Away by bike: Palace fan who cycled to every away game prepares for Bike to Wolves

Stephen’s plan began as so many great plans do: as a silly idea over a pint. “It literally started with something I mentioned in the pub,” he remembers. ” I used to go drinking in a bar in Tooting, and I used to chat with the manager there, and we kind of planned it out on the back of a napkin over a few drinks. “I’d read various books of people doing mad cycling things, like cycling the route of the Tour de France, or cycling down the Iron Curtain, and things like that, and I just fancied doing a silly challenge.

“Because of my work circumstances, I took a voluntary redundancy package from somewhere I’d worked for a long time, which gave me enough money to have a bit of a break, and a bit of a career break, and a bit of a chance to re-evaluate what I was doing with my career. “I thought: ‘I’ll never get a chance like this again, so why don’t I go for it, raise some money for charity, and see the country, see every palace going for a season, and ride a stupid amount of miles doing it?'” It’s one thing to plan such an adventure, but its another to follow it through – particularly in a Premier League season like 2016/17.

With Middlesbrough and Sunderland still in the top-flight, the games were hardly local.