Monthly Archives: April 2008

The weather forecast for the Bern area in Switzerland is sunny today, Sunday, so time to be cycling on again, recovered, repaired, recuperated, restored – with warm and dry thanks to Bob and Doodie in Geneva and to Clare in Bern.

Tomorrow’s forecast is again for heavy rain. But if I stay any longer, this will become a tourist rather than a cycling trip round Europe. I now am armed with seriously waterproof gloves as well, the last chink in my initially inadequate rain armour. So Raven awaits.

But I do sometimes wonder if it would be easier just to be a waterproof dog, like this magnificent specimen spied on the cobbled streets of beautiful Bern on Saturday. Plato! (An in-comment for Sue.)

Or a juggler in the dry. (Alastair, old son, have you ever seen someone juggling SEVEN balls??).

The other photo is of course just Clare and myself on one of Bern’s bridges, looking across the river at the Cathedral here. Taken for us by a sweet Japanese tourist lady who really knew how to use a camera – taking enough time to cause a pedestrian traffic jam on the pavement as the patient Bernese (so this is where the sauce comes from) waited for her to frame the shot and finish.

I shall leave the bottom left corner of Switzerland today with cries ringing in my ears from Clare and Bob and Doodie of “Will you get off that blanekty-blank computer!!!!”

It’s been so nice to work on real PCs rather than my fiddly little portable keyboard and the Blackberry – but Flickr and trying to post photos is enough to drive one demented.

Think of an amount of time you might need to resolve a computer problem, and then multiply it by ten to get a realistic assessment of how long it will really take. Sue will smile wanly at this observation. If she reads the blog….

So, next stop just 40 undulating Swiss miles away to the north, and my old Dart Centre friend and colleague Rolf von Siebenthal and his family. A true Swiss with, as I recall, a nuclear air raid shelter in his basement, filled however with bicycles.

Oh yes, I know this blog gives a sense of connection, but it’s a bit one way. So if you’re tempted to email me as well (KIDS!!) please do. It’s so good to hear..

And PS – just realised that all my posts so far have been logged as originating on US Pacific time, eight hours behind Central Europe. Giving a rather skewed impression of when I’m awake, sleeping, blogging or cycling. Have just corrected the blogger.com template, so should now be correct.

Onwards! Get OFF that Blackberry…

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So, why does one do/why am I doing (speak from the I, Brayne!) this journey? In my Dad's words, why on earth would I want to do such a thing.

(Noting as I write on a train from Geneva to Berne, shortly after taking the above picture at Geneva railway station, that I have been resting easy, warm and dry with the lovely Bob and Doodie Evans these past three days, partly to get through and over a foul cold, partly because the weather around Geneva has been utterly miserable, three days of constant, soaking rain. I may be incorrigible, but a masochist I ain't…)

Put at its most simply, if I were on my death bed thinking back over the things I wish I had done, but didn't, doing a mega bike trip – ideally from Beijing to Kathmandu through Lhasa – would have been right at the top of the list.

Cycling a long long way, without having to worry about the (of course legitimate) needs of a partner on the back of the tandem or about a salaried job to come back to is a dream I've had for decades – and most clearly since encountering a determined lone cycle-borne Brit atop the Khunjerab Pass crossing from Chinese Xinjiang into Pakistan in 1986.

Doing the big Asian trip would be a bit of a stretch as a starter, so Europe was right behind there, and that has to do with Gestalts.

An open Gestalt, put simply, is unfinished psychological and emotional business. The East European revolutions of 1989 turned my life around in all kinds of ways, just as they ended the divisions of the Cold War. Along with Europe itself, I found myself propelled on a midlife journey of healing and of deeper meaning.

That led to psychotherapy, as client then as practitioner, to redefining myself professionally and to engaging with journalism from the perspective of the reporter's personal and emotional experience.

It all also led led slowly and rather painfully to the end of a marriage, but also to new, challenging but deeply fulfilling relationships, including with my children, with friends and especially at home with Sue.

(Good grief – as I pen these lines, a crowd of young Swiss national service soldiers have just climbed on the train in full battle gear and with semi-automatic rifles! They do indeed take self-defence seriously here.)

Back to the narrative, at the transition between full-on career and what I hope wil be a fit and productive Third Age, this is the time to fulfil those old dreams and close some of the bigger Gestalts that remain open.

Put even more simply, when I've been asked in French these past three weeks what I'm up to, I just say, c'est une chose a fair avant de mourir. Everyone understands.

As I've written before, I also, sadly, believe that things look very grim indeed on the global warming and global economy front, and that quite soon it is going to get a lot worse.

In just a few years time, I anticipate that our collective human focus will need to be much more than it is now on actual survival than on having personal fun. So, selfishly-seen, cycle and travel now while stocks last – and while the knees are still able to do this kind of thing.

My friend Mary Self put it wisely in an email earlier this week.

"Most explorers are male and maybe the practical problem solvers are more inclined to make a physical journey than we females.

"Life is a journey of discovery" writes Mary, " and I suppose we can act that out ritually or symbolically. The idea of physically journeying to a destination alone and to find deeper meaning is perhaps an outer symbol of what we are doing inwardly – toiling and striving to glimpse and understand ourselves and others dear to us."

Expressed at its very simplest, when I watch eagles playing in the updrafts of the Alpine foothills or listen to the tap-tap-tap of last autumn's dry leaves as they skitter along the road beside me in the cycling silence of a gentle tailwind, then I know that this is the right thing to be doing.

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Yes, the wonderful cycling and feeling good about the world couldn’t last forever. Payback time. Some of the wettest April weather the region around Geneva has experienced for decades, and getting soaked two days running has landed me with the mother of all colds.

But thank the universe for Bob and Doodie Evans here in Geneva – my first Reuter bureau chief and his spirited Irish wife from mid-70s Moscow who have swept and warmed me up, filled me with good food and cold remedies, ready to, yes, take the train to Berne tomorrow to meet up with another old Moscow friend Clare aka Julia Slater.

The picture here by the way is the fabulous view today of Mont Blanc from the Evans’ flat just across the border from Geneva into France. Yes, you have to look quite hard to see anything other than cloud and rain. In fact, rain and cloud is all there is.

I will come back to the question of why one does this kind of thing in the next few days. Blogging perhaps as well as cycling ridiculous distances in the first place. Tricia Worsnip just says I’m incorrigble. Yes, guilty as charged, but it goes of course deeper than that as well. And in extremis, as in, terrible weather, I’m flexible about taking a short train trip. So maybe a bit corrigible after all.

And as for rain gear, Mary Self in Wales reminds me of what her cycling-addicted husband Richard says about weather. There’s no such thing as bad weather. Only bad clothing. How Right. She’s also had some wise words on the soul symbolism of the physical journey, but back to that later.

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Ah well. Eventrually one pays the price for perfect riding days…

It has been WET today, heading up towards Geneva but falling well short. Major insight: rain and mountains slow you down. Duh!! I may not make it to Beijing after all before having to return to England in July, it seems.

(Actually, Bucharest and back would have done, but after days like today, Budapest retour will be about the limit.)

Lesson two of today is, if you intend to cycle a long way, don't scrimp and scrape on the cycling gear. So if you've bought the world's toughest and most expensive bicycle to cycle around Europe, don't make do with a Lidl cycling top.

Challenged today for the first time seriously by rain, it leaked. Big Time. Requiring purchase, for a lot of money, of new and seriously waterproof jacket. See pic. Allowing therefore continued ride, but only for a total of 35 miles in all. Less than four hours in the saddle.

But hey – this journey is about emotional distance, not physical. Though being a bloke, I do like to ratchet up the miles.

Delightful, warm and dry accommodation last night with two painters, Marie-Eve and Jean-Paul Juen at their wood-panelled atelier in the mountains near Contrevoz. We all agreed that what ails France is an arrogance of the intellectuals, who won't countenance serious reform. Going back, perhaps, in Marie-Eve's view, to the French original sin of regicide at the time of the revolution? Interesting how deep history goes in a nation's psyche. Think Serbs and Russians as well as French or Germans.

No postable picture of my hosts, but thanks anyway for taking me in so late last night, cold and hungry after a sharp dusk ride down the mountain.

Today, emerging from their atelier, on the quietest of country roads, bumped into Karsten, amazingly the first seriously-laden fellow long-distance cyclist I've come across since arriving in France over two weeks ago now.

Dreadlocked and about 40, Karsten (in the picture above) comes from Erlangen in Germany (confirming my earlier French observer's comment up north that anyone with a heavily-loaded bike must be a Brit, or maybe a German), and is also seeking his purpose in life.

During the summer, when not cycling around Europe, Karsten repairs bikes for students at the local university. And is desperate about climate change, having decided as early as the late 80s never to fly and not even to get a driving licence.

It was good to meet a cyclist not togged up in Lycra and zipping arrogantly (again) past, like most French cyclists do, at a zillion km per hour.

One of these blogs, I do want to muse about why one does trips like this. Whether one's a Karsten or a Mark. Are we nuts? Or seriously in tune with the Zeitgeist? (No prizes for guessing my view.) Answering the question so elegantly put by my 86-year-old Dad when I told him I was planning to cycle around Europe for several months, "What on earth do you want to do THAT for??"

Next blog perhaps. But only if it's dry and warm…

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So, on day 16 of the journey (7 hours in the saddle, 61 miles, just 8.6 mph average speed) what do these pictures relate?? No prizes, but guess.

Pause.

OK, I'll give you a clue. Steam rising vertically into a blue sky from power station cooling towers at Hieres on the way from Lyon towards Geneva = ? NO WIND. WHOOPEE. And no rain either. Yet another stunning day's riding.

So, second thing? Pause. OK then. Steam but no smoke. Yet again, a whopping great nuclear power station, part of the system that gives France 80% of its electricity without almost zero CO2 emissions.

I know, I know, I've said this before. But we're going to have to think hard about nuclear. I'm with James Lovelock that we will have to have it, big time, if your cities aren't to go into powerless meltdown as global warming stresses civilisation to breaking point. As with twirly chocolate, France leads the way…

Third thing from the photos? The St James shell, symbol of the Camino. This bike trip is in many ways a spiritual, or soul journey, a pilgrimage. Subject perhaps for a later blog on really why one does this kind of thing…

And finally re the pix? Raven and I climbed high today, testing our new Rohloff low gears. Look carefully, holding the idiotic-grin image perhaps to a mirror to get it right way round (the Blackberry does this back to front, for some reason, when photographing from the front of the device) , and you'll see 1010 metres, over 3000 feet.

Long slow slog, but we got there. And down again, though so cold we've retired to a cosy B&B rather than put the tent up and risk my three-season sleeping bag not coping with the coldest of late winters/early Springs.

Cait McMahon in Oz, my former Dart Centre colleague, btw, thinks I'm too gloomy on climate change. I wish it were so – but heavy snow in Southern England and Northern France at this time of year? Another oddity.

OK, so finally finally. Seamus Kelters in N Ireland, BBC and Dart colleague, once did the Loire by bike as well, and had the same intimate relationship with his steed that Raven and I are developing. He reminded me of this lovely and so appropriate Irish blessing:

May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand.

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Back on the road, from St Etienne and John Laxton's place (old Uni friend, shared a room '68-'69 at Leeds) to youth hostel at Lyon, whence this blog.

Lovely to see John and his delightful Eng/Am Lit professorial partner Denise after so many years, and especially amazing to be treated by them (thanks!) to THE most extraordinary, indeed exquisite French nouvelle cuisine meal at the Les Iris restaurant in Andrezieux last night.

Lionel Githenay is the chef there, see pix above, and if you've seen the new Disney/Pixar cartoon Ratatouille, this was IT. (And if you haven't seen the film, do – it's brilliant.)

John, Denise and I were treated to the most amazing fare, presented as highest order works of art. A sweet for example mixing chocolate and mushrooms! With twirly bits that melted in the mouth. Again see pix – with thanks to the staff for letting us into the kitchen to capture the artistry on picture.

French shopping and opening hours may be a challenge, but you can see why this place leads the world in culinary imagination.

Right – quick summary of the technical bits today. Lovely ride, and good to be back on Raven and settled into the now supplest of compliant Brooks saddles. (It's bum sweat and pressure that breaks the leather, I've decided, and it takes 500 miles. Worth the agony).

Three hours 56 mins in the saddle. 46.78 miles at average speed of 11.8 mph – thanks to payback tailwind and most of the distance to Lyon being downhill. Max speed 34.4 mph – not a patch on what Sue and I can get up to, thanks to the extra weight (nothing personal, dear), on the tandem.

And total distance since leading Cirencester on Easter Sunday, 753 miles.

The really encouraging thing about the last three days is that I am now back, unexpectedly when I set out, on the real Camino de Santiago, heading backwards from Le Puy along one of the medieval arteries of this pilgrimage to Budapest.

Krakow in Poland was another medieval starting point, and I'm tempted to swing through there on the way back. After all, having got the authentic Credencial with Sue from Santiago in 2006, I count as a real pilgrim, not a fraud at all…

What a trip.
 

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Wow, has today been one of the best riding days ever, or THE best riding day ever? Sixty miles down the upper Loire, through stunning volcanic gorge after stunning gorge, from Le Puy north towards St Cyprien near St Etienne and my old university friend John.

For those with a technical bent, 60.24 miles, av speed 10.3 mph, max 32.6 mph, total trip so far since Cirencester on Easter Sunday 706 miles, time riding today 5hrs 47mins.

A quick blog before I get there, to note the fantastic view from where I'm sitting, looking down from Chambles along the dammed Loire. Without an N. And with thanks to Geraldine and Chantal who make France's best chocolate drink (mine was with mint…) at the Comptoire de Zanzibar by the local Eglise. See photo…

The highpoint of the past 24 hours though was an evening and night with the Confraternity of St James in Le Puy, where Isidore (sp?) extended a most generous welcome and bed for the night as part of the hospitality that awaits pilgrims setting out on the 1600km foot trek to Santiago de Compostela.

I felt a bit of a fraud at a surprisingly moving pilgrims' Mass this morning, taking the easy seated option on Raven, and also intending, despite a brief dalliance with going some way SW towards Pamplona, to do the Other Half of one Camino option backwards to Budapest. Bit hard for my fellow pilgrims (for mine is also very much a pilgrimage) to grasp.

But then Marlies from Germany (see picture of Isidore, me and Marlies grinning against the background of the hostel door with its St James shell marking it out) is also now going backwards. Walked all the way to Santiago from Berlin, arriving just before Christmas last year, and now she's walking all the way back.

Hochachtung to a real pro. And thanks too for the great spaghetti last night.

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Riding a bike for a long distance is very much like a meditation. Life, love, the universe etc. For those familiar with EMDR, there's something powerful about the bilateral brain stimulation of left pedal, right pedal, left pedal, right pedal ad infinitum, keeping one anchored in the present.

Tom in Paris asked, what on earth do I think about for such long stretches of solo time. Let me tell you, as I gaze down at my map, handlebar bag and computer, there's no shortage of brain Fodder. (Sorry by the way for those stray capitalisations – my stowaway keyboard and Blackberry decide for themselves that there should be a capital at the beginning of some lines, regardless).

How fast am I going. What's my average speed today. How far have I gone. Today and in general in my life. Have I gone The right way. Did I really get it so wrong with client x, or did client y benefit perhaps more than I realised. What is it about working with journalists and trauma that I find so rewarding. What do relationships mean. What about my kids' future and global warming.

(EVERYONE I speak to on this trip, by the way, is extremely concerned, and believes it's probably too late for the planet. There's been a breathtaking shift of awareness about this in the past two years or so, since I've started asked people on my travels what they think. More on that in a later blog.)

What's that twinge in my achillles heel, damn it, mean. Did the drugs really do the job? Yes, I think they did, and I have every intention of making it all the way round by July. How is Sue and how are the cats and the hens at home. Are people enjoying the blog. Why don't I put question marks at the end of my questions… ?

And so on and so on . Believe me, boring it ain't. Unless you are listening in as an outsider.

Final thought today before heading finally to John's. Blogs are addictive. And for an obsessive like me, thoroughly fun. Woke up in the middle of the night last night at the hostel and realised I'd posted something twice. Logged on and killed it then and there. At two in the morning.

How sad can you get! And by the way also, the Brooks saddle is now gloriously soft and supple. I win. 

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This is my patent baguette protection and conveyance system. Rolled in my sleeping mat. Works perfectly. Even kept (most) of my pain (if it this big, I’m told, it’s actually a pain and not a baguette) dry through a day of downpour. This pic belongs much earlier, to last weekend just south of Paris when it was p*ss*ng down. But nearly there with the sequencing now…

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I'll have a last go today at posting pix the right way round. Getting the hang, but slowly.

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And finally for today, not sure whether this picture will come out, but the view of Le Puy coming down the hill from the west is stunning. Three volcanic plugs with medieval churches or absurd statues on top of each. Raven of course pushing her way in to the picture foreground as ever.

Le Puy is the main French base for the start of the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route down into Spain. It would be lovely to do this again properly, either by bike or even on foot, after Sue and I took our tandem sunshine from Pamplona to Santiago in the summer of 2006.

Indeed, as I write, the Camino café around me is full of Pilgrims from Germany, Holland, the Netherlands, Austria, making their much slower foot-borne way towards spiritual healing

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Photo here is of amazing cathedral high up in the Massif Central in Chaise Dieu today after Arlanc where stayed the night last night.

(on which subject, THANKS Michelle, who as fellow passionate cyclist picked me up on the road just before six o'clock last night and offered me food and lodging out of the bleu!!! Now that's French hospitality).

Chaise Dieu is about 1000 metres up (yes, long slow slog with Raven, but we loved it) and was home to a lowly monk who in the 14th century, my Lonely Planet tells me, began studying here as Pierre Roger de Beaufort, and went on to become Pope Clement VI, mnaking sure that his home village got LOTS of funds to build one awesome church.

Which, at 1300 lunchtime, was of course SHUT. So, didn't get to see inside, but is said to be well worth the visit.

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Right – having sent out a load of emails to friends and family Today saying I'm now officially doing this blog, many of you have replied with the most wonderfully supportive and interested messages. Many many thanks – and indeed the reason i've decided to go with this blog and open up a bit about the experience is because so many said before I left And now during how much they envied me. I feel i'm at some level doing this on behalf also of many who'd like to be simillarly crazy.

So, writing this from Le Puy, after a miserly 36.44 miles today, albeit over the Massif Central with some quite stunning views, let me briefly present my partner on this journey, Raven. See picture.

She is a coupled (as in, can be taken apart into two pieces) steel-framed tourer from one of the world's best cycle shops, St John St Cycles in Bridgwater. Light she ain't, but solid she is. Black and sleek, hence Raven – which is also the generic name for the 14-speed integrated hub built by Rohloff in Germany. The quality of a Mercedes, and for those who understand these things, you can change standing still, and from top to bottom in one twist. Perfect. We have a very healthy relationship – and given that the trip as a whole is about relationships, we're getting on gratifyingly well.

Panniers waterproof, utterly, from Ortlieb also in Germany. And something very new – ceramic rims, which means fabulous braking and much less wear on the pads. Mighty pannier carriers, and the Brooks saddle, now thoroughly tamed and almost comfortable.

This is proving a wonderful bike trip. 645 miles so far in total from Cirencester, averaging 60-70 a day with reasonable comfort. Reached Le Puy today as start of the main French part of the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route to Spain.

But while most in the pilgrims' hostel I'm staying in here are heading West down into Spain, I head north-east for St Etienne tomorrow to visit old university friend John Laxton, French resident since the early 70s. And then it's on along the Camino backwards through Switzerland and Austria heading for Budapest. And then back home, all by bike!!

At least that's the plan. It will change.

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The extraordinary thing about France, i'm finding, is how often, as in almost always, everything in the countryisde is shut. No wonder the economy is in such a state, and why Sarkozy is trying to change things.

Shops shut at lunchtime for two hours, regardless. It's almost As if they don't want to be bothered by customers. They're shut at the weekends. Restaurants are largely shut at this time of year – went through Claude Monet's home village of Giverny West of Paris, prime tourist trap one would have thought, and at 1830 on the Tuesday after Easter, everything was shut. Bars that do open shut by 2030.

So, it's safer to create one's own lunch. See photo. And when the shops ARE open, needless to say the food is fabulous. This is what is keeping me going. As well as Steack and frites when I can find them…

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Warm thanks to Nathalie (sorry for the spelling) and to Anne in Vichy for the most wonderful welcome. Nathalie takes in foreign language students; and I guess I count with my struggling French. And Anne, sadly not pictured, is perhaps France’s leading trainer in journalism and trauma. Hence the connection.

And thanks too to Pascal, Anne’s doctor husband, for sorting my Achilles tendon. Which was playing up so much I thought at one point it might jeopardise the entire trip. Drugs do work sometimes after all.

Day Eight of the trip and seven of cycling, I’m now about 80 mile south of Paris on the way to st etienne, and boy, are french roads long and empty. Foul headwind yesterday to pay me back for sailing into Paris last week driven by hailstorms and gales from the rear. And today it’s just wet.

Wondering at the moment if the process of breaking the new saddle in will end in victory for Brooks B17 or for my backside. At the moment, I think the bookies are putting their money on the saddle rather than the rider.

Encountered a group of French walkers yesterday who commented loudly and immediately on seeing me that ca devrait etre un anglais. That must be a Brit. Judging by the load of the bike. No frenchman worth his baguette would ride with so much gear – he’d have a van behind with s spare bike and all his kit. And probably his mother on a tricycle blowing a whistle to keep rhyhm.

This lunchtime, it’s steack and frites at a restaurant which is, unusually for the french countryside, open at lunchtime.. Delicious.

The psychlist. Aka Mark….

Ah – getting the hang of this. One pic at a time and one comment. This is my patent baguette protection and conveyance system. Works perfectly. Even kept (most) of my pain (if it this big, I’m told, it’s actually a pain and not a baguette) dry through a day of downpour. Also, comments should be short. Suffit pour le moment.

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Crosses by the roadside remind that this is also the old pilgrim route from the middle ages to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, though sadly I won’t be going that way this time.

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Travelling along the Loire day before yesterday (Sunday 31st March), came across two nuclear power ststions within 20 miles of each other. Steam? Lots. Carbon footprint? Virtually nil. A reminder that France gets over 80% of its electricicty from nuclear, much less controversial here than chez nous.

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