cycling
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Three is the Magic Number
A while back my friend Ollie from work said he wanted to ride up Mont Ventoux for his fortieth birthday. I mentioned that my friends Jo, George and Oli had, a couple of years before, ridden all three road ascents and joined something called Le Club Des Cingles Du Mont Ventoux. I pointed him in…
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Cogidubnus Cheese and Cake Double Century
“Please take a banana. I hate them.” I chase wheels through the southwest fringes of London, from Richmond station over the Thames, out through Bushy Park and over the Thames again by Hampton Court Palace and then through leafy suburbia. I know that I am riding a bit harder than I want to be and…
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Alpine Weekender
Thursday “Not here, you need to be at the North Terminal”. I really should have checked my boarding pass before I joined the huge queue to drop off my bike bag. Thirty minutes later I’ve dropped my bag at the right terminal and find my way to the departure gate for Geneva. A few hours after…
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Restless
An overwhelming desire to be somewhere else. The overnight ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe. 130 kilometre potter around a corner of Normandy. Lunch and a nap on a beach. The evening ferry back to Sussex. Stopping off on the way home (avec vin, formage et saucisse) to meet friends in Hidden Valley. Waking up on the side…
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Scuffing the edges
Riding on the edge. Not the ragged edge but the blurred edge of what I think is possible. Travelling along ancient ways, drove roads and holloways. Ignoring the red and yellow lines on the map, following the narrow white lines left behind, the back roads and short cuts. Forgoing busy thoroughfares as if using a…
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Kingdom of the East Saxons
a tour of Essex with forays over the border into Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk biplanes over rolling Cambridgeshire fields, skylark song the aural equivalent to the shapes of the wind in the crops outrunning thundering clouds along the northern edge of Essex an ancient Ford Escort smelling of spliffs and knackered gaskets rainbow fringed clouds…
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The Man of Kent 300
Start, kilometre 0 – Tonbridge, Saturday 20:30 Proof of passage: Sainsbury till receipt, 2 litre bottle of Evian Preparations for this overnight perm haven’t exactly been perfect. Last night George and I went to watch some crit racing in Hove Park and necked a couple of beers. That would have been fine but we then…
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The Sussex Spring Classic
A couple of years ago I planned a ride for the Sunday of Paris-Roubaix incorporating some inappropriate sections for road bikes on skinny tyres. There are no cobbles or secteurs of pave in Sussex (except maybe a few metres here and there) but there are a lot of bridleways, gravel paths, farm tracks and tiny…
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