Atoosa writes; I’m really interested in this route and want to start cycling from Milan to North. I’d like to know how did you pass The Alps? did you go with [the] train? No I didn’t – I went over the top! You would be doing it in the […]
I was at the Eiffel Tower if you didn’t guess… That was the high (although I didn’t go to the top). But disappointing that I haven’t got any tickets for any of the Olympic events… 🙁 No money has been taken from my account. But… I do understand […]
This could pass for a four star hotel…
…on the last day of term! Kind of. Off to Paris with 33 fifteen year olds tomorrow for four days.
An App that is actually worth downloading (must remove all the crap ones that do nothing whatsoever apart from amuse for a few minutes after being installed…) has just been published by Sustrans, so I just did but it is quite difficult to test while still in bed. […]
Now available online! Comment is, as always, free, so please do so. Follow the link above or simply click here to read the latest draft chapter of the upcoming book about my Eurovelo 5 journey… Day 18 was a guided cycle from Como to Pavia through the northern […]
Sounds like a new surrealist film? No, just a round-up of the topics that have fallen into my inbox this week. Read on to find out more… I was wondering what crossing the alps was like? writes Henry Ulmann… Excellent! If you follow the Eurovelo 5 / Swiss National […]
Great documentary on BBC4 in the early hours of this morning – a repeat from 2009. The blurb says; “Author Rob Penn travels around the world collecting hand-built parts for his dream bicycle and charts the social history of one of mankind’s greatest inventions.”. It’s based upon his […]
…visitors. 🙂
When cycling to work this morning, I was thinking that if ever The One Show were to have an article about the Eurovelo 5 on their programme then surely I would be the person they would turn to. This was tossing over in my mind (it’s amazing what […]
Yet another sample chapter from the book now available to read for free (!) online. Just click here to enjoy a wet romp (if indeed you can romp on a bike) in central Switzerland. If the climbing the Alps was the high point of the trip, my day […]
‘Mattie’ in the Channel Islands is planning a trip from St. Malo to Athens. He asked on one of CTC’s forums for advice as to whether to take the Italian route (which would potentially use part of the Eurovelo 5) or the Balkan route (which would use part of the […]
Another sample chapter of the book available to read online. A little bit shorter than previous ones reflecting the shorter cycle from Dabo to Strasbourg. Read it here or by following the links at the top of the page. Feedback welcome!
This is a fascinating photograph – click on picture and explore… Wow!
I really enjoyed that. Only the most hardened of cynics would fail to do so, even the republican ones. The whole thing was beautifully done, especially the music in Westminster Abbey and the bit at the end with the classic Aston Martin. Nice touch. It was the perfect […]
“Estimated time of departure: 5th May 2011. We are cycling across Northern France, a bit of Germany, Switzerland (the high bits) and zig zagging down Italy (trying to avoid the high bits) to Taranto in Southern italy which is where Mary Ann lives. Hopefully friends and family will join us from […]
Another sample chapter is available online! Click here or follow ‘The Book’ link at the top of the page. Day 6 was when the rain started as I cycled from Maubeuge to Charleville-Mézières in the north-east of France. Feedback welcome and if anyone knows a publisher… 🙂 Update @ 3pm: […]
The rich ones have the Pacific crashing upon the shore next to their Malibu beach houses. I have this… I really should do some work for going back to school tomorrow but I feel I have at least one chapter in me this morning, perhaps two… And then […]
You are probably getting a little bit bored of the mention of this book I’m writing so pass over the following if that’s indeed the case. It is quite addictive though. I’ve now written just under 20,000 words and have got as far as the end of the third day […]
A couple of cyclists are joining the roll call of those having cycled the Eurovelo 5 south although these two are going a little bit further than most. John Howe writes; This summer I am cycling from London to Greece, with a friend, Kit Alexander. The final destination […]
I’m at risk of getting a little bit ahead of myself here. Not only have I located my place on the bookshelf at Waterstones, but I have now attempted to design the cover of the book itself! I’ve only written half of the thing so far (and most […]
Not me. Not yet. I was just in Waterstones and located where my yet unnamed book could be slotted in the travel section. It would be in good company, just to the left of Paul Theroux’s ‘The Pillars Of Hercules’ (which I have on my bedside table poised […]
I wrote about 4,000 words this afternoon. Once I started I couldn’t really stop. It’s great having a story to tell. I can’t imagine how I would ever write fiction. But writing non-fiction is easy. Must try and join my sentences together however. And add a few opinions. […]
Just returned from a very quick overnight visit to Yorkshire to see family. I didn’t cycle up there but did hire a car and took the opportunity this morning to revisit the towns of Halifax & Huddersfield. The former has a small but relatively unknown jewel in its […]
…kind of.
Carlo Levi wrote a book entitled ‘Christ Stopped At Eboli’, Eboli being a town on the west coast of Campania in Italy, south of Rome. The book title comes from a local saying and is referring to the poverty and exclusion ‘from the full human experience’ in southern Italy […]
As promoted in today’s Independent newspaper; The London Cycling Campaign, which promotes safer cycling in the capital, has produced a nine-point-plan for reducing the toll of death and injury among cyclists: * Enforce speed limits and clamp down on drivers who use mobile phones. (A young woman in […]
Here it is in its raw state. All 39,153 words and 168 pages. Set in Georgia 18pt (italic for the blog entries), justified. Now all I need to do is transform it into a best seller, which may take a bit longer than the time taken simply copying and pasting […]
My book is now standing at just under 10,000 words and has 39 pages. OK, I admit it, I’m cheating just a little bit as most of those words are not new but text copied from the posts I made along the way. To begin with I didn’t […]
I Tweeted this morning that “I need to write that book about cycling from Reading to Brindisi last summer”. The thought may have been forgotten, as most thoughts on Twitter are, had @No_More_Beer responded within the hour Tweeting “Yes you do! Worth a read”. So I have started […]
From the BBC website; MPs could introduce a new offence of causing death by dangerous cycling. But how much of a danger do these two-wheeled travellers really pose? There is little that divides UK public opinion more sharply than cyclists.To their supporters, Britain’s bike-riders are clean, green, commuters-with-a-conscience, who […]
Here is a slick, if functional video about Eurovelo 8, The Mediterranean Route and Eurovelo 7, The Sun Route. It could really do with some stirring motivational music to liven the whole thing up. And a translation into English of the Italian bit at the start and the end. […]
I used to love taking these panorama stitched together pictures with an old Nokia mobile phone. The effect is great. Wonder if there is a way to get the iPhone to do something similar. There must be an app out there, no? Which station is the top one by […]
A few days ago I added that Wikio badge just over there on the left of the website. According to Wikio this blog is ranked at number 15 in the country for cycling. That’s something I find a bit hard to believe and I am sceptical as to how […]
From the Dummy Jim website; In May 1951 a profoundly deaf 30-year-old Scotsman called James Duthie – known to his local community as ‘Dummy Jim’ – cycled solo on a return trip from the small fishing town of Cairnbulg in the north-east of Scotland to the Arctic Circle. The journey of over […]
This is becoming a little bit of a tradition. It took me a while to take today’s picture as the traffic was a little heavier but as you can see, the spring has unmistakably arrived. Such a difference from that shivery day back in December. Today was sublime. […]
Now, what do you make of the following email? It is, I suppose, in response to the post about Lisa Baum and her plans to cycle to the Arctic Circle. The weirdest thing is that the man himself – Dummy Jim – was killed “in mysterious circumstances” in 1965. […]
Lisa Baum has been in touch following my post below about her trip to the Arctic Circle this summer; x Hi Andrew, Thanks again for your kind words and add on your blog. Your trip to the south of Italy sounded awesome, there are so many good trips […]
Mary Ann Coupland and her friend Sally are about to head off on the Eurovelo 5. They have set up a Just Giving page to raise money for Cancer Research UK. Here is there story in their own words; We are cycling from Boulogne sur Mer in France […]
The article below is from this week’s Times Educational Supplement. Interesting choice of a bike. Her website is here. This summer, geography teacher Lisa Baum will cycle from her school, Ernest Bevin College in south London, to the Arctic Circle, with the aim of encouraging more pupils to […]
…because you never have the opportunity to do what I just did; stop and take in the view on your way to work. Those of you who travel from Reading to Henley-on-Thames in a car missed this wonderful sight as you sped past me at high speed on the country […]
Seems such a pity to shunt the picture in the previous post off the top of the blog; I may well fiddle with the dates so that it stays there for a few more days yet. 🙂 Not everything is always as it seems on the blogosphere… Anyway, […]
There may be an “after” shot later; reunion tonight of my ex-colleagues from Prospect College.
I have just refitted the bike computer back on Reggie. Now that I can see the digits (the days are finally becoming a little bit longer after the short days of winter), let’s see how fast I can get to and from work. I will be assisted a […]
Earlier this week I received a friend request on Facebook from a certain Tom Hooker. I like to think that his second name is Jasper, James or Jeremy and that his friends call him TJ Hooker but as he only looks as though he is in his 20s, […]
Perhaps they will be a little less tabloid when they become “independent”…
Of all the unsettling but jaw-dropping images coming out of Japan, this one struck me the most and really speaks volumes about the magnitude of the power of the Earth. Amazing.
My commute was so much better than this guy’s… As was my commute back home this evening. Wonderful day. Just a bit chilly.
It is bloody freezing outside the Back of Beyond pub in the Kings Road, Reading (there were no seats available inside that gave me a sufficient buffer zone between myself and a pissed old bloke doing nothing but drinking; such is the clientele of your average Wetherspoons pub), […]
You wait all week for a blog post and then four come along all at once! Sorry for the flood but remember that I am a teacher and only function on other levels on a weekend… An interesting nudge from Iain Harper earlier this week (see Iain’s own […]
The Bicycle City. Trailer from Greg Sucharew on Vimeo. This video is so beautifully filmed… It’s a bit like watching a sequence from Human Planet.
Why so many visitors yesterday?
A bit of a milestone (kilometre stone?) this week; I have received an email from someone asking me about Eurovelo 8 rather than Eurovelo 5. Clearly I am more of an expert on Eurovelo 5 and my ability to say much about number 8 is limited but this […]
Sitting on the sofa, iPad in hand typing this post, I am in two minds. My serious, professional, teacher head is telling me to get off my backside and make a start on the large bag of exercise books that I brought home at the end of last […]
Mark Easton’s blog
‘When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race’ ‘Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia’ …or was it Nigel Mansell?
I paused en route home from work last night (it is now 12.30am) to replicate the photo that I had taken on the final day of term 2 just before Christmas. It’s been a long term and there is a decidedly spring feel as we edge towards the end […]
Kind of… It looked a lot bigger through my eyes.
…nearly. Only three lessons to go and we are half way through the academic year 🙂 And Spring is just around the corner. Well, not this corner… Lovely still morning in Reading. Great day for cycling! Errr… Oh yes, Reggie stayed at work last night as I got […]
When I was a student at York University back in the late 1990s, a series of revolutions spread down through eastern Europe. Poland had been rumbling for years but in 1989 successive regimes crumbled. It was an exciting period of recent history but many students in York had their […]
A strange week of extremes on apsykes.com ; from last weekend to mid-week I was getting around 200 hits a day… and in the second half of the week under 100. Could this be all the Year 11 kids at school who had discovered that Reggie has his […]
Not me. I’m still stuck in Reading on a grey and dreary Saturday morning but hey! It’s Saturday morning so I shouldn’t complain. I’m a bit of a shandy cyclist compared to some; earlier this week, Jim Rawnsley invited me to join him and some friends on a […]
How about stopping labelling them as “bottom sets”?
Article below from the TES; deciding to walk or cycle to school, or work or anywhere really is a decision you make because you believe it is the right thing to do, not because of some glossy advertising campaign or some green do-gooder. Luckily, some of us have […]
Joe Durnall has emailed; I hope you don’t mind me emailing. I intend to ride the Eurovelo 5 to Rome this coming summer, and wondered if you could give me any indication of the costs of such a venture? I have all the kit (Bike, tent, etc..) and […]
It’s like a sweet shop…
…to London (in theory). Day in London; here is the plan. 10am: BETT Show at Olympia, 1pm: meet niece in Kensington High Street for lunch, 3pm: The Outdoors Show (incorporating The London Bike Show) at The Excel Centre in Docklands. The last bit – The Outdoors Show – […]
http://www.cycling-embassy.org.uk/ To investigate…
Strange though it may seem, my trusted steed, Reggie Ridgeback, has set up his own Facebook account. Don’t believe it? See for yourself by clicking on the picture below…
And he is shining like a new penny. I only took him down to the repair shop to investigate a wobbly back wheel due to another spoke becoming loose… but when I collected him earlier today they had cleaned him, replaced the brake pads and cables, a worn […]
I’ve been playing around with the following idea in my head for the last couple of days; don’t cycle from Athens to Cadiz, cycle from Morocco to Gibraltar / Cadiz, i.e. a full circumnavigation of the Mediterranean sea by bike. How cool would that be? Clearly it would […]
Following my appearance on Radio 5 Live this morning and discussion with Shelagh Fogarty (@Foggyon5), author and ex-BBC correspondent Misha Gleny (@MishaGlenny) responded to a Tweet that I had written about the goings-on in Ambridge (The Archers that is) and it was “re-Tweeted” by Linda Grant (@lindasgrant) who is a Booker short-listed […]
The debate this morning on the Radio 5 Live phone in is whether “motorists are the country’s cash cow”. I texted in saying that I cycle from Reading to Henley every day and that people are far too ready to trot out the adage that “I can’t live […]
Please note: I didn’t write any of this… The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow. Crunchy numbers About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every […]
…and a very Happy New Year. This blog is now entering, believe it or not, its fourth year; 2008, 2009, 2010 & now 2011.
It is the mathematician in me that comes to the fore in this post. Some of you will find what follows mind-numbingly tedious; I find it fascinating… It seems appropriate at the end of the year to look back at the statistics that are thrown up by WordPress, so, […]
Toby writes… I am an eighteen year old student who is looking for inspiration and perhaps a few suggestions from an experienced rider such as yourself. Me and my friend decided, a while ago, to do a trip from where we live on the south coast to Brussels. […]
As I did with Eurovelo 5, I have taken all the places mentioned on the official description of the route and plotted them onto a Google Earth map… France seems to be lacking in detail bit it gives you an idea of the route. I have added the […]
…just a pity that WordPress can’t cope with non-YouTube videos being embedded on the site! Watch it here instead. Bah humbug. Apparently you can if you pay for a $60 “video upgrade”…
Labour MP Paul Flynn, a member of the Commons public administration committee… “The blogosphere is not an area that is open to sensible debate; it is dominated by the obsessed and the fanatical…” He was talking about government proposals to allow debate in Parliament of online petitions. He’s probably […]
…in a Hyundai. Driving is not my favourite occupation but at least if I hire a car I usually have a bit of luxury to make the most of the experience. The Hyundai doesn’t really offer that as a compensation. As for the progress northward, it is slow. […]
These are quite good (although probably a bit basic for some of the regular readers of this blog!); I really should learn how to look after my own bike a bit better…
From the London Cyclist blog… I think in this case, it really was an “accident” – the driver was not travelling at speed and the conditions were not good. London Cyclist does give a good link to another of his blog posts about helmet cameras. Interesting. I’ll come […]
…well, it is nearly Christmas! For a full explanation see the Fresh Networks blog. Thanks to Ed Thompson for the email.
