randonneur
-
Meet Me By The Water Tower
Anyone who has followed this blog for a while will know that for over a decade I’ve ridden along the coast from Brighton where I live to Newhaven to hop on the ferry to Dieppe and cycle on quiet roads and eat good pastries. Water towers are a recurring motif across the northern France landscape…
-
Glimpses
Solstice ride in Normandy. 243km, a Holga and a single roll of 120 film. Playing with ideas for a set of screenprints or maybe another book.
-
ten
The bow ramp clangs onto the slipway, or maybe the stern, it’s difficult to tell with the symmetry of the ferry, depositing me behind the Seine. Vanishing points strobe in the sunshine, a zoetrope flicker, rows of netted fruit trees pulling my eyes back to the river and the silver-white rock walls swathed in woodland…
-
eight
Hop off the tram next to where the shiny brightly coloured logo splattered buses are parked up. Fans milling about as mechanics fettle. Expensive carbon fibre and fancy paint jobs reflect in windscreens. Accreditation badges hang round necks, television cameras sit on shoulders, microphones clutched in hands. Lotte Kopecky chats to a television crew before…
-
That didn’t go to plan
Pull my phone from gilet pocket and tap WhatsApp. Aborted. Legs and head both gone. Heading back to Dieppe, should be there by 1pm. Three course lunch and beers? Hit send. Put phone back in pocket. Turn around and roll back down the hill. Not even half way up the climb from Grandcourt towards Blangy-sur-Bresle…
-
Randonneur Round The Year?
Whilst idly plotting some routes earlier I realised that the last two months I’ve done 200 kilometre rides in France, both of them logged as DIY by GPS audaxes. There’s still one weekend between Christmas and New Year when I can get the ferry to Normandy and do another one which has got me thinking…
-
De la Med à la Manche – part II
Wednesday It’s pitch black when I wake up, I can hear rain outside. This isn’t surprising as it was forecast. I doze off again but my 6am alarm rouses me again. I need to get up and be on the road by seven today. I’ve got a very hilly 200km to ride, a good way…
-
De la Med à la Manche – part I
Saturday I tap the gear shift button. Nothing. Fucking fuck! I’ve just snagged the di2 cable in the seat clamp rebuilding the bike outside Montpelier airport and now I have no gears. Or rather I have one gear: 48×17 or maybe 19 by the looks of it. That’ll be OK today which is pretty much…
-
Normandicat
As soon as I start pedalling I relax. I know what I’m doing now. Riding bikes. Done loads of it. Cheered off by the organisers and volunteers we all turn left up the street from the Salle des Fetes just after 10pm. Most people continue straight across the roundabout at the top of the road.…
-
Bristol to London(ish)
Having volunteered at one of the London Wales London audax controls last year I had decided to help out at the arrivée in Chalfont St. Peter for this year’s LWL. Unfortunately I then discovered it clashed with Bespoked so for the first time in five years it looked like I was going to miss Bespoked.…
the man from icon 