In Appreciation of Fire

We're staying in a holiday cottage. I know, get us!

Collectively, we're over 100: me Tsk and the dog. Before we see if the dog enjoys camping we needed a holiday and we need to make sure we can take her away without crying the house down at night.

The holiday cottage has a log burner which ties into the hot water tank and central heating. This is no run-down shack kind of holiday cottage but a well appointed one with double glazing, a dining room, wifi and impecable soft-furnishings So we expected the heating system to work.

The stove itself is tricky to keep lit. As I struggled one evening to keep the flames going, I used our frivolous wifi spend to google the stove manufacturers website to see what the toggle marked + / - on the right hand side does. The manufacturer doesn't appear to have a website. The only images I could find were for similar-but-different models with much more ventilation to aid airflow. I found one image of "our" stove - for sale on Facebook marketplace. I pity the unlucky new owner.

Every evening I have taken ownership of the fire. Apart from my obvious childhood experience of growing up in a household with a coal fire, I, as the qualified engineer in the house, am the one deemed competent to understand the myriad instructions from the owner as to what switches and devices to turn on/off to magically heat our home. This important work - in the eyes of both husband and dog - involves sitting on a footstool (shaped like a highland cow) feeding paper, kindling and logs into the hungry burner and staring as the orange licks of flame spread-momentarily roaring (paper/ kindling) then flickering, glowing, pulsing (logs) and occasionally popping, sizzling and collapsing. The fuel air mix is key. With this stove that means figuring out the airflow defaults to the left and putting the fire there. It means stacking the logs carefully like jenga, the aim being not to let the flames go out-even if the tower topples over. Getting the air means cleaning the grate. Without a grate brush we repurposed the plastic dustpan brush - so best do that when the fire is cold. I sit and I watch - moving the unburned fuel in the log to sit in the fire + knocking the burned ash off to expose new fuel beneath.

I rotate out the hissing soggy logs and pull in new ones to pre­heat. I stack and I turn, judge, discard, poke. Occasionally I use the hair drier in place of the roaring gales which got us through Sunday and Monday. I write a few words at a time or knit a few stitches until I know there is enough thermal mass in there to sustain a fire. Only then can I relax. 

We've already had to shop for one new bag of kindling All of this keeps my attention. It's mindfulness on an epic scale. People would pay double what we paid for this cottage, just to have this much focus. It brings a new importance and relevance to life. If it were the only source of heat we had available it would be frightening but as it is (we have electric radiators and an immersion heater) it's satisfying to know that in an indirect way, I've made my hot bath myself. It's so much harder to add cold to the mix when you've gone to all that effort to heat the hot water, and you can forget the electric shower - like a steel bike you built yourself compared to a Carbon fibre shop built thing off the peg - I'd happily go 3 days without using the elec­tric shower in favour of a part-full warm (not hot) bath I've made myself.  The unpredictability of fire is a sound life metaphor Sometimes the more you prod and mess with it, the worse it gets. You're better off keeping the handle closed, shutting the heat in and letting energy plot its course.

The fire introduces a leak path through the fabric of the house. The Chimney allows sound to penetrate where otherwise none would.The first morning that I sat staring at the fire I was convinced I was about to set light to a blackbird, so loud was the birdsong penetrating from the hedge outside the chimney wall. 

Staring at the fire has given me thinking and processing time to work through what is important to me. For instance, processing the medium of long distance racing. I am questioning my reasons for chasing it - specifically this year's HT. 

While 12 months ago I could have seen myself progressing to something new after the HT, this year I don't know if I'll ever do an ultra again. It's not about the finishing time I get, it's become about chasing an obscure most-female-completions record with my quirky long times. I know there will be moments when it won't be about the ride or the Scotland it will be about putting up with pain or suffering...or just plain boredom. In a new menopausal middle age where life is all about a painful body, social and career indifference and outright boredom, I need my holidays to be about escapism and peace with some challenges and a moderate level of comfort thrown in.

I still follow Ultra racers as they take on their various global challenges. I absolutely know why they do it. I love seeing their smiling faces beaming from Morocco to Mumbai, Armenia to Atlanta. I also tire of seeing their bleary eyed tearful updates from in-race reels, crying about how tired they are of fighting with the punc­ture fairy or empty stomachs. The pride in their placed finish is palpable. The knowledge I won't ever be placed is real. I mean last or second-to-last is a place but why bother?

Well, the bothering is not the problem. I have the bother. I have the bother to go back to my bike. I have the bother to dig out my camping gear. Now I know I can relocate the dog's home to be "any place Trep/Tsk/food/bed/water" is then my world has just opened up. 

For years I've dreamed of long trips with a canine companion in tow. 

The day to day strife of long trips is reflected in the fire at the cottage. That I can't do more than that one thing. How do you keep a fire running, play with the dog? the kids? have a career? watch TV? The day in / out task of surviving comfortably through simple heat - it's all consuming. 

I remember the constant battle throughout childhood to keep the fire lit. Accepting that sometimes, if you want to treat yourself to a lie in or all-day-out, you'd need to go through the whole rigmarole of lighting the fire again - from cold, wet coal. This morning we didn't start the fire which is fine, it was a beautiful day.

 Instead we loaded the new dog trailer onto the bike and set off in search of the local railway trail to cycle all of 15km to Robin Hoods Bay.  Our first-and only major-hurdle was a flat rear tyre on my bike, no spanner to remove the trailer hitch thru axle and no sealant left in the tyre. A loan from the local "garage" (bloke operating off the street out of his shed) had us fixed up for the day and back on the road. The dog was happy as Larry in her new trailer then once we finally reached the Cinder Trail, she was perfectly happy to trot alongside as we rode. Initially there were a few emergency stops when she stopped for sniffs but eventually she settled into a steady trot or run and we made good progress over 5km. When we reached a road section for us to go and find a pub she got a ride in the trailer again. We all held out for snacks till the next bench then saddled up / put the dog on board for the descent into Robin Hood's Bay where our only near- miss occurred. TSK had failed to close off the dog's viewfinder window and she wriggled her over-inquisitive nose out, closely followed by head and legs. Thankfully I heard the velcro opening and realised what was happening in time to ground to a halt before she disappeared under the trailer wheels.  To allow all of us the space to calm down, we walked her to the end of the trail and only asked her to hop back in when we were on nice smooth tarmac. She did so without hesitation. If the Emergency stop or slow descent weren't hard on the brakes then the 30% road descent to Robin Hoods Bay harbour with 32kg of dog and trailer attached was the true test. Thankfully we (and everyone else) survived the steep descent and we parked the trailer with the boat trailers and the bikes in the beer "garden" where we could sit and watch the sea and enjoy a late lunch.

After a half pint we successfully pushed the bike/trailer combo up the hill and managed to keep control of the dog who was on her lead - there are no free rides up 30% hills.

Once back in traffic (the car park queue) we tucked the dog away and rode as swiftly as possible to the place where we could let her out for a run again. It was suddenly clear to me how much this was like old times. We never carried a trailer on our Canada tour but my pannier on the rack reminded me that this is an eminently doable form of transport. I was so glad I've had a weighty loadable gravel bike all these years just waiting for the opportunity to get out there & explore with my loopy snoot at my side.

After awhile it was clear she wasn't interested in more running as she just trotted along - rarely asking for me to quicken the pace to a run. So, we opened the trailer, she got straight in and lay down. TSK, my rear view mirror reported that, had she been any more chill, she'd have closed her eyes and gone to sleep. In fact, as soon as the tarmac got smoother she set her nose down on her mat. At the supermarket she did a lap of the carpark on foot before settling back in for a snooze. We had one comfy pup on our hands.

The trailer is muti-functional. Her future is in there for when she just wants to lie down and look out the windows. Her adventures are in there. I'm looking forward to plotting future routes in quiet places. It might be a means to an end for me. She might be my greatest HT 550 training tool or it might be that she can accompany me on a more leisurely ride through Scotland to watch the race unfold in all its glory in some of the best wild spaces in the world.

Until then, I'll stare into the flames to see what other dreams are contained within.