55km into my 60km ride on Sunday, all I was thinking about was getting to the end. It had been a grey day, I wasn’t feeling particularly fast or motivated, but I’d done it, and soon I could simply bask in the sense of achievement that comes from a long ride. I was cycling with three others into Bristol in south west England along the Portway, the main road into the city from the west, and I was just trying to get it done.
The Portway isn’t a nice road to cycle along, it’s busy with traffic, even on a Sunday early afternoon, but it’s flat and useful. While there is a bus lane for some of it, this peters out, and it’s currently a mess of roadworks, which ironically is aimed at boosting active travel routes, while hampering it at the moment. There’s also the option of cycling on the pavement, which would mean no motor traffic, but that comes with its own problems.
The scene is now set. I say I was cycling with my group, although the truth is I’d hit out a bit just to get this bit of the ride over with. There’s a short road tunnel underneath the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge to guard against rockfall, which is when the road also becomes one lane in both directions. It was here, when I was going about 25km/h, when I briefly thought I was about to die.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
The violence of an extremely close pass is hard to describe if you haven’t experienced it, and is not at all experienced by the person committing it. As I cycled through the tunnel, the driver of an industrial lorry, probably carrying some kind of aggregate, decided this was the perfect time to overtake me. It was not. There was not enough room, with a line of traffic on the other side of the road, and nowhere for me to go apart from the rock face. If I had wobbled, hit a pothole, moved an inch, I would have gone under the wheels of that lorry.
It would be nice to imagine that the driver hadn’t seen me, at least then it wouldn’t have been a deliberate, malicious act. But it was the middle of the day, and he had already passed the three other members of my group. I don’t know the last…