It’s the end of possibly the worst day of cycling I’ve ever endured. Around 140km into either a full-on headwind or a full-on crosswind, on a route that was mostly urban cycle paths. This is entirely my fault. We had a ferry to catch and the stipulation that the ride needed to start on a Sunday and end on a Friday afternoon meant that there was very little flexibility over logistics for our excellent tour guides from Saddle Skedaddle.
A rare section of today’s route that was actually worth photographing
There’s usually a day like today on these trips. A day when people just don’t want to get on their bikes in the morning. When the saddle sores are starting to really hurt as opposed to just hurt, and when you feel you have absolutely nothing left to give because all you have is tiredness in every part of the body.
But this is all sounding very negative and no matter how uninteresting the ride has been for large parts, the incredible stories I have heard from people, and their reasons for signing up to the ride, have blown me away.
Stories like that of Ian, who knew from childhood that almost all of his father’s family perished in the Holocaust but hadn’t been told that he was Jewish and only made this connection later in life. When, in 2016 Ian started to make further enquiries about Robert, his now long deceased father, he discovered amongst his belongings a school set-square with the address of an orphanage in Hamburg and a Star of David scratched into it.
Looking to learn more Ian contacted World Jewish Relief who furnished him with the full story of Robert and his brother, Brian, including pictures and several years of reports about the boys’ progress and health. Robert was on the very first kindertransport that arrived in the UK on December 2nd, 1938. He was 13 and his brother was 12.
And because of this Ian, along with Robert’s grandson, Tim, are riding with us this week to commemorate the 10,000 children who survived thanks to the kindertransport.
Accounts like that put headwinds into perspective, I’d say.
The Mamil 