Dreams Postponed – the Bike Trip is Off

Apr 24

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Farewell and Welcome World, and all too soon, Welcome Home balloons at Wychcroft

Ah well. It was worth the planning and the effort. But in the event, I’m not going to do the Great-2012-Bike-Trip-Of-A-Lifetime to Moscow and Hanoi.

So instead of images from the road to Moscow and then from Beijing to Hanoi, let me illustrate this blog entry first (left) with the lovely balloons from Meg and Jeff that first saw me off and then, rather too soon, welcomed me home, followed below (gallery at the end of the blog) by pictures from a most restorative 10 days just concluded on our lovely canal boat the Molly May.

Why the final decision not to go ahead, even with a bit of a delay?

I’ll spare you the boring health details, but as I had finally to acknowledge on a slow, slow potter with Sue around the canals north of Warwick, my arthritic neck and nerves are in no state to allow me to cycle 5000 miles – and sadly, for the moment anyway, probably not even 50 (although I might give a short ride a go in the coming weeks).

Molly May at dusk with the woodburner pumping out the smoke and the heat

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Posted in Canals, Cycling, Mainstream

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Pedalus Interruptus

Apr 10

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Aboard the Stena ferry to Hook of Holland

Sadly, sadly, dear friends, followers and supporters,  the feared flare of neck and nerves happened in Holland, and I’m afraid to have to report that today Tuesday I am  back home in Cirencester, having been retrieved from the Harwich ferry this morning by my lovely Sue.

As you can see from the pictures, I did make it onto and off the boat and into Holland with, of course,  its  cliched windmills.

But by just a few miles beyond Hook of Holland on Easter Day, on just day five of the journey, it became clear that I’m not at the moment well enough to undertake a long ride so long-prepared and looked-forward-to.

Curiously, the actual cycling – a hugely enjoyable 240 miles by the time I called a halt – wasn’t a problem. But not cycling was, and one can only pedal for six or seven hours a day…

Quite what set things off I can’t be totally sure. But after a year of knee and prostate operations, shin injury and attendant carpet-bombing with anaesthetics and antibiotics – topped off, of course, with more travel inoculations in one go than I ever had as a BBC correspondent – I just have to note that my poor old nervous system, already compromised by that pinched nerve in Dublin in 2010, quietly tipped over the edge.

Still, all is not lost. As a dear friend in The Hague with whom I crashed for 36 hours (thank you so much) has just texted, let’s view this as a postponement and not a cancellation.

For the moment, therefore, and with the warmest of thanks to all you have followed and donated to this adventure, this blog will go apologetically quiet for a while as I withdraw to rest and lick my wounds.

And once the last horrendous dental antibiotic (course completed only two days ago) has worn off, let’s hope the nerves will settle again, and I can next month resume the journey at least to Moscow, before I meet Sue in Hanoi in August for our then shared two months backpacking onwards round the world sans bike.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Farewell Blighty

Apr 7

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Flatford Mill

In the final couple of hours before I get on the Saturday night ferry into Easter Day from Harwich to Hook of Holland, I bid farewell to England for the next six months with images of the most beautiful Cambridgeshire and Suffolk countryside and villages, reminding me why I so love this country and living here.

Loving also the serendipity of long-distance cycling. You’re bowling gently along, musing about memory and family and how often to blog and how  (relatively) well the neck and the knees are doing, when – WHAM, BANG – there’s Flatford Mill just a mile off to the right.

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Day Two and Eating off a Plane

Apr 5

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Eating of a crashed Cessna's wing.

I know I said I wouldn’t post every day, but tonight, sitting in a warm pub in Old Warden, Bedfordshire, home of the world-renowned Shuttleworth collection of vintage aeroplanes which I’ll visit tomorrow, I couldn’t resist this one, of dinner this evening on a wing and a perhaps even a prayer.

I’m preparing to camp tonight, in a car park opposite the entrance to said collection, where this afternoon I found this Cessna, rather than worse for wear. But an ideal and stable base for my first outing with my new Primus stove.

Instant noodles. Worked a treat, and perfect after a fabulous day’s riding from Judy and Julia and Jeremy near Banbury, a rich and warming 60 miles due East into much less of a headwind than I’d expected. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Cycling, Mainstream

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Up and Away

Apr 4

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And yes, Raven thanks to her Rohloff hub has VERY low gears

So, the journey begins.

Forty miles north-east from Cirencester to friends near Banbury, and neither wind nor rain, nor even hills proved as challenging as I persuaded myself to expect.

Averaging just eight miles an hour, progress across Europe will be slow – heading for Cambridge tomorrow, then Harwich, Hook of Holland, Munster, Bielefeld, Hanover, Magdeburg and Berlin, and on to Moscow via the Baltic (details anon).

But good news is that I have probably already negotiated the biggest hills between Cirencester and Russia, along the old Fosse Way Roman road out of the Cotswolds. Read the rest of this entry →

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Forecast of 45mph headwinds – why am I doing this?

Apr 2

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Best first on three wheels

With departure set for the day after tomorrow, just 36 hours away, I was amused trawling old photos to find this first recorded evidence of my passion for spoked wheels.

Early experiments with wheels - ca 1951

I guess I’m under a year on the left, and about three on the trike on right. The photos will have been taken in the summers of 1951 and 1953 respectively in the garden of the tiny farmhouse at Duckshole (wonderful name) just outside Holt in North Norfolk from which we moved in 1953.

Not sure why I look so glum, as little brother Hugh, 18 months younger, tests his own smaller-wheeled hobby horse in the background.

But nearly 60 years ago, neither of us will have been bothered (elegant segue coming here into the purpose of today’s post) by the winds the Met Office is predicting for the rest of this week down here in the other agricultural end of England in the Cotswolds.

Today, Monday, was gorgeous – ridiculously and global warmingly so like the past fortnight – but just in time for my planned departure 40 miles up the Fosse Way North-East to old friend Judy in Banbury, we’re warned to expect viciously cold headwinds on Wednesday from that precise direction, gusting to a truly horrible 45mph.

I’m not trying to break any records with this bike trip, and need to nurse sore necks and knees anyway, so perhaps I should delay departure until the winds abate? Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Brayne Family, Climate Change, Cycling, Mainstream

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One week left, Raven packed – and ready to star in The Standard

Mar 28

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MB and Raven loaded up a week before departure

So, Raven is readied, panniers, tent and bags test-mounted and photographs taken for an article on the pending adventure scheduled for next Thursday’s local Standard newspaper in the Cotswolds. Fame at last…

Below right is how my study looked with everything piled up in one great heap before being packed. (Note that Myshkin, aka Wussum the cat, is not coming with me – he’s trying here to find his way to his food bowl near the French windows, and miffed.)

Left, what it all looked like a few hours later. A lovely experience again to feel Raven loaded beneath me, with her low-low centre of gravity and so solid on the road.

Wussum seeking his bowl, buried behind the pile

Twenty-five kilos of bike, and the same again in luggage. That’s not light at all, so progress from next Wednesday will be slow and plodding.

If you’re curious about what I’ve packed into those bags, feel free to browse through my Take on Big Bike Trip list, compiled over the last decade of distance solo cycling (especially Budapest retour four years ago) and of tandeming with Sue. It’s posted here knowing how useful I have found similar lists compiled by other long-distancers in the past.

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Posted in China, Choirs, Cirencester, Climate Change, Cycling, Mainstream, Preparations

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Fundraising progress (£1500 and rising!) and the elasticity of time

Mar 21

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Audi at the helm. Where she has always liked to be...

Two weeks today, and I’m off. Blimey.

Moscow, Beijing and beyond beckon, and nerves both emotionally and physically seem to be charging up, as I bid farewell to my very-nearly-85-year-old Mum (on the right at Braunston last weekend having a go at the tiller of our narrowboat the Molly May), and both greet and also very shortly thereafter wave goodbye to daughter Katharine, briefly over in the UK from her new New Zealand home with her partner Mela.

Self and Mater aboard Molly May

To these two, we meet again in September – an aeon, an awful lot of kilometres, but also just a tiny skip away.

And to Mum – hang on in there. It’s the longest we’ll not have seen each other since my correspondent days in the 80s, but six months will be gone in a flash.

So, suddenly it’s all very serious, prompting me to note just how curiously time stretches, elongates, contracts at times like this, as affairs are tidied up, relationships packaged ready for departure, as body and muscles and, again, nerves, are stretched and exercised ready for 60-80 miles a day, and I get used to the idea of a long separation from partner, friends, choirs, family… Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Canals, Cirencester, Cycling, EMDR, Mainstream, Therapy, Wychcroft

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26 days to go: Client endings & sobering reminder why maybe best to have quit journalism

Mar 9

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The Client's Chair

With a rapidly closing 26 days to go until I pedal into the sunrise (going East, after all), three things to muse about in this weekend’s blog:

  • The ending (at least for now) of the work of therapy during this coming week with some 20 brave individuals who’ve sat in that green chair in the CCPE’s 4th floor room 41 near Paddington for months and sometimes years, sharing profound personal journeys;
  • A reminder from my old journalist friend Graham Earnshaw, now in Shanghai, of why perhaps it was a good thing for all concerned that I quit the work of the correspondent in 1992; and
  • Chook alert (read on…)

First, the all-of-a-sudden winding down of psychotherapy at a time of my rather than my clients’ choosing is proving an extraordinary, and in some ways surprisingly rewarding experience, for many of those I work with as well as for me.

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Posted in BBC, China, Cycling, Mainstream, Therapy

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One month to go, and thanks for generous donations…

Mar 3

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One month tomorrow, Wednesday April 4th, the journey begins – reminding me of setting off four years ago this month on my so far longest, 4000-mile, round trip to Budapest, and of the nervous thrill of the first day’s journey across (picture l.) Salisbury Plain with its unexploded bombs.

“Danger – do not leave the road. Do not touch anything. It may explode and kill you.”

That’s pretty sobering and clear, but more on that below.

Time here at the top of this post (curious how blogs end up writing themselves in orders one really hadn’t expected) for the first of what I hope will be many expressions of warmest thanks to wonderful friends and colleagues who, as I write, have already donated an amazing £868.75, including Gift Aid tax relief, to the good causes for which I’m encouraging sponsorship of my ride.

That’s brilliant and humbling, awesome even (as my daughter Kat would say), and some of you have been quite astonishingly generous in the size of your contribution.

The Rory Peck Trust, the EMDR’s UK-based Humanitarian Assistance Programme, and sotte voce to one side (taking 20% of donations against 40% each for the other two, and by the way we have two brilliant concerts coming up tonight and next Saturday) my chamber choir Cantores are all already most grateful.

So, with two weeks’ worth of work with clients still to go, a blog post to write (later) on what winding down with clients in this way is like, and with organisational ducks increasingly in a row, so far – with waterproof-glove-protected fingers crossed – so good. More precisely:
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Posted in Cirencester, Cycling, Mainstream, Media/Journalism

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Raven – a Thorn bicycle made for the longest of distances

Feb 25

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Raven atop Minchinhampton Common

Cycling over to Stroud for my penultimate psychotherapy supervision session before heading off on (change of date) Wednesday April 4 prompted thoughts about a) the (at least temporary) ending of therapy for so many of my clients at once, and at a time not of their choosing, and b) the bike I’ll be using to cycle to Moscow, and then, with luck and a following wind, down through China.

I’ll post separately and later on the challenges of bringing therapy to an end as elegantly and supportively as possible – and finding just how powerfully and positively almost all the wonderful and brave people I work with are rising to that challenge of sorting stuff while there’s time.

But here, may I introduce the object with which I am to have an even closer  relationship for the months of April to August, going by the name of Raven – my extremely sturdy black steel steed, veteran of 4000 miles to Budapest and back and of 500 miles into Scotland a couple of years ago, and my all-time favourite bicycle. Read the rest of this entry →

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Visas and Jabs

Feb 18

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Little more than a month till departure, and  - as winter begins to fade and (as in the photo on the right) Cotswolds snows thaw – the visas and jabs are beginning to come together.

Preparing to  take a bike through Russia to China and on to Vietnam isn’t working out cheap.

  • Best part of £500 for the necessary inoculations – tick-born encephalitis, Hepatitis-B, rabies (thank goodness no longer with the jabs in the stomach) and only the surgery knows what else. Two sore arms this weekend, and that’s a price with a 10% discount for a trip that’s fund-raising for charity.
  • (On which point, please do, if you haven’t already done so, consider sponsoring me for this ride, by clicking the links in the column on the right of each page.)

And on the visa front, ouch. Read the rest of this entry →

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Cycle Trip Preparations – 2 months to go

Feb 9

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The View from Cirencester Park

With less than eight weeks to go until I set off on April 3 from the front door of our Wychcroft home in Cirencester (Sue, as a writer of books on the Old Ways, wanted to call our new home Witchcraft, but that really was a step too far), it’s time to start blogging more regularly on the preparations.

Not that there are many followers yet, but I’m hoping that might improve (and thanks to you personally, dear friend or colleague, for being here right now), since one of the aspects of the bike ride first to Moscow and then down through China that I’m most looking forward to is this blog.

You might think that entirely predictable for a former hack with 30 years of foreign reporting and editing experience.

But in fact, for this ex-journo to enjoy the prospect of writing is something of a first. Or rather, a second, given that blogging, to my great surprise, was one of the most enjoyable parts of my last long bike trip to Budapest and back in 2008. Read the rest of this entry →

Posted in Cirencester, Cycling, Mainstream

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Early MLB setting out in life

Continuing my journey back to the images of childhood, before setting out for six months on the road at 62, I can’t resist posting a couple of evocative pictures from the very early years, at Duckshole Farm near Holt in North Norfolk – causing my brother Hugh early grief, but already displaying the instincts of the traveller.

Looking at these pictures for the very first time 60 years on does make me reflect on how memory is constructed.

The picture above might in fact illustrate what I’ve always thought of my first memory, setting off down the lane at Duckshole to the gate onto the road to Holt, wanting to follow my father into town. Clearly preparing to a grown-up and set off on my own… (more…)

Looking Forward and Back

Jan 21

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Having begun seriously to spread the word about the bike trip, including newsletters to EMDR colleagues and the Cantores Choir mailing list, I guess I need to start registering how the preparations for my own journey starting early April are coming along.

Curious how looking back helps with the looking forward.

As I peruse Google Maps for the exact route to Moscow, and remember I’ve forgotten to do my morning stretches, and adjust my spokes to stop Raven’s front wheel binding on the brake block, I’ve been scanning in hundreds of old photos from my/our late father’s family albums.

Curiously, he never showed them to us when he was still alive, so considering all the psychotherapy of the past 20 years exploring and healing (largely) parental legacy, it’s been quite a journey into the past. Read the rest of this entry →

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Warwick Canal Ring, Days 9 and 10

Oct 2

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Days 9 and 10, Saturday/Sunday Oct 1-2, Rugby to Braunston, (eight hours, 19 miles, three locks) and Braunston to Stockton marina (five hours, 12 mile, three locks)

(I should explain to new readers that what follows, backwards, is an account of a 10-day autumnal cruise around the Warwick Ring canal system in central England in late September 2011. Best, probably, to scroll down and read from Day One through to here. Or, be surprised and do it backwards…)

Hottest October day in Britain since records began, and, while of course utterly delightful as we potter gently, surely more than a touch alarming as evidence gathers of irreversible, and for us humans, sooner or later disastrous climate change.

Our selfish hope today as we potter gently south from Rugby to our absolutely favourite canal village of Braunston, is that the collapse that’s coming holds off long enough for the canals to stay filled up with water and for boats to have space, diesel and leisure to enjoy this magnificent network for a few years yet. Read the rest of this entry →

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Warwick Canal Ring, Day Eight

Oct 1

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Day eight. Atherstone to Rugby, 22 miles, one lock, 8¼ hours = 23 lock miles.

Another full-on day. Doing the Warwick Ring in one week is doable – indeed, I know it is having done the Ring on my very first canal boat holiday with a friend and our shared four daughters in 2000. But, slogging our way round the Ring this time, I’m reminded that I must have been somewhat younger and more vigorous then, as this has been an equal measure of fun and hard work.

Moral of this story – pack in the distances and the long locking flights in a first few long days, and enjoy a more leisurely back end of the week confident that you’ll make the boatyard in time for your handover.

That said, my own day has been rather relaxing, having left to Sue most of the steering along the long, pretty but fairly uneventful rolling landscape of the Oxford Canal. Read the rest of this entry →

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Warwick Ring, Day Seven

Sep 30

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Day Seven, Kingsbury Water Park to Atherstone, 8½ hours, 15 miles, 14 locks = 29 lock miles.

We didn’t realise on setting off at just after eight this morning just how important it was to get moving and then maintain that momentum.

All became clear at Atherstone locks just after one o’clock, when we learned that because of the current desperate water shortages, this critical flight opens only at 0830 in the morning – and closes, more crucially for us, at 1600, to preserve water in this driest canal year since the legendary English summer of 1976 (when we read, in a local newspaper, that at Foxton Locks not far to the East one could walk across the dry canal bed.)

As it happens, the angels are smiling again, and we contrive to begin the Atherstone locks at pretty much the precisely perfect time to reach the top on the dot of four. In fact, with literally 60 seconds to spare, although the charming couple who occupy the Lock Cottage at lock one tell us that British Waterways do do a last-minute sweep of the locks before the top gates are padlocked for the night, to make sure that no-one is just tackling the final five locks above number six. Read the rest of this entry →

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Warwick Ring, Day Six

Sep 28

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Day Six Wednesday Sept 28, Birmingham to Kingsbury Water Park, 46 lock miles (11 miles, 35 locks), 9 hours.

From Birmingham along the Brum and Fazely canal, dropping away from the town centre along the Farmers’ Locks under Birmingham’s distinctive BT tower, we now have the canal system virtually to ourselves.

It’s a hard, delightfully but also disturbingly warm early autumn locking day, one of our busiest yet in 10 years of canal boating, and it also reminds me how dangerous it is to lower one’s guard even for a moment on matters of safety.

I’m aware as we set off from Birmingham how slippery my plastic Croc shoes are on the wet brickwork of the lockside, so I quickly nip into the cabin to don my much sturdier walking shoes. Lulled into a sense of greater safety, at the next lock I decide to take a short cut across the front of one of the gates, and I lose my grip. Thankfully, my responses are quick enough to catch my fall, and it’s only my legs that get a soaking up to the knees before I manage to catch myself and pull myself back onto the lock gate. Read the rest of this entry →

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Warwick Ring, Day Five

Sep 27

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Day Five,  Tuesday September 27, Waring’s Green to Birmingham Gas Street Basin. 14 miles, no locks, 5 hours.

Quite how I thought we might be able to make it all the way to Gas Street in Birmingham yesterday, I’m not sure, as today we found ourselves moving surprisingly slowly through the southern suburbs of Birmingham past Cadbury’s Bournville  headquarters (how sad that the company is no longer British-owned) with its uplifting odours of chocolate.

Before reaching Birmingham, the character of the canal changes quite sharply, and moored boats suddenly have solid window protection against vandalism. There are shopping trolleys abandoned in the water, and nylon cables that wrap themselves around our prop shaft, reminding me that it is indeed important EVERY morning to check the prop for debris.

I do sometimes despair of human beings, ready to chuck anything into the canals and anywhere else without a thought for other users. Read the rest of this entry →

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