landscape
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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…
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Ride ‘zines
Recently I’ve made a handful of ‘zines based on bike rides over the years. The Picos and Nyhavn first appeared on this blog but I’ve edited or re-written the text extensively. All of them are A6 folded booklets that unfold to A3 with maps, photos and/or words on the reverse side. Full colour digital print…
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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.
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The shortest straightest line rarely beckons
There’s a stream that runs by the office where I work. The Winterbourne, its name a clue. It runs high and fast when the South Downs saturate and the chalk aquifers deep inside overflow. It’s an indicator of conditions on the Downs and it helps me decide my cycle commute. The office is in Lewes,…
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Passing Through
Some of the half-frame 35mm photographs from the French ‘Randonneur Round The Year’ rides will be included in a Brighton Photo Fringe exhibition between 16 and 20 October. The show is at Regency Town House in Hove, open between 11am and 5pm. Further details on the Photo Fringe website. Copies of the photo book 2704…
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twelve
Ker-clunk. Twenty fourth stamp in my passport and waved straight onto the ferry. I pick up my phone from the floor next to my inflatable pillow. It’s 02:38. Is that French time or UK time? Oh hang on, phone isn’t displaying home and away times, it must be UK time. Open Google Maps, blue dot…
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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…
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nine
Swallows and martins angle and glide overhead on the causse, moss slowly smothers crumbling chalk walls. The sacred city cascades down cliffs. I slip into the other canyon, the one behind where the l’Ouysse river appears from under the limestone. Skim the edge of the Dordogne, the road wedged up against leaning rock walls. Across…
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seven
Intersecting lines, motorway overhead, railway below. Signs point to places in a different country. Bus stops, metro stations, tram lines. Severe concrete outskirts, roundabouts and conflicting angles, stripes and chequerboards painted on tarmac, kebab shops and tattoo parlours, chain hotels and car dealerships, fast food and deserted offices. Torn edges, scruffy urban collage, new parts…
the man from icon 