'My cycling was my escape' - Michèle Linton talks about long rides in the Scottish Highlands and and getting back on her bike after a bereavement

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, so the saying goes. Maybe the same can be said for the road to cycling fitness. Whether we're planning to get out on the road or maybe get online for a virtual ride, sometimes life gets in the way.

That's certainly what happened to Michèle Linton's cycling. For years she would escape her difficult marriage with long rides around some of Scotland's most beautiful places. "He became a very hard person to live with, so my cycling was my escape from that," Michèle explained from her Ayrshire home.

"Cycling for me was the brilliant excuse to bail out and have my own time, and get things sorted in my head. And quite often I would meet really interesting people. When I should [have been] cycling I would sit with somebody for hours chatting, and that kept me going."

But in late 2023 life began getting in the way when her husband was diagnosed with cancer. She managed to keep riding, but in February 2025 she became his full-time carer and cycling took a backseat.

When she was riding regularly, rather the use the local roads around Ayrshire, she would take her motorhome and head north.

"I think my heart's really up in the Highlands, Perthshire and Morayshire. And I'm lucky, the last few years I've got really into nature photography and wildlife, so I can combine the two of them."

Cycling isn't a recent thing for Michèle, she's been on two wheels most of her life, growing up around the town of Innerleithen, in the Scottish Borders, cycling was one of her two passions.

"It was a combination of cycling and horses, because I had a love of horses but my dad cycled, and from when I was a wee toddler, that was when I started cycling. I was up to all sorts with my friends on bikes and stuff." However, adulthood brought Michèle more challenges than most, illness affecting her ability to exercise.

A bout of glandular fever left her with ME, which relapsed after catching chicken pox. She was then diagnosed with Sarcoidosis, a condition which causes swollen tissue, and has left her with only 60% lung capacity, but a return to cycling was an effective therapy.

"When I moved here I got a new specialist, he's German and he's very pro-exercise of any kind," she explains. "I said I'm going to try cycling, and that's how I ended up going out on the mountain bike with this group. I surprised myself. I was last because I was on this bloody heavy mountain bike, but I decided, 'I'm getting a road bike again.' And that was it, once I got that road bike, I never stopped. It wasn't the bike I wanted but I sorted that later.

"And it does help. Anybody that sits down to any illness like that is really silly, whether it's ME or Sarcoidosis, you can never sit down to these things because you're only going to get worse."

She was soon back with a vengeance, learning to cope with her illnesses and finding a happy place regularly riding long distances and chasing down the 5,000 mile distance. Using an e-bike when she wasn't feeling great and riding a regular machine other times. A regular on the Big Ride Challenge Facebook group, where she posts some of her magnificent photos, the 5,000 mile target seemed relatively easy for her.

Michèle's husband died in the autumn of 2025, and late in the year she was back on the bike, starting with a tentative 10 miler, but hoping to build up to some of those longer rides and has already entered the Doddie Aid ride, in support of MND.

"Over Christmas and New Year I was on the smart indoor trainer quite a lot, but being back on it, it confirmed I can still do it," she says.

"I'm going to try and do shorter rides and probably ride more often," she says. "But there is something about doing longer rides, I love the achievement, I suppose it's because it's one of the things I can do. My longest road ride, I think, is 118 miles, for somebody with the things I've got is no bad thing. And that's what I want to work back to."