My name is David Leigh. I was born and brought up in Lancashire but for the past twenty years I have lived in Quorn which, for those who don't know the area, is a village in Leicestershire just south of Loughborough. As a 58 year old lawyer with two children and two grandchildren I should probably have more sense than to embark on this sort of thing. I came to cycling as a sport late in life. When I was growing up a bike was simply a way of getting around without having to pay bus fares. That all ended with my first car. Over the next twenty years the bike gradually decayed as, unused and in pieces, it followed me round the country. At the same time I set about destroying every joint in my lower limbs by playing football twice every weekend, training midweek and running half marathons during the summer. This was augmented by a reckless program of mountain activities. For good measure I also took up skiing in a clumsy sort of way. It surprised no one apart from myself that by my mid forties my knees and ankles were beyond economic repair. Thus it was that cycling re-entered by life.
It gave me no satisfaction, of course, to see a number of like minded friends all going the same way. We now form an exclusive group of orthopedically challenged cyclists who ride together most Sunday mornings and Thursday evenings. We make a modest contribution to the sportive boom usually entering three or four every summer. Occasional forays into Europe have replaced the gruelling weeks in the Scottish mountains. I even make a regular if unconvincing attempt at a local evening time trial. Multi day touring however has been pretty much a closed book - until now.
