a wandering path

It's probably about time that I actually looked at a map in detail.  It sounds as if navigating by cycle in France is as easy as finding a little road on the map that heads in roughly the right direction, and pedalling off.  Lovely!  However, I do want to end up heading in roughly the right direction so I will get myself a Michelin map and have a good look.

In the meantime though, this map shows a route heading in about the right direction.  I haven't mapped this in any detail, just tried to drag the squiggly line so it avoids the main roads.  I'm sure the Swiss part doesn't follow the Panorama Route but you've got to start somewhere, and I'll try to refine this in the next couple of months.

View A long(ish) ride in a larger map

new beginnings

Crikey it's a while since I was here.

A lot has happened since. I moved to London. I rented out my flat. I rented a flat. I started cycling to work and realised I quite liked it (mountain biking (badly) has been more my thing). I put my flat on the market. I started looking for a flat to buy. And I decided to take a little bike trip this summer.

I've never had an urge to be a 'touring' cyclist. For some reason these guys seems to be way on the uncool side of cycling. Not that I was on the cool side in any way. Anyone who saw me stack it over the handlebars and land on my back on the road 6 ft below during a trip to Bike Village a couple of years ago can testify to that. Anyway, I guess it just never really appealed.

Then after a year of working hard down here in the smoke, and thinking that I needed a break, I started looking for a mountain biking holiday, perhaps in Africa (somewhere I've visited just once and need to visit again...). CycleActive had a trip in Morocco which looked a bit more technical than I fancied and a much more chilled trip they had to Malawi appealed seemed much more appealing. More of a journey. In the end the trip wasn't running but it got me thinking.

A bit of Googling and a purchase of a few books later, and I'm taken with the idea.   There are so many people out there undertaking amazing journeys, large and small, on two wheels, and it all looks amazing.  Here's just one photo from TomsBikeTrip:

The Fully Loaded Touring gallery has plenty more.

So I'm going to try it.  Whilst somewhere tough and remote would be great, I realise that although I mountain bike and cycle to work, I've never done any long distance cycling on a loaded bike. I may HATE it.  I may wimp out.

So to start with its going to be somewhere relatively easy - Europe. A friend of mine is moving to St Gallen, in Switzerland next week. So that is Target Number 1: London to St Gallen.

St Gallen just happens to be virtually at the start of the Panorama Route, one of the 3 national Swiss mountain bike routes, which runs all the way across Switzerland through the foothills of the Alps to Lac Leman. So that's Target Number 2: The Panorama Trail.

I do have a friend with a flat in Barcelona and depending on time and my speed, might try to head there. However, that might be asking a bit much with probably only a couple of months away from work at the moment.   But a touring guide I bought for the Alps shows a route which heads from Geneva (close to Lac Leman) all the way down through the Alps to Nice on the Mediterranean Coast. It sounds like its a route for the sadomasochistic lycra clad roadies: climbing up as many steep passes as they can, but provisionally, that's Target Number 3: Lac Leman to Nice.

That's just about as far as I've got with the route so far. I'll be aiming for as many small roads as I can, and I'd quite like to do as much of it off road as I can, so I need to do a little research. A route that heads down to St Gallen through Germany's Black Forest seems to make sense and I'm sure that there must plenty of off road trails there.

Watch this space.

up and down

Despite people telling me that this is incorrect (check out the London tube, they say), I like this:

'I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an "Escalator temporarily out of order" sign, only an "Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience" sign.'

-Mitch Hedberg

appreciation

At the moment, I live in the north east of Scotland. Some things about being here get me down from time to time:

Its so far away from the rest of the country, from family and old friends.
It rains lots.
Its very grey (the ground, the buildings and the sky).
The city feels small and limited in some ways.
The winters are long and dark and windy.

But then I come across views like this:


I took this on a frosty Sunday morning. If I was travelling somewhere far away and saw this view, I would want to live here. This is the Scotland I love. This is what makes the list above worth it.

I may not live here forever, but whilst I'm here, I will appreciate this.