Cycling to the sea in 2020 to escape Covid

East Sussex coast, 2020

I grew up in Ohio. It’s a landlocked middle state and a ten hour drive to the ocean - a drive that we did not take. Beaches and the ocean were not part of my childhood. But I thought crashing waves were magical, and as an adult I’ve been trying to make up for lost time with any beach, ocean or sea ever since.

Now that I live on an island I take every opportunity to go to the beach, walk along the sea, find reasons to sleep there, linger. I like to talk to the sea. Confide. Wish. Plan.

When covid restrictions eased in the summer of 2020 and provided a window to leave the local area, all I wanted to do is bike to the sea. And I thought we could. In one day.

During early covid, we bought a bike trailer for our 2 and 4 year olds. From April 2020, early in the morning before work, we would pack the kids into the trailer and bike along the Thames up to Richmond and Kew. It was a quiet morning meditation that steadied the rest of the day. Days that were filled with full-time Teams calls, important emails and deadlines amongst full-time toddler reading, nudged play-time, and strategic TV. Full-time child-care it was not. Our toddlers were often left to their own devices while we were on competing calls. After one of those juggles, Andrew came upstairs to break the news that Tallulah had cut off all her hair during the last meeting. It’s unclear how we survived those days.

Looking back, I would have more compassion for ourselves, but at the time it was a pressure-cooker, impossible situation for us both to be working the demands of 8-9 hour jobs while simultaneously wrangling our toddler criminals. Tantrums flared because they didn’t get the blue cup or the cookie was broken. Co-workers couldn’t possibly understand how dysfunctional the working environment was while caring for a 2 and 4 year old. Most either had grown children or none, which posed different challenges. And people are bad at judging their own empathy for something they haven’t experienced. I remember the dizzying chaos. It frayed everything and there was no break.

There was so much crying during those months, that I can hear the silence of cycling: bike tires on a gravel path with the children safely buckeled into the trailer for this one peaceful hour along the river. We would do it in the rain. We watched as the flowers bloomed that Spring, and the leaves grew and weighed down the trees. On the weekends we were braver and I would map locations down the Thames and consider if we could get there and back: Walton-on-Thames, Weybridge and Shepperton. We started picking fruits and vegetables at Crockford Bridge Farm. I wondered if we could make it down the Wey. Could we get to Guildford and back in a day?

One morning after a caffeine-fuelled Google maps session, I announced that for our summer holiday, we would bike to the sea! We would bike in a single day and stay for a few days in one well ventilated hotel. At the time, we were distancing, and minimising contact and the idea that we would stay in hotel felt like the end of our covid comfort. There was fear and then there was the covid meta-conscientiousness that seemed to define morality. Andrew was dubious about the adventure, but played along.

70 miles. We packed ham and cheese sandwiches, made with Andrew’s covid homemade bread and rice krispy treats; clothes and some sand toys for the girls. (This would be our 2020 summer vacation.) We started early one July Thursday. Dew still covered the grass in Bushy Park as we cut across to Hampton. We retraced regular rides to Weybridge and then turned south down the Wey Navigation. The path slowed: tree roots had eroded it like speed bumps. But the landscape was a misty English poem: Newark Priory in the distance, the thatched houses of Send.

Guildford was supposed to be lunch, but it was late. The path near town was longer than expected and broken. We refueled with bought coffee and ate our sandwiches on a bench by the canal. The girls played. We had to carry the trailer and bikes up stairs to cross an overpass, pack them back in. Shortly after, there was a puncture. The afternoon evaporated and we were only half way.

The Downs Link is a former railroad that’s been converted into a bridleway and a straight shot through the North Downs from Guildford to Shoreham-by-Sea. But it’s still 37 miles of gravel. We were tired when and kept having the feeling we were nearly there. Tarmac miles are different than gravel. And they were different pulling a pair of fussy, thirsty, I-have-to-wee snack monsters. The interruptions were thick and the exhaustion was high. We ran out of water. It was a bad calculation.

When we hit the beacon over the Downs and could see the sea and there was pure elation. We still had long thirsty miles left. My injured knees were a disaster - on and off the the bike all day rummaging for on-demand snacks, requests to put shoes back on, meltdowns.

If I were doing it again (and maybe we will when the kids can do it on their own steam) I would break the journey half way through. Stop at a nice pub for dinner and camp or flop into a basic bed. But none of that seems possible with our 2020 constraints, which became part of the adventure.

The final miles beside the sea from Shoreham to Lancing were numbness. Squeezing the last light out of the day. I was shaky as we locked up our bikes and found our way into our room. We had rarely been inside anything aside from our house since March. We opened the window reflexively. Andrew drank all the bottles of water in the fridge. But all I wanted to do was put my feet in the waves. In flip flops, I walked Tallulah outside across the street to the water’s edge in post-dusk light.

Our lives had been disrupted. Not as much as lives on the news. But Tallulah and Olive had never returned to her nursery school and my job had to adapt. Our lives had changed from four different people with different days and experiences, to a unit that did everything together all the time. All of our plans, celebrations, trips, visits from family had been cancelled. Because we were living with so many limitations, everything that we managed during 2020 seemed special.

That night standing on the beach with my four-year old, the waves smelled familiar, like a normal summer trip any other year. We stared out into the dark water, unable to make out much but the horizon line. I felt grateful. Today had been a good day. “70 miles from our house to the sea. I knew we could do it.”