I’ve never entered a cycling sportive in my life… but I’m a sucker for a good poster and these posters from the people who organise the Eroica events have featured several times in the past on CyclingEurope.org. They’ve just sent through the complete set for 2021 – yes, it appears that they are starting again… – and the first of their cycles is actually today in South Africa.
I don’t think this is a spoiler but in the final lines of Alan Booth’s The Roads to Sata (that I have just this afternoon finished reading) he recounts a conversation he’d had with an old man towards the start of his walking journey through Japan that started at the northern extremity of Hokkaido, Cape Soya. The old man explains that you can’t understand Japan by looking at it, walking through it or talking to its people. Booth asks him how, then, do you understand Japan to which the old man answers ‘You can’t understand Japan’. It’s the final line of the book.
It’s foggy and cold outside, CNN is on the TV (as with much of the world, I’m sitting here waiting and hoping for that 253 to change soon) and it’s the first Saturday of Lockdown 2.0. Not a great deal to do other than ponder over the future… That could be a real Pandora’s box but let’s keep things focussed on cycling.
Mmm… Let’s hope I’m there for the opening but cycling the length of Japan in July & August 2020 seems a little less certain than it was just a few weeks ago…
A few weeks ago, I watched a short series of beautiful BBC natural history films called Japan: Earth’s Enchanted Islands. Alas they are are no longer on the iPlayer but a few short clips are available on YouTube. Here’s one of them: Bears… They featured several times in […]
Wednesday 2nd January 2020, 9am A long, long time ago… well, back in 2008 when I was living in Reading, I decided to head off to London to see a document at the British Library. The document in question had been written by Archbishop Sigeric. He was the […]
