Berwick-upon-Tweed    A very dead and flattened squirrel lies across the cycle path, its pink innards twisting across the path. It is late afternoon on an early autumn day as I ride into town. All the inns and hotels are full, according to the App on my phone. But I’m tired and the light is fading. I ride and push my bike from one hotel door to the next. ‘Sorry Sir, we are full tonight’, they chorus. I ride up Hide Street, a main thoroughfare which climbs a short hill. Lining it are heavy buildings housing banks, hotels and Winebars. Timpsons, Amran’s Kitchen and Grill, Limoncello a ..read more

The Green Corridor - Crane River Park    Visitors to London We stop in the stillness. A summer breeze filters through the willow trees and a warbler - willow, reed or other I cannot tell - sings its song loud and clear. The air is rich and green, clean and humid. A river sinews by with silent stealth. Hawkweed, hogweed, yellow rattle, black mustard and bramble line are making good business with bees. A blue summer sky, painted with childlike puffy clouds, and a path of hard packed biscuit gravel. We sit on a fallen tree, turned into a bench with a woodpecker carved on the backrest ..read more

Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s memorial, Victoria Embankment    The old be-whiskered man bends his face downwards, his weak voice barely audible above the traffic which hurtles down his Embankment. ‘If you were to have stood just here’, he says, ‘a hundred and fifty years ago, before I began putting the river in chains, you’d have been buried in black filth. All manner of things; horse and human dung, market detritus, rotting animal corpses and anything else that the river transported down from upriver. A miasma of mephitic air would have surrounded you making it hard to breathe’. He pause ..read more

Les Eyzies-en-Tayac Be aware as you ride up a four kilometre hill built for non-existent traffic, through thick woodland of oak and chestnut whose banks are covered in cowslips and orchids, and onto a plateau created 85 million years ago, that you are on the lookout for mammoths. Several hundred of them. And keep your eyes peeled for the herds of bison, ibex, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer. For whilst their presence is not immediately obvious, pedal quietly, for they are here. It’s just that, (to mis-use a bike-racing expression), you’ll need to dig deep, even to bury yourself, if your are t ..read more

Le Troueé d'Arenberg Nothing can compare to a spring-time ride on rough roads across the muddy and war-wounded fields of Flanders in search of Belgian beer and frietjes. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Le centre des sports, Roubaix We, the 6,000, meet in the thin light of dawn and stand in a mighty long queue which rounds both bends of the running track at the Centre des Sports in Roubaix. An overly excited announcer shouts into his mic how each of us will be a hero if we conquer ‘The Hell of the North’. In between his hyperbole, Europop storm-blasts the eardrums. After three-quarters of an hou ..read more

The Dagenham Idol (courtesy of Valence House Museum) Face to face with the Idol “We’re closed for lunch now,” said the woman in a heavy Thames estuary accent. “Sorry.” Her keys shifted in the old manor house door and she turned to walk away down the gravel drive. “Er, I er, erm, was hoping to see the Dagenham idol.”  “Well you can love, of course you can, but after lunch. As I said, we are closed now from twelve to one. For lunch.” She paused and smiled and then added, “There’s the walled garden you can look at. That’s open, and of course the cafe is open. They do good lunches and coffee ..read more

   A Spring breeze is blowing I’m bursting with laughter — wishing for flowers Basho March is here, with its limpid light and hydrangea blue sky. There are flowers on every tree, on every street and in every park. Magnificent magnolias, cool camellias, cheerful cherries, pretty pears. The Japanese have a word for rides like these; hanami. Loosely translated it means finding a quiet space for blossom viewing.  a camellia falls a rooster crows another camellia falls —Baishitsu (Tr. David LaSpina) View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize In the gardens of Chiswick House, a lad ..read more

Wild cherry-plum blossom in the wild woods of West London Sometimes it’s not enough just to ride. Sometimes you need fill your soul and eat the land. It’s a raw February day and a louring sky warns of another impending storm. Dampness chills the bones. We ride till we’re warm, then stopping for a moment, we chew on a few exotic tasting violets which we’ve picked from a vast bank of them deep in the wild wilderness lands of West London’s boundary. As we stand, we hear a great tit’s shrill two note call pouring from the lower branches of an ash tree. On the black still waters where a river has ..read more

   'And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth’. The Noak’s Ark, Lurgashall, West Sussex The Ark originally built of gopher wood, has had a refurb. The Biblical damp and dark barge has been transformed into a warm and brick-walled pub overlooking Lurgashall’s picturesque village green in West Sussex. We, the Surgeon and I, arrived as the others had done millennia ago, soaked and mud-caked. A re-vamped Mrs. Noah with swept back grey hair and a striking pair of black-rimmed glasses, checked our kind against her list. Other touches of post-bi ..read more

River Colne Cycle Trail    The Colne Valley Cycle Trail The first year student who lives nearby, messages me; - I’m planning to cycle across America with a friend next summer. I need some advice. Can we meet? Next morning after a short train journey from Shepherd’s Bush we arrive in Watford to ride London’s Westernmost boundary. It was still quite early for a student, but she’d arrived on time and with a bike that worked. Little was said on the train. Out of town, we ride on a disused railway line known as the Ebury Line. The path is high and dry above the river, which has spilled ..read more