We made it. My son fell ill with a stomach bug during our first scheduled cycle camping attempt and our plans collapsed entirely. This year, we finally made it happen though it nearly didn’t. That ill-fated weekend, my daughter and I salvaged something by heading to Rowsley for a gravel ride and ice cream, but the tradition was too important to abandon completely. Since 2016, this annual adventure has become sacred to our family, and I wasn’t prepared to let another summer pass without it.
This time, everything aligned. Light rain fell in the morning with more forecast for early afternoon, so there was no hurry. Instead of rushing, we moved through the day at our own pace: reading, listening to podcasts, drawing, even some piano practice. While I gradually sorted things around the house and began packing. Lunch at the Morrisons café broke up the afternoon, followed by more careful preparation. Eventually, the bikes came out and the old tag-along was dusted off.
That WeeRide aluminium tag-along has been with us through every single annual trip, along with the old Decathlon Rockrider used for commuting to the station and for towing it. Over the years, its purpose has evolved. Once it carried my son while my daughter sat in a child seat on the front of my bike, then the roles swapped with my daughter on the tag-along and my son on his own bike. Now neither child rides on it at all. Instead, it has transformed into something of a makeshift cargo trailer, holding our tent, food and the bulky bits of kit that simply won’t fit into my bags. The Eric Byrne Memorial campsite, where we camped on that very first adventure all those years ago, had become our destination of choice again for the last couple of years. There was something reassuringly familiar about heading there, a return to a place that had witnessed our family’s growth.
Leaving Chesterfield, we began the familiar slog up the hill towards Old Brampton when something unexpected happened. A Citroën passed us, and in that moment, it looked strikingly familiar, it looked like the kids maternal grandfather’s car. A couple of bends later, we discovered it truly was. The children’s grandparents had recognised my cycling jacket, pulled over up the road and walked back to meet us. Without stopping we exchanging greetings and photos were taken, my attention staying on the more immediate challenge: hauling a heavily laden bike and trailer up a considerable incline before the long descent towards the Robin Hood Inn.
The forecast held. We experienced only the lightest touch of rain and with everything carefully packed into waterproof bags, we soon reached the campsite. Then came the first real obstacle: the gate. Getting three loaded bikes and a tag-along over it felt like something from the old Royal Tournament gun carriage race. My daughter’s lightweight Islabike Beinn went over first, followed by my son’s Decathlon Elops Speed 900 (originally a city bike that had been transformed into a remarkably capable adventure bike with the addition of gravel tyres). Then came the systematic unloading of the cargo: three dry bags and the locks removed from the tag-along and passed across, the tag-along itself disconnected and lifted over, then my Rockrider and then I hoped over the style. We would need to reverse the entire painstaking process the following morning but that was tomorrow’s problem. For now, we wheeled everything towards the campsite with bags hanging from bikes, looking, in my imagination at least, like characters from a Swallows and Amazons adventure in Swallow Dale.
Only one other small tent occupied the site, which was part of what I increasingly loved about the Eric Byrne campsite. There were no cars beside the tents, no electric hook-ups, no hot showers; just grass, toilets, washbasins and an outdoor washing up area. Simple camping. While the children ate sandwiches, I set up our three person tunnel tent, then it was time to cook. Our old fashioned meths burning Trangia produced nothing fancy but dinner tasted pretty good after the ride: rice noodles and miso soup, golden vegetables, then custard and chocolate brownie. While I cooked, the children relaxed on our picnic blanket, really just a lightweight groundsheet, with exposed skin covered and midge head nets in place, though the midges weren’t particularly bad that evening.
By the time we’d finished washing up and cleaning our teeth, the last of the daylight had gone. We needed our torches to get back into the tent. It was then that I really noticed how much earlier darkness was arriving. Barely two months beyond the longest day, summer was already turning toward autumn; a reminder that my favourite season would return before we knew it.
I woke early the next morning. There’s something special about being awake on a campsite while most of the world still seems to be asleep: golden light, birdsong, sheep in the distance and an almost complete peace. I sat with my diary and reflected on the previous few days: a trip to Liverpool, climbing at Birchen Edge and now this. Self propelled travel, sleeping under canvas, being outdoors with the children, feeling for a little while at least more connected to the natural world. Eventually the campsite began stirring. The farmer came round collecting the camping fees the old fashioned way and then it was time for breakfast: porridge, hot drinks and with fine weather now making life considerably easier, everything gradually came out of the tent and was spread across our groundsheet before being packed away again.
Tent down, bags packed, bikes loaded and then one final hurdle, quite literally. Everything had to go back down the farm track and over that gate once more before we eventually emerged onto the road, turned right, and started climbing. Our next objective was Curbar Gap and Jolly’s Coffee & Cake.
There was one small difficulty: Curbar Gap is considerably higher than the surrounding landscape. We turned right at the roundabout and began the long climb upward. The hill just seemed to keep going. The children disappeared ahead and I found myself reflecting on something I hadn’t thought about in a while. There was once a time when I could run alongside them while they cycled. Those days now feel surprisingly distant. On steep climbs, their lightweight bikes and increasingly strong legs leave me behind on my much heavier machine. I suspect it won’t be too long before experience alone won’t be enough to give me much advantage going downhill either. But there was something wonderful about watching them go, about seeing how, over the last decade, they had gradually developed the skills, confidence and independence to cover ground that once required constant help and encouragement.
Eventually we escaped the main road, climbed the last section and arrived at Curbar Gap. The cake tasted exceptionally good; perhaps because we’d earned it, perhaps because it was simply very good cake. Either way, I knew I’d be back. There was another reason for stopping, though. One of my old university mountain marathon friends has a wife who works at the coffee van on Fridays. We’d started running mountain marathons together in the early 2000s, later sharing trips and adventures both in the UK and further afield in the Alps over the year. My daughter, meanwhile, had absolutely no idea who she was and was slightly puzzled as to why the lady serving cake knew her name. Another tiny reminder of the way different eras of life overlap.
After applying more sunscreen, we set off again, continuing our little tour of the Eastern Edges, heading towards Shillito Woods and passing close to one of the wild camping spots we’d used on previous trips. During the Covid years, when campsites were closed, wild camping had become part of these adventures and has always been a bit part of my adventures over the years, preferably with a bivvy bag! I still loved the feeling of finding somewhere quiet, carrying everything with us and spending a night with almost nothing between us and the landscape. Across this landscape the scenery suddenly opened out, countryside I know well, yet the views continued to stop me in my tracks. My daughter asked if we were stopping at “the bench,” meaning one we’d used on previous trips. Yes but first we had a long descent and with a tent and luggage strapped to a tag-along designed to carry a child rather than camping equipment, there was good reason not to get too carried away with speed.
Eventually we reached Pratthall bench and stopped. And it was there that another thought occurred to me. Looking at my daughter’s bike, I realised this could be its final annual camping trip. She was growing out of it. Her Islabike Beinn XS had been the latest edition of the Beinn bikes from Islabike’s that had carried her (and her brother) on countless family adventures, but Islabikes stopped making bikes in 2023 and the time was approaching to move her onto an adult machine. My son had already made that transition. His Islabike had been replaced with the Elops Speed 900 with added gravel tyres, which he was now riding beside us with apparent ease. And suddenly I found myself thinking about just how many adventures those little bikes had enabled.
One memory in particular came flooding back. In April 2018, my son and I were staying on Mull and took his Islabike across to the Isle of Ulva. We cycled across Ulva and onwards towards Gometra, covering rough ground that would have been painfully slow for a small child on foot. Where things got difficult as I was running alongside him I could just give him a push while he pedalled. We stopped for cake at the Boathouse café before catching the ferry back to Mull. Without the bike, we simply would not have explored as far as we did.
From the bench we headed onwards, picking up the bridleway towards Linacre, passing car parks and toilets before finding more lovely gravel riding as we gradually descended towards Chesterfield. And now, eight years later, as we headed down that bridleway towards Linacre Reservoir, I watched both children ride bikes that were starting to look much more like adult machines. The children I once ran alongside were disappearing up hills ahead of me. It felt like the end of one small era but perhaps also the beginning of another.
The children were covering the ground more easily than I was on my heavy bike. At one point I watched them riding side by side, simply chatting. Brother and sister. Teenagers riding bikes together through the countryside without, for that moment at least, much of a care in the world; certainly not the kinds of cares that seem to accumulate with adulthood. And I remembered doing much the same at their age. Perhaps that was my favourite moment of the entire trip. No grand destination, no dramatic mountain summit. Just two young people riding along a track together, comfortable in each other’s company and the landscape around them.
Then, almost without warning, we were back amongst the familiar roads near home. It felt surprisingly abrupt. One moment we had been riding through open countryside, carrying everything we needed for the night. The next we were back in everyday life. And all of it had happened in less than 24 hours around 32 kilometres and about 600 metres of climbing. Hardly an expedition, yet it had somehow felt like one.
Eleven years after we first strapped children to seats and tag-alongs and headed off to sleep under canvas, the details have changed. The children are taller, the bikes are bigger and I am increasingly the one trying to keep up. But the important bit hasn’t really changed at all. Get on the bikes. Carry what we need. Go somewhere under our own power. Sleep outside. Come home with another story.
If you have got this far; perhaps this is your reminder that an adventure doesn’t have to take you very far from home. Get outside. Go somewhere a little differently and have an adventure of your own.