Whoosh 26 Day 3
May 3rd, 2026
Whoosh 2026 Day 3 Shrewsbury to Stourport 46 miles; 1,939 ft of climbing
On Sunday morning, before we departed from Shrewsbury, four of us participating in this year’s Whoosh had the privilege of attending worship at St Chad’s church, on a hill above the town centre. Taking as his text Jesus’s words “I am the way”, the vicar, Sam Mann, told us that the words were directed to the lost. When someone in the ancient middle east did not know where he was going, he would approach a stranger and, if the stranger could help, he would say, “I am the way” and lead him in the right direction.
It was to prove itself appropriate to the day almost immediately. As we left Shrewsbury after a photo opportunity at the castle, I misunderstood instructions to follow “a one-way system” and quickly found myself on the other side of the River Severn from my companions. When I succeeded in finding the others, we encountered a group of hundreds of runners coming the other way down a cycle and pedestrian path. It was a relief when we succeeded in navigating away from them and I found myself in a group speeding along quiet roads towards the Ironbridge gorge.
I thought about the sermon again, however, when our route took us onto a section of the National Cycle Network following an old railway line on the right bank of the Severn south of Coalport. The stony, muddy surface steadily grew more and more difficult to navigate and those better at handling such conditions disappeared into the distance, leaving me to navigate on my own. I longed not so much for a stranger to guide me on the planned route as for someone to say, “here is the well tarmacked alternative”.
The experience informed my later decisions. I caught up with the other riders over lunch in Bridgnorth and we rode together to near the little town of Chelmarsh, where the planned route turned onto a private road that turned into a gravel track and then an unsurfaced path. Recognising that I would struggle to handle such conditions, I did the modern alternative of grabbing a passing stranger. I logged onto the navigating app and plotted my own route entirely on well-surfaced roads. I started to make my way along hilly country roads towards the town of Bewdley.
The time on my own afforded further opportunities to think about the sermon and some of the things other riders had been saying to me in the first two days of riding. One had remarked to me how he feared heading off too fast down hills because it was never clear what would be around the corner. I thought about that particularly when I encountered a van speeding up a steep, narrow hill as I made my way down. It occurred to me that Whoosh’s annual fundraising generally helps people to handle what happens when something unexpected comes around the corner – or to ensure people face fewer such unexpected surprises.
It also struck me that I was fortunate to be able to make choices when faced with tough conditions. Many of the charities that Whoosh helps offer assistance to people who have less choice about these things. World Bicycle Relief, our international charity this year, helps people who have no choice about taking the rough with the smooth when cycling. It provides communities with “Buffalo bikes” that will easily handle the kind of conditions that put me off and still get people to work, education and healthcare.
Thames21, meanwhile, aims to clean up the Thames basin so that future generations will encounter fewer environmental problems heading towards them unexpectedly around the corner.
It was, nevertheless, an odd experience to head off on my own. A wayfinding app might be more reliable than the wayfinding stranger of two millennia ago but it offers less companionship. As I laboured up and down the hills, I wondered whether the others had already safely arrived and were baffled at my eccentricity.
In the event, I reached our hotel for the evening behind only one other rider, who had the advantage of an e-assist bike.
But I arrived more tired and drained than by other, theoretically more demanding days. Just as in the time of Christ, it is more convivial to be lost in company than to try to make one’s way alone.