The Guardian's head of travel Andy Pietrasik is riding in the 112-mile Etape du Dales, helping raise money for the Dave Rayner Fund. He's been practising on the North York Moors - and meeting the wildlife
Kevin didn't say anything about snakes. He'd invited me up to York at the weekend to do some training rides across the moors ahead of our attempt on the Etape du Dales cycling sportive later this month, and he'd promised it would be a "wild ride" - literally, this being spring and all. We'd probably get to see some lapwings doing their crazy mating flyby, he'd said, maybe hear a curlew call, see a hare racing across a field, or catch a spooked grouse all of a flutter in the heather. But when I asked him about adders, prompted by the sight of winter-dried bracken lining the road as we cycled across the moors from Helmsley to Cockayne, he said he'd never seen one in all his days in north Yorkshire.
The wind was whipping freezing rain into our faces from the north-west as we reached the top of Pockley moor, and we were struggling to keep our wheels turning. The energy stocks from the fat rascal I'd scoffed at Hunters deli in Helmsley square had long since been used up, and my legs were feeling hollow again. I was just reaching into my back pocket for a handful of chocolate raisins, when I almost ran over it – a checkered flag of sorts lying across the single track road, which brought me to an abrupt halt.
The adder wasn't inching sluggishly across the road as it emerged from its winter hibernation as I'd first suspected, however. Neither had it been frozen in its tracks by the unseasonal weather. Closer inspection revealed that it was now part of the fabric of the road, squashed in two parts by a wheel much bigger than a bike's. It was a fresh kill, too, though we hadn't passed many cars on that desolate high road. And it was large, much larger than the adders I'm used to seeing when fishing around the lochs of northern Scotland. Turns out there's a very healthy adder population in north Yorkshire. Only this one wasn't healthy. Almost as if in sympathy, a grouse then popped its head up by the side of the road to see what all the fuss was about as we set about taking photographs of the deceased.
Haunted by his first sighting of an adder in Yorkshire, Kevin rode the 30-odd miles from his home in York again a couple of days later to see if he could find the snake and bring it home for an autopsy to be conducted by his nine-year-old daughter. But it was gone - "Crows had it," he texted. I was beginning to feel like I was in a Ted Hughes poem.
Andy Pietrasik is head of Guardian Travel whose excellent holiday guide to North Yorkshire is here. There's also a current guide to North Yorkshire's ten best pubs (plus many more recommended by readers) on the travel site here.
The Dave Rayner Fund was set up in memory of the champion cyclist from Shipley who died aged 27 in 1994. It raises money to help other young cyclists make a racing career, and holds the Dales race annually.