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Alright, alright. So I cannot actually speak of any real training since my last post because there hasn’t really been any since my last post. In my defence, however, it isn’t my socialising at the stiletto’d feet of which I must place the blame, rather that which has moved to joint pole position as the most important use of my time before April: work to earn money so that I can do this at all. 

Four hours of sleep (whilst a luxurious lie-in compared with Wednesday) was not sufficient rest to allow me to start my shift in the restaurant at full throttle. This was unfortunate because January 30th felt more like July 30th such were the hungry hordes which only Lauren and I were available to seat, serve and tidy up after. When she had to stay past the departure of the last bus, I volunteered to take her back to where she lives, in the depths of snowy Northumberland. Not having driven on the snow since I expensively dented the car before Christmas, and fully aware of how my sleep-deprived person was approaching the limits of his attention span, I was both drained and delighted when I finally returned home at 11.30PM, not having killed anyone. Another mammoth shift the next day, during which we served almost as many Sunday lunches as we would in the summer only, with it being winter, one waiter less, floored me utterly.

As far as living is concerned, then, it has been one of my busier weeks. I would not have had it any differently, though.

My friend’s birthday night out was a revelation. After the meal, organised by me at the very last minute, I was bracing myself should our group end up wending their way towards The (Hateful) Gate. As it was, the birthday girl took us in the opposite direction and this is how I now know about Baby Lynch.

To the left of Newcastle Central Station as you approach it from Gray’s Monument, this was to be my first Newcastle club. After having had my ID checked (both irritating and intimidating) in I went. I was impressed. The decor was original and comfortable, the music good without being deafening and they had five single malts behind the bar. This

"Lookee! Bowmore!" I can't tell you how overjoyed and relaxed finding this unlikely outpost of malt made me. Ross was happy with his mojito, too. Photo by Frances Hawkins.

 bar looked like the floor of the London Stock Exchange after everything started to go wrong. Bartenders rushed between tills and bottles and glasses, mixing all sorts of incredible drinks. To my complete surprise I felt at home. I bought a mojito and a double Bowmore 12-year-old. Although these totalled more than £12, it was entirely worth it for the sensation of soaking up this new atmosphere whilst drinking something I actually like. Would you believe it, but this has never happened before. Sipping and sniffing, this drink lasted me for the remainder of our time at Baby Lynch. As we roamed around trying to get into other places (too much to get in to Tup-Tup Palace; ticket-only night for Digital) it started to snow. While sitting in Gotham Town and juddering around in a couple of other places prior to leaving for our taxi, it started to snow a lot.

2AM arrived, but no taxi. We were standing in the huge concourse of the station with streams of people emerging from the blizzard, hopelessly under-dressed and trying to track down a taxi of their own. Charlotte was one of these under-dressed folk, and because she isn’t really of Northern origins, I feared she was going to perish of hypothermia. After donating my hoodie to her, I thought I was. The taxi came at long last, though, and on the way back we saw why he had taken a bit longer to reach us. Everything was white. Someone plainly doesn’t want me riding on the road.

Therefore, it is another turbo session once I have posted this, plus overshoes and one of my new base layers. I don’t need a cold on top of everything else! For one thing, it would get in the way of my other branch of training, which has been going very well indeed.

As you can see from the picture, I have been giving my senses a refresher course and I feel they are back up to speed.

"Ten green bottles..." Some of my favourite malts, and a great test of my sensory abilities.

 To my delight, I have discovered a heightened sensitivity (or would that be imagination?) regarding terroir-related flavours. It is these aspects of the whiskies I’ve sampled which I have use to compose the tasting notes below. The originals were much much longer!

Bwmore Legend 40% (See ‘Most Hotly-Awaited’)

Colour: Fresh gold with smooth ambery depths.

Nose: (Full strength) The sea experienced in a close driftwood shed. Salt and spray fly above a solid, heavily-peated base. Cool and moist: a warehouse on the shore. (With water) Smokier: thick, fragrant palls of the stuff. Rich, iodine-y seaweed.

Palate: Initially it is an island of peat on an energetic ocean. Lots of seaweed.

Finish: Salty and seaweedy. Peat smoke lingers in the background but reservedly.

Mortlach 16-year-old 43%

Colour: Deep burnished ochre with amber/bronze highlights.

Nose: (FS) Very intense, rich, moist and round Sherry wood aromas. Fudgy. Not quite “outside”, not quite “in”. A quiff of heather essence and within a closely-contained peat/smoke note. (WW) Becomes drier, sweetly earthy and floral. Fruitcake and honey. Wonderful caramel.

Palate: Very sherried malt with spoons of rich honey and a dab of fruit. Dries a lot and there’s an explosion of peat smoke.

Finish: Long, thick and moist. Bitter chocolate. Figs. Orange and cloves.

Old Pulteney 12-year-old 40%

Colour: Bright broom-yellow gold.

Nose: (FS) Very pronounced May seashore sweetness: dry grasses and flowers. A light dash of dessicated coconut. Seawater in a plastic bucket. (WW) The butter and sugar have become a full sponge mix with lemon zest. Still quietly floral only these flowers are wilder: broom and sea cliff flowers.

Palate: Medium-sweet, hot, lots of honey and increasingly malty.

Finish: Flavours of flora: flowers again, but also grass and the dark shade of a tree.

Ardbeg Uigeadail 54.2% (See ‘Most Hotly-Awaited’)

Colour: Smooth nutty Sherry brown with golden highlights.

Nose: (FS) A powerful humidity is first out of the glass with the characters of Sherry wood, dry malt and some smoke. Tarry notes and pencil lead. Finally we reach equilibrium: smooth and authoritative with marram grass and hot white sand. (WW) Not quite the same smoke and a little clearer. Leather tarps, tarry buckets and well-used wood. A delicate, smooth, sweet and fragrant vanilla/citrus note. Dried peat put back in the bog. You could nose it forever.

Palate: Very intense and aggressive. Wash-like fruity malt which is soon overtaken by thick black peat smoke and burning heather roots.

Finish: Burning cask staves. White chunks of peat. I even taste the whitewashed stones of the distillery itself. Takes an age to diminish.

Longmorn 15-year-old 45%

Colour: Full yellow/gold.

Nose: (FS) Honey and vanilla ice cream with a herbaceous border of floral notes. Butterscotch. A definite, soft fudgy sweetness with fresher minty qualities. (WW) Lighter and more moist with added juicy fruitiness. Warm and spicy oak. All light and delicate flavours with a lot of space between them.

Palate: Very lively malty sweetness leads into a drier biscuitiness, then assertive and flavoursome seasoned oak.

Finish: Vanilla and flowers dominate the quiet, measured and creamy finish.

Talisker 10-year-old 45.8% (See ‘Most Hotly-Awaited’)

Colour: Polished fireside brass with clean gold highlights.

Nose: (FS) Very dry, smoky and peppery. Volcanically powerful. Smoked molluscs. Subtle heather honey. (WW) Much more easily-defined smokiness: burning driftwood and smokeless heat from the peat. A wooden rowing boat on the sea loch. Clinging sea mists.

Palate: Begins with heat, raw wood and peat. Then you taste the peat fire.

Finish: Long, salty and seaweedy. Lovely smokiness in the rounded wood flavours.

You catch me at a calculated crisis in my training. Over recent days I have not been sculpting my body, efficiently recovering and appropriately refuelling. Exercise has taken the form of tramping around the Newcastle conurbation firstly on middling quantities of alcohol and secondly on negative quantities of sleep. Refuelling amounts to lager,

This jacket is so hi-vis it, ironically, blinds you.

a  homemade curry, fast-food fries and sandwiches carefully selected for their non-aggravating fillings. And I have plans to repeat all of this tonight.

In short, it is the perfect time to ignore the question ‘What Would Lance Armstrong Do?’ I knew I couldn’t put off any more a visit to two of my friends at university in the Newcastle area. I also knew that the birthday of one of my very best friends was more than likely to fall on the same date it always has. For someone pursuing the fitness level required to cycle in excess of 1300 miles in a very bumpy country, it perhaps wasn’t ideal to fit both into three days. But I’ll only know for sure if it really was too stupid with the benefit of hindsight so Newcastle, here I come! Er… again.

I’ll give some treatment to tonight in next week’s post but in the calm between the two storms I can now reflect on the aftermath of the last one.

Armed with sleeping bag and toothbrush and together with Ross, I took the bus to Gosforth. On the way down anticipation and acute anxiety made a toxic cocktail in my innards. The last time I spent the night near the Tyne for very little of it was I horizontal. Instead I was slouched like a discarded doll on the floor of a Gateshead bathroom I still see sometimes in my nightmares.

Such memories of being flamboyantly unwell returned to me after we met up with Stevie C, arrived at his student digs and were in the process of cooking a chicken korma. This, with rice and naans, went down very well, although I think the salmonella incubation period is very soon to expire…

It was a good night, though, having infiltrated both the Newcastle and Northumbria student unions. In the latter I was asked by Adam, a Northern Irish guy I’d heard a lot about and whom I can now attest to be a magnificent bloke, what whisky he should try. Anxious for him not to have a bad experience, I pointed to the trusty Glenfiddich 12-year-old. He liked it. And tried the Glenmorangie Original sat next to it behind the bar to make the comparison. A convert!

At our next port of call, I quickly saw that I’d be making no such recommendations to an interested party. The Gate, a collection of clubs, restaurants and cinemas, is the exact antithesis of anything I could claim to be comfortable with. Affecting a more exaggerated drunken stagger to fit in with the ”mortal” hordes, I was deeply relieved when we found the quieter clubs to be closing and the bigger, stickier ones full to bursting. The half-hour walk back to Gosforth in the freezing cold sobered us up nicely.

Sadly, this didn’t make for a fuller night’s sleep. There exists in me a dichotomy which I cannot explain and which upsets me a lot. I’m devoting nearly six weeks and far too much money to touring Scotland and hunting out its whiskies but drinking alcohol with the masses and far from home makes me less relaxed than I would be on the rougher streets of  Basra. Petrified of getting queasy in front of people and fully aware of how little my system likes alcohol at the wrong times (it won’t tell me when these are); unenamoured by sensations of drunkeness but surrounded by expectation, a depressingly high percentage of nights out are endured rather than enjoyed. I must be the only teenage whisky fanatic who hates getting drunk and expects to throw up long before he is.

But to discuss the tour itself. Ringing round all of my hotels and B&Bs proved to be a shrewd exercise. A couple of dates had to be adjusted and my call reminded one place that they really should transfer my details, made a note of in the back of  last year’s diary, into the pages of this one’s.  I have also bought two of the items of apparel I estimate shall be most in demand come April and May: the jacket (see above) and waterproof over-trousers. Now I’m just waiting on a couple of base layers and another pair of shorts and, clothing-wise, I’ll be able to tough-out anything my travels have to throw at me. Outside cycling should be possible before long. Although having said that, whilst writing this the wind has switched to now come very determinedly from the North and snow flurries have made intermittent re-appearances. Great…

Turbo training: carrying on from where the Indian subcontinent, GCSE Physics lessons and the iron maiden left off.

Until I’m actually ploughing along Scottish roads (and very probably leaving a furrow such shall be the load over my rear wheel) I have decided to post a weekly update on where I am physically, logistically and mentally. This week is the exception, obviously, but venting my spleen about technology was a matter of some urgency.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my fitness regimen has begun. Just like the rest of the UK, Northumberland received its quota of snow, ice and cold. The only exercise I got throughout the cold snap was dragging my sledge back up the hill again. After what seemed like months, though, it cleared. However, ice on the pavements was slow to thaw and so recognising that a broken leg really wasn’t what I needed, it was last week before I donned my trainers and ran.

I returned from my first circuit an interesting colour. This was partly because of the cold, but mostly because you would have to go back to before Christmas, before my dental operation left me with a face like a butternut squash, for when I last did anything vaguely cardio-vascular. My next run was better, however, which reassured me that my level of fitness pre-op would be quite easy to re-acquire.

But I needed to get on with some cycling, too, so yesterday I set up the turbo trainer for a more specific appraisal of my legs. For those of you who have never done it, it is one of the most boring and damp things you can do. To combat the former I’d rigged up the CD player so I could work out to Rush’s ‘Snakes and Arrows Live’ and to tackle the latter I was in the garage. With the door open. This was much colder than my past sessions in the conservatory had been but this didn’t stop the perspiration pooling in the most alien of places, which the air then turned to ice. I got off as the last chord of ‘The Main Monkey Business’ melded into the first couple of ‘The Larger Bowl’, my legs a bit more wobbly than I had expected. I dismantled everything, ate my recovery meal and longed for a little more warmth so that I might get on the road for real. One of cycling’s quirks is that you can ramp up distances pretty quickly and if I could do 25 miles before lunch in an hour and a half 3 years ago, I reasoned, it should only be a case of altering my approach slightly: allowing myself an extra hour, maybe, before I could then go out again after lunch and very quickly 60 miles in a day doesn’t sound so impossible. This isn’t racing, I shall have to tell myself often, this is touring.

I don’t just need my quads and calves at peak fitness for April, though. My nose and palate must be at the top of their game, too. Their training began last week after a long sensory lay-off. In mid-December I had a wisdom tooth taken out which involved putting me under general anaesthetic. It also involved the surgeons shoving breathing tubes up my nose. What I was told when I came round and blood simply refused to stay in my face was that I had very narrow nasal canals, to the point where they couldn’t fit anything down my left one. Having said that, they must have given it a damn good go: for four days afterwards I couldn’t put a tissue to my nose without discovering reddy orange spots on it when I took it away again. So the back of my nose was a mess, as was the back of my mouth. I had a few drams over Christmas but significantly diluted after a neat dose of Longmorn 15-year-old (45% abv) brought on the sensation that my jaw was melting.

Last Saturday I poured a measure of The Balvenie DoubleWood into my snifter glass, anxious about a noticeable dip in performance. All I found was that the back of my nose numbed slightly after a while when analysing the neat spirit but otherwise I noted down the familiar honey, wood, rich malt and delicate peat notes of this wonderful whisky. I had lost my firm grip on the sensory memories of other malts, however, which I find make tasting a breeze when I’m well-practised. I should be heading back in the right direction after another couple of tastings, though.

Touching on my itinerary, I have collated onto a single piece of paper all of the information concerning my trip in calendar format: the date; the start and end points of the day; the distillery(ies) I’m visiting; where I’m staying, and any public transport I need to use. My next task is to ring around and confirm with my proprietors that I’m staying with them when I think I am.