From Lourdes to Lisbon with the Blazing Saddles Autumn 1998 by
Graeme Fife

Well, now: one serendipitous day in 1991 Eamon
Duffy, Director of the National Council of the Blind of Ireland, whose
effect on fund-raising resembles that of abrupt movement on
nitro-glycerine, got it in his head to gather up a whole bunch of
cyclists, and send them out far and wide to pedal their socks off for
charity. The Blazing Saddles, (hereafter Saddles) were born.
Irish blood
is rich fuel to any sort of challenge and there’d be no soft riding, but
what’s a long day in the saddle, for goodness’ sake, against the
permanent trial of being blind. Besides, the stars of the team’d be the
tandems, with a sighted pilot and a VIP (visually-impaired person) in
the engine room to force the pace. The Saddles rode their first tour – of
California – in 1992 and since then, (through Europe, South Africa,
Australia, Canada) motivated by velocipedimania and a heartily piratical
way with sponsors, the outfit has raised around £200,000 a year.
Anyone can join and the team spirit makes any Saturday night camaraderie
in a Dublin pub look unduly tepid. So it was that on 4 September 1998
the Saddles wheeled out from Lourdes on the Expo’98 Challenge to ride
some 930km through France and Spain into Portugal.

To single out but one example of Saddles’ dedication to fund-raising for the Blind of
Ireland, septuagenarian Pat Moony typifies the breed: he takes in
laundry to stump up his £2,000 entry money. Hurley sticks lashed
to his bike’s crossbar- a quick game at the lunch stops to burn off
spare energy – Pat is, it must be owned, a bit of a quare one in that he
appears to string out his energies between breakfast and dinner on a
diet of scarce more than water… a substance deemed by most Saddles
to be fit only for the locating of punctures.

The Tour
leader Sean Kelly – so enamoured of the Irish green, that he won the
emerald Points jersey of the Tour de France a hitherto unequalled four
times – has ridden for the NCBI since 1993/4, out of devotion to the
Saddles’ freewheeling cause and sheer love of the bike. It’s inspiring
for everyone, the hot shots, the wee nifties, the young, old and
in-betweens and the cheery occasionals to ride alongside the man and
observe him biffing empty cardboard boxes into the verge with a sideways
flick of his back wheel and see his grin crack wide.

The
spirit of cooperation throughout the tour was, by general assent, good,
marred only by the repeated attempts of various splenetic individuals to
discombobulate the chairman, Fergus O’Hagan, SC (Silk Cut) prominent
member of the Irish Bar. Prominent member is,admittedly, an incautious
turn of phrase in this context, but, so be it. Fergus’ robust
committment to long-distance cycling is famous and he pursues, to use
the word at its very loosest, he pursues an idiosyncratic fitness
r&eacute:gime which leaves most so-called amateur gutbusters gasping.
Yet, selfish puncture victims, heartlessly presuming on their Chairman’s
sunny temper, would quite off-handedly importune temporary loan of his
front wheel thus consigning him, all a-fret, to the padded smoking
lounge of the broom wagon .He was, it goes without saying, bitterly
reluctant to cede the loss of a few hours of athletic action in a baking
sun on unforgiving roads, jostled by a peloton of certifiable lunatics,
yet his own native magnanimity won through, wedded as he is to
philanthropic principle -care for the less fortunate, lending a hand to
people in a fix, needlessly ingratiating tosh of that ilk. I passed his
trim figure (well, from certain angles, trim) at the foot of one climb,
2 km of vicious 7% hairpins up a bare hillside into conifer groves balmy
with resin and sunburnt pine cones. He stood at the side of the road
fuming, ( Silk Cut ), as Fintan McGill loaded his now unrideable
monocycle into the trailer.

I hailed him. ‘You’ll have been sorry
to miss this climb. ‘
‘I was looking forward to it’ he replied,
ruefully, ‘but, as you know, I’m here on a scholarship from the
Samaritans.’

(By the bye, chief mechanic Fintan’s adept wielding
of toolbox, tyre-lever and monkey wrench helped many a stranded Saddle
out of a hole and the man’s grace under pressure never yielded to
impatience or ill-temper ‘Fling the bloody crate in the trailer won’t
you, and let’s get on ‘ he’d say, amiably.)
To resume: the
Chairman’s reserve cracked but once. ‘What’s the Portugese for “thick as
a plank”?’ he asked me one day at the lunch stop ‘ I’m going to snarl at
one of these policemen and get myself arrested, I could do with a
ride.’

In the interests of keeping him at full racing peak I bit
my tongue and cruelly withheld the information.

In Povoa, the
Saddles’ FA XI (opinions as to the precise signification of that acronym
FA vary wildly) challenged the hotel team to an evening game of soccer.
They at once fell victim to local chicanery. Unbeknownst, the home side
had dug up the entire pitch overnight and spirited the turf away,
leaving a wicked surface of shifting sands to which their own
preternaturally long boot studs were well-suited. The Saddles, in more
traditional pumps, floundered. Moreover, the Portugese cunningly adopted
an all-white strip, rendering them nigh-invisible in the glare of the
powerful floodlights. Nor was this the end of it – no level playing
field here. The Irish team, sportingly clad in the traditional red of
Ulster, their supporters supplying the green of Eire along the
touchline, were further hampered by the inclusion in their number of a
contingent of motley English and Caledonian makeweights, two of whom,
through a lamentable breakdown in liaison, and faithlessly ignoring the
Saddles’usual more laid back policy on such occasions, actually scored
goals. Indeed, they scored all the visitors’ goals. (These
supernumeraries, from a TIC team which supports and helps adults with
learning disabilities, are based in Coventry. Following their shameless
hogging of the limelight on this occasion they were fortunate not to be
sent back there on the next plane.) However, nobility shone through and,
in the interests of entente cordiale, the Saddles graciously conceded a
7-3 defeat to the plucky Portugese. Their cheer leaders, though, did
carry off the Molly Malone Invitation plaque – by unanimous decision of
Eamon Duffy, the Tour director – not least for an ebullient rendition of
the Blazing Saddles anthem in mid-pitch at half-time:

If you
follow the Blazing Saddles Clap your hands (bis)
If you follow the
Blazing Saddles
You must really push the pedals
It’s the
greatest cycling team in all the land
etc etc blah blah
blah

(Authorship of this stirring farrago of twaddle is, for
patriotic reasons and in the interests of the miscreant’s personal
survival, kept a closely-guarded secret.)

The cheer-leaders were
led out by Jan Flanagan and Anne Carey, the two of them also responsible
for daily signposting of the route, a varied, scenic itinerary planned
meticulously by Jan and Nick her husband. Skulking out of the hotels
unbreakfasted at 6am like a pair of double-room moonlighters, Jan and
Anne pasted, pinned and posted arrows notices and fingerposts from start
to finish of the daily rides, crucial roundabouts, tricky side turnings
and all. Often to no avail, of course. Many of the Saddles are blind;
quite a few of the other Saddles habitually act blind and the official
back marker spent many a lazy hour dozing on the grass verges in the
afternoon sun waiting for stray breakaway groups who’d shot left past
signs pointing right, to be hauled back in the shimmering slipstream of
ride-marshall Alfie Acheson’s powerful motorbike lately believed to have
been summarily repossessed by the Guardai in Dublin. Indeed, one balmy
morning, the said back marker watched with the sort of affectionate
amusement normally reserved to a mother duck watching her brood heading
for the weeds, as a party of the Saddles forged ahead up the inner lane
of the motorway heading for Gibraltar.

On the seafront in Povoa – an
ancient fishing port – stands a monument to a blind man of the sea, 0
Cego de Maio. His sightless eyes brood on the massive Atlantic rollers
which hammer incessantly at this coast (I tried swimming in them: a
snail’d have better luck in the high jump.) A century ago, he’d been a
fisherman who went blind but continued to venture out into the
treacherous waters when boats were foundering and saved many a life.He
knew the currents so well, every rock and sandbar and he homed in on the
cries of distress over the keening of the wind and the crash of the
tide. Blind, going out into that furious ocean. Makes a creature
shudder.

I’d never, before this trip, talked to a blind person. ‘We’re
the same as you’ Geraldine said to me. Kind words, if inexact . The
cheerful resource of the blind over their affliction is humbling .How
many sighted people expend so much effort on the easy labours of their
day as it takes a blind person merely to get about, to fumble round in a
strange bathroom, to eat a plate of food, to make a cup of coffee ? And,
at the same time, spice it with humour .In Oporto we visited the HQ of
Sandeman’s. Our guide, togged out in replica of the famous logo – black
Spanish sombrero: cue sherry, Coimbra university student’s cape’ cue
port – switched on the slide show and asked if everyone could see.
Stefan Grace, who’s blind, said he couldn’t see a thing .The guide
feverishly tweaked the knobs and twiddled the focus and asked if that
was better.

‘I still can’t see a thing ‘ said Stefan.

After the guided tour, the Saddles were parked at refectory tables to sample the drink
known as ‘bottled sunshine’, ruby and white. Plainly considering this
beverage to be a teetotal drink, resembling the true Guinness only
remotely, by its deep red colour, one of the company, when informed that
he was drinking a vintage over 20 years old, peered dolefully into his
miniscule glass, the fourth he’d swallowed, and replied ‘ It’s very
small for its age.’

Ah, the drinking. Many of the Saddles resemble Flann
O’Brien’s Third Policemen not a little, in that they must surely be well
over 50% bicycle in constitution for, like the bike, they find
themselves unable generally to stand up without something to lean
against. To be fair to the philosophical notion of bicycle qua bicycle,
this is because, come the evening, many of the Saddles are often more
dished than ever their wheels are. Take blind Gerrie Lennon. Please ?
No, come on, now, charity, charity. Gerrie came to the Expo Tour ready
for spritely action, as ever; then, having left his guitar behind at the
start of the tour in Lourdes, he persistently left his own self behind
in assorted hotel rooms long after the rest of the Saddles had departed.
His taxi bill for the Tour is reputed to have topped the accumulated
jackpot for the Saddles’ nightly lottery, the Blotto, by several
noughts. This gratuitous sponsorship of local cab firms began with 2
careless hours oversleeping at the hotel in Santander. One misadventure
rapidly piled on top of another till finally, in an attempt to get back
to the hotel bar from Lisbon in advance of the returning coaches, he
poached a ride with the luckless Peter Donagher, who, eager to crack on,
missed his motorway exit and proceeded to Coimbra, where we’d lodged a
week earlier. The pair of them eventually stumbled into the hotel at 4
am there to be informed by Fergus how, three hours earlier, the hotel
manager had declared the bar open for unlimited free drinks, but, dearie
me, the curfew guillotine had just fallen .A passing Saddle accused
Fergus of a bare-faced callous untruth, shameless in a man of the silk.
Fergus promptly and stoutly denied the charge in strenuous terms,
calling it sheer calumny and mischief of which a man of his affable
disposition could never be capable. Then, looking Gerrie square in his
blind eyes, he complained of fresh-air poisoning and claimed a
cigarette. Gerrie saw his chance and shrewdly refused the snout on pain
of access to the Chairman’s minibar. An ugly scene there might have
been, but negotiations proceeded, spurred by nicotine starvation on the
one side and a powerful thirst on the other and the exchange was decided
upon.

The Saddles have a lot of fun: it’s an essential to the spirit and
enterprise of raising money, but every one of them has to earn their
sponsorship, and all the high jinks can never disguise the passion at
the heart of the company. Outside the hotel in Bilbao, on the morning of
8 September, the whole company stood dismounted while Sean Kelly
delivered a moving tribute, in Spanish and English, to the Spanish
children caught up and killed in the Omagh bomb outrage. We paused a
minute in silence and prayed for these minutes to be multiplied into
years and for the men who won’t budge an inch yet rant, from their
bunkers of violence or sanctimonious rectitude, of going the extra mile
for peace, to be shamed into silence.

The last port of call was Fatima,
and on the ride into that other shrine to Our Lady, Stefan Grace was
partnered by Sean Kelly This necessitated a change of footwear – the
tandem pedals didn’t take cleats. Even Kelly, who seems to be capable of
divesting himself of most items of apparel whilst in the saddle on the
move and, sporadically, losing them by the side of the road, had to
admit defeat here and dismount. Stefan, ever alert for a dose of tar,
puffed away the delay cheerily. When at last they were on the move,
Stefan, sensing that Kelly was going particularly well that day, leaned
over his man’s shoulder to spur him on, adding that since he seemed to
be surplus to requirement just then, he was going to take a much-needed
cigarette break.

Later still, on the long climb to the plateau on which
Fatima is built, Stefan reached into his back pocket for a mouth organ
and, punctuating vocals with instrumental solos, chivvied the peloton of
150 riders up the gradient with a medley from the Irish songbook,
rounding off, as the peculiar tradition dictates, with:

If you follow
the Blazing Saddles
Keep both eyes peeled for puddles
Unless, like me,
you happen to be blind.

In Fatima that day, Peter Donagher and the
catering crew, who are to the conjuring-up of roadside picnics and the
shrugging off of trying circumstances what the Campagnolo rear mech is
to smooth gear changes, produced their final lunch of the Saddles’ Tour
’98, an entirely sumptuous barbecue in a pine grove. The magnificent
catering team spent their days largely setting up and breaking camp,
making the food, serving the food and clearing it all away before the
drive on to the next hotel .Gruelling work .They and the luggage crew,
who packed and unpacked the antics with bags, bikes and assorted
paraphernalia every day, morning and afternoon, provided the kind of
support service which you couldn’t put a price on or ever hope to repay
.If an army marches on its stomach, the Saddles undoubtedly ride on
their back-up of professional class organisers knitted together by the
liaison of Eleanor Kirwan and kept in health by the medical care of
Caitriona Devilly and Clodagh Loftus, each one of them peerless,
uncomplaining, efficient and time no object. Why, Jacko ‘Luggage’
McCarthy was frequently to be found zigzagging along the hotel corridors
in the early hours of a morning apparently carrying out security checks
entirely beyond the immediate call of duty. Before lunch that day in
Fatima, Eamon Duffy reminded the Saddles that if anyone wanted to ride
into town they should be sure and take their bicycle with them. Given
the prevailing record of forgetfulness among the party, this advice was
timely. It was only when we reached the perimeter of the sanctuary that
we discovered that cycling is not permitted therein, nor are dogs,
beggars, bag-snatchers, mobile phones, radios, brass instruments,
ball-games, decolleté off-the-shoulder beachwear, brawling etc.
One of the Saddles, scrutinising the list of banned activities,
murmured:

‘Well, we’re going to have a ball in here.’

On
the penultimate morning of the Tour, the Cowell family, who supply the
Saddles with unstinting supplies of physiotherapy, massage, team
merchandise and merciless humour, set up their stall in the lobby of the
Dos Templarios hotel, a vast atrium done out in marble and plate glass.
Unconscionably posh. This being the last opportunity they had of hawking
their wares, the Cowells – Margaret, Joe and Mick – supplemented the
customary display of smart new leisure-wear with various items of lost,
found and inexplicably discarded apparel unearthed from the murkier
corners of their van, including three pairs of knickers (ladies’,
ownership unproved, two used), ditto pairs of underpants (mens’,
ownership unconfessed) and assorted socks (odd and matched). Consider
the astonishment etched on the faces of a party of tight-lipped Price
Waterhouse executives in Italian suits who emerged from the lift that
morning to find their route to the conference hall blocked by a trestle
table piled with jumble from a travelling Irish street-market.

On
the Expo Tour ’98, we cycled through villages quaintly named Chaos, For
Sale and Water All-year-round The route took us along wild sea-coasts,
dipping and soaring over cliff edges with the Atlantic surf coursing in
onto smashed causeways of gleaming black rock and half-moon bays of
smooth sand, over the ups and downs of the lower Pyrenees as they peter
out westwards, by winding riverside paths, through the eucalyptus
forests of northern Spain and Portugal. On a Sunday morning so tranquil
and still, down green country lanes so rapt in peace you’d have known it
for the Lord’s Day even without the church bells, we rode out of Orthez
where, the night before, a Basque choir had charmed the fatigue and
clamour out of us with songs in harmonies that dropped from a clear blue
heaven and words of that queer impenetrable language which even the
Devil, in seven years of learning, could master no more than 3 words of,
though what the three are the Devil is keeping schtumm about. And after
they’d finished, we dined and danced to the gleeful jazz and swing of a
local band in the hall where dinner was served For three days, echelons
of Basque motorbike police escorted us through their province as if we
were visiting bike-racing royalty and one day one of them shot the
sweeper five miles back to the bunch, after a puncture, gripping the
seat of his saddle and propelling him at 60mph in an ecstasy of terror
and idiot disbelief. In Maceda, the village children lined the church
square and cheered after the priest had given us his blessing for the
progress of the ride that had paused in their small corner, the gift of
a hello and farewell and a return of the smile we hoped to convey to
every place we passed through after Lourdes itself, scene of the special
Mass and a memorable hymn of Envoi from Stefan Grace himself, to the
last, elated ride up the massif above Tomar to the convent/castle, once
home of the Templan Knights, lords of Tomar… the men and women of the
Saddles notched up miles of sweet riding and honest sweaty riding, many
evening hours of the well-lubricated craic and days of hot sun and one
of cool rain. Standing outside a bar, dripping wet that very day, one of
the Saddles remarked ‘If I was as wet inside as I am outside, wouldn’t I
be as dry as a bone ?’

The Tour was, by common consent, an
exceptional one. There was but one injury and that no thanks to a Jehu
of a car driver. The money was raised and newcomers to the Saddles’
experience didn’t quite know what to say on make of it. One debutante to
the ride, when asked what she thought of the whole shebang, replied:
‘There are no words in life to describe these people’ and, tangled up in
who knows what whirl of emotions, incomprehension and utter disbelief
that the thing had had not only happened but that she’d been part of it,
turned on her heel and sidled off. She was later found unaccountably
refusing the offer of a glass of draught vinho verde in a tidy wee local
bar, boasting more than a hint of homeside ambiance, so shaken was she,
evidently, by the tomfoolery and unpredictability of that extraordinary
fortnight, the epic two-wheel trek from Lourdes to Tomar/Lisbon by the
1998 Blazing Saddles.

If you follow the Blazing Saddles />
You’re sure to wind up addled
By a joie de vivre for which you
never planned
Oh, en passant, and in the interests of group
hygiene and one particularly fragile reputation, I wish to scotch
unseemly reports that the following exchange did actually take place:
Male Saddle to group of Female Saddles: ‘Who’s for an orgy ?
2am till 5am, room 312.’
‘You’re disgusting.’
‘Oh, come on.
It won’t be a dirty orgy. There’ll be no smoking and no coffee breaks.
It’ll be clean, totally clean.’
It’s that disgusting that sticks
in the craw.

Finally, it’s my opinion, for what that’s worth,
that:
Every Blazing Saddle
Deserves a winner’s medal

They’re the most generous, idiotic, warm-hearted, crazy,
rambunctious cycling team in all the land.

The Sweeper

posted on April 20th, 2011