Cycling has been Scot’s lifelong passion and he looks forward to many more years on two wheels.
As he cycles off into the sunset with his last column for The Courier, Scot Tares reflects on the effect cycling has had, and continues to have, on his life.
My first Blazing Saddles column appeared on January 21 2012 – 456 columns and almost nine years later, it is time to bow out.
Over the years I have loved writing about many aspects of cycling and sharing the adventures I have taken with friends and family and through working with bikes at home and abroad.
In my research for material for future columns I have learnt a great deal about cycling and discovered aspects of cycling that were new to me, including the first mountain bikers; the Buffalo Soldiers, the African-American regiments who formed in 1866 and made an epic 800 mile journey from Fort Missoula to Yellowstone National Park and back again on bikes.
Over the years I have delved deep into my knowledge of two wheels and that of others to find different aspects of cycling to write about.
I have been told stories from friends and readers have been in touch to tell me of their own adventures. Among others I have met and interviewed Mark Beaumont, Sarah Storey, Graeme Obree and the author (and previous track cyclists) Richard Moore.
I have surprised myself with links between cycling and other aspects of life. Sometimes they have been tenuous, but fun to write.
One memorable piece came to me as I recalled the French professional cyclist, Laurent Jalabert racing up the Law in Dundee on the 1989 Tour of Britain and it brought to mind the late Michael Marra’s song Frida Khalo’s visit to the Tay Bridge Bar.
As I write this last column I have been looking through the previous copy I have written and it has highlighted how much cycling has been part of my life.
At two years old my dad put me on a bike, which I immediately fell off and for years had the gravel marks on my forehead to prove it. Now I head off into the mountains with my family on multi-day bike-packing adventures.
Along the way I have made many friends – in fact there are very few people I know who don’t have a link with cycling in some fashion or other.
I was never an academic school pupil, and it was the Duke of Edinburgh award that gave me the confidence to venture further afield and realise that there was more to life than qualifications.
It would have been hard to imagine then that my future self would travel the world and cycling would be my career and my passion that permeated every part of my life.
I grew up painfully shy, and it was being in the outdoors that helped me overcome that obstacle. From once lacking the confidence to put my hand up in class and answer a question, I now revel in standing up in front of large audiences and speaking about bikes and cycling.
2020 has been a strange year and I understand the distress that many school pupils are going through as they struggle to consolidate their learning with a view to future careers.
I left school with very few qualifications and even less of an idea of what I wanted to do with my life. It has been a bumpy, but fascinating road to where I am now.
If I could tell my younger self one thing it would be not to stress on the details. If you believe in and are passionate about something enough, then you will enthuse others and you can make a success out of whatever you want to do.
Over the years I have gathered many anecdotes, but perhaps the one I recall most is a school coaching session. The teachers had warned me of one pupil who would be disruptive.
They didn’t tell me who and as the session progressed I forgot all about the warning. At the end of the session one boy came up to thank me and tell me he “didn’t realise that cycling could be so much fun”. That boy, it turned out, was the one I had been told might be disruptive.
It reminded me of the moment that I realised that the world of academia was not for me. Instead, there was a entire world out there that mainstream education, at that time, had not told me about.
It was a revelation and one that would shape the rest of my life.
