Land’s End to John O’Groats, swimming all Lake District waters (yeah, failed that one!) and various quadrathlons & triathlons, culminating in successful Ironman attempts. Not to be outdone they’re at it again, only this time the silliness is of their own making and beggars belief in its, well, its silliness!

In any given year people up and down the land complete The Three Peaks where the largest mountains in each mainland country (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike & Snowdon) are travelled to and ‘bagged’ in a cumulative time of 24 hours. Countless cyclists indulge their passion for two wheels and undertake big distances, many finally cracking the 1000 miles on the aforementioned end2end challenge. The real crazies, grease themselves up and take to the water to dream of swimming the channel. So, what about a bit of all three?

Yep, this year’s adventure is going to comprise The Three Peaks, cycling the 550 miles between them and throwing in a swim across (and back) Lake Windermere at it’s widest point. Oh, and they’re doing it on a 1970s tandem that weighs as much as your average modern car, and all within a five day target. For the record, that’s 10,000ft of ascent & descent, 550 miles of cycling and a bit of a dip in freezing cold water that’ll still be under well eight degrees and it’s why they’re going to name it the ‘Tens & Fives Challenge’. Oh, and did I mention the five day target? On a tandem. In May.

Rather than burdening their trusty steel packhorse with any further weight than themselves they’ll be aided and abetted by drinki…er, training partners and all round good-eggs, Ty Elleker and Tony Marsh, who really should know better. They’ve both taken a week off work (and out of their holiday entitlement) to ferry the support vehicle around, mending punctures, cooking sausages and emptying colostomy bags. Rumour has it they may even do a bit themselves, especially the bits that don’t involve too much effort!

Now the rub! Oh yes, you’ve got to put your hand in your pocket and shell-out some of your hard-earned on their worthy ‘good cause’, the continued sponsorship of little Neve Dandy – www.stayclosetoneve.com – who has a shocker of a condition (Dravet Syndrome) and the more we can all support her and her family the better. Neve is now just coming up to four years of age but is still very much in the ‘catastrophic’ stage of the illness and they all need as much support (aka money!) as possible. It’s not a formal charity as such so there’s no overheads or admin cost and you can be confident that every penny goes directly to Neve and her care. Click on the website and it’s easy to donate by either paypal or by sending a cheque made payable to ‘Neve’s Trust’.

Rest assured this task is not, by anyone’s stretch of imagination, a relative walk-in-the-park and every day is going to hurt. A lot. There’s a minimum of twelve-fourteen hours in the saddle each day before you even begin to think of the mountains and the lake. It equates to something similar to undertaking an Ironman each and every day, for five consecutive days, and every pound you donate will be more than paid for in their pain! So, without further ado, dig deep, cough-up and make Grant & Carl feel it’s almost worthwhile. Probably.

Update – The Final Countdown…

Hey Y’all, D-Day for our impending ‘Tens & Fives’ escapade is fast looming and there’s no going back now as the accommodation is booked, kit sorted and life-assurance taken out. You’ll be relieved to hear that Grant and I have now finally take to the road on the tandem and was that an experience or what. I’m sure we’ll get the hang of it (both riders are ‘fixed’ together in the chain rings and clipped in on the spd’s) but the worst thing is it’s sooooo effeminate – two blokes on a tandem is like two guys in a convertible Ford Ka, just plain wrong. In only 20 miles on a Sunday morning we were ‘honked’ at a couple of times and even mocked by a bunch of youths loitering on a street corner. The thought of 130-140 miles per day (as the cycling has to be done in four days) just seems ridiculous.

The other day also saw us in Heron Lake for the first time this year and it was bl**dy FREEZING. At 12 degrees I could only swim a kilometre before calling it a day and staggering about like a drunken bum with an ice-cream head and frozen extremities. Mind, Windermere is likely to be at least two or three degrees colder and with a couple of miles to do only heaven knows how we’re going to get on. I think our safety man ‘Boris in the boat’ is certainly going to be kept busy.

But at least the running’s going to be easy enough I hear you say? Currently, Ben Nevis is still under snow from half way up…and we start at midnight. Uh oh.

Main Course / Meat & Two Veg:

Sunday 27th May – My, am I so excited or what! I’ve not done anything of this nature for a little while and I am SOOO keen to crack on. A good breakkie sees me on my way with Mr. Organiser (Grant), Transition Man (Ty) and ‘last minute, this seems a really good craic and I think the missus will be OK with it’ Tony. As many of you will recall of your own escapades and adventures, setting off is just the most fantastic feeling and a more upbeat sense of expectation, excitement and apprehension you’d be hard-put to find and experience anywhere else.

An uneventful couple of motorway hours, ignoring the fact that even with three GPS/sat-navs we still made two wrong turns BEFORE we’d got past Windsor, leads to our first, completely unexpected, public donation. We’re tucking into a cheap-and cheerful carvery at some non-descript pub just outside Carlisle when chef-Stewie, on hearing what we’re about to undertake, coughs up a tenner out of his own pocket. Completely unprompted and to put it into perspective, this probably represents a couple of hours of his time, or perhaps even the profit to him of the shift he’s just worked. And he wasn’t having any of ‘taking it back’ at all. Stewie, you’re a top-boy.

8.00pm sees the Fantastic Four arrive safe and sound in bonny Scotland with a few hours to kill. Or a few hours TO BE killed more like. Who out there knew this was prime ‘midge season’? Thanks. For nothing. The midges in Jockoland are mercenary carnivores of the finest order and English flesh is their cut of choice. Preferably undercooked ginga flesh. Midnight could not come soon enough and up we went, up and up.

Sunningdale to Fort William/Ben Nevis – 520 miles
Start 8.30am. Finish 8.00pm.
Weather Conditions – Lovely, high 20s and not a cloud in the sky.

Monday 28th May: 00.00: No-one told me Ben Nevis was THIS high. And steep. And cold. Very cold with two or three foot of iced snow towards the summit. Ben Nevis is a belter of a hill and, as it turns out, somewhere between Scafell Pike and Snowden: not as brutal as Scafell but way harder and much prettier than Snowden, even in the pitch black. A cracking mountain for sure and perhaps worthy of the trip alone. It was on this ascent that ‘last minute, this seems a really good craic and I think the missus will be OK with it’ Tony let slip his missus, Louise, had actually christened our wee adventure ‘Three Pillocks Run Up A Few Hillocks’. Never has a more apt name been coined and from hereon in we shall be known as such! Guilty as charged, your honour.

But, get this as a thought for the day. At 2.24am on Monday 28th May, no-one was higher than I was in the whole of mainland Britain. At that time I was THE tallest amongst you all. And probably the coldest. So there.

3.40am saw the head-torches go off as the beautiful morning sunrise did its best to light our way and, not much later, we dived into Grant’s travel bus to grab a welcome Mars bar and 20 minutes shut-eye. I mention the ‘shut-eye’ as Grant is legendary amongst us all in telling us, that with four children, three dogs and a trans-Atlantic reporting job, he neither needs nor gets, any/enough kip…so it may come as some surprise for (not) the first time during the weekend Grant’s snores prevented us all from joining him in the land-of-nod! Even Scotland’s ravenous midges chose not to dine on South Africa’s toughest rump…

I have to admit that at this point in time I was quite looking forward to the real task of the week ahead, cycling a very long way relatively quickly, and couldn’t wait to climb onto our preferred mode of transport, our two-tone all-terrain tandem. In our weekend-warrior garb of lycra bib-shorts, gaudy race shirt and SPD shoes (MAMILs – Middle Aged Men In Lycra) I do concede we looked a tad incongruous on such an alien machine, but hey, that was half the fun. Until I’d done about ten miles on it. Maximum. By fifteen I’d complained so much that we’d stopped to adjust the height of the saddle. By twenty, the length from the bars. By twenty-five I’d given it up as a lost cause and made ‘last minute, this seems a really good craic and I think the missus will be OK with it’ Tony swap me his road bike for my ‘stoker’s’ position on board the evil two-wheel machine of Satan. Probably.

Its’ status as Damien-the dual-wheeled-denizen-of devildom was confirmed only five miles later as the two of them had to decamp said machine sharpish in a truly heart-stopping manner. An oncoming marauding trannie van had decided that it was entirely feasible to overtake three HGVs in one manoeuvre. It wasn’t. In a movement perhaps reminiscent of The Queen Mary, Grant was in the clear but ‘last minute, this seems a really good craic and I think the missus will be OK with it’ Tony certainly wasn’t. The fact he had to take himself off to the woods pretty sharpish, paper in hand, is all you need to know. I wasn’t close enough to be in any real danger but even MY life flashed before my very eyes…warranting the comment that it wasn’t that much fun first time around so why would I want to go back there for a second viewing! Along with the fact that the tandem was consigned to the bus all our winter hacks made an early and somewhat unexpected appearance. If Grant had had his way it would have been thrown in the nearest loch and sinking would have been the only thing the evil machine would have done quickly! Phew.

Only another 80 miles to go. And so they did. But they weren’t easy. And then it all started to unravel. A couple of you may be aware of Bjarne Riss’ infamous bike-throwing incident in the 1997 Tour (youtube it if you want as it’s really quite funny) and not half a mile away from our first proper stop I was witness to a similar fate of ‘last minute, this seems a really good craic and I think the missus will be OK with it’ Tony’s Ridgeback Genesis road machine. Uh oh. It took me a good couple of minutes to coax him back onto his feet and astride the bike (I kid you not) and from hereon in I was seen on several occasions to duck when he moved a little more quickly than I expected! And remember this was the FIRST day. Not even a lovely swim in Loch Lomond in our cycling gear improved his mood.

The second unrequested donation of the trip came in the form of £2 from Nicola, our wee waitress at the local Frankie & Benny’s, and as this most likely represented a good deal of cash to her, it meant all the more to us. If you’re reading this Nicola, good on you and thank-you. It had nothing to do with your ‘perfect-eight’ figure, flawless complexion and demure manner. It’s reactions like yours that make all these silly ego-centric escapades worthwhile. Honest. Almost.

Ben Nevis –4409ft. 9 miles. 4.25 hours
Fort William to East Kilbride – 118 miles
Exercise Start Time- 00.00. Finish 7.00pm
Weather Conditions – Clear and dry on Ben Nevis but very cold for the top half with a few snow flakes at the summit. Freezing at 5.00am though warm enough when cycling. Lovely during the afternoon and mid 20s.

Tuesday 29th May – 8.00am: This was always planned as a big cycle day as we had to travel the not inconsiderable distance from just south of Glasgow to the Langdale/Old Dungeon Ghyll starting point of Scafell Pike and my, were we pleased we weren’t on the tandem. Occasionally, an escapade develops a catch phrase and the ‘Tens & Fives’ already had its own – ‘it could be worse…we could be on the tandem!’ Each and every time it got tough and uncomfortable out it came. And it was soooo true.

Tony wasn’t up to joining us from the onset so Grant and I cracked on through the sleepy towns of Scotland’s border region. One thing that was immediately evident was the amount of food we needed to be taking on board to keep us going – constant grazing of bananas, powerbars, snickers, gels and anything Ty threw at us was the order of the day and the calorific intake must have been huge. At least we had an excuse, something I suspect the dozen or so jockos queuing two deep outside a Greggs at ten o’clock in the morning may have struggled for!

Thankfully the sun came out to play intermittently, Tony rejoined us and the miles pretty much flew by without incident. Apart from the fact we joined a motorway, had to cycle back down the slip road to get off it and Grant went the wrong way round a busy roundabout. Twice. Oh and we came across a discarded black lacy 38C brassiere on the cycle path just outside Lockerbie. Oooeerrr missus. Heaven knows how it got there but we had fun speculating! Eventually, a sign for Little Langdale came in to view but with a helluva warning – 25% gradient. Uh oh, to be faced with a one in four hill after 140 miles just ain’t cricket and it was an absolute shocker, evidenced by the fact that we passed at least three or four other cyclists walking it. A couple of Yates’ bitters at The Old Dungeon Ghyll have never been more welcome.

East Kilbride to Langdale – 142 miles
Exercise Start Time 8.00am Finish 8.30pm.
Weather Conditions – great for cycling, clear but a bit chilly at times. Race capes were needed for much of the journey.

Wednesday 30th May – 4.15am: What time? Yep, that time. Back to Langdale in the bus from our Windermere base saw us take our first faltering steps on the slope of Scafell Pike, England’s largest mountain. Now, I’ve done Scafell a couple of times from both Wast Water and from Seatoller and I can’t recall it being this hard. Scaling it from Langdale was proving hard, hard, hard, so much so that half-way up Tony, who was still suffering from the after-effects of the Monday, and perhaps a few too many Yates’, wisely called it a day. Personally, I had a major sense of humour bypass and grumbled and moaned the whole way up. Not a happy bunny I’m afraid and even a completely empty summit peak (unheard of on Scafell) did nothing to raise a smile. Ditto going back down as you spend half your time actually going back up. B*gger.

A big breakkie back at base did work wonders however, although I was certain the next element, a two kilometre swim across and back Lake Windermere at its widest point, was certain to take any smiles from our faces. Impact Development Group’s Andy Ligema (Boris to you and I) promptly arrived at the allotted boathouse in his high-powered rescue boat, gave us the very sensible safety warning, made us swear that we were criminally insane and acting of our own volition and off we went into the black, uninviting water. And do you know what? It was fantastic! The water temperature at about 14 or 15 degrees was perfect for this length of swim and in less than 20 minutes, being led by Tony, we were all over the other side. 26 minutes saw the return journey and it even ended in a bit of a sprint, which I lost. Hot tea and home-made custard tart did the trick of reviving us and then it was back to Langdale, onto the bikes and off we went with God’s country (Preston!) in mind.

If it sounds a bit of a faff that we had to keep going back to Langdale, that’s because it was but it was all about something that Ty kept calling ‘preserving the sanctity of the route’. What this meant in practice was that we had to cycle exactly the same route that the support vehicles take in the ‘normal’ Three Peaks endeavour. And my was he picky about it!

Preston came into view early in the evening but, and I kid you not, as we passed the city sign (yep, it’s now a city) the first drops of rain started to fall and within a hundred yards it was absolutely tanking down. Needless to say neither Grant nor I had any wet weather gear and by the time we met up with Ty and Tony in the bus we were soaked and shivering. Our own fault though.

Scafell Pike – 3209ft. 12 miles. 4.26 hours
Lake Windermere – 2KM/1.25 miles. 15 degrees, 46 minutes
Langdale to Preston – 64 miles
Exercise Start Time 5.15am. Finish 7.30pm
Weather Conditions – Cold on Scafell but fine thereafter, until the rain came.

Thursday 31st May – 4.15am: A cracking home-cooked breakfast in the wee hours (thanks mother) sees us on our way but the rain hasn’t ceased and it’s a typical grey, wet, Northern day. Home sweet home, I love it. The all-new rearranged plan (perhaps not the wisest idea after three pints in the local hostelry is to rearrange a well-documented and highly sensible plan?) is that we’re now going to try and get over to Snowdon in time for the ascent to take place on the same evening. Good, so that’ll be an easy 110 mile cycle in miserable wet conditions and a light hop up Wale’s finest hillock? It could be worse…we could be on the tandem!

By now, well, by the end of the first day if the truth’s to be told, the natural cycling order had been well and truly established: Grant at the front doing ALL the work, Tony in the middle occasionally doing SOME of the work and me at the back doing NONE of the work. It’s been proven that drafting (sitting on the guy in front’s back wheel) can save up to 30% effort and I can not tell you how grateful I was for that. I did occasionally go to the front ‘to do my pull’ (as proper cyclists apparently call it) but then they complained that I was both too slow and way too erratic to lead. Suits me, cycling snobs and give me back that wheel to hold!

The miles were thereafter dispatched without much ado, other than again cycling along a couple of miles of ‘cycling not permitted’ quasi-motorway (exactly why are all the cars honking at us, Grant?) but I have to say Wales is very, very hilly and it appears to be made up of valley after valley after valley. The last 30 miles were put to the sword humourlessly with no-one speaking a word. It was solely a case of grind them out, get it finished and get up and down that mountain. And what a shaley, slately, slag-heap of an excuse for a mountain Snowdon is. Why it’s tarmac’d at the bottom and there’s even a railway that goes to the summit. That’s just cheating. Anyway, up we went and down we came. Tony had a bit of a blip on the descent and came over all sick and shaky but a couple of gels soon put him right. As did a can of Carlsberg that Ty carried up to the entry gate for us. I don’t care what anyone says about the old-soak, he’s a good boy in my books…until he made Grant and I walk past the bus to the car-park…to preserve the sanctity of the bloody route!

Done. Finito. Now let’s go home.

Preston to Llanberis – 103 miles
Snowdon – 3560ft. 9 miles. 3.20 minutes
Exercise Start Time 6.00am. Finish 9.00pm
Weather Conditions – Cold, wet and miserable. Very windy and freezing cold towards the summit.

For the record (and with the aid of modern technology), we travelled a total of 457 miles and climbed an elevation on both foot and bicycle of 28,769 ft. From start to finish the escapade took 93 hours and included 61 hours on the go (43 hours of constant movement), with an estimated sleep time of 14 hours leaving 18 hours drinking time! See, doesn’t make for a snappy title after all.

Dessert / Our Just Desserts:

So what was all that about? Why would anyone run up and down each of the biggest mountain mainland Great Britain has to offer, cycle almost 500 miles through three mountain ranges between them, swim across and back a big f*ck-off lake and do it all in under four days? I can assure you it ain’t because we enjoy constant sleep deprivation, the taste of carbo-gels, being permanently hungry or the feel of wet lycra against cold skin…although now you mention it… It’s a question we all asked undoubtedly asked ourselves both individually and collectively but it’s one only the individual can answer for himself. For me it’s a combination of several reasons:

– Because I can. I’m one lucky so-and-so in that I have both the time, the inclination and the fitness to do so. Even though it’s short and wiry, my body has, over the years, taken me to some great places physically and mentally. And long may it continue. Every time I take on another endurance escapade ‘me mother’ always tells me it’s time I give up and act my age. I counter with it’s the things we give up that keep us young that makes us old.
– If I’m subsequently able to raise a bit of cash for a worthy and needy cause then all the better. As with other recent ones, our good cause was to help Neve Dandy on www.stayclosetoneve.com
– Ditto, if the experience acts as any form of example to anyone else. More often than not we’re all a bit too comfortable these days, cocooned in our connected digital world. There’s a whole real world of possibilities out there and we need to experience them first hand not vicariously or virtually.
– It is, believe it or not, a tremendous amount of fun. The levels of friendship, camaraderie and support you experience on such an adventure is always way beyond your expectations.
– I enjoy telling tales and tall stories and there’s always a couple of good ones that come out in the wash. It’s an ego-thing for sure and I love it.

On a lighter note here’s what I personally discovered:

– Tandem’s are slow, heavy, awkward and I can’t ride one. If we’d have done more miles beforehand we’d have known this and not believed we could complete such a task on one. Yeah, I know, poor planning and all that.
– With two blokes on one, tandems are also incredibly gay. Picture two guys in a convertible Ford Ka and you’ll get the idea. In Ray Bans and too-tight open necked shirts.
– 19 hours’ non-stop activity without much kip really does crazy things to your mind.
– Scafell Pike is no place to be at 5.00am.
– I like beer.
– Chrysler’s are not ALL bad.
– Travel light and then leave half of this at home. You will need only one pair of pants. Honestly.
– If you’ve not had a pee for over twelve hours it ain’t going to be clear.
– Tony’s wife Louise is very perceptive. And right.
– Cycling 142 miles in one sitting will do your piles no good at all.
– Three day old Ribenna doesn’t taste very nice. And drinking it out of bottles that haven’t been washed for five days will indeed give you the sh*ts.
– What the wind gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.
– Grant ‘the engine’ Wyatt very quickly developed an unnatural fascination for tarmac quality.
– Lance was right and it ain’t about the bike. Two of ours were second-hand £300 purchases. All the gear…
– Continental Four Season & Gatorskin tyres are God’s gift to mankind – not one puncture on any bike. Incredible.
– It rains in Preston. Always.
– Size is not important. Allegedly. The smallest mountain was by far the toughest. Small mountain syndrome!
– Don’t rely on gadgets, sat-navs or devices. They will play-up and leave you in the lurch.
– Ty sobered up on Tuesday. Almost.
– We are all more capable than we think we are. Probably.
– Whatever happens, it could be worse…you could be on a tandem!