“Words and verse about the race” sums up this half hour programme called ‘Fear and Loathing In Harrogate‘ that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 earlier this week. Recorded in, well, Harrogate on the day that the Tour de France passed through the town, it’s well worth thirty […]
My journey across the continent continues… I have already posted planning notes on cycling through Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Here are my planning notes for Belgium after which only France and Spain need to be considered before I set off from Tarifa in Spain shortly after Easter. […]
While maps are on my mind (see previous post)… I have a newly discovered love for Marco Polo maps. But before I get on to them, let’s back track a little. I can’t imagine there will ever be a day when I ditch paper maps altogether; when I cycled […]
I was managing to write one of these country commentaries at the rate of one per weekend earlier in December but I’ve had a break for a few weeks over Christmas. Remember that they are not a complete overview of cycling in the particular country through which I […]
It’s perfectly normal at the fag end of the old year to reflect upon what has happened over the previous twelve months and look forward to the new year with vague (perhaps even precise) resolutions to do everything better than you did before. In the books I have […]
Here in West Yorkshire – my home county and the place to which I will be relocating permanently later in 2015 – I have just had a brief Boxing Day walk over the newly-created cycle path in West Vale (about 3 miles south of Halifax) that makes use […]
I have arrived at country number three – in a reverse sense – after previously writing about Cycling In Norway and Cycling In Sweden. Denmark will, of course, be country number five after Spain, France, Belgium and Germany but in my quest not to neglect the latter part […]
When I cycled from Greece to Portugal in 2013, I spent most of my time pre-trip thinking about Greece, Albania and, to a certain extent, Croatia. I didn’t spend too much time considering the western European countries through which I would be cycling. In France, a country I know […]
It’s that time of the year again when the route of the Tour de France is released and as per usual there is an accompanying video to reveal all. This year the video is a real cracker; it seems speeded up somewhat and the mountain stages are shown […]
Not that I have done this yet, but it is part of next year’s plan to cycle along the Eurovelo 3 from Santiago de Compostela to Trondheim (and beyond, along the Eurovelo 1 to North Cape). Yesterday’s trip to London (see previous post / video) allowed me a […]
By Aiden Watson (@aidenwatson89) I’m really excited to be training for my first big race — the Tour of Britain. Like so many amateur cyclists, I found the Tour de France hugely inspiring and a great boost for my training plan. I took up cycling last year after deciding […]
By Henry Arnold The Tour de France was an overwhelming success. The two stages held in Yorkshire: Leeds to Harrogate and York to Sheffield, drew crowds totalling 2.5m. Not only did the Tour bring the sport into more and more homes it also proved that the Yorkshire terrain […]
Courtesy of Wordle, here are the top 100 words contained in Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie… (see comments below) The top 100 words do not include very common English words. The word ‘cycling‘ appears 568 times in the book but the word ‘but‘ rears its […]
Well, I’ve got to have a press release, no? Press Release: ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie’ For immediate distribution Wednesday 30th July 2014, Reading, Berkshire We are delighted to announce the publication of the cycling travelogue ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie‘ by Yorkshire […]
Here’s a great video from Welcome2Yorkshire summing up in images and music the two-day visit of the Tour de France to Yorkshire. A few screen shots to whet your appetite…
Moving on… I’m a sucker for a good poster (I think I said the same thing only last week about the Transport for London posters…) and here is another good one. More details on the Brompton World Championship website.
Information courtesy of Europcar!
The atmosphere today on the Côte de Greetland (known locally, more prosaically as Queen Street, Hammerstones and Blackley Road) was wonderful. Half the population of the small town of Elland (c. 20,000) must surely have been somewhere along the hill. I was brought up on Blackley Road and my […]
Information courtesy of Europcar!
…for two days at least. It should be fun!
Information courtesy of Europcar!
By guest blogger Ian Fergusson Le Tour de France has come a long way since its humble beginnings in 1903 as a newspaper publicity stunt. The world’s greatest bicycle race is also the world’s largest free sporting event. Thousands line the streets of France every year to cheer on […]
Here are three guys who cycled along a similar route to me but from London Barcelona taking in large chunks of my 2010 journey from England to Italy and then my 2013 across southern France and into Spain. I wrote books about my adventures; these chaps have made […]
Well, disappointing news about David Millar (see previous post and today’s news of him being dropped by his team, Garmin), but the Tour de France circus moves on… After Yorkshire it arrives in London and here are a couple of cracking posters produced by Transport for London. Both posters […]
Here’s an interesting press release relating to pro cyclist David Millar: “Cycling Films and Scottish Documentary Institute are looking for budding volunteers to shoot, record and photograph pro cyclist David Millar during his last ever Tour de France. Called ‘Capture David’, this is a unique opportunity to collect images […]
Here’s a timely repeat (I’ve posted it at least twice before) but it’s a great explanation of the Tour de France, past and present.
My old secondary school, Brooksbank School in Elland, West Yorkshire are doing their very best to make sure that those who will be in the area for stage 2 of the Tour de France have a great view of the race both during its passage through the town, […]
Courtesy of ‘Yorkshire Jules’ (@julieredred on Twitter) this must be the best Tour de France related photo I have yet seen. Fabulous! (Update from her mum: she is Phoebe, aged 9, started cycling 2 years ago and rides with Clifton cycle club in York.)
I’m no music critic so I’ll simply post the press release and you can make up your own mind: Hearts in Notes today releases “Breakaway”, a contemporary instrumental composition, along with an accompanying music video. The release is the first from Michael Thomas’ Hearts in Notes since last […]
…but were afraid to ask? Well, perhaps not. But if you do want to find out almost anything about the Tour de France, here is a good place to start, or rather two good places to start. I was sent the two books shown here by the publishers […]
The Yorkshire Bicycle Show takes place over the weekend of the Tour de France Grand Depart in Yorkshire, the 4th – 6th July, at Leeds Town Hall. The organisers have just finalised the list of talks that will be hosted as part of the event and here it […]
By guest blogger Emily Buchanan With the Tour de France set to depart from Yorkshire in July, there’s never been a better time to embrace bike culture in the UK. From a 100-day cultural festival in the North East to the second annual Edinburgh Festival of Cycling in Scotland, […]
Yesterday was my birthday. It wasn’t a great birthday as I also happened to be ill and had taken the day off work. I’m still ill and I’m still off work. Late last night as I was coughing in my bed, unable to fall asleep, I heard my […]
Coming To A Radio Station / Café / Pub / Bike Shop / Cathedral Near You! Well, if you live in Yorkshire… Later this week I’ll be talking a short break from putting together the final chapters of Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie (due out […]
Here is the third in a series of extracts from the soon-to-be-published book ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie‘. If you haven’t done so already, you may want to read extract 1 (which was about cycling day 11 in Albania) by following this link and read extract 2 (which […]
I may be a cycle-touring author in my spare time, but at 6:30am every Monday to Friday for 38 weeks every year I cycle from my home in Reading to do my day job of teaching French in a state secondary school in Henley-on-Thames. It’s the reason why […]
While Yorkshire gears up for the Tour de France, Ireland – north and south – get ready for the arrival of the Giro d’Italia in 2014…
I suppose being a French-teaching cyclist, I am the perfect target audience for a new book which is subtitled ‘The ultimate cycle journey from Channel to Med – St. Malo to Nice‘. Even if you are not a French-teaching cyclist (which, let’s face it, the chances are you […]
By guest blogger Tom Nelson The countdown to Le Grand Depart has at long last begun with a one hundred day cultural festival that celebrates the start of arguably the greatest cycle race of all time, the Tour de France. Indeed it is the first time that such a […]
Here is the second in a series of extracts from the soon-to-be-published book ‘Along The Med on a Bike Called Reggie‘. If you haven’t done so already, you may want to read extract 1 (which was all about cycling day 11 in Albania) by following this link. Tuesday […]
Here in the UK the clocks have just changed which means that cycling commuters such as my good self can look forward to six months of travelling to and from work without having to remember to fix the lights on the bike for all except the earliest of […]
I’ve mentioned the first two days of the Tour de France 2014 frequently in recent months as it will be visiting Yorkshire, the region where I myself was born and grew up. I haven’t really written about day 3 of Le Tour which will see the cyclists set off […]
Yorkshire is going potty over the arrival of the Tour de France in July. Yorks of Thirsk* a cafe in North Yorkshire (@YorksTea) are going, err… tea potty. Just look at these displays they have created; *”A friendly independent café in the market town of Thirsk. Cyclists and […]
More details on the TOB website… (It looks as though Yorkshire is now part of France! Perhaps in 2015…)
Watch the video here… I’ll be there. Will you?
I’ll be wearing this with pride… kicking off in Berlin over the next few days!
In the lead up to arrival of the Tour de France in July, Yorkshire (my home county) is having a get together, The Yorkshire Festival. All the details on the website (and a couple of screen shots from that site below) but this official song from a group […]
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 […]
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…)
“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 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.
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
I can’t say for sure but it wouldn’t surprise me if great works of travel literature have been penned whilst sitting in laundrettes worldwide. If they haven’t, this short piece describing my cycle from the Italian Alps to the French Riviera may be a first. But I doubt […]
It’s now midday on Saturday and I’ve arrived in the town of Cuneo just above the plain of northern Italy. Not too high – just 550m – but the highest that I’ve been since arriving in Italy and from here over the course of the next 24 hours […]
It was the equivalent of one of those days when you turn up at work and just potter around doing bits and pieces but never seem to get to tackling the big issues in your job. This tends to happen for me as a teacher on the very […]
So where are you tonight? Who said that? It’s Ivan, Ivan iPad. Oh my… Haven’t we taken this too far? As I was saying, where are you tonight? Ask me for a Shakespearean quote Err… OK. Andrew, can you give me a quote from Shakespeare? Yes, I’d be […]
My plans as they stand for the upcoming week are below. As always they will evolve, change, be scrubbed etc… as circumstances & events dictate. My arrival in France will miss the self-imposed deadline of the 1st August (quite considerably) but… If you have any comments or suggestions […]
I started writing this last night but eventually gave in to the weight of my eyelids shutting… How could I not take a day off in Venice? That’s the plan for today but before that, I need to catch up on yesterday’s events, cycling day 23. I have […]
After my enforced day off it feels just like the evening before you return to work after having been sick. I am now more or less sure that I wasn’t suffering from dehydration after all and that my problem was a bug that I had picked up somewhere. […]
When I look at the map I don’t seem to have cycled very far today compared to the previous two. However, three days into my post-Dubrovnik campaign to make it over the border into France by the 1st August, the number of kilometres cycled has been comparable to […]
It was indeed a shorter day in the end and nothing untoward happened. Following coffee in Mitikas it was a relatively short cycle to the much nicer Paleros where I had planned to meet Ed Cox. Ed is cycling from Bristol to Brisbane and he had contacted me […]
They used to make a really cool little video showing a fly-through of the route of the Tour de France, but strangely, for the 100th Tour de France they have reverted to simplicity… Shame. My route this summer will pass over the route of the Tour de France […]
It has yet to be rebound and may be better as two volumes but here it is, hot off the chopping board… The Rough Guide to the Eurovelo 8; Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, France, Spain & Portugal (or at least the bits I’ll be cycling through). I have […]
Here are some exciting things being planned in West Yorkshire (the area where I was brought up) to tie in with the Tour de France visiting the region in 2014. Hopefully I will be involved in some way, shape or form…
Three weeks to go… Still so much to do in terms of planning and I am beginning to feel the same way as I did back in 2010 before I set off for the south of Italy; a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Excitement is the easy emotion […]
Last weekend when I was staying at my brother’s house in Yorkshire, my niece happened to be browsing through the travel section of The Sunday Times. She pointed out an article about ‘cycling-friendly‘ hotels, the first of which was in Provence, France and my ears pricked up. The […]
I was emailed yesterday by a guy in America called Angelo who is planning his own cycle tour of Europe. He had read Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie and suggested that I might be interested in another book that predates my own by getting on for […]
If you are a reader of Cycling Active magazine and have an ability to spot detail amongst all the bike-related info., you may have noticed a mention of Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie in the July edition of the magazine that came out last […]
Way back in June 2010 I wrote this post about the FreeLoader solar charger. It was just before I set off along the Eurovelo 5 in the summer of 2010 and I was hopeful that I had found a nifty solution to the power problem as I cycled […]
It’s 7:10am on April 21st. In exactly 10 weeks (to the minute, hopefully), my cycling expedition across Europe starts as my flight from London Heathrow to Athens takes to the air. OK, if you want to quibble, there is much room to do so. I start the cycling […]
The reason I’ve been blogging about visiting France last week and being in Slovakia this week is three-fold. Firstly it gets me back into the travel writing mode and I’ll need to be be in that mode as from the 1st July for this summer’s big cycle along […]
When we initially planned this walking holiday in Slovakia I wasn’t quite sure what the weather would be like. Even as recently as last week I was assuming that a few layers (perhaps an extra one than normal) and my normal waterproof cycling jacket would suffice in this […]
I’m at the annoying end of the cold. Not annoying in that it will soon be over with but annoying in that it is still spluttering erratically to an end. No doubt when I wake in the morning I will feel fine and an opportunity to take the […]
Cold & shivery. That’s not just the weather by the way. It’s also me. Being ill is not great. Being away from home and being ill is bad timing. Being ill away from home when it’s freezing cold outside is annoying in the extreme. I’ve sniffed my way […]
I’m a little bit worried. I’m cold and just a bit shivery. My legs are aching. This could mean one of several things. It could be that I am simply cold. I’ve not really had the chance to get a thoroughly warmed up all day what with being […]
