To the Railway Bridges

Do you know that feeling, when you just ‘have to ride’ ? Perhaps it begins with a restlessness, maybe repeated glances at the window, agitation, sighing, even a little heart-ache. This is the urge to ride, a demanding physical need to spin the cranks, to be moving through the air, to feel the road thrumming beneath the tyres, to bring endless horizons towards you, rolling on, and on, and on.

On Friday I couldn’t get out to join John and Andy on their afternoon ride, but when the chance came to take just half an hour, I had to ride, my bike of choice was the Brompton. The destination was the two railway bridges between Brokerswood and Dilton Marsh. One of riveted iron, straight and wide, the other of brick, arching gently out of the ground. Only a hundred yards or so apart, they span different stretches of track and the junction where the lines part can be seen in the distance from the brick bridge. Maybe a mile or two further in that direction sits another, larger bridge, off the beaten track. No road seems to lead to its grand arch, it will be the subject of another cycle quest another time.

I made another cycle film of the journey- this one is epic by my standards – nearly six and a half minutes long. It’s filmed entirely on my little compact digital camera so the quality leaves a lot to be desired, I would like to think that it has a charming sort of super8 feel to it, but that is very much wishful thinking. The film contains variously, a farm cat, lots of shots of power and telephone lines and pylons, the long hill at Rudge (road technically closed, you can see it’s all dug up) the tin tabernacle at Brokerswood, wheat fields, hedges, verges, the two railway bridges (the iron one only briefly because I could hear a train heading for the other bridge so I turned back and headed for the brick bridge to film it), a train and a feather. The music is by John Cage.

Power and phone lines fascinate me, I think partially because we do such a good job of editing them from our vision and memory. They are so ubiquitous yet it seems to be possible to view a landscape without seeing them at all. A photograph can be startling when it restores these invisible towers and poles that we have edited out of our memories of the landscape.

Pylons viewed from the back road that runs between Frome and Standerwick

For some reason that I cannot articulate, or even fully understand, I find pylons and telephone lines beautiful. I particularly like to see pylons striding out across fields, or better still, a skewed line of telephone poles lining a country road.

Telephone poles on the road to Dilton

This fascination of mine extends only to wires and lines, it does not include phone masts, I’m not sure if it includes radio masts. I would very much like to see a map with all the above ground powerlines added.

Apparently one of my first words was “Pylon”.

The House by the Railroad

The day after John and I pootled/sprinted our way to a cup of tea I rode to work in Salisbury and back. The first time I did that, I thought it was an epic ride, this was the third time I’ve done it this year and it’s incredible how quickly it has become just another journey, absorbed into the day-to-day riding. That’s not to suggest that the ride itself is in any way ordinary and unremarkable, I would be hard-pressed to find a more picturesque and pleasant ride of that distance locally, it’s just that to me it no longer seems epic. I am making the journey to Salisbury in about one hour fifty minutes now, and the return journey in two hours to two hours fifteen. I was once told that the top of the spire on Salisbury Cathedral is level with the bottom step of Warminster town hall. I’m sure this is a Wiltshire old wives’ tale as that would imply an incredible rate of climbing over twenty four miles, 404 feet to be reasonably precise. In any case, it is significantly harder on the way back compared to the way there.

En-route, I have come to recognise and anticipate certain landmarks, one of which is a house in Wylye village which fascinates me. I call it The House by The Railroad, as, although it looks nothing like Hopper’s famous painting with that title, it has a sort of melancholy feel to it that I associate with Hopper’s paintings. And of course it is actually by the railway line. A while back someone posted a comment on this blog that led me to an article about Hopper’s love of cycling and particularly track racing, so there is a little bit of synergy here. Anyway, here is the House by the Railroad:

The train track runs scant feet behind the back of the building. I like the fact that it’s on a hill and has a lot of steps up to the front door. Although there are other houses around it, it seems somewhat isolated from them, having an aura of its own, indeed I cannot recall what the houses around it look like, so unremarkable are they to my mind. For some reason I would love to live there. Both my wife and I find the clattering of trains in the night to be a soothing sound, on this line the trains must sound their horns as they pass the myriad crossings that are scattered throughout these villages in the Wylye Valley. It has a faint whiff of the gothic about it, from the artlessly scattered chippings the mound seems to rise from, to the pillar supported porch and the open window, not to mention the cat lurking on the driveway. The house is small and set back a little from the road, yet its presence is huge and it demands, and commands, my attention every time I ride past.

A serious house, on serious earth – as it says in the graphic novel Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison. Interestingly, this subtitle in turn is taken from the poem Church Going by Philip Larkin, which also contains the words:

” …Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence, “

My view of the house lasts all of ten seconds, yet I am ready for it a good mile in either direction or so from where the house stands.

Go Slow – with the Slow Bicycle Movement

Splendid work from those Slow Bicycle Danes, fresh out of Copenhagen and rolling laconically in your direction.

More slowness at The Slow Bicycle Movement.

Will sprint for tea

Crossing the A36 was a matter of cycling twenty yards and signaling right in front of a near blind corner, John almost came a cropper when a barely in control Range Rover hurtled round the bend while he was side on to the traffic. It was close, too close, and cycling up the tiny lane towards Laverton we hastily made small talk about mountain biking on order to quickly forget the near miss. Ten minutes beforehand, John, fresh back from mountain biking in North Wales, had turned up at the gate early that Tuesday evening, I was eager to show him the roads out towards Lullington so we ambled out of the village towards Woolverton and took that nasty right turn. We needn’t have bothered with the blase chit-chat, the leafy lanes themselves soothed us and drew us gently into the comfort of the Somerset countryside. The roads were so quiet that when we were set upon by a couple of over excited farm dogs, their noisome barking and yelping seemed explosively loud in the calm of the evening. We were in no danger, but we hastened away, standing up to put in some acceleration up the hill until the dogs receded into the distance, last seen standing in the middle of the road yapping madly. We dropped down into Lullington, cycling at a gentle enough pace to talk Tour de France, North Wales and a blow by blow account of John’s holiday. A gentle pace became a snails pace, then we stopped for a spot of photography:

Trundling slowly past the dairy, John took over the navigation as we crossed into what looked like someone’s drive, but turned out to be a tiny lane pointing towards Standerwick. We eased ourselves up the hill as the road became thinner and thinner. We were in lanes even John had not visited in his extensive bicycle travels. Over a small bridge and… we were suddenly confronted by what was without doubt one of the most appalling cases of fly-tipping I had ever seen:

This had clearly been hastily thrown off the back of a van. Big plastic crates with ‘corrosive!’ written all over them, stacked full of junk, old trackies, soggy books, plastic toys. It looked like the aftermath of a terrorist attack on a village jumble sale.

Over the A36 again, with a considerably better line of vision to get across safely. Then we trickled amicably towards Rudge, having only gone about seven miles and wondering if perhaps we ought to think about doing some proper cycling. In an attempt to scupper that particular train of thought, I suggested ringing our friends Lou and Rob and seeing if they might put the kettle on. John did the honours and, yes, the kettle would be switched on for when we arrived. Unfortunately this had the opposite effect from what I expected. John suddenly turned into Eddy Merckx and started sprinting. Right, if he’s Eddy Merckx, then Je Suis Bernard Hinault et tant que je respire j’attaque! (as it says on my t-shirt).

So we dueled through the lanes until we reached Westbury, opting to take the old road. We arrived dripping with sweat, which was altogether pretty unpleasant for Lou who greeted us at the door and guided us round the back of the house, and through to Rob who handed us a steaming beverage each. Later on, having had a tour of the the work going on in the house and garden, we set off for home. Having had a nice combination of gentle bicycling and hell for leather cycling. Here is a short poor quality film from the pootling bit – sorry for the abrupt cut off, still getting used to the iMovie/youtube crossover. The music is Wind Forest from one of my favourite films, My Neighbor Totoro – but played by Grooploop – who I know nothing about.

Why haven’t I posted anything about the Tour de France?

Because no one needs my comments on it – last year turned out to be so disappointing in terms of the doping scandals, that reading back through, my posts on the Tour reflect my growing disillusionment with the event. Also last year I was able to attend the prologue in person, and enjoy the atmosphere of the Tour so felt I had more to say or report.

But, for the record here are my comments on this year’s tour.

Cavendish – Yay!

Blue skies and Brompton

Lucy was eager to get out on the bike today, so we dropped the kids off at their grandparents before slipping back to the house to get the bikes. We trickled out of the village to Rudge, taking it easy on the hills, just sitting back and letting the bikes do the work. Lucy was on her Diamondback and I took the Brompton. On the way back, I tried to shoot a bit of video on my phone. Getting it onto You Tube has meant the quality has been sucked out at every one of the three stages it went through to get there. The resulting very washed out, tinny vid looks more like a series of stills than a film. Anyway, I present it below. Music by the marvellous My Two Toms from Bristol.

***updated information, I’ve reloaded the vid at slightly better quality, the improvement is marginal at best***

In Rome you long for the countryside; in the country you sing to the stars of the distant city.

Recently I have been reading so much about urban riding, mainly on Copenhagen Cycle Chic, that I have been feeling that I’m missing out by cycling in the countryside. I have been longing to put on a suit and ride a classic roadster, or swing down to the coffee shop and pick up a latte, perhaps meeting a friend, also on a bike. Walking a bike over a zebra crossing, signaling to rejoin the traffic, waving at a van who’d let me in. Maybe I would have a newspaper rolled up under my arm, or I would be balancing the coffee or doing something equally urbane and sophisticated.

But today all that went away in one ride through some arcadian country lanes. I had worked hard all day and was feeling drained and lethargic by the time the evening came, so much so that I couldn’t be bothered to change into my cyclewear, and just clipped up my jeans – slapped on a hi-viz vest (the sky was bruised and dark) – and put on a cycle cap. The helmet sat on the rack of the bike while I decided which way to go, in fact I forgot about it and it sat there for the whole ride. Leaving the village I headed over the mill bridge towards Bath, but turned left when I hit the A36. Almost immediately I turned right where a small sign indicated ‘Laverton’. and I was off the main road and into narrow country lanes. As I rode down the rough tarmac the sound of the A36 diminished then disappeared completely, to be replaced by the sound of the wind in the oak trees and the sweet singing of blackbirds, sparrows and finches. The hedges closed in and the banks rose up, more old roads, older than maps and carved deeply into the hills over generations. Massive oaks, stag-headed, leaned over me as I wended my way along what seemed more track than road. At every crossroad and junction I guessed my way as there were few signposts to guide me. It felt wonderful, the few signs pointed towards villages that I had not heard of, and I was only four miles from home. The hum of machinery from the open door of a farm building, the smell of a dairy, something I remember from my youth, cows, straw and sweet milk – mingled into a cascade of scent and memory. The road continued through farmyards, disappearing under mud and gravel, stones washed away from the banks in a flood and left high and dry in the centre of the track, here and there water seamed to be bursting from holes in the road where springs had worked their way up through the tarmac, memories of rivers, streams born again after the rains.

Every now and again, the road opened up at a corner and the verge disappeared into a morass of cow hoofprints where the animals had stopped to drink at a roadside spring on their way between field and dairy. These were drovers roads once, before the days of the cattle trucks animals were funneled down these steep banks and high hedges to market, even today the air was thick with their bovine-stink, surprisingly a not altogether unpleasant smell.

Cornfields near Lullington

I worked out that I must be headed toward Frome, and the roads opened out a little, now meandering past golden fields of standing corn, or the green fuzz of maize. I saw a hare with black-tipped ears nibbling at the base of the plants, unconcerned as I watched from a gateway. Then down a hill, the road crumbling and eroded by water until suddenly I was in Lullington and passing what looked like a castle. The old village pump still stands, protected by a wooden shelter. This village seemed ancient, as old as the roads that lead the rider into its boundaries. The foundations of its buildings were laid long before even the mightiest of the mighty oaks that stood amongst the houses was a sapling or even an acorn. The clouds swept overhead in the strong winds, dappling the streets with occasional flashes of sun, giving the impression of time moving fast, speeding up while the village remained constant and unchanging. The bike carried me through it all, my own time machine descending toward the river. Then suddenly a huge modern dairy, all sheet metal, pipes and carpark, loomed up from around a corner. Cars flashed past at the end of the junction, the main road to Frome.

I knew where I was now, back in the 21st Century. On the way home I reflected back on the ride and realised that I am lucky to live out in the countryside.

“Romae rus optas; absentem rusticus urbem tollis ad astra levis.”

In Rome you long for the countryside; in the country you sing to the stars of the distant city.*

*Translation taken from the site Sweet Juniper

The Ride Journal – Featuring Greg Lemond, Victoria Pendleton and… blimey! The Highway Cycling Group!

Have you been looking for a cycling publication that talks more about the pleasures of riding than the latest kit? A magazine that isn’t stacked full of adverts, but instead is beautifully designed and elegant? A journal that covers all aspects of cycling, from BMX to cycle chic, via singlespeed and track racing? Yes?

I should very much like to draw your attention to a new cycling journal called The Ride. It is a thing of astonishing beauty, more akin to a book than a magazine, the design work alone makes it worth the £8.50 cover price in my opinion.

What about the content? Well you won’t find many adverts at all, and no technical reviews or ride guides. Surely every modern cycle publication must contain information on fitness, technique and nutrition for cyclists? Not this one. What it contains is a series of terrific articles, artwork and photo-essays that explore the feelings associated with riding a bike. There are BMXs on the Lower East Side, essays on the hunt for the perfect brakes, the birth of mountain biking, cycling through the snow, a tour of someone’s workshop, even articles from Greg Lemond (on his incredible Time Trial that won him the Tour de France) and a piece by the always excellent Victoria Pendleton.

There is even an article by yours truly, The Highway Cycling Group. The Editor Philip Diprose contacted me at the beginning of Spring, having read this blog and wondered if I would write a piece on the origins of The Highway Cycle Group. I gladly did so, producing a piece specially for the journal that has not been featured on the blog. I didn’t know if it was any good or not, but it seemed to fulfill what Philip was looking for in producing a bicycle journal with soul. To my surprise and delight, they published my article, along with a couple of pictures from the archives of the Group, including one of the badges my father made.

The Highway Cycle Group in The Ride Journal - apologies for the quality of the image

I hope my piece stands up to scrutiny when compared to the other articles, there is some really good writing in the rest of the journal.

It also turns out that someone else from the village has also written for the journal, Debbie Burton is well known in the world of mountain biking, not only for her journalism but also for her clothing company Minx stylish cycling gear for girls. Philip had no idea that we live in the same village when he commissioned us and Debbie and I only found out we’d both written for it after the journal was published. Debbie received her copy first and showed it me during the school run. Small world.

Get over to The Ride’s website and snap up one of the limited first editions – each one is numbered and there’s only 1000 copies available.

*** Stop Press *** It’s sold out already! They may be going to reprint and are taking emails to gauge interest – get your name down now and ask for a reprint, these are going to be collectors items. I cannot stress how beautiful and soulful this journal is, it makes Rouleur look like Cycling Weekly, and that seriously takes some doing!

Accusations of riding with the bilge on view

Email received today from Very Concerned of Chiswick

“Is that a hint of builders bottom I spot in the shot of you freewheeling lost down country lanes, hand on hip??”

Builder's Bottom?

To put matters straight, I have annotated a closer photograph from the same sequence, lest others have viewed the pic and come to a similar, and I must add, mistaken, conclusion.

I have been advised that a light coloured belt is an unwise choice, this has been duly noted.

And there, I think, we should perhaps let the matter rest.

New to the blogroll

I’ve added another two blogs to the blogroll (in the right hand column of this blog). Both of the authors of these blogs have been kind enough to feature The Highway Cycling Group on their own sites, and as both blogs are really good I thought I ought to pull my finger out and return the favour.

First up is TLATET – I don’t know what it stands for, but the author certainly puts in a lot of mileage. I find the blog inspirational as mileage is calculated and racked up over the week, putting my efforts into perspective. The posts are always well written and the ride posts are interspersed with cycling comment and news. Well worth a look.

Next is Just Williams – The author has posted on my average speed page which is how I got to see the blog. The writer describes himself as a UK Grandfather who has recently taken up cycling again, and has discovered that cycling has pretty much taken over his blog. The blog is filled with incisive and interesting comment on various aspects of cycling from helmet use to cycling as a means of dealing with obesity.

Both blogs are worthy of being added to your bookmarks – especially if you share similar views on riding to The Highway Cycling Group.

More links to come soon.