The foreigner’s guide to cycle-touring in the UK

by
Time for a tongue-in-cheek look at foreigners cycle touring in the UK. Now the UK is exquisitely beautiful and it's no wonder it receives so many tourists. The main island itself is small, and is little over 800 miles from end to end, making it perfect for cycle touring. Indeed, one of the most iconic of British rides is the End To End. This ride either starts in the south (Land's End) and finishes in the north (John O'Groats) when it's abbreviated as LEJOG, or it starts in the north and finishes in the south, when it's referred to as JOGLE.

Devon Coast To Coast – A Travelling Ouballies Ride

by
Devon  Coast  To  Coast,  aka  NCN  27 This past weekend I cycled Devon Coast To Coast again, along with my friend Caspar (follow him on Twitter – he’s one of the good guys). I know the route very well – after all, I published what I genuinely believe to be the most detailed route guide ... Read more

But I need to drive…

by
Have a conversation with the vast majority of people, and you will very soon hear how everyone needs their car. You will be told detailed stories of how they use their cars to collect fridges, couches and more. So much so that I wouldn’t at all be surprised if someone claimed they used their car to ... Read more

A Redlake Ride

by
I’ve posted about Redlake before – it’s out on Dartmoor, and there’s a disused china clay mine, which left behind three things of note: a large spoil heap, a pit that’s long-since filled with water, forming a pond, and the remains on what used to be an old railway track. The name predates the mine, ... Read more

Back to Basics – Cycle Helmets

by
Cycle helmets are often a highly divisive topic, surrounded by a wealth of myths and misunderstandings. This post is NOT going to tell you whether or not you should wear a helmet. Instead, I will try to give you some clarity about cycle helmets. Back in 2014, I had a crash. I still distinctly recall ... Read more

Back to basics – Saddles

by
A very common complaint about cycling is about pain or discomfort caused by the saddle. Let’s get the obvious point out in the open right away: we are all different, and our bodies are different. What this means in practice is that a saddle that’s extremely comfortable to you might be excruciating for me to ... Read more

“Influencer”

by
I’m highly sceptical about the entire “influencer” cottage industry. If you claim to be an “influencer”, what I’m hearing is that your opinion is for sale, and at that point, I’ve lost all respect for you, and you’ve lost all credibility in my mind. I’m most certainly NOT an “influencer”!  What you will get from me ... Read more

Touring in a connected world

by
Some cycle tourers I greatly admire, including Dervla Murphy and John Devoy, are very clear in their derision of taking tech along when cycle touring.That’s OK – what makes the world such a fantastic place is the fact that we’re all different, with different views and opinions. I’m just about a digital native, having been ... Read more

Post-crash blues

by
Back in 2016, I was involved in a crash. Two weeks before the Dartmoor Classic sportive, I was probably fitter than at any other time in my life, and was comfortably confident of getting a gold medal. Cycling to work, as I did daily, I used to leave earlier, and take the longer route, treating ... Read more

No plan(et) B

by
By now, you might be sick of hearing about climate change. After all, didn’t the doomsayers forecast Armageddon for decades now, and yet, here we still are? Surely that proves climate change is just a big old scare story, right? I suppose to some degree at least you may be forgiven for thinking like that. ... Read more

Love, death and bicycles

by
LOVE It’s often said that the only things in life that are certain are death and taxes. That’s not quite true – there are many other certainties. One of those is that the vast majority of people enjoy cycling, and would love to cycle more, but are scared off by perceived danger on the roads. ... Read more

Book review – Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, by Dervla Murphy

by
In 1963, Europe had one of the coldest winters, and 1963, during winter, was when Dervla Murphy set off to cycle from her native Ireland to faraway India. Along the way, she kept a diary, and this book is the result of that diary. The world was a totally different place in 1963, as you’d ... Read more

Is justice blind?

by
The vast majority of cyclists in the UK will tell you that the courts are exceedingly lenient towards drivers who endanger, or even injure or kill cyclists. Even when convicted, drivers regularly plead “exceptional hardship” and are therefore permitted to keep driving. At this stage, it’s easy to get angry at the Crown Prosecution Service ... Read more

When reality hits

by
This past weekend (August 21), Dartmoor Search & Rescue was called out to evacuate a young girl, who was hypothermic, from the moor. While searching for her, quite by chance, they stumbled upon a cyclist lying on the ground. When they checked him out, they found no signs of life, and they recovered his body, ... Read more

Book Review: Pedal Power, by Anna Hughes

by
Pedal Power is a very unusual book, from the pen of the very talented Anna Hughes. I reviewed an earlier book of hers, Eat Sleep Cycle before. What makes this book unusual? It’s non-fiction, but that’s not unusual. The unusual part is it tells the stories of over 80 people who were pedal powered, and ... Read more