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Coast
A zig-zag route with a profile like saw teeth. Narrow lanes between high hedges, rough and twisting. Stick and stones, mud and leaves, over pitted tarmac. Gently turning into a corner the front wheel follows the tangential line until it finds some traction. Getting out of the saddle uphill is like roller training, back wheel spinning but no…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 10 // October // Peaks and troughs
I’m on Winnats Pass in Derbyshire. I’m lying on the wet grass verge looking at my bike lying half on the road, half on the grass with me. I gaze down the hill, then up the hill, and then forlornly back at the bike. A moment ago I was riding up the hill. The gradient…
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The long way round
Shutting the front door whilst the nearly full moon still hangs over the city to the east I head west. The sun is yet to break cover. Where the sky meets the sea is pink and orange, a hint of what is imminent. I’ve got just under three hours before I need to be at…
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as you crest Chapel Hill…
Look left you’ll see probably my favourite view in Sussex. I never tire of the view west. It’s up against some stiff competition – Steyning Bowl, the Weald when you look out from the false summit on Ditchling Beacon, the view north from just below the summit of Firle Bostal, the Seven Sisters from Seaford Head,…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 9 // September // The Black Mountains
The YHA weren’t lying when they said the Wye Valley hostel was at the end of a “a steep unsurfaced road with a hairpin bend”. The first few hundred metres of the September TT ride was back up that steep driveway more suited to a ‘crosser or MTB. The hostel lies next to the River…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 8b // August // Norfolk
The next day I ride north into Norfolk to meet my friend James. I’ve not actually met James before, or even spoken to him, but he’s part of the Twitter cycling community and we’ve chatted (typed) online a fair bit. After zigzagging along some quiet lanes I pick up a main road north, through Dennington…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 8a // August // Suffolk
Riding the coastal flat lands of Suffolk, an edge of England made from clay and sand, being slowly reclaimed by the sea, it’s so flat that it is like actually riding on a map. The edges of the paper can’t be seen, extending away in all directs. The map isn’t completely flat though, it ripples…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Etape 7 // July // France
No words for this one yet, just some pictures. A combination of Tourist Trophy foreign country wildcard and Rapha Rising. Words will follow at some point in the future.
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 6a // June // Bath to Salisbury
a.k.a Getting lost in the mid-West The original plan was to travel by train to Salisbury on a Saturday morning followed by a leisurely meandering ride to Bath over two days. However a few days before the ride I realised that I’d planned the ride for the same weekend as the annual London to Brighton…
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Tourist Trophy 2013 // Stage 6b // June // Salisbury to Brighton
a.k.a A morning to forget, an afternoon to remember. Day 2 I woke up and didn’t hear the sound of rain. This was promising as the forecast in the few days before the ride had been bad. After filling up on the YHA buffet breakfast I retrieved my bike from the shed and pointed the…
the man from icon 