A Journey to the Collapse of T12

On my birthday, we were going to repeat a ride we’d done last October: the Journey to Roof of the World, up the Mennock Pass through Wanlockhead and Elvanfoot, and then back down the Dalveen. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks, but as it got closer things seemed to get in the way. First I caught a cold I couldn’t shake, and, on the preceding Saturday, I was called urgently to Edinburgh to support my sister with a family crisis. However, on Sunday afternoon I was able to get home. I got the bike – my beautiful carbon Dolan - ready, tyres pumped just so, chain cleaned. I had good big meal of pasta. I had a bath and got to bed early. The weather forecast, for what it is worth, was good.

And the morning dawned fair. Up betimes, breakfast, opening of presents, bike into truck, collect Dougie, go. At Andrew's, Gregg was already waiting, as usual with one of his slighty eccentric mongrel bikes – this one having started life as an early steel framed mountain bike, and still sporting flat bars. Andrew was riding his beautiful titanium and carbon Colnago – a machine which has the prettiest paint job I've ever seen on any bike. Dougie had brought his Massi winter training bike. We have coffee and prepare to head out. Alison has decided not to come, but might still join us en route. Just as we are leaving from Andrew's, Catherine Niblock rolled up and joined us, just back from the last round of the Scottish Cross Country series, in which she'd taken second place.

We rolled out of Dumfries pretty briskly. I was feeling good and was leading much of the time. The weather was quiet and cool, the colours of the foliage just beginning to turn to golds and yellows, the quiet back roads of Nithsdale pretty much empty of other traffic. Altogether an ideal day for a ride. What wind there was was from the East, and Dougie started to talk pretty seriously about leading me out to fifty miles an hour coming down the Dalveen. As last year I was still the slowest of the group climbing – no surprise there – but again I was making up for it by descending faster. But overall the speeds were much higher; I was much fitter, and less of a drag on the others. We passed Keir and made the obligatory stop at the smithy. A light rain started – not so much rain as a wee bit water on the wind – enough to dampen the road surface but not enough to require a waterproof (which was as well seeing I hadn't brought one).

North of Thornhill, Catherine turned back; she was tired after racing and had only really come out for a recovery ride. The rest of us headed on north, and as the landscape became increasingly rolling our speeds remained high. I was enjoying descending fast on the tribars, pushing the bike to higher and higher speeds, consciously preparing myself for the fifty miles an hour push. But I was also climbing much better. Finally, on the last climb before we would descend to cross the Nith, the last climb before the big one, Dougie and I chainganged off the front of the group. Dougie is an enormously strong man and a great cyclist; locally known as 'the bus' for his ability (and willingness) to give almost anyone a tow. But now I was feeling fit enough and strong enough to do my share at the front, and together we flew up the climb. Leading over the top I flipped up into my tallest gear, dropped on to my tribars,and started to wind up the speed.

The road snaked down the right hand side of a wooded glen, the sightlines short but the bends flowing. The surface was good, only slightly damp from the earlier rain. Riding it was just a rush, just great. Life was good. The last speed I saw on my computer was 67 Km/h.

The crash when it came was almost undramatic. I came off a righthander to see the subsequent lefthander was a lot tighter. I saw at once that I wasn't gong to be able to make the bend on my side of the road, and was slightly annoyed with myself for going too fast. I wasn't alarmed, and I didn't start panic braking. I came up from the tribars onto the hoods. I laid the bike over. But as I crossed the centre line the camber was against me and I began to realise that I wasn't going to make the bend at all. I was still trying. I remember the verge closing; rough grass, the stump of a young birch tree cut off at about fifty centimetres and coppicing vigorously...

I'd broken my back once before, in a car crash. On that occasion I knew at once I was seriously injured, that I had to lie down and not move. This didn't feel anything like that bad. The others helped me up, and together we assessed the damage to the bike. The front tyre was split, of course, and the rim horribly dented, but the wheel was true. The little plastic bridge which joins the ends of the tribars was missing, and we couldn't find it among the scrub and boulders of the roadside. Otherwise, the bike seemed fine. While Andrew passed me a hip flask of good whisky, Gregg beat the rim roughly into shape with a stone, patched the inside of my tyre and got out my spare tube. Within minutes the bike was ridable.

Dougie was, in the mean time, more concerned about me. He was sure I was badly injured, insistent we should get an ambulance. I was hurting, but I thought I was basically OK. What I was feeling was mainly guilty for spoiling everyone else's ride. I knew I couldn't complete it, but I didn't see it as an emergency. As a compromise, Andrew phoned home to Alison and asked her to come and pick me up. Because we were still on a very minor side road, we'd roll gently down to the main A76 and meet her there. We got back on our bikes and started out again down the hill. We were going a lot more gently, and at first everything felt all right; the bike definitely felt all right, which was a great relief.

Dougie was still very concerned and stuck close to me. After about a mile I was grateful of it; I don't know whether it was the ebbing of adrenaline or the jarring of the road, but the pain became too much. I braked to a halt and Dougie and Gregg lifted me off the bike. I got myself down into recovery position at the side of the road. Dougie again argued for an ambulance, and still I resisted. Alison was on her way; I'd let her take me into casualty to get checked over.

And then, just as Dougie had pretty much won the argument, a car rolled up; the local midwife, on her way down to the surgery at Sanquhar. She offered me a lift, and I accepted it. At the surgery a young GP dressed my cuts and gave me a pain killer. She advised me to sit and wait for the ambulance, which she had called. I didn't feel like sitting, so I stood. Alison arrived, with my bike in the back of her car. Once again I was all for cancelling the ambulance and going back to Dumfries with Alison, but she advised against it.

When the ambulance arrived, the crew were accepting no nonsense. Spinal injury protocol, lie down at once, on my back, hooked up to the monitors. Very competent and professional, but also extremely gentle. I felt extremely guilty for wasting their time; and later, in the infirmary, lying on a trolley in casualty, going for X ray, I was still feeling that I should sign myself out and go. These were busy people, with seriously injured patients to care for. Finally a young doctor came into my curtained cubical. I'd had a spinal injury before, he asked. Yes, I confirmed, crush fracture to the fifth thoracic, about six years ago. I was sure it was T5? Yes, I said, quite sure. OK, he said, this time you've crushed T12.

So; lessons to be learned.

Firstly, of course, a cotton cap saved my life. I wasn't wearing a helmet. I had a small bruise and graze on my forehead, consistent with it having hit a lump of granite at some point, but clearly only the most glancing of blows. This is just luck; I landed on a pile of boulders with young trees growing up through it. I could easily have gone head first into something very solid. Whether a helmet would have helped if I had I don't know.

More interesting, would downhill-style body armour have helped? Again, I don't know, but I don't think so. Immediately after the accident I assumed I had landed very hard on a rock, but that doesn't seem to be so. I'm told there is no bruising anywhere on my back, and it seems likely that it's a hyperflexion injury – I was simply bent over backwards further than my back could safely go. If back armour provides some additional stiffness support this might have been useful. It's all a bit academic, though, since no-one is going to burden themselves with full body armour for a road ride. To put this in perspective I've ridden bikes for forty years over at least one hundred thousand miles. Riding mountain bikes I've fallen off certainly thousands of times. However, this is only the third road bike crash of my life, and only the second time I've needed any medical attention at all after a bike accident. Yes, it's a bad injury, but it doesn't add up to my cycling being dangerous, in my opinion.

The one practical lesson I learned (apart from not descending too fast on roads you don't know well) was this: if you're out with a group and someone gets injured, pay no attention to what the injured person says. Dougie was absolutely right: we should have called an ambulance immediately, and I should not have moved. I could very easily have damaged my spinal cord – in fact I'm ridiculously lucky that I didn't. Adrenaline and shock clouded my judgement badly. However, thanks mainly to the ambulance crew and to the wonderful people of Ward 16 at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary, I'm going to be fine... eventually. Meantime, it hurts, which serves me right.