EPISODE 347: Richard Fletcher, Mr Cycling on the Isle of Man

24th February 2024

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 347: Richard Fletcher

SPONSOR: Tern Bicycles

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Richard Fletcher, Isle of Man

TOPICS:

LINKS:

https://www.the-spokesmen.com/

https://www.ternbicycles.com

https://twitter.com/CarltonReid

https://www.cycling.im

https://www.bikestyle.im

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru1PYzU1k_w

https://www.visitisleofman.com

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 347 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Saturday 24th of February 2020. For

David Bernstein 0:29
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Tern bicycles. The good people at Tern are committed to building bikes that are useful enough to ride every day and dependable enough to carry the people you love. In other words, they make the kind of bikes that they want to ride. Tern has e-bikes for every type of rider. Whether you're commuting, taking your kids to school or even carrying another adult, visit www.ternbicycles.com. That's t e r n bicycles.com to learn more.

Carlton Reid 1:04
The plan was to record this interview while riding to Laxey on the Isle of Man with cycle guide and event organiser Richard Fletcher, pointing out the roads long used by fellow Manxman Mark Cavendish, but then weather! I'm Carlton Reid, and I was on the Isle of Man for the AGM of the British guild of travel writers. members could choose a one day fam trip activity. And while others chose spa and yoga retreats or cookery sessions, all indoors, I had asked to go cycling. I brought my road bike on the Steam Packet ferry from Heysham and was eager to hook up Richard with a radio mic and then chat, as we pootled along. The driving rain put paid to that idea. And after a bitterly cold two hour ride, we drip-dripped into a Douglas bike shop. Right. And I've just seen a photograph of you there that I took on the road, and you're smiling. But there's sleet. There's rain, there's basically we're riding through it almost a river coming up through to Douglas. So that was pretty grim out there.

Richard Fletcher 2:23
Yes, as bad as it gets over here. But yeah, you're out on your bike. And there's the worst places to be. So as long as you don't do more than an hour and a half in that sort of that sort of weather, then it's fine. Right?

Carlton Reid 2:35
So warmed up, we had a cup of coffee, and a bit of cake in Noa's bakery, and that's Noa. And next door to that is Bike Style. The bike shops who are now sitting on very nice sofas here, in in a nice bike shop. I'd like to say overlooking, you know, the scenic wonders of Douglas, but we can't actually see a great deal. And when we were out riding this morning, you you basically you took me out to some scenic places, but we didn't actually see anything. So just describe the ride that we did this morning. What would we have seen if it would be a beautiful day? Because we're kind of going towards Snaefell, weren't we?

Richard Fletcher 3:12
Yeah, well, the hills, the route, we went on the hills all around it, basically. So and yeah, on a clear day, that's what you see. You can you can see the island from sort of side to side and top to bottom only when you're out it's particularly if you get some height. But today, because it's hilly, you get white-out effectively. So yeah, there's quite low cloud and you don't see a lot. But yeah, it would have been a nice ride if our view wise if it had been clear.

Carlton Reid 3:42
Because we did get pretty damn cold out there today. So the route you were originally planning to take me on would have been towards Laxey

Richard Fletcher 3:52
We'd have gone north of the east coast of the island. And you get some stunning views on the East coast. Well on all the coastal routes on the island, and the island basically has villages and towns dotted around the coastline. So as soon as you come in from the towns, you start climbing, and you go either over a hill into a valley and over another hill and back to the coast. The island is only 12 miles wide and it's been its widest point, and 36 miles long. So you can cross from coast to coast or top to bottom in a day. But there's lots of minor roads. I think some of the roads we went on. They were most of them were single carriageway roads to the benefit that is the nicer island because they're quiet, very little traffic. But yeah, it's just today was a rough day for it.

Carlton Reid 4:42
So if we had done that ride, which we're planning to do towards Laxey would have basically written past Cav's house, yeah?

Richard Fletcher 4:51
Well, he's born and brought up in Douglas and Laxey still has a house in Laxey. And Laxey's got a lot of history from it was an old mining village years ago not a big population there. It's people have a possibly have an impr...