Book review: Along The Med On A Bike Called Reggie, by Andrew P Sykes

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I’ve reviewed two other books by the same author before – his 1st book, and his last book. This review is for his second book, which I only fairly recently purchased and read. Sykes is on Twitter as @CyclingEurope, so give him a follow and he has a podcast, with full details available at his ... Read more

Crash card

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Nobody ever wants to crash, especially when that crash involves being hit by a driver. In fact, most of us don’t even want to think about that! What I’ve learned from painful personal experience is that shock will impact on your behaviour, and decisions after a crash. You are extremely likely to make poor decisions, and to ... Read more

GoCycle Guide – Kennet and Avon Canal cycle route

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A picture of my laden bicycle, taken on a bridge, while cycling the Kennet And Avon Canal cycle route
Cycle the Kennet and Avon Canal Ah, the romance of cycling along canals, wind in your hair, sun on your face, and birds swooping around! You’ll smile and exchange pleasantries with boaters as you pass each other by along the Kennet and Avon Canal cycle route. Canal cycling is gorgeous, usually flat, incredibly scenic, and a wonderful introduction to cycle ... Read more

SheCycles – Nadine

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Nadine on her bicycle
In this latest SheCycles post, we hear from Nadine Ansorg – she’s Nadine_Ansorg on Twitter, and you should definitely follow her. Nadine offers insight of being a woman who cycles, both in the UK and in Europe, especially Germany, where she’s originally from. SheCycles is a growing series of posts in which a wide array ... Read more

A suggested cycle touring pack list

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Happy cycle camping! A hand holding up a tin mug, with Happy Camper printed on it
Why  do  you  even  need  a  cycle  touring  pack  list? If you’ve read anything else on here, you will realise by now that I’m very enthusiastic about cycle touring. So much so, I have an entire category dedicated to cycle touring, and another dedicated to cycle camping. Of course not everyone who goes cycle touring ... Read more

Cycloffee

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Cycloffee is a challenge that will benefit both cyclists, and coffee shops. As is commonly known, cycling and coffee is a match made in heaven! The idea is to visit as many of the coffee shops as possible, and get your Caffeine Card stamped. Rules are simple: a visit to a coffee shop only counts if you cycled there, and obviously you can only get a single stamp per café.

To overcome the monster…

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Hills – love them, or hate them, you cannot alter the reality that they exist. You can try and avoid them – move to the Somerset Levels, or the Cambridge Fens, or most of Lincolnshire, for that matter, but sooner or later you will have to cycle up some hills. Some refer to monster hills, but ... Read more

Facts and perceptions

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There’s a massive difference between fact and perception, but as a species, we mostly operate on perceptions. Add to the mix the fact that psychology teaches us that humans tend to first form an opinion, then look for reasons to support that opinion, and things can rapidly get messy. For many thousands of years, humans ... Read more

Preparing for a cycle tour

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How do you prepare for a cycle tour? How do you prepare yourself, so your cycle tour is pleasure, not punishment? No, this post will not turn into a detailed, structured training plan (though it does contain a link to a simplified training plan). If you were preparing to tackle the Hour record, I’d expect ... Read more

Back to basics – Let there be light

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I’m a huge fan of cycling in the dark, which is just as well, as almost half the year most cycle commuters cycle in the dark both ways. There’s something completely different about cycling in your personal bubble of light, along otherwise totally dark roads, and I rather strongly feel this is something everyone should ... Read more

Frazer’s Tour – Part 3

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This is the last instalment of Frazer Goodwin’s guest posts, in which he recounts his adventurous 1 400km ride from Belgium to Sweden, and his return to Belgium. If you haven’t already done so, I suggest you read Part first, then read Part 2. Part 3 This summer I managed to cycle from Brussels to ... Read more

Frazer’s Tour – Part 2

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This is Part 2 of Frazer Goodwin’s 3-part guest blog about his 1 400km ride from Belgium to Sweden. If you haven’t yet, I suggest you read Part 1 first. Part 2 I finally completed a bike ride in the summer I’ve been thinking about and planning for years – riding from my home in ... Read more

Frazer’s Tour – Part 1

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This guest post is by Frazer Goodwin – he’s on Twitter as @FrazerGoodwin and you really should follow him. Frazer is English, but lives in Belgium. Enough from me, I’ll hand over to Frazer now.

Part One

“Aren’t you too old to travel that far on a bike?”

It’s a question I’ve been asked by both friends and family. But I have finally managed to complete a multiday bike ride I’ve been planning for years – a ride from my home in Brussels to my in-laws place in Sweden on an island north of Gothenburg. When I posted that I’d done it on Facebook, a good friend here in Brussels simply responded “Nuts”.

Well, I didn’t get to ride that far at 57years of age by just climbing on the bike and setting off. So this short series about my bikepacking will start with the planning and preparations I undertook before the next post details the trip itself and then a final one will review what I’ve learned and plan to do next…

I have been thinking of riding to the island off the Swedish west coast where my in-laws have a house for a couple of decades. It is after all where my wife and I married more than 20 years ago. I had planned the ride in detail for last year, but the pandemic kyboshed it then. I managed to turn it into a tour of the Netherlands to at least use some of the accommodation I’d already booked. And that trip provided me with a lot of insight about how both my bike-setup and I coped on a multi-day bikepacking trip.

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Back to basics – winter cycling

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Every year a bunch of people start cycling in the spring or the summer, and are determined to carry on cycling through winter. Every winter there are loads of cyclists who give up cycling. Let’s have a look at what you can do to keep you riding through winter. Wet Let’s deal with the elephant in ... Read more

Looking forward

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We live in the Information Age, and most of us have instantly-available information at our fingertips, courtesy of the Internet. We also have more information available to us now than ever before, yet it seems we chose to primarily use the Internet to spread doom and gloom, with the occasional cute kitten video to lighten ... Read more