I REMEMBER looking at the clock. I got my bike out.

“You’re not going up there, are you?”

There’s no memory of an answer passing my lips, I just left. The streetlights hadn’t come on yet, but the clouds had rallied to see off the longest day of the year.

Vanishing for a while, I went there eventually, finding my dad with his siblings and his mum.

A few decades on, there are responsibilities, but the urge to disappear has never quite gone away. It sits somewhere tapping out the perfect cadence in the background, waiting for the fizzing accompaniment to return.

When earlier this year I got back on the bike, it lacked the spontaneity of youth. It’s been years since I last fell off one, so excuses not to climb back on were easy to be found. Work at home, work at large, the most important thing is work.

In the days when all I seemed to do was ride, I never really had the time to see the country. Racing gave me a lot, so much so that it managed somehow to swamp out the urge to explore that got me on the bike in the first place.

The tapping never goes away though, getting louder as autumn’s chaotic loss gives way to winter’s clarity.

Last August as we sat with my father, I’d resolved to do something of use for the hospital that looked after him, and a bike ride had crossed my mind. A fun-run wasn’t going to do it though. A thousand miles in 10 days for the Marsden and CWU Humanitarian Aid — whose convoys he helped with — seemed like a good idea at the time.

We left Govan on July 12. Eyebrows had been raised at the date, but it fitted around the work of my fellow traveller, Phil who had got himself new wheels for the occasion — somehow it also managed to be the first time I’d actually crossed the Govan reunification bridge.

It of course turned out to be the hottest day of the year… Not to worry, the first half of the day was a jaunt along the Forth and Clyde Canal to Edinburgh. A pleasant enough ride to the Falkirk Wheel — flat, naturally — before almost coming a cropper on the wet cobbles that lay in wait in the dimly lit tunnels.

It was a relief to get on the road as we approached Edinburgh to meet retired telecom engineer and CWU comrade, Johnny — ably assisted by brother Alfie and his golden-doodle Buddy — who’d volunteered to feed, water and put up the tent for us as we made our way round the country.

Riding over the Forth Road Bridge, I looked at the giant nuts and bolts and wondered which of them my grandpa had worked on. It was all there was to see as we entered the haar — the North Sea fog that regularly envelopes the east coast — making a mockery of my promise to Phil of a view of the rail bridge.

The heat that came later as we rode through Fife was forgotten in the drama of Phil and I losing one another, but over the Tay Bridge, and up to Alyth the first 136 miles were done, a ride that — despite my earlier confident declaration that morning that I didn’t get sunburn on my legs — left me lying fried on the grass of the campsite with no conception of how we would keep this up for another day, never mind another nine.

Something else niggled though. I had always enjoyed hills on the bike, but the bumps on the first day worried me a little, if I’m honest. They didn’t come as easy as they once did. “You’re older, you’re heavier, and it’s not a bloody race,” I told myself.

At the end of the first day, Johnny had lifted up both our bikes and joked mine was “not a proper racing bike,” and weighed twice what Phil’s did. I defended its honour — my ride was the steel-framed devil I’d built to race on in 1995. To be honest, it wasn’t the lightest even then, but it has memory.

It’s been all over, it’s heard cheers, it’s been in pile-ups, it’s been lifted and laid at the end of the day by a father coping with a grumpy teenager.

In the struggle of the first couple of days, I could barely look at it as I searched for the shadows that had deserted us with a little mantra of “remember why you’re here, remember why you’re here.”

The thought of the causes could do nothing but encourage, but in the end the truth was that I was there because I’d lost my father and reminding myself with every pedal stroke.

Something changed though, even as some of the gradients topped 20 per cent, I stopped wrestling with my old friend and remembered how to do it rather than just talk about how I once had. Eyes on the horizon and go over the hill, not up it.

The cloud lifted on the Western Isles, I could see the world I was passing through.

The villages, and hamlets, even the seemingly randomly placed postboxes sitting in scenery as stunning as anywhere on our Earth. Eagles, dolphins, the odd herd of intransigent Highland cattle and more black sheep than I’ve ever seen in my life.

And people. The odd grump behind the wheel of a Range Rover, but the dozens who passed the time of day as we passed on our way. Sitting on ferries and listening to families who had grafted all year joyfully gossip on who won what at the agricultural show.

Then there are the For Sale signs littering the landscape. Communities slowly hollowed-out not just by the draw of the young to the cities, but by a generation being left unable to buy or even rent in their home islands, disjointed by holiday lets, second homes, retirement getaways and the wealthy building their Bond-villian dream homes where crofts once stood.

I’ll confess to entertaining thoughts of taking down one of those For Sale signs myself, and living the fantasy of life in a rural idyll. It is fantasy though, one born of privilege and ignorance of how hard it is to make a decent living.

The lack of a decent phone signal for much of the journey may seem like the perfect escape for those of us who find ourselves grafted onto the machines these days, but I can imagine it’s somewhat less of a boon if it’s your everyday life.

Back when I built the bike, a mobile phone was something of a novelty — my dad once called on his new BT-issued phone from under a rock near Arrochar purely because he could — now they’re barely used to make calls at all.

Still, over a week with sketchy phone signal and almost no political chat brought the horizon into view again.

On the last day, we circumnavigated Arran, where my dad had once also entertained fantasies of escape, before jumping on a ferry thankfully small enough to take us to his home town of Ardrossan rather than Troon 20 miles away.

A drizzle began as I pulled out the magic insulating tape to carry out running repairs on my old saddle. By Paisley, the rain fell like stair rods, but we roared on, acclimatising to multi-storey buildings, traffic and even traffic lights once again.

Heading along Paisley Road West into Govan, we cheered the soaked Palestine solidarity campaigners outside Helen Street Police Station, where — I later realised — one of their number had been held.

Rolling back to where we started, the Mary Barbour statue at Govan Cross, a small group of comrades had gathered to welcome us home.

I remembered why we’re here.