Articles
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Bicycles By Numbers
June 17, 2026
Some people collect antique clocks, some people collect books, and of course some people collect bicycles. The collecting may start as an unintended pastime, rooted in some childhood moment of wonder. I have slowly acquired more than a dozen, and after careful examination, I can pin my moment of wonder down precisely to a specific event in my life, and it truly was a revelation in Technicolor . It still resonates with me. I collect bikes because I see them as a means of escape. And boy, did I need that means of escape at my seventh ever Christmas.
When I had just turned seven at midsummer, my mother and father were very concerned at how poor I was at learning to read, write, and do basic arithmetic in the state education system. My mother had retrained as a teacher herself while I was still at nursery school and was appalled at the innovations that the state was foisting on children with the eventual aim of making reading and writing easier to master.
I think she was right. I was learning to read and write using a novel phonetic alphabet called the Initial Teaching Alphabet (‘ITA’) and enjoyed reading books written in it so much that I rapidly exhausted the available stock of books at the school.
There’s a good article on the rise and fall of the Initial Teaching Alphabet from the Guardian newspaper here.
I could not read any of the dozens of childrens books that were brought home from the library for me, even though like you, I can readily guess at the meaning of each ITA word as an adult. Normal English is one of the hardest languages to read and learn, and I wasn’t given any of the mechanisms I needed to make sense of the vast quantity of written English around me. The pathways had not been formed, and in fact this turned out to be the great failing of using this approach to literacy - it was very hard to undo the false start it presented to young readers. And I was rapidly outgrowing the stock of Ladybird books at school. Something had to be done.
Helping At Home - The ITA Edition What they did next to remedy things had a profound impact on my life: they sent me off to have my writing and reading and arithmetic sorted out at a proper Prep School, called Belmont School, the junior school to Mill Hill School on the Ridgeway, London NW7.
My father was careful to preserve correspondance relating the whole of my education in a large box file, and it doesn’t make for easy reading. Nearly the first letter in the file is from the headmaster of Belmont School, Mr. Foster, explaining that a place can be found for me for the autumn term, but that I’ll have to come to the school as one of its 110 boarding pupils, places for day pupils having been parcelled out on the basis of academic excellence prior to my father’s petition. My parents were undaunted, since my being a border meant that they could both continue to work full time. And they were well off from my father’s government pension from his previous fifteen year career as medical laboratory manager for the East African Trypanosomiasis Research Organisation in Tororo and Nairobi. In fact my brother had been to the same school 18 years before me, and this must have been a factor in the decision - several of the staff that taught him were still teaching there, and he had done well enough academically to get into medical school from Belmont and Mill Hill school.
I was kept in the dark about all of this until a couple of weeks before the start of the autumn term, when I was taken to a London department store to get kitted out with everything a boarder would need, from a boiler suit (worn over sports gear when playing out in the woods at the school) to boot brushes (for polishing the two pairs of shoes I was sent with, with my school number 118 marked in small tacks under the instep on both pairs). The itemised list was gradually ticked off, culminating in the arrival of a stout wooden tuck box with a padlock and key, in which my personal effects that I wasn’t wearing were stored. This may sound odd, but the tuck box and its inviolate contents (staff and other boys were very conscious of this rule) were the main thing that stood between my experience of being sent away to school, and the equivalent experience of older men being drafted into National Service or Army basic training. It was difficult to transition from what I took to be the loving environment of home to sleeping in a bunk bed in a dormitory with eleven other lost boys in the first three weeks of term. No telephone calls were allowed, no visitors were allowed, and by the end of the first week I had genuinely discovered what home sickness feels like, along with the shock of going from the top of the class at reading and writing in my state school to the very bottom of the class, where I was barely literate. Maths was even worse for me, as was having to form joined up writing with a dip pen and an inkpot on my desk. For the 1970s, the school was remarkably consistent with its values and methods from the post-war years.
Although the immediate urge to run away was tempered by the border fences around the estate and warnings about guard dogs patrolling, a couple of kids did manage to slip away, notably Hank Marvin’s sons who were probably going through a far worse time at home than I ever was. But they were brought back pretty speedily.
So the special moment came on the very last day of the winter term when we were all gathered into the blacked-out gymn hall on low benches to watch Mr Kirkham screen a real film on a real film projector with proper sound - the [Great Escape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Escape_(film). I have no idea how the school came by the print or the projector to screen it on, but this film was the highlight of the year for us. After all, we lived in a small self-sufficient community with no access to radio, television, or newspapers, so watching an actual film was a really big deal to us. The strange thing is that if you ask anyone who has seen the film what its greatest scene is, they’ll talk about Steve McQueen’s desperate gamble with a stolen German BMW motorbike and a frontier fence; I could see at once that his character Virgil Hilts was going out of his way to draw attention to himself and was bound to fail. As were the escapers who tried to get as far away as possible on the German railway system. I was captivated instead by James Coburn, whose character Sedgwick quietly frees a bicycle from a bike stand and rides it all the way to the border with Spain with the odd friendly wave to people he meets along the way. The bike isn’t in the film for more than twenty seconds but it made a big impression on me.
James Coburn as Sedgwick escapes by bicycle Although the opportunity to cut through a chain and elope with a bicycle from Belmont never presented itself, the seed of the idea was implanted, and reinforced each year subsequently, because the school only had the one film, and it was shown at the end of every term just before we were released for the holidays to our parents.
The bikes, and their numbering:
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Riding the Iron Pig
June 12, 2026
My new electric behemoth the Moustache XRoad 4, weighs 25kg unladen, and after riding it for four or five months, this is the biggest talking point about the bike.
Norwegian dairymaid riding a pig It was bought in anticipation of longer day rides or even tours in the UK, but proves to be a mixed blessing. Can the Iron Pig really live up to the marketing brochure hype, is it the right kind of electric bike for gravel riding (which it claims to be)?
Worsening road surfaces and boarded-up pubs on country rides that I really enjoyed a couple of years ago resulted in fewer memorable rides until recently. Paddling a kayak on the Thames or dinghy sailing are competing with country rides, but only the latter activity really leaves me tired and happy after a great day out. The other two are better for the social element - I prefer day rides at my own pace and not with a group (although that may well change if I stop working at my day job). An electric gravel bike seeems to offer more opportunities for getting fit enough for group rides or routes longer than the 50km rides I know so well.
The idea of gravel riding is not novel, much of the route I followed through Sweden in 2008 was on gravel roads, and before that there were miles of forestry tracks and access roads in North and Mid Wales that we cycled together back in the 1990s and 2000’s. But does the Iron Pig make things worse or better?
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New Sails
November 23, 2023
A month after my last post here and an email arrived from Kenna at Sanders Sails to let me know that the sails I ordered for Paloma in September were ready for collection…
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Masthead Failure
October 16, 2023
My sailing friend Steve offered to skipper for me in Paloma on a sea trial in mid-September. Unfortunately our first attempt at getting the sails set didn’t come to much, both the mainsail and the jib were too big for the mast track. But while waiting for new sails to be made up, I’ve suffered another setback…
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Paloma Mast Refitted
August 24, 2023
Today there was a slot available at the boat lift at Shamrock Quay for Paloma to have her mast restepped. It was removed two years ago and stored on a mast rack at Seatons Marina until I loaded it onto the trailer when I purchased the boat in July. Other than being checked over the mast had been sitting on the rack ever since. The restepping was cancelled during the boat’s transition from trailer to berth two weeks ago when we ran into some snags, which Cameron and Glyn at VMG Rigging have been working through for me.
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Thanks Margaretha!
August 19, 2008
I would also like to say a big thank-you to Margaretha Danbolt Simons and John Hart for an unforgettable stay at Margaretha’s summerhouse in Stavern…
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On My Way Home!
August 19, 2008
Just time to write a quick note to say I’m on a big container ship in Brevik waiting for it to slip its lines and sail to Immingham in the UK, which it should reach on 20 August at 0200 - then I join the family in Cornwall for the last part of the summer holiday by the beach
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Time to Reflect ...
August 13, 2008
I have been in Strömstad in Sweden for several days. This pleasant seaside spa town is famous for enjoying more sunshine than anywhere else in Sweden. It’s some 135 km from Oslo, and makes a popular day trip destination for the Weegies. They can catch the Color Line ferry from Sandefjord which docks here to buy all of the expensive things at home much more cheaply abroad.
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A Ride Along the Klarälvsbanan
August 8, 2008
Another unexpected and rewarding discovery this week has been the Klarälvsbanan, a fifty-five mile (90km) asphalt-surfaced cycle route from Hagfors to Karlstad that follows the line of an old railway track. It’s flat, tree-lined, and very pleasant to cycle along as it broadly follows the course of the river.
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Someone else on a bicycle!
August 5, 2008
This is a rare event, considering the number of miles clocked up here in Sweden. After days and days of riding in isolation from Stockholm along the Sverigeleden I meet another cyclist, heading in the opposite direction!
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The rain caught up with me
August 3, 2008
After two weeks of browning my knees in the scorching Swedish sunshine, I’m now back in my rain gear again.
I’m trying to ride towards Arvika to find out about opportunities for a canoe holiday there next year, but the rain is falling in sheets today, so I am going to make a short 40km dash from Borlänge, where I have stayed overnight in the luxurious but very reasonably priced First Hotel, to the youth hostel at Grangärde at the top of Lake Väsman to the west.
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Jo and Beamer At Nordkapp
July 30, 2008
Delighted to discover that my Troms cycling companion Johanna and her faithful bicycle Beamer made it to the North Cape, completing 10,000 kms or more on the road since leaving Munich at the start of the year. She emailed me today. The weather seems to have been pretty much the same for her as it was for me!
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Rest day near Avista
July 28, 2008
Despite a lot of rumbling thunder yesterday afternoon, I am now edging into the second week of lovely cycling here with blue skies, melting tarmac on the road, and gentle breezes - no rain yet.
Yes, I should splurge on a T-shirt or two… rather than wearing the Icebreaker wool top, although this is surprisingly comfortable to ride in in the 30° heat.
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An unexpected visit to the summerhouse of Linnaeus
July 25, 2008
Today I stumbled upon the summerhouse of Carl Linnaeus,the man who invented the taxonomy system we use for the plant and animal kingdoms. I discovered that he was also something of an ecologist, perhaps the earliest one to go into print.
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Summer days in Stockholm
July 23, 2008
I was up early taking photos in the deserted old town district of Stockholm at 07:30. This worked out very well, because I was at the door for the extraordinary Vasa Museum an hour later, just as it opened, to beat the crowds.
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Arrived in Stockholm
July 22, 2008
Every time I change planes at Oslo Gardemoen I seem to run into a delay with the transfer that sees me sprinting from one end of the airport to the other, and in the 15 years of doing this I’ve learnt that even if the airline thinks that you can get through the transfer in just an hour, it rarely works out like that. This time I knew it was going to be extra tight because the flight from Bodø was very late in leaving for its trip to the capital with me onboard.
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Leaving Stamsund and the Lofoten Islands for Sweden
July 20, 2008
I have finally reached the end of the Norwegian leg of my cycle ride from Bergen to Nordkapp and around Senja and the Vesterålen islands and the time has come to pack my bags for the next leg of my trip. This involves two of the long distance Sverigeleden cycle routes that join Stockholm to Strömstad on the west coast of Sweden, and a final ferry trip across to Sandefjord and a bit more cycling to Stavern in Norway where I plan to close out my summer trip in about one month’s time.
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Impressions: Sweden by bike in 2008
July 12, 2008
If you are looking for something different in your next cycletour in Europe, Sweden is a strong contender for combining endless opportunities for wild camping with well-signed cycle routes and a good mix of historical buildings and pastoral scenery. The only downside is that as you go further North from Dalarna the preponderance of forests and hills can make things monotonous. I really enjoyed pedalling around Dalarna and Varmland and Uppland though and traffic was never a problem!
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First Day in Western Australia
May 8, 1993
Mileage on Odometer after NZ: 2684.7
We arrived in Perth on an “Ear New Zealand” flight from Auckland in a venerable Boeing 767 at 22:00 - an hour or so later than planned; to us it was 02:00 Auckland time. A fine, warm, moonlit night. The signage at Perth Airport reminded us both of home and Heathrow Airport but it couldn’t have been more different. We were the only flight to arrive that late and customs and immigration formalities were minimal. There was no damage to the boxed bikes or searching questions beyond being asked where we were staying that night; we answered with the address of popular Backpacker hostel but we were expecting to hide somewhere close to the runway in our tent instead.