Books And Bikes

Rants about reading and cycling

Cycling

Three consenting adults

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This started off as a cycling report on King Alfred’s Way, a newish mostly off-road 220-mile bike route around the medieval king’s stamping ground in Hampshire, Wiltshire,  Berkshire and Surrey … but it turned into that could only happen between three consenting adults.

Coronavirus had put off my foreign cycling tours and I had forgotten that in England I ride along muttering oaths about the poor quality of, in no particular order: the roads, the weather, the food, the looks you get when you ask for your bike to be kept indoors at night, and how all those potholed roads lead not to Rome but onto a bigger road, then an even bigger and busier one.

So to King Alfred’s Way, a mostly off-road route, but that was too rough for me and bike, so I diverted onto nearby tarmac.

But that’s boring. This is much more interesting.

[Read more…] about Three consenting adults

Karakoram Highway part three: Kyrgyzstan

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After an interesting but strange few days in China, I felt much more relaxed as soon as we were through the final passport check and into Kyrgyzstan, via the Torugart Pass, 3,752 metres above sea level.

The scenery didn’t change much but everything else did. Gone was the vaguely threatening atmosphere. I say that, and it’s true, but we were not bothered by security forces at all in China, except for the long wait at borders. What must it be like for the locals? [Read more…] about Karakoram Highway part three: Kyrgyzstan

Karakoram Highway part two: China

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At 4,880 metres, the border between Pakistan and China, the Khunjerab Pass, is the highest paved road international border in the world.

Along with the Pakistanis who had driven up there, we posed for photographs under the arch that marks the border and laughed at the sign boasting about the world’s highest ATM.  [Read more…] about Karakoram Highway part two: China

Karakoram Highway part one: Pakistan

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Before I went to Pakistan to cycle the Karakoram Highway, two people who know the country well gave me warnings. One said that to use a cashpoint in Islamabad was taking your life in your hands, such was the probability of robbery at gunpoint. The other told me that while 90 per cent of the Pakistanis liked the British, the rest were not so keen.

A couple of weeks in, I was sitting at Baltit Fort in the Hunza Valley of northern Pakistan telling all this to a local man who had asked me about my impressions of his country. He looked out over the valley – reportedly the inspiration for Shangri-La  – and said:  ‘It’s bullshit.’ [Read more…] about Karakoram Highway part one: Pakistan

Mont Ventoux … there are steeper climbs, longer climbs, but none so long and steep

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Here’s an article I wrote for the summer 2018 edition of Cycling magazine, about a particular bump in France.

You cannot miss Mont Ventoux. Drive or take the train down the Rhône Valley, and there it is, on your left, perhaps 40 miles away, rising out of the plains as if it is the only mountain in the world.

From almost any part of Provence, just look up. Impressive enough anyway, with its bare limestone peak that looks like the surface of the moon, it means even more to a cyclist. [Read more…] about Mont Ventoux … there are steeper climbs, longer climbs, but none so long and steep

Starting early

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I did my first cycle tour at the age of five.

We were living in New Zealand and I had got the bike, in fact a tricycle, for my fifth birthday. Just before the following Christmas, I had been, with my parents, to the centre of Auckland and I saw a red toy racing car that I very much wanted, but didn’t think I had much chance of getting, especially as I hadn’t had the tricycle very long. [Read more…] about Starting early

The Giftie Gie Us

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The poet Robert Burns wrote: ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us!’

I was cycling across the Thar desert in India, which, although it was epic, it wasn’t as epic as you may think. Two hundred and ten miles in three days, and, as you can imagine, as flat a road as I have ever cycled on. Hot, but because of the season, not Sahara Desert hot. Occasionally I had to get off because the road was blocked by sand, but that was hardly a surprise, and indeed I quite enjoyed that. [Read more…] about The Giftie Gie Us

No room at the inn

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In a chambre d’hôte, the French version of a bed and breakfast, guests and hosts sit around a big table and have their dinner together.

This was the scene that faced me as I walked in, soaking wet on a freezing cold and rainy night in the middle of nowhere. In fact, it was a town called Le Bleymard, in the Cervennes National Park in the southern end of the Massif Central and it was about 8pm, although when you’ve arrived there by bike, it may as well have been midnight. [Read more…] about No room at the inn