Re: Cycling (And Books)

By Andrew on January 1, 2024 • ( 2 Comments )

Happy New Year! I’ve just returned from feeding my brother’s cats. He’s in Australia at the moment and the journey to his house – invariably made on foot or on the bike (but admittedly all too often in the car…) – gets me out of the house in the deep mid-winter. I shan’t dwell upon the fact that at the start of my return walk I was viciously attacked in the right eye by a lethal wreath of holly (ultimately it came off worse than I did) and focus on what I’ve just spent the past hour and a bit listening to as I wandered home: BBC Radio 3.

Radio 3 isn’t my natural listening home although I do spend much of December listening to Classic FM (for the Christmas music). I was keen to listen to something as I walked so I typed ‘cycling’ into BBC Sounds and it came back with Re: Cycling, five essays about… (you guessed) cycling.

“From the streets of York to the hills of Highgate, writer and raconteur Andrew Martin surveys his own life on a bike and discovers a country more and more enamoured of cycling.”
BBC Sounds

Andrew Martin, according to his Wikipedia page, is a writer who writes both fiction and non-fiction books on the theme of trains. But he’s also a keen ‘utilitarian’ cyclist and the five audio essays that were broadcast on Radio 3 earlier in 2023 are very engaging. There are five of them and they come under the headings of:

Well worth an hour or so of your time.

Talking of time… I will be filling most of my free time over the coming weeks and months finishing writing and then editing the new book: Le Grand Tour. The first draft is perilously close to being finished. I noticed earlier today that I first opened the document that has now become the first draft of around 140,000 words on January 1st 2023 (although I didn’t really crack on with the writing until April). I’m hoping for a publication by Easter (although may be delayed if a publisher becomes interested – the process of editing book number 3 when Hachette / Summersdale were the publishers took at least 6 months).

If you can’t wait that long, some good news. If you haven’t read the previous books – Crossing Europe… and Along the Med… (the first two books that were self-published), I’ve just reduced the eBook price to a mere 99p. I’ll keep them at that price until the new book is published. As for book 3, Spain to Norway… – the one that was published – I’m afraid I have no influence over its price and you’ll still have to stump up the £3.99 for the eBook version. Paperbacks of all three books are also available via Amazon etc…

As a result of my focus upon the latter stages of the writing process I may be posting here on the website and on social media somewhat less frequently. It’s not that I have vanished…

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