In Mark Cavendish’s tyre tracks on the Isle of Man

Dot Tilbury stares out of the café window at the sunlit sweep of Douglas Bay and considers my question. “I’m not really sure how you’d categorise my role in his development,” she says. “Coach? Not really. Mentor? Mmm. I think really I was just the person who booked his ferry tickets.”

She’s being modest, of course. Outrageously so, in fact. The athletic 74-year-old — alert eyes framed by purple tortoise-shell glasses — is a veritable force of nature and almost as well known here on the Isle of Man as her record-breaking former charge.

Back in the early 1990s, less than a mile from where we’re sitting, Tilbury started a weekly league in which children from all over the island — many with no previous cycling experience — could turn up and race around the half-mile perimeter road encircling the National Sports Centre complex.

Among the thousands of children who have attended over the subsequent decades was a curly-haired nine-year-old with a black BMX, oversized red helmet and (his own description) “pudgy little legs”. The boy rolled up one Tuesday evening in 1995, entered a two-lap race and proceeded to come “dead last”.

Last month, from such inauspicious beginnings, that pudgy little chap became the greatest sprinter in cycling history. Mark Cavendish — who on July 3 finally secured a 35th Tour de France stage win, pipping the legendary Eddy Merckx to take the all-time record — is the proudest of Manxmen. The 39-year-old speaks often and candidly about the beautiful but quirky island in the Irish Sea that shaped him as a character, and its intricate web of roads, lanes and hills that forged him as a cyclist.

Keen to capitalise on the moment, the island’s tourism authorities are backpedalling hard from its Victorian time-capsule reputation and attempting to reposition it as a vigorous outdoors and cycling hub. Arriving by air, one thing is immediately clear: the Isle of Man, home to about 85,000 people, is way too small and landmark-strewn to risk any serious loss of bearings. Just 53km long and 22km at its widest point, it has a high point (Snaefell, 621m) that helpfully stands broadly in its centre; a sequence of towns spaced evenly around its coastline; and castles, towers and Victorian follies in almost every direction you look.

I’ve recruited a guide, regardless: Richard Fletcher, who represented the Isle of Man in the Commonwealth Games and is now a race organiser and all-round two-wheel evangelist. When Cavendish, the “Manx Missile”, was back on the island in March and wanted to join a local race, it was Fletcher who organised it. “I said, pay your £20 and we’ll sort it,” he says — an amusingly derisory sum for someone who set their Tour de France record riding and wearing £180,000 worth of cycling gear.

“Dicky” — as Dot calls Fletcher affectionately when he introduces us — is 62, with calves like knotted rope. He kits me out with a carbon Orro rental bike from Bikestyle in Douglas and lends me an Isle of Man club jersey into which I squeeze my middle-aged bulk. The Manx Manatee is up and rolling.

Fletcher has mapped out three half-day rides over successive days, none more than 45km. The first is an early-evening there-and-back from Douglas to Peel across the Man’s midriff. We follow the valley path of the old steam train route, now repurposed as a cycling and walking trail. It’s sunny, nearly 20C, the terrain is unwaveringly flat and there’s barely a breath of wind. None of these things, Fletcher feels duty bound to point out, is typical of an Isle of Man cycle ride.

“There are two prerequisites for riding a bike here: you have to be tough and you have to be passionate. Without those two requirements, there’s just too much wind, too much cold, too many hills and too many excuses to do something else,” wrote Cavendish in his 2009 autobiography Boy Racer — a passage that Visit Isle of Man is unlikely to be reproducing in its promotional literature.

Keeping the spectacular hilltop tower of Corrin’s Folly on our left, we descend into Peel. Fishing boats are moored neatly on the quayside, the sun-splashed outdoor tables of the whitewashed Creek Inn are buzzing and a paddleboarder is making serene progress across the unruffled bay framed by the craggy silhouette of Peel’s 11th-century castle. Atypical or not, it’s all rather lovely.

Cav, as any local will tell you, is a stickler for not repeating any parts of a training ride, preferring instead to draw on his exhaustive knowledge of the island’s more than 400km of back roads. So we do similar, returning to Douglas via a steep climb known locally as the Hope, and a magnificent ridge-top straight with views across to the heather-coated slopes of the central highlands.

As we ride, Fletcher tells me about the Isle of Man’s rich cycling heritage. Between 1936 and 2003, the island staged the Isle of Man International Cycling Week — the biggest gathering of its kind in the British Isles, with a road race that followed the route of the infamous TT motorcycle races. The event attracted some of the sport’s biggest names, including Tom Simpson, the first British rider to wear the Tour de France’s yellow jersey, and a certain Belgian champion by the name of Eddy Merckx.

Helped by the “Cav effect”, the Isle of Man is in the midst of a cycling boom, explains Fletcher. Specialist tour operators such as Isle of Man Cycle Tours and Bike Adventures organise bespoke, multi-day trips. The tourist board offers a complete guide to cycling on the island, including route maps, via its website. And there’s a glut of new rental options and dedicated bike shops.

As we drop back down into Douglas, we pass one of the best of the latter. Cycle 360 is a cavernous but welcoming bikeshop-café with a menu full of pancakes, waffles and other finely tuned Mamil fuel, and — judging by the car park packed with Porsche Cayennes and custom-painted Land Rover Defenders — a well-heeled clientele.

Cav may have grown up with comparatively little, struggling even to afford those regular ferry trips to the mainland to compete, but on this self-governing island and tax haven, with its thriving insurance, online gambling and offshore banking sectors, conspicuous wealth is a feature of life. When I ask Cycle 360 founder Mark Horsthuis whether it’s intimidating when Cavendish brings in his Tour-calibre bike for servicing, as he’s been known to do, he laughs and says: “To be honest, we see more expensive bikes than his in here.”

The following morning, we’re treated to some proper Manx weather. The island is enveloped in mist, punctuated by bursts of slanting rain. I decide to sit out the worst of it, riding the late-morning Hogwartian steam train from Douglas to Port Erin near the island’s southern tip, where Fletcher is waiting with the bikes in his van.

It looks like the day is a certain write-off yet, within an hour, the bad weather has almost entirely cleared and we’re hurtling in and out of sandy bays separated by blustery headlands, scarcely believing our luck. From Castletown we ride north, then steer west up towards the hilly, forested interior. It’s a long steady climb along slender lanes whose hedgerows close in like Tour de France crowds on a mountain stage. Spiky, vivid-orange flowers from montbretia plants confetti the roadside. The air is fragrant and beautifully fresh.

By the time we reach the tree line, and the ranks of Sitka spruce and pine give way to a vista of spongy, purple-heathered hills, there’s a reasonably impressive queue of cars behind me. As the road straightens, I hear the engine of the lead car rev and then it draws alongside, window down. Come on then — get it off your chest.

“Keep going! Almost there,” shouts the driver, supportively.

This unexpected interaction acts as a tailwind as we sweep round the lofty Shoulder Road on what proves the most scenic stretch of the three days, culminating in an exhilarating descent to Port Erin. For this I assume Cav’s trademark crouch — hunched over my handlebars, legs pistoning and my speed, aided by a one in five incline, for once close to what the great man somehow musters on the flat.    

In December 2007, off the back of a debut pro season in which he claimed 11 race victories and received a commensurately inflated salary, Cavendish finally bought the house on the island that he had long had his eye on: high above the village of Laxey, on the east coast, with views across the Irish Sea towards the Cumbrian fells.

We cycle past this on my final day on a balmy 37km loop that begins with a rollercoaster segment through lanes as old and twisted as the roots of the ancient trees that line it.

In the village of Onchan, we pass the gold postbox dedicated to local lad Peter Kennaugh, a team pursuit winner in the 2012 London Olympics. It’s a reminder that, set against its diminutive size, this windswept island has produced a wildly disproportionate number of pros over the years, also including the likes of Lizzie Holden, Steve Joughin and Nigel Dean. In Laxey itself, we dip down to the harbour front, where the expansive, sand-fringed bay shimmers like a million-strong shoal of mackerel, and dive into the Shed café for a coffee.

“Please tell me that Cav raids this from time to time,” I say hopefully to the lady serving the coffees, pointing to a refrigerated cabinet overflowing with shortbread, lemon drizzle cake and other calorific treats.

“Afraid not,” she says, with a smile. “I’ve only ever served him a flat white and a teacake.” Darn. Something to work on there.

Fortuitously, my final night on the island coincides with the season’s first Tuesday evening session at the National Sports Centre. It’s just been announced that the perimeter track is to be renamed in Cavendish’s honour and, buoyed by the Manxman’s record-breaking exploits, numbers are well up: more than 400 have signed for the new season.

The atmosphere is frenetic and joyous, with marshals chatting with parents, and youngsters hurtling this way and that on every imaginable type of bike. Wearing a headset mic and carrying a clipboard emblazoned with “Dot’s”, Tilbury is organising, galvanising, corralling. “No wiggly worms,” she says to the little ones, as they’re lined up in batches and waved away with a red flag.

One — little older than the number of wheels on her tricycle — wears a red helmet, mismatched kit and a determined expression. She sets off on a heroically erratic course, shadowed by her proud mum as smiling marshals look on.

The young girl doesn’t exactly look like a world beater. But then, as Tilbury knows only too well, you can never quite tell.

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