Darkmoor – the return

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Darkmoor was an annual all-night bike ride that I used to organise. It never really took off, so I stopped it. After all, there’s no point continuing a ride that attracted exactly 2 riders the last time it ran. Darkwhat? Darkmoor was an all-night ride that crossed Dartmoor – the last wilderness in England. The ... Read more

Kit review – Zefal T3 top tube bag

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Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐ The Zefal T3 bag attaches to the top tube with Velcro-type fasteners, and has a clear pocket for your smartphone. It’s generously-sized, but you need to decide for yourself if that’s a benefit, or not. Road-tested I took the T3 bag along when I cycled (more or less) the bottom half of ... Read more

The Beginner’s Guide to Designing a Cycle Route

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Tired of cycling the same old routes, and ready to broaden your horizons? Then this post if for you! This is a long and detailed guide, so set some time aside to read all of it. What makes a good cycle route? Ask 100 cyclists that, and you’ll get 100 different answers. However, there will ... Read more

Kit Review – Profile Design aero bars & risers

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Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Aero bars on a touring bike? Yes, I fit Profile Design Legacy II aero bars to my touring bike. My primary motivation was not to gain any aerodynamical improvements. No, instead I wanted a way to get weight off my hands and wrists, especially on longer rides. I intentionally left it some ... Read more

Kit Review – Nebo Mycro head torch

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Kit review of the Nebo Mycro head torch.
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Head torches are severely under-rated, and are critical bits of kit. They come in extremely useful when cycle commuting, cycle touring and when camping. On night-time rides, riders who use battery lights are usually able to remove their lights to illuminate parts of their bike, for example when mending a puncture. Us ... Read more

The CIA and cycling

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You may wonder what the CIA (and its predecessor, the OSS) could possibly have to do with cycling, and especially cycling activism. The answer will surprise you: they literally pretty much wrote the book on campaigning against cycling infrastructure! Don’t believe me? Read on! The OSS The OSS (Office for Strategic Services) later pretty much ... Read more

Five things you’ll love about cycle touring the UK

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Some people can only be happy when they things to moan about, and in the absence of valid reasons, they’ll invent some. Those people will try and tell you that the UK somehow is an awful place to explore by bicycle. Don’t listen to them! The UK is a stunningly beautiful country, and the best ... Read more

The Transcontinental Race

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Longer and harder than the TdF The Tour de France needs no introduction. More than a bicycle race, it’s become showbusiness. Team strategies, dictated into riders’ ears via Race Radio, robbed the event of the almost-reckless spontaneity it used to have in earlier years. For years, the TdF retained it’s purest form. Riders competed as ... Read more

So it went wrong

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The Internet is awash with glitzy, highly-polished tales of jaw-dropping adventures in stunning and exotic locations, illustrated with often wonderful pictures. That’s the show-reel, to draw you in. Do not for one moment think all adventures are like that! Sooner or later, something will go badly wrong on an adventure. That’s all part of the ... Read more

This is the life you’re living

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This is your only life, so live it well. Instead of worrying about things that you cannot control, focus on what’s within your power to control. That’s more than what you realise! My heartfelt advice is to forget about your career, unless it will make you feel proud to one day have a tombstone that ... Read more

Aero Bars On A Touring Bike

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Aero bars, also called tri-bars, are attached to your bike’s handlebars, with the primary purpose to get your body into a far more aerodynamic position. They’re mostly used by riders doing time-trials or triathlons (hence the tri-bars moniker) but they do offer benefits outside of those two fields. I recently ordered a set of aero ... Read more

The Winner!

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During my Wild Atlantic Way ride, I ran a competition, giving away a signed copy of John Devoy’s amazing book, Quondam. The competition took the form of a quiz, and with each daily post there was a new question about Ireland. The questions were compiled by John Devoy himself. Why questions about Ireland? For starters, ... Read more

Just go on and do it

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I’m well aware that Nike has copyright on that phrase, which is why I changed it a tad here, but I expect even the mighty Nike will agree with what I’m saying here: Stop putting it off and just do it! (Strictly speaking, I’m agreeing with what Nike so aptly put in their slogan, and ... Read more

Truth matters

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Trust is binary: either you trust someone, or you don’t. When people deliberately give you false information, they destroy any trust you may have had. Sadly, this is something police in the UK seem to struggle to understand. Go grab a cup of your favourite drink, as this is a long post, covering a lot ... Read more

Couch to Cycle Camping

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You heard about Couch to 5k, right? This is vaguely similar, only instead of trying to get you to run 5 kilometres, let’s get you cycle camping. Said hey babe, take a walk on the wild side I make no secret of the fact that I believe wild camping is the best camping. There are ... Read more

Cycle touring – the little things

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The Internet’s awash with cycle touring packing lists – there’s one on here, too. However, there are at least two very important items that most packing lists forget to tell you about, but we’ll get to those in a bit. Daft as a brush Have you seen videos, or read write-ups of people cutting their ... Read more

UPDATED: Kit review – iGPSport BSC200 GPS unit

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Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐ Do read the update to this review further below. I know my cunning plan was to never replace my ageing old Garmin Edge 500 GPS unit, and instead rely on the superb RideWithGPS app on my phone. It was for this exact reason that I bought a rugged, waterproof smartphone. Some flaws ... Read more

Cycling Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way

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Go Mall is Gaelic for "slow", and slow perfectly describes the very best way to cycle the Wild Atlantic Way
I want to tell you about Ireland. My Ireland. No, I’m not Irish, and obviously I don’t own the place. That’s not what I mean when I say my Ireland. My Ireland Each of us live our own lives, and we have our own experiences. When I talk about my Ireland, I’m referring to my ... Read more

Wild Atlantic Way – the things that went wrong

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One of the things that’s important to accept before going cycle touring is that things can, and often do go wrong. Being mentally prepared for that will leave you prepared for when things do go wrong. With that said, here are the annoyingly-long list of things that went wrong on my Wild Atlantic Way ride. ... Read more

Bollox to AI!

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AI (Artificial Intelligence) is big news these days, and it’s big business. The makers of one of the best-known AIs, Chat-GPT, claim they spent over US$ 40 million just training their AI. AI is being integrated into search engines, and more. Soon, it will permeate our lives. Keeping it real Various search-engine optimisation sites are ... Read more