lot
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eleven
Fuzzy felt cones, perfect triangles. How I would have drawn a mountain as a kid. Ancient volcano cores, rock millions of years old. This year of rides is nothing but a blink, a flash in comparison. Sun beats, kites soar, lizards scamper. Sixteen hundred metres. Bright red Coca-cola parasols fold inside out in the wind.…
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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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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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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 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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Monts et Rivieres
Turn left out of the drive and start climbing. Ten kilometres of up. Not steep but constant. Compared to home these hills are mountains, up through the trees to the grass plateau, real mountains jagged against the skyline ahead forty miles distant. The sticky hum of tyres on sun molten tarmac. A snack on a…
the man from icon 