I’m at Square Chapel Arts Centre in Halifax tonight – Thursday 12th July – to see… Tickets still available – click here – … and you can store you bicycle in the Cornerstone room! “Scottish-born David Millar bought his first road bike aged 15 and when he turned […]
It’s taken nine years of blogging, over 2,500 blog posts, 20,000 kilometres of cycling around Europe and three (rather good) books… but I’ve finally been invited on an all-expenses tour of a foreign land. The land in question is the Dordogne region of France and earlier this afternoon […]
The great and the good of cycling out in force for the pre-event launch of this year’s Tour de Yorkshire; Welcome to Yorkshire’s Sir Gary Verity, the Tour de France’s Christian Prudhomme and La Vuelta’s Javier Guillรฉn. Is that a sign that Spain’s big race might be coming […]
For those who like their cycling art just as much as their cycling facts and figures, this book could be for you: “Racing Bicycles: The Illustrated Story of Road Cycling“. “Everything you need to know about road cycling โ the bikes, the races, the famous riders โ in […]
After a spell of poor weather, summer seems to have finally arrived in the UK. A sign of things to come on the continent in July and August? The blast of warm air has come from the south – it always does I suppose – and I am hopeful of decent weather as I head off along Le Grand Tour. But I’m not counting my poulets just yet. The last time I mentioned Le Grand Tour back on June 5th, I was still somewhat uncertain as to when I would be catching the ferry but as of a few days ago, the date has been confirmed as July 2nd. With a return scheduled for the night of September 3rd, I will have nine weeks to achieve my objective of cycling around France, then to Andermatt in Switzerland and finally north along the Rhine back to where I started at the Hook of Holland. And I’m finally getting excited about the prospect of doing so…
A selection of photos to keep you going. I’ll write up when home.
Iโve seen the Pyrenees for the first time this evening. After so much relatively flat or tame topography over the past five weeks, itโs good to finally have a little drama added to the landscape. They are only in silhouette, shrouded in haze and only just perceptible from the sky but they are definitely there. (Or my glasses need cleaning.) Iโm in a place called Alzonne by the way, about 90km along the canal from Toulouse. Carcassonne is a further 20km to the south east.
There were times this morning when I thought this particular day – the whole trip perhaps – were being derailedโฆ It all started by me heading over the bridge back in the direction of La Rรฉole. Oops! Wrong direction. No big problem; Iโd only cycled perhaps 50 metres across the bridge and by doing so made a nice video clip (yep, you guessed it – watch the videoโฆ).
