The Lance Armstrong Witch Hunt

The rain is back; well I suppose it is a bank holiday.

Eventually we give up sheltering from it and take the tent down in the rain. The rain turns out to be not as bad as it sounds once you’re out in it but it was a good excuse for a lie in. Then we head off to find breakfast.

Everywhere seems shut; well I suppose it is a bank holiday.

Eventually we have breakfast at around 1pm in a branch of Booths in Garstang. Then home to catch up with the Vuelta and the Lance Armstrong saga.

I don't like Lance Armstrong and I don't think he's innocence. I mean how could anybody defeat all the top cyclists in the world, for seven years in a row, and not only defeat them but also defeat all the top performance enhancing drugs in the world that these top cyclists have pretty much all freely admitted (eventually) that they were on.

Drugs or not, Armstrong was still the best rider in those races because he won on a playing field levelled by those drugs. I suppose it’s possible, but unlikely, that he had better drugs than the others. Maybe he was just the better athlete. Sure it's frustrating for anybody who was clean but reality means they almost certainly finished well outside the top twenty.

Stripping him of his seven titles is just pointless. Who does that leave as winners of those Tours? The confessed dopers Jan Ulrich, Alex Zulle, Joseba Beloki and Ivan Basso, that’s who. Along with the deeply suspicious Andreas Kloden.

It’s time to draw a line under this all this and move on. As Armstrong says, it’s now simply a witch-hunt. This is all ancient history. We have new heroes now.

(Monday 27th August)

A Good Buffeting

We are camping at a dog show, as you do. We arrived last night and squelched our way across the field to our designated camping spot right at the back... They obviously have us down as trouble makers or maybe they’ve been pre-warned about MD’s vocal chords. They seem to have had rather a lot of rain here.

Then this morning we squelched our way back across the field and out on to the road, temporarily waving goodbye to the dog show. We are just using their camping facilities, or to give it its proper name, field, for the moment. I’ll be competing tomorrow.

We’re at Garstang at the moment but now we’re heading for Morecambe, where the weather is incredibly bleak and terrifically windy. So nice weather for the Morecambe Mile. I’m so glad I’m not involved. It’s just L, a couple of hundred others and some rather fearsome looking waves. Lovely weather for swimming...

On the plus side, the Morecambe and Heysham Yacht Club who are hosting the event are churning out the bacon rolls, flapjacks and hot drinks at a rate of knots. They’ve even got a table full of cakes for later. So the organisation is top notch.

As everyone else gets wetsuited up and heads out onto the front, the dogs and I try to get a good viewing position, somewhere where we won't get blown over the sea wall. Then we are told of the delayed start, which is greeted by mostly relieved looks all round. Then we’re told that they’ve moved the start. Preferably to warmer climes but no just a hundred yards or so down to a 'calmer' bay. The waves are oooh 5% smaller here. We watch a couple of boats struggle out into the sea with the buoys which will mark out the course, the boats bobbing up and down on the ever increasing tide.

Then a chap who looks kind of official jumps up on a wall, calls everyone round and tells us it’s all off. Cancelled. They’ll be no Morecambe Mile. A few cries of ‘Oh no, I was looking forward to a good buffeting against the rocks’, or something like that, go out but are quickly drowned out (if you excuse the pun) by a relieved round of applause from everyone else. It’s disappointing but there’s always the cakes.

Then we partake in a bracing walk along the sea front, to walk off the cakes and to try and find Doggo a bit of beach. Of which there is none, the tide is still stubbornly in and still looking fearsomely unswimmable.

This is how windy it was.

Then we head back to the dog show and squelch our way across the field to our camping spot. Later we head down into the village of Scorton and sit romantically under a canopy, because we’re not welcome inside the pub with the dogs. We watch the on-off rain while sipping beer and eating our way through an undeserved three course meal including a not too bad cheeseboard.

(Sunday 28th August)