Day 13 28 May 2026
It seems that a week off has not affected my ability to ride a bike. That’s a relief! I’ve been trying to choose the hilliest routes to get in the necessary practice, but even they are not as hilly as it’s going to be in Wales. I’ve managed to persuade myself that its doable, by noticing that there are two or three big hills each day. If I ignore these then the overall ascent is not so bad, and I could (and will probably need to) walk up the steepest places.
Distance covered in training so far 427 miles, total ascent 22,966 feet
You can sponsor my bike ride here
After Alice was murdered, it felt like my life split in two. Nothing was ever going to be the same again and although I still have most of the rest of my family, my future now has an empty section. There are so many memories of Alice that were locked away, but suddenly flood back when triggered by events, places or people. But there are also lots of new things that happen and I wonder what Alice would feel about them. I remember once reorganising the furniture in the lounge and sending Alice a picture. She jokingly told me that I can’t change things without her permission and those words come back to me a lot. People still tell me things, and my first thought is often “I must tell Alice about that” and then I realise that I can no longer do that. I watch the lives of Alice’s contemporaries as they progress in their careers, marry or have children, which is both lovely and very sad. And as time has gone on, I have tried to hide all these thoughts from people, because who wants to listen to that sad person whose first thought is her dead daughter.
But most difficult of all are my thoughts of life before Alice was murdered. Because everything that happened before that day led us to the point where she was murdered. The famous meteorologist Edward Lorenz once said that a butterfly beating its wings in one place, could lead to a tornado forming somewhere completely different. And I cannot get this out of my head. For a long time, I felt that everything I had ever done before Alice’s murder was wrong. Things as simple as taking Alice to ballet lessons, deciding on which school she should attend or allowing her the freedom to make her own decisions.
I have largely come to terms with this now. I do not believe I was a terrible person. I made the best decisions I could with the knowledge I had at the time, and I also realise that different decisions might have led to other difficult outcomes. I have to keep reminding myself that Alice grew into an amazing person who had many wonderful friends. She had one extraordinary piece of bad luck: encountering Trimaan Dhillon.
