I’m not sure how my blogging activities will be affected by my renewed action on the book writing front – I’m now very much into writing the following up to ‘Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie‘ – but here’s the first proper post of 2014. Happy New […]
Get on your bicycle and ride… Happy New Year!
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for CyclingEurope.org. Here’s an excerpt: The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 200,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days […]
Here are the five most popular pictures that I posted to Instagram in 2013 in a short video. The last one is not actually mine but it was crying out to be ‘instagrammed’. See the others that didn’t make it to the top 5 here.
A very Happy Christmas to all the follows of CyclingEurope.org & readers of “Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie” (if you aren’t a reader yet, why not download a copy to your new tablet via Kindle or iBooks if you were lucky enough to get one?). Here’s a […]
The latest edition of Bicycle Traveler has been published online and for FREE! I particularly like the photography. There are also some short but interesting equipment reviews and some advice when it comes to visas… Follow this link to get hold of a copy. Here are a few […]
The year is slowly drawing to a close… and I haven’t got very far with the new book. I’ve so far written about 6,500 words (which equates to about 5% of the final total unless it turns out to be a modern-day War & Peace). I’m not worried […]
Taken this morning in the grounds of Gillotts School in Henley-on-Thames where I ply my trade as a French teacher… It even made it onto the local news in the South of England:
From Amazon.co.uk about Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie: “Excellent and amusing commentary on a solo bicycle trip from Reading in England to Brindisi, on the heel of Italy. This isn’t a journey through Outer Mongolia. Sykes always has the option of stopping and getting a train […]
If you are in Yorkshire on Friday 30th May 2014, come along! More details on the Le Tour Ripon website.
When I first embarked on a long(ish)-distance cycle back in 2009 cycling along the Pennine Cycleway from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Derby I took with me a pre-smart phone. I think it was a Nokia. It did a pretty good job allowing me to take some half-decent pictures and send […]
I watched this video earlier today and thought that certain bits looked quite familiar… and they should be as it has been filmed in and around Henley-on-Thames, the town where I work and the town to which I cycle every morning on Reggie. It’s beautifully shot – even […]
You’ve cried at the John Lewis Christmas ad (although I have to say it just isn’t quite the same after you’ve seen the front cover of the latest edition of Private Eye), you’ve watched Rosie Huntington-Whiteley dive down a manhole (that just doesn’t sound right does it?) only to […]
Thanks to Iain Harper for pointing me in the direction of this high-quality and extremely informative ten-minute explanation of the Tour de France made by InfoBytesTV. Amazing! (Just a pity that there doesn’t seem to be a version available in French…)
Why playing poker on two-wheels is becoming a trend in the country Germany prides itself on many things: its grand castles, towering ice-capped mountains, and its top-of-the-line automobiles. But one aspect that’s often overlooked in this country is its people’s love for poker. And thanks to their passion […]
Raynaud’s phenomenon is not a great thing to suffer from. It’s even worse if you are a cyclist. And cycling in winter can become a pain, literally. Also known as ‘vibration white finger‘ (as it can be a symptom of having used a vibrating device – such as […]
“This is such a crucial time for cycling in Britain” are the first words in this short video about a crowd-funded film that has been proposed called ‘Bicycle‘. After tragic cycling news over the last couple of weeks emanating from London this is something a little more positive. […]
I’ve entered Reggie in Cycle Love’s ‘Best Bike’ competition… More details here.
The poster by Andrew Hoffman was pointed out to me yesterday on Twitter and I do like it. It was produced for Art Crank, an art collective which promotes cycling-related art and holds exhibitions around the world (the ones in the UK being in London & Manchester). If […]
They didn’t even pay me to put it here… Quite sweet.
I’ve been admiring these little promotional videos for the Tour de France for years. I never imagined there would be one that started like this… See the video by following this link.
Not sure if you have ever explored the further reaches of this website. If you haven’t you may not have visited the section called ‘Eurovelos 1-15‘. It’s over there on the right sandwiched between ‘Eurovelo 8‘ and ‘Pennine Cycle‘. Found it? Good. I have to say that I […]
Nice to get a little mention on this Spanish cycling blog; I love how the expression “small-time eco warrior” has been translated. Grab your bi-lingual dictionary!
Don’t you just wish you came from a place like this? Oh, yes… I do! Bienvenue dans le Yorkshire! Bring on the Tour de France 2014! And the route that was revealed last week not only passes through the small town in West Yorkshire where I was brought […]
The graphic below has been produced by specialist claim solicitors BBK in association with CASA (The Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis – cool name!) which is part of UCL. It’s a comprehensive visualisation of London’s cycling landscape which shows “for the first time” (allegedly) the boroughs that produce the […]
If you have read “Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie” you may recall that I am a fan of Luxembourg. It was such an interesting place. I suppose I’m mainly referring to the capital itself rather than the country as my stay was a brief one and […]
A couple of months ago I wrote about some cycling clothing that I had been sent by Aldi (“Cycling Gear From… Err… Aldi“). Despite my scepticism about the quality of anything that comes from the budget supermarket, I was very impressed (and continue to be so; the £4.99 […]
Korea? Ireland? No… The Parthenon Marbles! From the Autumn 2013 edition of the newsletter of the Marbles Reunited Campaign (@MarblesReunited / MarblesReunited.org.uk):
I have interesting interactions on Twitter on a fairly regular basis. I had two today, one of which I will tell you about now, and the other at some point in the future. Ade Thomas (@thermosflaskman) is a teacher and he made this video for an assembly at […]
Richmond is posh Yorkshire. I think William Hague is the MP and he is the ultimate in posh Yorkshire. You can hear it in the way he speaks. I’ve heard lots of people sing the praises of Richmond but I can’t ever remember having been there. Until today. […]
After a second full English breakfast in as many days the walking party split and we all headed off in our respective directions; some back to Norwich, one to Cardiff, one to Derby and me in the direction of Yorkshire. I’m due to West Yorkshire to visit family […]
MoMondo (‘an emerging flight comparison site’) just sent me this; useful info if you are heading to London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam or Nice…
Just got back to Reading after an invigorating hike around Henley-on-Thames with a group of pupils, parents & fellow teachers at Gillotts School. It’s never a good feeling waking up on a Saturday and realising that you had volunteered to take part in weekend work-related activities but you […]
I’m not one of life’s protestors. In fact, I can’t remember ever having protested about anything in an organised way before. There must be something… [pause for thought / reflection…]. I once joined a teachers’ march in France during a six-week stint in Nice while training to be […]
Today is the 107th Paris-Tours cycle race. I lived in Tours for five years during the mid to late 1990s and used to go along to the finishing line every year. It was an exciting carnival descending upon the otherwise sedate provincial French town. Fond memories…
Just noticed this event via the Reading Cycle Campaign Facebook page; a protest ride around Reading “…to show the poor state of the cycling infrastructure in Reading. To give visibility to the poor job the council has done in making Reading safe for cyclists and to object to […]
I need to know more about this…
The ECF have just published an interview with me where I discuss this summer’s cycle from Greece to Portugal along the rough line of the Eurovelo 8. The interview can be found on the ECF’s increasingly useful Eurovelo website in a slighted edited form. The full interview is […]
Just as with the first book, the first thing that I needed to do requires nothing more than a bit of patience and a lot of copying and I have spent several hours today doing just that. I am conscious of not just publishing a blog. If you […]
It’s difficult to explain how nice it is riding a bike after not having done so for a month. My short journey from AW Cycles in Caversham to the centre of Reading was brief but unimaginably pleasurable. Apart from the new tyres, cables & brake pads, nothing needed […]
Very nice… And not excessively expensive… Mmm…
When it comes to my supermarket of choice, I’ve always been a bit of a Sainsbury’s man, occasionally wavering towards Tescos and very occasionally Waitrose. Aldi? You must be joking! So, when I was contacted last week by a marketing company offering me a few free samples of […]
Nearly four weeks after we finished our epic 5,700km cycle across the continent, I’m recovering slowly (although currently have the sniffles) but my bike Reggie has found the return to normal life more of a struggle; he is currently in pieces!
I only stayed with four WarmShowers people during the summer’s trip along the Mediterranean coast but they were all great hosts. I’ve just been giving some feedback on the website and found this picture of Diego who hosted me at the end of June at his home near […]
Having just spent several hours doing this, I’m also going to elevate what is otherwise hidden away in the Eurovelo 8 section of the site to its own blog post. Here are the links to the original blog posts made during the trip along the Eurovelo 8 (or […]
I used to regularly post extracts from emails that I received on here but recently I seem to have stopped doing so. For no particular reason. It’s a delight to be asked about the routes that I have cycled and, quite often, those that I haven’t. I try […]
Love this photo. More pictures from Monday’s Lake District stage on the Sky Cycling website.
Ironically, after five years of cycling to work almost every day of the week, on national cycle to work day, I’ll be on the train as Reggie is currently under the knife at the bike shop for his post-cycle refurbishment. So I’m relying upon you…
This weekend it’s my brother’s turn to get on his bike; along with 19 other cyclists he’s cycling in aid of Macmillan Cancer & the Yorkshire Air Ambulance from his home in West Yorkshire to the Isle of Man and then doing a lap of the TT circuit. […]
In preparation for the visit of the Tour de France 2014 to my home region of Yorkshire, a bicycle show is being held in Leeds. Here’s the press release: “Tour de France fever comes early to Leeds with the Yorkshire Bicycle Show” “Across our region bicycle fever is […]
Here is the summary of fifty days of cycling. The day I cycled up Mont Ventoux was officially a ‘rest day’ so not included which is why it gets a box of its own…
It didn’t take long for the practicalities of life on the road to kick in after my arrival at Cape St. Vincent. As I was recording the video clip in the previous post my mind was on the clock as I knew that the campsite supermarket closed at […]
Arrived at Camping Sagres – great site – and the tent is pitched. Reggie has been relieved of most of his panniers. All that remains is for us to cycle the remaining 6km to Cape St. Vincent. This plan is coming together…
Made it to Lagos & about to tuck into lunch; some pasta for that final bit of cycling. The N125 is now a lot quieter although the condition of the road itself deteriorates as each kilometre goes by. The wind is picking up however and I assume will […]
Slight change of plan (as ever). Both Albufeira & Portimão were inconveniently distant from the lovely N125 so I have pressed on. The latter didn’t look at all appealing from the modern bridge spanning the wide estuary just to one side of the city with a skyline of […]
Just over 25km cycled. Leaving Faro involved snaking through back roads but I was eventually allowed back onto the N125. Not that there is much joy on this road; poor surface, heavy traffic, no real view… But it’s a necessary evil. I’ll pause for coffee in Albufeira at […]
So, the penultimate day arrives. Or rather arrived as it is now at an end. I bid my cousin farewell with the intention of seeing him again later in the day at a campsite somewhere along the Algarve in Portugal but even by 9am this morning I was […]
It was a slightly delayed start to day 48 as I spent a little time cycling around the streets of Seville. Like many towns and cities in Andalusia, cobbles seem to be everywhere and I have spent a significant amount of time over the last few days teetering […]
It’s a bit grey here but I did manage to find a little bit of colour in Seville…
When I sat down in the hotel in Valencia and planned the remaining few days of the trip I knew that cycling day 47 would be the crunch day. If I managed to get to Seville by the end of Sunday then I knew that there would be […]
Time to catch up before I forget! Cycling day 46 was the big Vias Verdes day and after the mixed feeling about Via Verde number 1 from Albacete a few days ago I was hoping for someone far better. Did I get it? I suspect that if you’d […]
I’m not sure whether Pablo hadn’t offered me the private mini guided tour of Ubeda I would have got any further than Jaen today or not. It was a modest cycle by the standards of this jaunt across Europe – a mere 63km, only just over half the […]
Slightly delayed departure this morning but I don’t mind in the least. It’s not every day that the owner of the hotel where you are staying gives you a private guided tour of a nearby ancient monument. The one in question was the one shown here – which […]
Cycling Day 44 is easy to describe. I set off from Camping Peñascosa, I had breakfast from a bakery on the main street of nearby Alcaraz, I cycled about 125km from Alcaraz to Ubeda along the N322 pausing from time to time at petrol stations for snacks and […]
Apologies for the lack of text to go with the pictures when I initially posted about cycling day 43. If I had written anything late last night it would have been rambling gibberish (‘no change there then’ I hear you cry!) as a result of the quantity of […]
About 30 minutes ago I cycled my 5,000th kilometre. Unfortunately I was in a dark tunnel at the time… If anyone fancies working out approximately how many kilometres I still have to cycle (along the lines of the plan posted here a couple of days ago) I’d be […]
This morning things were going relatively well. I think I’m beginning to resign myself to struggling through the first 20 to 30 kilometres of the day as my increasingly weary legs take this time in warming up. Today was no different to recent days but I persevered and […]
After having cycled the first 30km this morning I felt as though I must have cycled over 250km the day before last. Which is strange because I had. I hadn’t felt the effects of Saturday’s long-distance effort on my day off yesterday wandering around Valencia but once I […]
If the manager of this hotel were to walk in right now, I’d probably get thrown out for moving all the furniture around. I needed a space large enough to piece together the final three maps which has just allowed me to work out a little more detail […]
The non-Guardian reader campsite (see cycling day 39) provided me with a supermarket evening feast which I ate whilst sitting in the tent as I failed miserably in my attempt to find a chair upon which to sit and do the same thing. At least I was spared […]
To say I didn’t set off until around midday today, the distance I managed to cycle – some 93km – wasn’t too bad at all. But whereas quantity wasn’t lacking, quality was. It was not an enjoyable ride apart from one short portion in the ten or so […]
Dave and Pauline’s hospitality didn’t stop in the evening; it continued in the morning where I was presented with a very nice full English breakfast. The Cockers don’t even eat breakfast while in Spain – they prefer to eat later and have a large lunch – so it […]
The problem with writing these updates a couple of days after the events is that I forget so much so quickly. It can be very frustrating but here goes… I had breakfast in the centre of Perpignan and was still not sure which route to take into Spain. […]
Almost live from central Barcelona…
I’m about to enter country number 9, Spain, but this last ride in France along what I’ve seen referred to as the ‘Red Coast’ south of Argelès has, despite the cars, been a delight…
Eddy wasn’t just good, interesting company; he was useful company. Before the combined effects of the food, cycling and two glasses of local white wine (I know, sorry, I’m a lightweight) had had their effects, he talked to me about his own experiences of cycling through Spain and […]
Here we go. Apologies for the late update but I’m not going to move from my seat here in the garden of the Ibis hotel in central Perpignan until cycling days 35 & 36 are written. I may order another beer at some point. Life can be tough […]
I’ve just heard on the radio that the Prime Minister back in Britain wants a ‘cycling revolution’. Well, good luck with that but its a shame he wasn’t cycling with me yesterday as I made my way along the coast from La Grande-Motte towards Béziers. Some excellent examples […]
I tweeted earlier today pointing out how nice it was to spend Sunday morning cycling around an unknown town (see the next post for some of the pictures from Nîmes). I could say something similar about Sunday evening although in Béziers tonight it was without the bike…
Today was, at times, at many times, a frustrating day. The wind, the roads, the signage, the route, the tourist destinations. They all conspired together. Perhaps they wanted to show me another side to Provence before I departed for the (mainly) flatlands of Langudoc-Rousillon, a meaner, grittier, kick […]
Mont Ventoux is a place with iconic status but one about which I knew little about until just a few months ago. Scouting around for interesting cycling-related things to do whilst crossing southern France, I simply noted on the map that Mont Ventoux was actually in the very […]
Time to catch up. I’m a little behind so if you are waiting for the story of Mont Ventoux, please bear with me as I first update you on cycling day 32. Even before I retreated to my tent at the end of cycling day 31, the campsite […]
Back in summer 2010 it took me 30 cycling days to get to Brindisi in the south of Italy from my home in southern England. It’s now cycling day 31 on this particular trip. I cycled 3,311km three years ago averaging 110km per day. I’m currently averaging about […]
Now in Castellane. This may not get sent tonight as 3G doesn’t seem to actually be 3G in this corner of the Alps of high Provence (that’s what the French call this department or county). Split infinitive there, sorry but moving the ‘actually’ elsewhere seems to change the […]
