the man from icon

  • Island Hopping

    I make coffee in the almost-light that waits for sunrise. Shouldering the bike down the front steps into a silent city, the main road empty other than a gang of gulls ransacking the bins outside the local chippy. Urban foxes, an air of insolence and disobedience skulk suburban streets. Without the white noise drizzle of…

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    Island Hopping

  • Grey

    No one bats an eyelid, raises an eyebrow, or tuts when a suggestion is made to drop down from the Downs to find coffee and some tarmac, maybe even the coastal suburbs to home. A quiet consensus. The weather hasn’t entirely matched the forecast, overcast has rather been cold driving drizzle. We’ve slipped and sludged…

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    Grey

  • Between the Storms

    As the day tilts into action a thin gauze of cloud stretches across the sky. A meek light casts weak ghost shadows, there out of the edge of vision but disappear when I turn to look. An upside down world existing in a flooded farm track. The sun rises through a bitterly eye-wateringly sharp wind.…

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    Between the Storms

  • The Old Ways and New Ways

    Jump on a train west to Chichester to make the most of the forecast weather. Head for home with the wind on my back and scudding clouds and an intermittent shadow for company, looking for a route with as little tarmac as possible rather than the shortest way. Out of the city on back streets…

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    The Old Ways and New Ways

  • Upturned

    Crossing the bridge over the river the thick cold mist bites. Back in the village frozen droplets clung to the trees lining the road out. The cemetery across the field dissolving in the low cloud. It’s the kind of cold that freezes your sinuses and makes your eyes water. The grey sky is flat and…

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    Upturned

  • 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…

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    That didn’t go to plan

  • 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…

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    Randonneur Round The Year?

  • Duinencross

    Having had barely a handful of hours kip on the ferry the night before last plus the four thirty start for the two hundred plus kilometres from Dieppe to Dunkirk I have a lie in before heading for Koksijde, just over the border in Belgium. Despite a decent night’s sleep my head is thumping with…

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    Duinencross

  • 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…

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    De la Med à la Manche – part II

  • 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…

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    De la Med à la Manche – part I