Category: Photography

Camping & Hiking In Wasdale And Eskdale

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I’ve just made a return trip to The Lake District and the National Trust campsite in Wasdale. I stayed there for a couple of nights back in 2018 when I climbed Scafell Pike (see the film at the foot of this post). Last week I was there with a friend to do some hiking in and around the valley. I wasn’t on the bike so this is one for HikingEurope.org rather than CyclingEurope.org although we did drive up the Hardknott Pass, one of Britain’s more challenging cycling climbs. It was hard work in a car never mind on a bike but perhaps one to add to the list of future two-wheeled challenges…

The Kit Required To Blog, Video And Podcast Around Europe

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Here’s a post that some will love but others with loathe… I’ve been gathering together my kit for Le Grand Tour for a few days now and there will, inevitably, be a rather clichรฉd picture of it all laid out on the floor (see previous big trip kit posts ad nausea…). Look out for that perhaps the day before I set off on July 2nd. It will be the usual standard stuff; tent, sleeping bag, packet of spaghetti (“You do know they have dried spaghetti in France don’t you…” some wag will quip)… But what usually gets lost in those photos is the electronic kit that, increasingly, seems to be standard. Although many will disagree…

Background Inspiration

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Episode 027 of The Cycling Europe Podcast was an important one… It featured Dr. Ian Walker, an academic and cyclist who had broken the World Record for cycling from Nordkapp in Norway to Tarifa in Spain. That in itself made it worthy of note and I would encourage you to go back and have a listen. However, I normally ask people who appear on the podcast to provide me with a few images that I can use when publicising their particular episode of the podcast. Episode 027 was the first when I used one of the images as a background to the information slide that is used on YouTube (prior to that it was just a different colour background for each episode).

Cycling Slovenia: The Outsider’s View

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A few weeks ago, shortly after attending an online seminar on the subject, I posted an article about cycling in Slovenia. It was kind of the ‘official’ version. My experience of cycling in Slovenia, as I set out in that post, is very limited; just a few hours back in 2013 as I cycled from Croatia in the direction of Trieste in Italy. Even after such a short visit, however, I was impressed and the seminar made it clear that there was much, much more to see in this, one of Europe’s smallest countries. A few days later a Slovenian cyclist called Miha Pavลกiฤ emailed with an ‘insider’s view’ of cycling in Slovenia. All good things come in threes and clearly cycling in Slovenia is no exception as Robin Watkins has now been in touch. He visited Slovenia in September 2017 and below are his thoughts on travelling through the country and, again, some beautiful photographs.

Manos Charalampakis: Cycling In Athens – The Good, The Bad And The Beautiful!

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Attentive readers will hopefully remember that, way back in 2013, I flew to Athens with Reggie (the bike) with the intention of cycling from Cape Sounio in Greece to Cape St. Vincent in Portugal, following the coast of the Mediterranean and as later recounted in Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie. Before setting off, I had arranged to meet local cyclist and journalist Manos Charalampakis. Manos works for a newspaper in Athens and, among other things, he often writes about cycling. Indeed he writes a blog for the newspaper’s website and earlier this week he got in touch with a few thoughts about being a cyclist in Athens.

New Year’s Day 2021

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Just returned from a 14km walk. I took my camera with me for the first time in quite a while. I’d forgotten how nice it is just to wander and snap… If you happen to live local, you can probably work out my route. Happy New Year!

2020: The ‘Interesting’ Year In Review

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So 2020… it will go down in history as the ‘interesting’ year. More infamous than famous. It does seem to have been a year that has passed very quickly. Perhaps it was the soap-opera nature of the whole COVID thing, waiting for the next bit of breaking news that might change our lives for the better but which, more often than not, delivered yet more bad news. However, in a year of many, many negatives it is worth reflecting upon the fact that the global pandemic did have knock-on positives. I don’t usually show it, but I consider myself to be an optimist and if ever there was a year when being an optimist – even a blind optimist – was more useful than ever, it has surely been 2020.