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 […]
The rising sun gently lifts mist from the frosted hinterlands, the angular shapes of Arundel Castle stand out against the hill curving through the clear sky. I’m on an early […]
Ah fuck it! The road is actually properly closed. Tall metal barriers span the darkened sunken lane. It’s always a risk riding past ROAD CLOSED signs but with a bike […]
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 […]
An old point and shoot, one roll of film. A week off work. Aeroplane mode, wider world switched off. Perhaps an audiobook in one ear. The sun stays close to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Saturday – Rule 5 Bikes Summer Send Off Meet up with friends at Freedom Bikes, sign on and collect brevet card…and a pen, as usual I’ve forgotten to bring one. […]
Awake before the alarm and sun rise. Fall out of bed, flick on the radio. The World Service, still too early for Radio 4. Thick black coffee, teaspoon of sugar. […]
Paths past garden gates, those neglected places where stinging nettles and wild flowers thrive. Next to a railway line and over a stream that is obscured from view throughout […]
From the regularity of the straight lines between the fields of the flatlands around Ripe into the twisting roller coaster of ancient ways of the High Weald. Rolling over sandstone […]
Hidden Valley. That’s what they called it. Not everyone, just a few friends, some of the ones that ride mountain bikes. Not everyone knows about this place. Hidden Valley. It […]