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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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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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Three galleries and chips on the seafront
Jerwood Gallery, Hastings De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne
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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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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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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…
![Meridian Hills [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud 200km audax perm]](https://themanfromicon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/img_20161227_202410_894.jpg?w=1024)
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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…
![Down to Downs [AAA Brevet des Grimpeurs du Sud audax perm]](https://themanfromicon.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wp-1480428867785.jpg?w=1024)
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A Reminder
For one reason or another I’ve not ridden much in Sussex this year. There have been trips overseas, to mountainous lands, stage races and iconic summits, tours and audaxes, foreign counties, long long rides to way over there and then back again. Some of these were planned long ago and some impromptu and immediate desires…
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You Are Here
You are here. Yeah I know, the little animated arrow following the blue line on the screen tells me that much, but not a lot more. It’s zeroes and ones, information without knowledge. Satellites pinpointing my coordinates, nothing more. It’ll get me from A to B but won’t tell me anything about the journey. GPS…
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Here to There to Here
“Spoke to Andrew at TiC who wants to know when we’re going up to say hello?” Within a few minutes we’ve planned to ride to Cambridge and back in a weekend. Two hundred and twenty odd kilometres each way. The idea to enter the 2017 Transcontinental race as a team means it doesn’t take much…
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