It’s Friday 1st September 2017. On this day in history…

• …Louis XIV died (1715)
• …the last known passenger pigeon, Martha, died in captivity in Cincinnati Zoo (1914)
• …Ernest Hemingway’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel, The Old Man and the Sea was published (1952)
• …the wreck of the Titanic was discovered (1985) and
• …Betty Cantrell, Miss America 2016, was born (1994)

Wikipedia does have its uses.

It’s a possibility (admittedly a faint one but stay with me…) that perhaps in years to come, September 1st will also come to signify something else; the day that saw the launch of The CyclingEurope.org Podcast! (Pause for faint ripple of applause followed by images of tumbleweed…)

Yes, the day has come; The CyclingEurope.org Podcast is here, or rather there, on the Internet. First of all the technicalities. The easiest way for Apple users to access not just this first episode of the podcast but all subsequent ones is to subscribe to the iTunes feed. That way it will be downloaded automatically to your device when it’s published on the first day of each month. Fear not; it’s free (and will continue to be so for a while) so you won’t be committing to paying anything in any currency other than an hour or so of your time.

The podcast will be available via other ‘podcatchers‘ (there’s a word I didn’t know until a few days ago) as long as they pick up the RSS feed from Awesound, the people hosting the podcast. I sense eyes beginning to glaze over… the upshot of all that is, if you can’t find it elsewhere, go direct to The CyclingEurope.org Podcast page on Awesound and listen directly from them. You can also listen here:

I should have said that to begin with.

The first episode of the podcast includes:

• a chat with Tim McKenna about cycling and mental health
• a cycle along the Calder Valley of Yorkshire with Craig Dodson
• an extract from Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie read by… not me!
• a report about cycling and camping with the cyclists of the CTC (yes, CTC, not Cycling UK!) in the Cotswolds, and
• a chat with the woman behind the Cycle Touring Festival, Laura Moss.

If you like what you hear, please help spread the word by mentioning the podcast to friends. If you have any comments to make, get in touch! I’m already on the lookout for people to chat to and places to visit for future episodes of the podcast and ideas are very welcome.

Thanks for reading and, especially, for listening. Enjoy!