WE CAN BE HEROES!

"From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads" is a quirky David Bowie lyric - but to James Briggs it was the inspiration for a life-changing bike ride

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When you're going on a long bike ride, there are many things to consider. Distance, scenery, potential cafe stops - and of course whether there is a pub at the end where you can click-clack your cleats across handsome flagstones and guzzle frosty pints while horsing down their entire supply of Scampi Fries. All these things were entirely unguaranteed when fate decided my long ride would be to follow a David Bowie song lyric.

It was mid-2016, Bowie had just passed, Prince too, and, well, it seemed like the country was in an irreversible aquaplane into a ditch full of sodden vegetation and division. I wanted out, not of Europe, but into it. And it was the Starman's journey of the mind that would take me there. One day, just as I'd started mournfully singing his classic 'Life on Mars?' I passed my bike in the hallway - and an unexpected route presented itself. The lyric was, for Bowie, a sneer at mass tourism, but to me, in my ready-to-burst midlife crisis, it demanded to be cycled. I undertook the ride over six weeks during autumn 2016. Now, 3,000 miles and nine years later, here are six reasons why everyone should ride a song lyric.

You'll see the world

From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads, according to Google Maps, could've been a straight-ish 103-hour romp from southern Europe that passed through Valencia, Pamplona and Biarritz and then headed up France's western seaboard to stock up on cheap plonk at Ouistreham. A ferry to Portsmouth, a spritely dash around London to Norfolk, and I'd be done.