A couple of weeks ago in an episode of The Cycling Podcast, I had made a joke (meant affectionately) about the brevity of the typical Scottish summer accounting for the nation not being a cricket-playing hotbed. What I actually said was that the Scottish summer extended to as many as two days most years, not even enough for a Test match. Well, who was having the last laugh about Scottish weather now? Scotland was.
The snow failed to clear enough for the train lines to Glasgow to reopen and so we had to postpone our second Scottish show and make plans to get home. The Signet Library in Edinburgh and the people at Penguin Live, who organised the bulk of the tour, moved quickly to work on alternative dates. We’ll now be going to Edinburgh on April 12. Unfortunately, Òran Mór in Glasgow is not available for the rescheduled date so Penguin are sorting out another venue and we’ll announce that very soon. Happily François and Orla will be able to join us for the rearranged dates.
So, after the high of Wednesday night in Salford, when I think we were all buzzing from the experience, we had a strange day and a bit living Alan Partridge-style in a hotel waiting to see if the shows would go on before heading home.
Postponing two nights was a shame but it wasn’t even a choice. We simply couldn’t have got there. Even if we’d somehow managed to make it to Scotland, it would still have been the right decision to postpone. Having sold out Edinburgh, and got close to doing so in Glasgow, we didn’t want to end up in front of a couple of dozen hardy souls who’d made it through the snow. A quick look on social media suggested that 99 per cent of people who commented thought it was the right call.
The journey home went smoothly until I got to my local railway station. Snow had been falling for a while in Hertfordshire so when I arrived there were no taxis at the station, meaning I had to ring home for a lift. The roads were gridlocked so the final five miles home took almost two hours to complete.
The Cycling Podcast’s book tour will resume at the Arts Theatre in Nottingham on Wednesday, when Richard and I will be joined by Daniel. If you’d like to buy tickets for any of our remaining dates, go here.