Category: Other

Having a folding bike with me in this research trip for the upcoming Bradt Guide to the Czech Rep has been a revelation. A train can get you anywhere major. A bus from there can you get you anywhere minor. And a bike from there can get you anywhere at all. Even places so small…

I’m back in the Czech republic again, this time with a folding bike. I’m staying in Příbram, a former mining town an hour from Prague, and an easy bike ride away is the village of Vysoká. Here are various summerhouse retreats of the great Antonín Dvořák, composer and redesigner of computer keyboard layouts. (Well, OK,…

I’m spending a lot of time in the Czech Republic this year, updating a guidebook. (I have a separate blog on that.) Mostly this is using the country’s excellent public transport, but at last today I did manage to get a bike ride. With my friendly guide Pavel, I cycled to see some famous regal…

I’m exploring the touring possibilities of a folding bike plus inflatable boat. The bike can carry the deflated boat; and the boat can carry the folded bike. Which enables amphibious linear journeys: you don’t have to paddle back to where you left the bike (or car, not that I can be bothered with cars). You…

After a few days in Denmark, I cycled a few days in Schleswig-Holstein. Why? Ah, that old question. Well, I’m planning a German End to End later this year, and this seemed good preparation. Northern Germany does good cycling infra. The hundred-plus-mile trip from Flensburg, on the Danish border, through the DK/DE ambiguity of Schleswig-Holstein…

I’m recovering from scheduled hand surgery, which has resulted in forty or so stitches in my left palm and little finger. It looks like Boris Karloff’s attempts to sew a mailbag on deck in a storm. So for a couple of weeks I’m having to take things easy. Which means essential journeys only. Such as…

I had an unexpected stay in Rotterdam, so I nipped down south on the train today to see the Netherlands’ most celebrated cycle roundabout: the Hovenring, a gyratory suspended in mid-air above a main road in Eindhoven. The hovering interchange is on the Rondje Eindhoven (‘Little Ring’) bike route that loops round the city. Half-bridge,…

Julian’s Bower, at Alkborough in far-north-west Lincolnshire, is the only Julian’s Bower in England still called a Julian’s Bower. I cycled it today. A JB is a maze; technically, a labyrinth – a one-route turf path that winds its convoluted way within a circle to the centre. The concept wasn’t invented by the York one-way…

When asked where I’ve ridden in Britain, I’ve replied ‘everywhere except Skegness’. Well, I’ll have to find a new joke now, because I’ve finally cycled there. I went down the Lincolnshire coast from Cleethorpes via Mablethorpe, and very nice it was too. In parts. A few parts. After hearing bitterns at the Far Ings nature…

The Monsal Trail is one of Britain’s wowest-factor bike paths, stretching eight car-free miles between Bakewell and Annoyingly Not Quite Buxton. Once a mainline railway, it’s excitingly fitted out with half-a-dozen tunnels and several bridges, and offers some lofty views down over the Wye Valley. (Not that Wye. This Wye.) All this is fairly recent….