'Soak my shorts': Clare's rainswept ride for rhinos with perfume-assisted pedal power

Source: Prudential RideLondon via Clare

My friend Clare seems to have been popping up on Bonkers quite a bit of late, between my post about her perfumista protege progress, a couple of posts on Cake Club, and coverage of her cycling feat last year in a London to Brighton charity ride. Despite a bandaged knee, she gamely made it round the punishing 50 mile course, spurred on by whiffs of Sarah McCartney's scent, Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers. This eclectic perfume - featuring notes of marmalade and Shimano gears - was famously inspired by Sir Bradley Wiggins' podium moment when he won the Tour de France in 2012.

In hindsight, 50 miles now seems like a leisurely pootle, for last weekend, my indomitable - and some might say completely loopy - friend took part in Prudential RideLondon-Surrey, a whopping 100 mile circuit that covered most of Greater London before meandering through large swathes of Surrey.  For months she had been following a rigorous training schedule, but until last weekend she had never ridden more than 65 miles in one go. So when last Sunday dawned (wet and stormy, as the remnants of Hurricane Bertha lashed The Home Counties), I was concerned that she might have bitten off more than she could chew this time.

Shortly after 8am, Clare posted this status on Facebook:

"On the start, in the rain. Feeling sick. Vanessa Musson will let you know if I've been taken off the course in the comments below. Fingers crossed!"

For Clare had sent me a link to a whizzy GPS app, which enabled me to follow her progress every step - or revolution, rather - of the way. This was important, as any riders found to be lagging behind risked being intercepted by marshals at one of half a dozen check points and removed from the race.  I kept logging into this app on and off through the morning and all was well in terms of Clare's mileage and average times until 13.57 when the route updates suddenly stopped around Epsom. This prompted me to call her husband in a panic, who reassured me that the battery had probably died on her phone.

Source: Prudential RideLondon

And so it proved. For at 16.13, four minutes short of eight hours since she set off, Clare arrived in The Mall, and understandably burst into tears when she saw the finishing line, in a heady mix of relief, joy and pride. For the conditions in which she had covered the course were nothing short of diabolical - at several points riders had to carry their bicycles aloft through flood waters, and two hills were taken out of the route altogether, as it would have been too dangerous to have people whizzing down a wet road at speed. This actually lopped 14 miles off the total distance, but to cycle 86 miles in such hostile weather took unbelievable grit and determination.

Source: Clare's equally proud husband!

Here was Clare's Facebook update on Sunday evening:

"Thank you everyone. I am totally and completely shattered. We went through crazy floods, thunder and rain like I've never seen. I only lost my temper once. There was a very plump girl just in front of me who, like me, had carried her bike through the floods and trundled on. Two yobs by the side of the road pointed and laughed at her. If I could ride one handed I would have slapped them. Instead, I suggested they get on their own effing bikes and try it. The rest of the people along the way were wonderful and definitely kept me going in the headwinds. Nobody tried to take me off the course. Had they done, I would have decked them."

I wrote back that I was 'proud to know' her, which I most certainly am. In fact I have been a bit tearful writing this post, which isn't at all like the Bonkers you know. ;)

Source: Clare

So...obviously, having given Clare a few days to recover this week, I had to pop the question about whether wearing Sarah McCartney's 'Eau de Wiggo' perfume again helped her focus.

"I couldn't smell anything at all. Throughout the entire route I was sniffing, but the tissues in my sleeves had soaked through. I wrung them out, but blowing your nose on papier mâché is limited in effectiveness.

I did inhale at the Start line before the downpour and felt invincible. That lasted about 20 miles. Then I just felt wet and a long way from the Finish.

I didn't get a sniff of Bradley."

Source: Cycling Weekly

Ah, too bad then, but most understandable. And would you believe Bradley was also cycling in this race? Though he will have started well ahead in the pack, so there was no chance of his catching Clare's sillage during that first section, and wondering about the identity of this olfactory impostor.

I found this amusing quote in The Guardian from another prestigious participant, former Olympic track champion, Chris Boardman, describing the weather on the day:

"It went from torrential to biblical and then just to horrendous."

And what of the rhinos, you may be asking? Well, Clare decided to raise money to protect the rhinos of Pilanesberg in South Africa, and at the time of writing has already exceeded her target by £160!. This is not a fund raising post by any means, but if anyone particularly supports wildlife causes, the link to her fund raising page is here.

Source: Prudential RideLondon via Clare

'Perfumista protégé' progress reports: No 2 - my best friend Clare, and giving a perfume about fig

Clare in pensive mood on The Ridgeway last year

Regular readers of Bonkers will have come across my best friend Clare in a number of past posts, notably on the topics of spaniels, cakes and cycling.  Facebook friends may also be familiar with her pithy and amusing comments on my wall. A marketing executive by profession, Clare is a committed cyclist and dog lover in her spare time, and also raises chickens, defends badgers and communes with owls.

Here are her answers to my questions about her perfume j******. (I've got a grip again, Tara!)

My perfume collection before

"Clinique Aromatics Elixir - gosh, how many bottles of this must I have finished over the years...still a shock of pleasure when I spray.

Chanel No 5

Chanel Coco Mademoiselle

Clarins Eau Dynamisante - originally sent to me as a freebie when I edited a woman's page in 1989 and bought subsequently whenever I could justify the cost.

Acqua di Gio - can't find this bottle at the moment. It was bought in 1998 and doesn't look like any of the bottles that came up on a Google search to check the spelling. Have they had a redesign?

Howzat! Clare's beloved spaniel Meg

Kenzo Flower by Kenzo

Jo Malone Lime Basil and Mandarin - discovered in my early thirties, after reading one of those celebrity beauty profiles in the Observer Magazine, I think. I can't remember the celebrity and certainly wasn't interested in her favourite lipstick, but was intrigued by her description of her signature perfume and bought a bottle. I've had lots of bottles since and have also spent far too much money on the body lotion and even candles.

La Perla Creation - unearthed among the bottles provided in the loo at Chantilly after a leg wax, my wedding perfume, and I think the unwitting cause of your perfume obsession. When I wanted another bottle and Chantilly stopped selling it, you undertook to track one down online for my birthday. That night, in Pizza Express, you excitedly told Nicola and me that you had discovered that perfumes came in different groups (woody, floral etc) and attempted to categorize us. A slippery slope. So in a way, perhaps you are my protégé? In a 'What-have-I-done?!' kind of way."

Editor's note: My recall of this early phase of perfume mania is a bit fuzzy (mental fog again), but I believe the original trigger to have been a couple of (to my nose) rather sweet perfumes worn by another friend, which I googled to see if they contained similar notes (they did!). That said, the La Perla mission would have been entrusted to me very much around this time - for Clare's birthday would have been just three weeks from the exact date when perfume mania struck in early 2008.

Where it nearly all began ~ source: fragrantica.com

What do I own now?

"All the above plus:

Guerlain Mitsouko, bought after Tony (husband) and I watched an amazing documentary about Guerlain.

Guerlain Acqua Allegoria La Collection (set of miniatures comprising Flora Nymphea, Bouquet No 1, Pamplelune and Herba Fresca).

Creed - still in search of the elusive one sampled in Selfridges in Manchester, I have had Spring Flower, Himalaya, Love in White and Fleurissimo.

L'Artisan Parfumeur- the wonderful, wonderful, Premier Figuier as first (and successively) given by you. Fleur d'Oranger, Dzongkha (a mistake).

Pecksniff's Iced Tea and Fig

Which brings me on to...anything figgy, thank you xxx!"

Editor's note - I have since given Clare small bottles / purse sprays of Sonoma Scent Studio Fig Tree and Ava Luxe Fig Wood, while Sarah McCartney kindly donated a decant of 4160 Tuesdays Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers to spur Clare on on her long distance cycle races.  NB I can only take credit for introducing Clare to the various fig-themed perfumes - all the others mentioned she winkled out herself.

The figgy trigger ~ source: profumeriaparis.com

How have my feelings about fragrance changed?

"I think that as a result of owning more bottles and trying more 'stuff' I have understood more about what I really like. I describe this as a perfume that smells of a thing. Something organic, not something perfumey. This has probably always been the case - when I was at university I used to wear the overpoweringly strong rose perfumes that Boots (Number 7?) used to produce at the time. I just hadn't thought about it enough to appreciate what it was that drew me towards particular fragrances. I would definitely not have tried anything figgy, had you not steered me towards those and what visceral pleasure I would have missed!

For the record, I have never, ever, ever worn Anais Anais. It is, nonetheless, the perfume most gifted to me. I received another bottle at Christmas, which was presented to the 'Unwanted Gifts raffle' at work. An unfaithful boyfriend once picked up a bottle for me in a Duty Free. I don't know whether I was angrier that he turned out to have several other girlfriends at the same time, or that he had bought me Anais Anais. My dad and I disposed of it ceremonially, with my dad holding the dustbin while I attempted to get the bottle into the bin from ever further away.

Cxx"

 Editor's note: The notorious Anais Anais shot putting incident is also recounted in a Cake Club post here."

Figgy quiddity ~ source: bilgiustam.com

Then on the occasion of my birthday last month, there was an interesting twist to this story, when Clare gave me a surprise gift of perfume as one of my presents - from a British independent perfumer of whom I had not even heard, never mind tried his wares! A case of protégé turned mentor, you could say - the full account is coming up in the next post!

Dogs and cycling captured in one shot!

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'Eau de Wiggo': 4160 Tuesdays Time To Draw The Raffle Numbers, And Bandage Girl Clare's Gallant Ride

Perfume and its copiously stamped and cheerfully spotted box

My friend Clare - owner of the perfumista pooch Meg, who narrowly missed becoming a calendar bitch - is mad on cycling.  No, really, she is completely obsessed with it, going out at every available opportunity to cover 20 miles here and 35 miles there.  She has taken to loitering in Lidl to take advantage of their occasional random deliveries of budget cycling kit, of which she assures me one can never have enough. Given that Clare is a loyal Waitrose shopper - and wouldn't normally be seen dead in a retail outlet that sets the merchandising bar so low as to sell stuff out of its cardboard outers turned sideways, if at all - that gives you as good an indication as any that the woman is bonkers about biking.  In addition to this, Clare is a massive fan of Sir Bradley Wiggins, to the point where she started to refer to herself - with a worrying absence of irony - as 'The Other Bradley'.  In a further worrying development, she then progressed to referring to Bradley Wiggins himself as 'The Other Bradley'.  And I guess that given his recent health issues, prompting him to withdraw from this year's Tour de France, somebody had to step up and be him on a bike for a bit...  I did manage to dissuade her from wearing stick-on sideburns, though these were mooted at one point.

Then at the start of the year, Clare announced her intention to compete in the London to Brighton cycling race, a 50 mile circuit from Clapham Common to the Sussex coast.  A little while later, I met Sarah McCartney on a 'perfumery crawl' in London, and discovered her quirky and eclectic range of scents: 4160 Tuesdays.  My attention was caught by one fragrance, Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers, which was directly inspired by Clare's hero - specifically the moment when Bradley Wiggins was on the podium after winning the Tour de France in 2012.  Sarah McCartney explains the background to the creation of this scent in a blog post, including the peculiarly British resonance of the phrase 'time to draw the raffle' after which she named the perfume:

Bradley's podium moment - source: cyclingweekly.co.uk

'When Sir Bradley Wiggins got up on the podium at the end of the Champs Elysées, with Chris Froome and that bloke who came third, a load of dignitaries, the sprinter Maurice Green and two skinny birds in yellow frocks carrying daffodils and stuffed toys, he addressed the gathered millions, and suggested that it looked like time the draw the raffle numbers.

He did it for the British cycling fans who’d travelled to Paris specially to see him there, the winner of the Tour de France, in his yellow jersey. He wanted to say something that would be meaningless to the rest of the world, because only the British know that when it’s all over, just before we all go home, that’s when we do the raffle. It was outrageous, original and funny. And I wanted to put it in a perfume.

This is a perfume of parts. I wanted the scent of a crowd on a hot day; coffee, tobacco, hot tarmac and linden trees of the Champs Elysées; oiled bicycles; marmalade on toast. I’m not sure if Sir Wiggo had marmalade on toast for breakfast but I’d like to think it was his petit dejeuner of choice the day after.'

I didn't sample Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers the day I met Sarah on our sniffing expedition, but I thought that as a card carrying Bradley fan, Clare simply had to try it.  Try it and very likely wear it on her ride to Brighton.  So I dropped Sarah a line, explaining about my friend's Wiggo fixation and upcoming cycling challenge, and she was kind enough to send a little roll-on of the scent for her and one for me.  Clare was very excited at the prospect of wearing a Bradley-inspired perfume on the big day, and carried on training in earnest.

Nice toenails!

Then, with just three days to go before the event, Clare fell while cycling at 17mph and badly hurt her leg, as well as all but writing off her bike.  Having seen photos of how much her leg swelled, I thought her hopes of riding so soon after her accident must have been scuppered, not least because of the mangled bike.  But a local cycle shop spent seven hours the following day wrenching it back into shape, and by the following Sunday, Clare was - if not good to go exactly, for her leg was still heavily swaddled - thoroughly determined to do the ride.

The day was not without incident, however, for Clare fell from her bike again before even leaving London, but was happily unhurt - or no more hurt that she was already, say. As she reports in a Facebook update after the event:

'It confused the hell out of a first aider when I fell off at a set of lights in London. He couldn't work out how someone had already patched me up, in between my collapsing in a heap and his battling through the crowds of cyclists to pick me up.'

But that fall did not deter her, and I am happy and amazed in equal measure to report that Clare did indeed complete the course, helped by the whiffs of Eau de Wiggo which she caught periodically rising up from whatever you call the equivalent of décolletage on a woman attired in top to toe Lycra.

'I could detect the special Wiggins perfume at every pedal.  Even above the all pervasive aroma of Deep Heat. I explained to my husband that it would spur me on and that I would be like the pre-knighthood Bradley, not this year's quitting Bradley. I would be that gritty Bradley. "You want to be Fat Gritty Bradley?" he queried, mishearing slightly. He has been calling me that ever since.'

And how does it smell, you may be wondering?  Well, like sweet orange-flavoured Shimano gears would be my best attempt at describing it, ie hot oily metal - and there is also a muzzy earthy feel to the scent that might be the tobacco.  Comforting for sure.

Of course I had to write to Sarah again after the race, telling her the good news that my friend had made it to the finishing line despite her set backs, and quoting her take on Eau de Wiggo.

'I did wear the perfume and I could smell it while I rode. Loved it and am sure it helped.'

To which came Sarah's delightfully pithy response:

'It must have worked then.'