Slowest Known Time: A Bikepacking Adventure on the Badger Divide (Film)

In October 2021, my friend Marcus and I were on a hillside somewhere west of Burnley in Lancashire, England. It was dark and damp, and the going was rough. My front brake pad had completely worn out, and Marcus had run out of water. For both of us, this was the fifth consecutive day we were still cycling after dark, having been in the saddle for almost 12 hours. It hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing to this point, either.

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Just hours earlier, I had come off my bike on some rain and moss-slicked tarmac, Marcus had started on the migraine-strength ibuprofen to deal with some knee pain, and these were just the latest additions to a long list of trials that we had faced on the ride. These included sideways rain, route diversions, swollen rivers, cargo mounts shearing off, and countless climbs with quaintly prescient names like “O’er Top.” And this is how I found myself on that dark hillside west of Burnley, saying to myself, “I thought this was meant to be fun.”

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That 2021 ride, a 380-mile bikepacking route straddling Scotland and England known as the Second City Divide, had been the latest in a series of multi-day cycling trips stretching back 10 years. An interchangeable group of us attended these rides, all close friends from university who derive joy from getting out on bikes. As time has passed, we’ve spread all over the UK, so these trips have allowed us to spend quality time together again. What had started as single-day road rides have grown into multi-day tours, but they were always characterised by the fun of going for a bike ride with friends. Sometimes underprepared, often underbiked, and usually over-optimistic. 

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At some point, the nature of these rides blurred the between touring and bikepacking. The handlebars got wider, the tyres fatter, the gears lower, the equipment lighter, and the time spent on forums longer, but we hoped the fun would remain. And that is when Marcus and I, the first of us to make the bikepacking transition, attempted the Second City Divide. For once, we weren’t underbiked, but we were almost certainly underprepared (and definitely over-optimistic). We had done minimal distance training with daily targets set for ourselves based on our road-touring experiences, and we had pre-booked most of our overnight stops, meaning we had to actually make those distances. Add to that the driving rain, bike issues, and injuries, and it’s easy to understand how the sense of fun was somewhat lacking.

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Thinking back to that Burnley hillside where I was seriously questioning my life choices, the idea that we would actually finish the ride must have seemed like a distant dream, but somehow, finish it we did. However, finish it well, we did not. We were exhausted, injured, and both ready to not even think about bikepacking again—let alone plan another trip—for the foreseeable future.

It turned out the “foreseeable future” was about a year, as in late 2022, one of us floated the idea of another trip. This time, it would be the Badger Divide, a 210-mile route across the Scottish Highlands from Inverness to Glasgow. Joining Marcus and me would be our good friend Dave, another touring-to-bikepacking convert. Central to the planning this time was the aim for the ride to recapture the fun of our tours of yesteryear, unlike the punishing enduro we had somehow managed to turn the Second City Divide into. For starters, this route was named after a fluffy burrowing animal, which made it sound appealing and fun, but perhaps more importantly, we came up with a pretty loose plan and a very generous amount of time in which to do the ride. Yes, it would likely have its challenging moments, but why make it more challenging than it needed to be? 

The loose plan was set: We would give ourselves up to eight days to ride 210 miles from Inverness to Glasgow, a daily average of just 26 miles. At around the halfway point, we would book one hostel in advance. Apart from that, we would stay in bothies or camp. We would do this in mid-April, with the weather warming up and before too many midges were in the air. 

The one extra logistical consideration was that I had unilaterally decided to film the whole thing. So, on April 21st, 2023, with a fully loaded bike plus a backpack full of camera equipment, I set off from Cardiff to Inverness via the sleeper train to meet Marcus and Dave at the start. The film, entitled S.K.T, tells the story of the ride that followed and embodies the sense of simplicity and fun of going on a bike ride with your friends. It felt important not to contrive jeopardy, meaning, and narrative if there wasn’t any, but rather to share the experience of the trip in as close to an authentic way as possible.

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The storytelling in the film is done through conversations as we went along, rather than a voiceover recorded afterwards, and it doesn’t shy away from the fact that there’s someone behind the camera. The film also documents the planning, prep, and logistics in the run-up to the ride because, as anyone who has planned a big bike trip can attest to, that can be half the fun.

Is there an overarching narrative to the film? Not really, I would say, but some themes emerge that may resonate with anyone who has done a trip like this.

First, on a bike, you get used to a pattern of moving from the epic to the seemingly mundane quite quickly—from remoteness to urbanity and adventure to admin. One minute, you’re climbing over an epic mountain pass, then seemingly a couple of miles later, you’re in a co-op deciding which flavour of readymade sandwich to go for. 

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Second, conditions out of your control can change fast. The weather can turn a joyous afternoon cruise into a race for somewhere warm to stay, with little warning. You just have to have the flexibility in your plan to work with it to keep safe, even if it means staying in a nice warm hotel instead of in a bivvy.

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Third, the time off the bike is often as memorable as the time spent riding. Overnighting in a bothy, a well-placed lunch stop, or even a particularly nice stream for a water fill-up all go on to form part of the story of the trip.

And lastly, when it’s all going well, cycling in the hills with your friends has a simple joy that is pretty hard to beat.

The Route

Further Reading

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