the man from icon

  • Windmolen Achtervlogen

    Sailing around Sussex with friends searching out windmills. All eight listed on the brevet card found and logged. At the almost the exact midpoint between the starts of meteorological and astronomical spring, it was the first ride in what felt like spring. Gloves off and jerseys unzipped. Riding with shadows and laughter. It didn’t start…

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    Windmolen Achtervlogen

  • M+1

    In 1990 I went off to Canterbury School of Art in Kent as a fresh faced scrawny twenty year old taking my Raleigh Scirocco racing bike with me. Not only would the bike let me explore my new environs but as I lived ten miles from college on the coast at Whitstable the bike was…

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    M+1

  • I should have stayed in bed

    It’s dark when the alarm goes off. I think to myself “I can’t be bothered today” and doze off again thinking about getting the train to work a bit later. Something in my brain makes me get up five minutes later and fall out of bed into my cycling kit. I laid it out ready…

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    I should have stayed in bed

  • Mapping Out

    I look at the map, planning a ride, following yellow and white roads, the quiet ones, linking them up, matching arcane symbols at junctions and hilltops with the key. Unfurled across the floor I crouch over the flat piece of paper surveying a land where the only ridges are the straight folds of the paper, the…

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    Mapping Out

  • Winter Wonderland

    We can’t feel our fingers or toes but we are surrounded by the whiteness of an overwhelming silence. Mist and snow have muted the woodland around us. Last night messages bounced back and forth discussing whether to attempt the planned 200 kilometre DIY audax or not. The decision to set off from Brighton and see…

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    Winter Wonderland

  • Three galleries and chips on the seafront

    Jerwood Gallery, Hastings De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne

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    Three galleries and chips on the seafront

  • Your application has been successful…

    I’ve been fascinated by the Transcontinental Race since seeing a video of the first iteration in 2013. Since seeing those videos I’ve followed the race each year via Twitter and Instagram, dot watched, read blogs, and listened to podcasts. For a few weeks every summer the refresh button gets hit regularly in multiple browsers. It…

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    Your application has been successful…

  • Farewell White Chalk Hills Ultracross

    Since 2012 there has been the annual tradition of the stupid cyclocross ride across the South Downs, usually on the Saturday between Christmas and New Year. I missed the middle year but turned up and tried my best all the other years. The first two years I was on borrowed bikes with road pedals and…

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    Farewell White Chalk Hills Ultracross

  • Meridian Hills [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 200km audax perm]

    Meeting friends on a cold dark petrol station forecourt. Sunrise viewed from up the hill by the golf course, a huge orange disc seemingly rising from the silver sea. Down on the weald frozen puddles and glistening hedgerow. Icy bends in the hollows, cornering by trying not to steer, a foot unclipped and leg held…

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    Meridian Hills [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 200km audax perm]

  • Down to Downs [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud audax perm]

    We start the climb up to Black Hill in darkness, up through Five Hundred Akre Wood, a tunnel of trees lit by the many lumens of our front lights. With few leaves on the trees the ridge of the Ashdown Forest can be seen shadowed ominously against the last remnants of twilight. It’s a long…

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    Down to Downs [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud audax perm]