About a decade ago I stumbled across the cycling world of audax. Long distance endurance riding that was described to me as “…like fast touring”. The word audax intrigued me, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A strong tide pushed the ferry sideways up the channel last night, it docks later than usual. Through passport control a few minutes after 6am. Cinema ticket booked for 6pm. […]
The weather changed direction this last week, coldness drifting in from the east, the forecast a couple of days ago even threatened snow flurries. At least the wind has weakened. […]
The call and response of owls fades. The bell of a church concealed in the blackness strikes seven and the incoming day is heralded by the abrupt dawn chorus of […]
The niggling anxiety of riding in the dark a long way from home knowing daylight is hours away countered by the comfort of familiarity with the hidden landscape, an invisible […]
Land and sky are close to indistinguishable. My light wedges a cone of visibility into the darkness in front of me, the surrounding world muted. It’s not night but nor […]
Twenty one bends. Any space that a camper fits is filled, many German, French and Belgians camped out, Dutch corner banging out euro pop at 9.30am, thirty six hours before […]
A usual road from the port following the Arques valley to the first town inland where we turn over a small stone bridge and start up a narrow lane towards […]
Each signpost points to somewhere I was either a few minutes or an hour or two ago, and quite often both. A back and forth route that almost retraces and […]
I’m soaked and distracted and I’m not sure I exchange any pleasantries as I stick my head round the door of the pub and bluntly ask “Are you serving coffee?” […]
We sweep down from the opera singer’s house past Virginia Woolf’s to the Ouse flood plain, the first of our Ravilious rendezvous. A heron nonchalantly flaps overhead. The riverbank into […]