Category: Adventure & Observation

There are many varieties of adventure, so what do I mean when I use the word? I like this definition: A wild and exciting undertaking (not necessarily lawful).

Adventure, by any definition, is not limited to epic tours through foreign lands, climbing mountains and sleeping in cold huts. And it’s definitely not limited to air travel.

Since quitting aeroplanes in 2010, I have never travelled more: hiking all over the country, from the cathedrals of the south-east to the summits of the Highlands, hitch-hiking with strangers from London to Ben Nevis and touring tens of thousands of miles on my bike(s).

For me, adventure is a way of being in the world. It is a shortcut to two feelings that I treasure most in life: connection to people and place, and awe.

(Not) Cycling to the Sahara: Trains

Over the past few days, the universe has been telling me loud and clear: “You should be on a bicycle, not on a train.”

You see, I had the temerity to use trains to go and visit my friend in Hamburg. But the universe didn’t like this and so the universe made things very expensive. Then, when that didn’t halt my progress, the universe made things highly inconvenient. Then, when that didn’t stop my passage, the universe decided to get radical. The universe struck down the entirety of Northern France’s rail network. The universe brought on soldiers with machine guns. The universe threw bodies onto train lines.

But still I prevail.

Firstly, I have a strong recommendation for anyone wishing to travel in Europe using any mode of transport other than their own. Make a plan. Book in advance. Be boring, or else expect to pay for your spontaneity. It would seem that modern train fares encourage the sort of constrained thinking that also dogs aviation as a mode of transport: advanced planning and point-to-point travel. I can bear witness to this.

I only decided that I wanted to go direct to Hamburg from Paris last Wednesday. It was a spur of the moment sort of decision. I wanted to go that day because I wanted to see my friend and there’s only so much you can spend on patisseries in Paris. So I went to the train station: a train that day would cost me 200 euros. One way.

I left the train station and went to an internet café. I calculated forty-seven different ways of transporting myself and my bike from Paris to Hamburg and thence to Marseille by train (I had also decided that France on the whole was overpriced and underheated). The cheapest option, it transpired, was to buy an Interrail pass for 267 euros, not including mandatory train reservations, which cost extra.

So I returned to the Gare du Nord and engaged in proxy combat with a computer booking system through the exhausted mouse of an SNCF employee. I could not travel on an Interrail pass that day. There are limited places available, you see, for people with Interrail passes. Normally, my SNCF told me, you should book months in advance. She clicks her teeth at this, as if I have personally put her out with my spontaneity.

But to her credit, she locks horns once more with the binary code on the other side of the silicon and comes back with a new plan: I can go tomorrow, changing at Brussels and Cologne. She winces: it will take over ten hours. I don’t care. Ten hours? I can swallow that. She leads me carefully through the itinerary and also books me onto trains back from Hamburg and to Marseille. I am now locked in to travel at specific times to specific places. Reservation supplements bring the total cost to well over 300 euros. I swallow it. She hands me my tickets. It would appear that I’m now French. She takes back the tickets and reprints me back into an Englishman.

I leave the poor SNCF employee shaking with effort (she actually closes her window) and roll my bike over to the information office. I make a half-hearted attempt to find out about how to transport my bike on the TGV train to Marseille. The information dude thinks I just have to pay a supplement. So whatever. I leave my bike at a friend’s place in the deuxieme and enjoy a last Parisian supper.

The universe has successfully made things expensive and inconvenient. These I can swallow. I even take it in good part when I confuse Hamburg-Hauptbahnhof and Hamburg-Altona, forcing my friend to travel across town, at risk of prosecution for fare evasion, to meet me. Over ten hours on a train, but aside from incipient piles, no permanent damage done. The trip back will be better: eight and a half hours and only the one change in Cologne.

One happy train.

Or so I thought. The universe was not done with me.

I caught the train from Hamburg to Cologne at about half eleven. At about half three I arrived in Cologne. At about half four I caught the train from Cologne direct to Paris. At about seven we made a scheduled stop in Brussels. We were about ten minutes late. I quietly accepted this fact.

Then we stayed stopped in Brussels.

An announcement declared that we would be here for at least an hour, due to an electrical fault. They made it sound like a light bulb had blown. In fact, the whole of the Northern France rail network was power-less. An hour and a half later, we still hadn’t moved, although I had bought several packets of biscuits.

An announcement told us to consider postponing our travel plans. Nobody, they portentously announced, is travelling into France. An odd announcement, that. It didn’t actually say that trains were cancelled, just that we might like to consider postponing. So I joined an exquisitely long queue of people trying to get tickets changed, vaguely wondering what this would mean for my onward travel to Marseille the next morning.

I happily stood in the queue for about half an hour (as an Englishman, I know my place). A film crew was interviewing an excited gaggle of American girls in front of me. I was just getting to the part where I could almost see the doors of the ticket office, when a casual voice announced in French: “Mesdames et messieurs. Le train pour Paris Gare du Nord partira a vingt-et-un-heure-quinze du quai six.”

Quoi? I look at my phone. That’s now! I don’t wait to hear the message repeated in Dutch, German and English: I run for the platform. There are four trains-worth of passengers who want this train. The French-speakers are rather unfairly placed first in the stampede. Security guards try to stop us. The Thalys train people flap their hands to slow us down. We hit the escalator. A film crew (how had they got there?) was blocking it from surging up, so a few people try running up the down escalator. The security guards drag them off, so they start to walk up the down escalator, getting nowhere. A priest breathless behind me raises his hands to heaven – Merci Thalys!

The atmosphere on board is electric. The only electricity in Northern Europe, apparently. An announcement says that this is the Thalys service to Paris Gare du Nord and that we’ll be travelling on la route classique, which sounds lovely. He’ll tell us at Lille what time we’ll get to Paris.

We arrive in Lille at quarter past ten, but we’re last in the backed-up queue to France. The driver says we won’t move for forty-five minutes. Then we move and the driver says we’ll arrive in Paris at 00h45. This is shockingly late to stay at my friend’s flat. She’ll leave the key outside the door. Finally the announcement is that we’ll arrive at 01h30. Each new delay is greeted with something approaching glorious hysteria. I think everyone is just glad to be going somewhere, sometime.

When we arrive (and we do, finally, arrive), Thalys are handing out water and a box that contains magical coffee that gets hot when you shake it. I think they’re putting on taxis as well, but I’m glad to walk down Boulevard de Strasbourg to my friend’s place, ignoring the prostitutes sheltering in phone booths. I’m looking forward to a few hours couch kip before my next train south to Marseille – this time with my bike – at ten the next morning.

Or so I thought. The universe has one last desperate trick up its sleeve.

I get to the station the next morning and ask the information people about how to buy a ticket for my bike. They say go to the ticket office. I queue for the ticket office, arriving with about fifteen minutes to spare before my train departs. Perfect.

Then: they don’t take bikes unless they’re in bags. Bags? The woman looks at me angrily, like I’ve personally put her out with my poor planning. Tsk. I go to the train anyway. Maybe they’ll let me on after all. Maybe it’s not busy. Maybe I’ll get a kindly guard. Maybe.

No.

But I do get helped by a kindly passenger, who directs me to a local branch of Go Sport, where I can buy a body bag for my bike. This is when the universe decides to really go for it. I leave my bike chained up outside the station, against an innocent-looking wall. I go for a pee. I come back and see three soldiers in full battle fatigue, nervously gripping semi-automatic rifles. One of them is looking at my bike. A couple of firemen stand around, smoking. I see the soldiers and think – oh that’s funny, they’re near my bike. I stand around, not wanting to get too close to men with guns. The soldiers storm past me into the station. I creep up to my bike. A fireman asks me if it’s mine. I admit responsibility. The alert is called off. The soldiers let me go, mysteriously explaining that it is all part of the “terrorist plan”. I hurry away to a boulangerie.

Then I cycle to the Go Sport shop. It is raining by this point, another part of the universe’s plan. I will pay anything to get out of here. I need the south: it won’t be raining in the south. Anyway, how much can a bag really cost? 10 euro? 20 euro?

Well, 75 euros, apparently. More than the cost of a ticket if you plan in advance, as I strongly recommend. I baulk at this robbery and try to cook up an alternative plan involving a friend’s flatmate, a scooter and Montpellier. It comes to nothing and I have to buy the bag. It is 80 euros by the time I get it to the register. I swallow it. The assistant sweetly informs me that there are bags available for 100 and 200 euros. I took their last cheap bag. Lucky me. At least the ticket office at Gare de Lyon allow me to change my ticket for free.

The bag necessitated collapse of my bike into component parts: wheels, frame and handlebar, but into the bag it eventually went. I was all set, following rules and feeling sick about it. I buy a book to boost morale. The universe, despite bringing in the military, will not win. I shall get to Marseille.

Spot the bicycle.

But still the universe was not done with me. At this stage, though, even the universe knows when it is beaten. So all it could muster were fate’s snide remarks, irony and mild inconvenience. The train was half-empty and could have accommodated an elephant, let alone a bike – with or without the world’s most expensive bag (which, incidentally, already had a hole in it). At Aix-en-Provence we heard an announcement that a man was on the line (it was unclear if he knew he was there or not) and there would be a delay of around ten minutes. Ten minutes? Is that all you’ve got left, universe? Ha!

So in Marseille I did finally arrive. It was a stunning entrance, all sun and sandstone. I dragged my bags into the sunset and busily reassembled my bike. Wrongly. A kindly man in hip-hop shades pointed out that my fourchette was back to front as I replaced the handlebars. The universe is kindly. I then cycled down a hill, only to realise that the hostel I wanted to stay at was up the hill. I pushed my bike up the one-way hill and looked into the hostel: complet, full. I kept on walking past, winking at the universe. Then I stopped. I turned around. It won’t hurt to ask. They’ll be able to direct me to another hostel, I’m sure. I ask at the desk. They are not complet. In fact, when I arrive, I am the only person in my room.

It does fill up later with three others, including the mandatory snorer, a mild woman of middle age with the respiratory system of a Harley Davidson.

Universe: let’s call it a draw, yeah?

Worth taking on the universe for: Marseille.

(Not) Cycling to the Sahara: Hamburg

This is Hamburg.
Please note: This is not actually Hamburg.

I wasn’t supposed to be here, really. Not until the Sunday before I left England. I then wasn’t supposed to be here so early. Not until I had dallied in Paris too long to cycle to Bonn. Bonn, where I was supposed to collect a train to Hamburg. Instead, I dallied in Paris, ate croissants aux amandes, went to the theatre and drank vin rouge. It was all very Paris.

This is actually Hamburg.

And the suddenly it wasn’t very Paris, it was very Hamburg. By which I mean: ports, building sites, graffiti, squats, ships, cranes, burlesque life-drawing, wind-farms, compound nouns and absurd uses of the word ‘super’.

“Brunch”, c. 2 p.m.

Still, I was pleased to see that they do patisserie here and have duly invested heavily in baked goods. I was also pleased to see that they have shoe shops here and have duly invested in a pair. Of shoes, not shops. So Hamburg passed by in a glaze of eating (Pakistanisch, Portugiesisch, “Brunch”), walking (docks, Schulterblatt, Alstersee) and keeping my hair out of the wind. None of which is interesting to you, I’m sure.

So I won’t say any more about Hamburg, except to invite you to suggest purposes for their tower:

Flying saucer? Mind control tower? Enormous hypodermic needle? Whatever it is, there are plenty of them in Germany.

(Not) Cycling to the Sahara: Paris

I never meant to go to Paris. I never really meant to stay in any one place for more than a day or two and I certainly never meant to do a lot of walking.

So that’s why I spent four days in Paris, à pied.

My bicycle necessitated repairs, which was why I went to Pairs in the first place. The cycle shops in Vernouillet were closed on Mondays. So I caught a train to Paris-Saint-Lazare and cycled to a superior Parisien cycle shop. It was closed on Mondays.

With a Gallic shrug of the shoulders, I decided to have lunch.

What happened next is a little hard to explain, but it involves Shakespeare, a packet of karmic tissues and Cyrano de Bergerac. Anyway, it’s a story probably best told over a carafe of Bordeaux, to get the real atmosphere. I can’t pour wine over the internet (licensing laws, eh!), but one thing led to another, led to me spending three nights in Paris. Besides, all you want is my cinematoscopic photography in the city of light, isn’t it?

Well, this is what I saw on my sightseeing tour:

Notre Dame Cathedral

The Eiffel Tower

Beautiful.

What was not beautiful was the unfortunate beast who occupied the lower bunk bed from mine at the hostel. He appeared to be a Brazilian musician, but I never actually exchanged words with him (except curses under my breath) because I never encountered him awake. He seemed only capable of sleep during the day; during the night he preferred a symphony of coughing, choking, shaking, mumbling, sneezing, snoring, smacking lips, cracking fingers. Then finally his alarm goes off – evidentally not to wake himself up because he’d never been asleep. I felt sorry for him, really. Well, up to a point. I stayed there two nights, the third I spent on a couch in the deuxième – far more comfortable.

So that was Paris. What is beautiful is not the stone or the river or the people, but the company. Walking through cobbled streets alone only hurt my achilles. Sitting riverside alone in my ragged stinking clothes, surrounded by chic Parisiens, only brought on acute social anxiety. Staring up at marble and wrought iron only made me feel like all human endeavour is vanity. But when I offered my packet of karmic tissues to a sniffly girl in Shakespeare & Co. then Paris became Paris. But that is another story, like I said.

Cycling to the Sahara: London (ish) to Paris (ish)

No I haven’t got a drinking problem (ish), it’s just that I’m lazy and couldn’t be bothered to cycle all the way through London.

So I started my journey on a train, astonishing rail workers and elderly ladies alike by saying I was going to France. In truth, I was going to Caterham. Then I was going to France. Via Newhaven and a ferry.

Of course, the important thing to remember when doing a London-Paris cycle ride is that the pizza shop in Newhaven is awful.

CAUTION: Pizzabike

The above pizza hacked a destructive path through my intestines, stirring up all kinds of malodorous gusts for the rest of the day. That would be reason enough to catch a ferry from Portsmouth or Dover – but another reason is that the Newhaven-Dieppe ‘overnight’ ferry arrives bang in the dead of dark.

Due to some kind of arbitrary time-zone discrepancy between Britain and France, what I thought would be five hours of sleep turned out to be only four. So I effectively started cycling at three a.m., my time, after about two hours of ferry seat-sleep.

If you’ve never cycled through Seine-Maritime at 4 o’clock in the morning, then it looks a bit like this:

Seine-Martime at 4 a.m.

Ahh – only joking! It looks more like this:

The church at Arques-la-Bataille

But what I lost in sight-seeing, I gained in noise-hearing and smell-smelling. And thankfully there was almost zero traffic-trafficking – breathful, blissful solitude.

There is an excellent cycle path that goes almost all the way from Dieppe through Seine-Maritime – une avenue verte, a green avenue – but you can’t see green in the dark, so I didn’t pick it up until Neufchâtel-en-Bray. Flat, quiet, green and with conversational information boards on the life-cycle of drinking water and the compostition of the solar system, this is a premium cycle path.

The same cannot be said of the D915. This is a main road from Dieppe to Paris. Don’t use it unless you want to die.

So I took the D915 from Gournay-en-Bray to Sérifontaine, a chokey ride through 15km of car fumes. Up hill. 

At about this time I decided to get cold. Really cold. Although the sun had apparently risen by half seven, I’d yet to see any of it. The clouds were heavy and mist blew in my face. My immune system must have been annoyed at my lack of sleep, nutrition (pains aux raisins don’t count) and suitable clothing (sandals, really?) because it proceeded to evacuate litres of sneeze-goo from my nasal orifices.

On a side note: if you ever see a man on a bicycle sneezing, give him plenty of wobble room. The aftershock from one of my eruptions was enough to send me careering across the carriageway and, on the D915, that’s not a healthy move.

Luckily, I made it to Gisors. It has a castle. I managed to take a photo, which was pretty heroic of me, considering how much snot was oozing from my face.

Gisors castle. Through the pain.

Yes I know it’s a rubbish photo. Live with it.

Cycling along the minor roads of the Vexin region is rather pleasant. And my health seemed to pick up no end after the acquisition of a pain aux amandes in Seraincourt. It was still not sufficiently snotless to take any photographs of the beautiful church or château at Gadancourt. Are you grateful for that Gisors castle photo now?

So I managed to cross the Seine at about four p.m., after ten hours of cycling. I was expecting this to be a romantic, mythical moment, like Caesar crossing the Rubicon, but it turns out that the Seine is only romantic and mythical in Paris. In Les Mureaux it looks out over an industrial works and an indoor swimming pool.

But after a hundred miles of pedalling, you don’t give a toss about romantic and mythical arrivals. That’s why, to rendez-vous with my friend, I chose a local landmark: Lidl. She led me through the baffling twists of Parisian commuter belt sprawl to a real warm home, with a shower and a kitchen.

And that’s what I love about cycling: the feeling of hot water on skin and raclette in stomach.

Cycling to the Sahara

It is 1,279 miles from my house in London to the Saharan desert. I know what you’re thinking – not far, eh?

My house The Sahara

So I decided to cycle there.

I’m going to be doing all the usual live action twittering – @dcisbusy for that. Plus I’ll be posting stories and photographs from the road up here whenever I can access an internet portal.

I’ll (bike service permitting) be leaving tomorrow afternoon in time to catch the graveyard ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe in Normandy. It should look something like this:

But the beauty of cycling is in its unpredictability – starting now, as I nervously await the result of my bike service…

9 Precious Ps of Long Distance Bike Rides (and other expeditions)

Patience

You can’t rush around Britain. Even if you rush one day, you’ve still got hundreds, thousands of miles still to go. There’s no point. If you try and rush, then you’ll just lose heart (and probably do yourself an injury). You’ve also got to keep your patience when things go wrong. When it rains, when your bike breaks in half, when you get lost. It doesn’t matter. Just calm down and ask someone to help you.

Perseverance & Persistence

There is nothing remarkable in a philatelist who has collected one stamp. Long distance bike rides are the same. There is nothing remarkable in one day’s ride, it is only by persisting through day after day after day of rain and pain that you’ll reach your goal.

Prosperity

I don’t mean you have to be super-rich to go on a long expedition. But you do need to have money. Taking three months off work to do something like this is already a big financial commitment. And you don’t want to be scared of spending money on a lot of food, between £10 and £20 per day, even if you go to supermarkets. If you’re not wild camping, then that’s another £20 to £40 per day on accommodation. You’ll also want to put aside a few hundred pounds for bike repairs and maintenance, just in case. You could easily find yourself £1000 out of pocket without even thinking about it.

Physical Fitness

This is an important one, but also a misleading one. Cycling gets you fit. But: cycling long distances every day will not feel good and you won’t feel fit, at least to begin with. You’ll probably feel rubbish. Personally, I’m five days in and I can hardly walk, my knees are in pain and my neck and back ache. Anticipate it and forget about it.

Planning & Preparation

Planning, the art of plotting out a route or coming up with a cycling concept, is hugely overrated. The chances are that all your plans will be thrown off the bike as soon as you get on it. Preparation, on the other hand, the art of ensuring that you have the right equipment to be able to handle these capricious changes of plan, is worth investing time and resources in.

Purpose & Pride

If you don’t have a strong purpose for doing your bike ride, then you might find it mentally tough to keep going. However, you’ll soon find that pride takes over. As long as you can’t think up an excuse to all those people back home you told about your expedition, then your pride will keep you purposelessly pedaling.

And so back to my purposeless pedaling!

p.s. I’m in Burnham Deepdale, in Norfolk. Done about 325 miles so far…

Cycling around Britain: #1 …ha ha ha!

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It didn’t have to be: I was lying in a field of nettles, my feet above my head and a slug in my face.

This, my friends, is the glamour of attempting to cycle around Britain (…ha ha ha!) without a tent or a proper map.

I say “…ha ha ha!” because really this doesn’t feel much like an attempt to cycle around Britain, more like a race to see which will break first: my body, my bike or my mind.

So where do we stand on that score?

1: The Bike

The first to break was my bike. The rack, on which one of my bags is strapped, snapped off. I heard a clunking noise from behind me and stopped. I looked around at my bag and stared. For a minute or two I couldn’t figure out what had happened. The bag and the rack were still attached to one another. That was good. But the bag was somehow further away than it should be. Slowly it dawned on me.

So I got out the trusty gorilla tape (stronger than duck tape) and Heath Robinsonned the rack to the bike. It’s behaved perfectly ever since.

2: The Body

Second to break has been my body. Both knees are destroyed, but in fascinatingly different ways. The right has reverted rather truculently to the old injury that I did cycling to Bordeaux two years ago. But the left, always inventive, has found a couple of tendons around the back and is attempting to saw them away from the muscle. This means that I can’t go faster than about 10mph (except, lethally, downhill) and I can’t go up hill at all.

I am lucky that cycling and walking use two completely different sets of muscles. So, while my knees scorn any attempt at cyclopic locomotion, they are sweet as pie when it comes to perambulation around town. It’s at that point that my quads kick up a fuss and I spent a happy ten minutes this morning staring at my calves while they twitched and spasmed quite joyfully. I was only sitting on a park bench.

3: The Mind

This is the most insidious and the most dangerous. Furthermore, the other two, bike and body, feed it with self-pitying cream cakes of depression and pointlessness.

Every little thing becomes a test of mental resolution. From struggling with the bungee ropes on the rack, to being unable to get the plastic wrapper from a lipsalve. From the prospect of the weather, to the sound of a mournful song on the radio in a cafe. From finding a bite to eat, to finding a place to sleep.

And what makes it worse is that, with a broken bike or a broken body, there is no dishonour in going home. With a broken mind, there is no excuse.

That’s when I remember Ed Stafford’s walk along the length of the Amazon. He hated it. Absolutely hated the whole damned thing. He got depressed, he got shot at, he got infected with strange parsasites. But did he go home? No.

See you in Lowestoft then!

p.s. I’m currently in Woodbridge. I’ve done 150 miles so far. Hurrah.

How to Hitch-hike

Terrified by the prospect of standing on the side of the road with your thumb out? Well, here are some tips on hitching.

If you’ve never hitched before, don’t panic. How hard can it be? You just stick your thumb out and smile!

The hitchwiki website has a treasure trove of tips for new-comers and old-timers alike: http://hitchwiki.org/en/Main_Page

For what it’s worth, here are my own All Star tips and tricks:

  • Take a large (A4 minimum) sketch pad for writing signs.
  • Take several thick black marker pens (other colours optional). And I mean several – don’t rely on only one. It will run out and you’ll be stuffed.
  • Take a small road map of the UK. Like this one. Don’t lose it, like I did.
  • Pack a mac. Preferably a bright red one with reflective tabs. Be seen!
  • By all means stand by the side of a road with your thumb out, but for real pro-hitching, try to get lifts between service stations. It might not be glamorous, but it does mean you can approach people personally, they can hear about your quest and see that you’re not a psycho. Service stations also have toilets, food and water.
  • Don’t be afraid of going in the wrong direction. If you find yourself in the doldrums, then just pick up a lift going anywhere and try from there. 
  • Don’t, under any circumstances, take your ipod or other anti-social entertainment device. For god’s sake, talk to your kind hosts!
  • Take snacks for the road. Nuts are good, so is chocolate. I wouldn’t take a hip-flask, though. Try, at least, to look respectable.
  • If you’re not confident, travel with a buddy you trust. Three really is a crowd for hitching. Lone drivers might be reluctant to pick up a crowd and three people are difficult to accommodate in lorries. 
  • Hitch in daylight. Night hitching is probably safe, but it’s much harder. No one can see you, there are less drivers on the road – and the ones that do and are, are knackered and just want to get home.

But if there’s one golden rule I’ve learnt over and over again, it is this:

Don’t, under any circumstances, ever give up.

Last weekend I hitched to the Lake District and back in 36 hours. One particularly dark moment served to illuminate this rule better than most. I was stuck in Skipton. No one was stopping for me, several young ruffians had shouted at me, sworn and given me the finger. I trudged miserably up the road, in the misting rain, for about three hours.

I’d given up. I wasn’t even sticking out my thumb.

Then a van pulled over to the side of the road ahead of me. He must be checking a map, I thought, and I trudged slowly onward. I was just walking past him, when I noticed his window was wound down. Then I saw him looking at me, but I’d still given up. He moved to speak to me. He’s probably lost, he probably wants to ask me directions, I think.

Then this happens:

“Were you the lad with a sign to Kendal earlier?”
“Er… Yeah?”
“What? Have you given up on that?”
“Er… No?”
And he jerked his thumb to the back of his van. “Hop in then.”

And he drove me all the way to Keswick: never, ever, under any circumstances, give up.

MacAulay & Co: The Programme

For those of you who missed it, here’s a link to ME, live on BBC Radio Scotland with MacAulay & Co:
David Charles on BBC Radio Scotland

Highlights:

RG: “Did anyone stop who looked like Rutger Hauer?”
DC: Who the f*** is Rutger Hauer? “Ha ha ha…”

DC: “I’ve met squaddies, religious fanatics, mine investors, hydroelectric dam insurers…”
FM: “Perverts?”

FM: “Is there a passing wind policy? What’s the protocol?”

FM: “Thanks very much for joining us this morning.”
DC: “Plea…”

Me & Hitch-hiking on BBC Radio Scotland – Tomorrow!

I always knew fame would come some day, but I never imagined it would come like this. After two very countable feature appearances on Iranian PressTV and Singaporean StarSports, and after countless featureless appearances in the background of Midsomer Murders, I’ve finally made it. The BBC has called.

Tomorrow, at approximately 10:30am, I shall haul my heavily medicated vocal chords into the BBC studios to pass down some authoritative tips on how to hitch-hike to Fred MacAulay of BBC Radio Scotland.

But enough! Here is the link to the programme:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074hh3

It is on air from 10:30 on the 15th of June 2011, but you can always listen again, up to 7 days after.

So if you ever wondered how to get from London to Ben Nevis and back for free, or what to do when you’re stranded 150 miles away from your hotel in a foreign country, or how to raise loads of money for charity this summer – then now’s your chance!

Wikipedia, Egypt and the mystery of the Stoke Poges Naked Bicycle Angel

Egypt? It’s near Stoke Poges, a delightful village near Burnham Beeches and a lovely little cycle from London.

It was well worth the pilgrimage too, not only for the beautiful woodland or for the wonderfully displaced North African country, but also for a certain stained glass window in Stoke Poges church. I learnt of this window from Wikipedia when I was researching a talk I gave last year on the history of the bicycle. Apparently, there was a window of an angel, stark naked, riding a bicycle.

So I pedalled to the church, wheeled my respectful way down the winding path through the cemetery, leant my bike up against the porch and, full of anticipation, pushed open the heavy wooden door.

Now, I was expecting to see a huge window with a glorious winged angel dazzling the congregation with his dangling member straddling a Raleigh six-speed. So it was with increasing frustration that I circled the small church two, three times, without seeing anything remotely resembling an angel of heaven on a bike.

Then I found this:

Bicycle window, Stoke Poges (Peter Reed, Flickr)

This is a small inset picture in a window installed to celebrate the lives lost in World War II. And it’s not so much an angel as a cherub, I’d say. Far from being glorious, it seems a little inappropriate. I’d like to know the thought process behind this one.

We want something nice to remember the 450,000 souls who died in the most horrific war in human history…

I know – a cherub on a hobby-horse blowing a trumpet!

Whatever the thinking behind it was, one thing is certain: Wikipedia is wrong.

What?

This is what Wikipedia originally told me about the window:

There are several early but unverifiable claims for the invention of bicycle-like machines. The earliest comes from an illustration found in a church window in Stoke Poges, installed in the 16th century, showing a naked angel on a bicycle-like device…*

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the Second World War was a twentieth century event.

This is a valuable lesson I think.
1. Don’t believe everything you’re told. Sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes you do know better.
2. Check the facts for yourself. Go there. Verify the angel.

It reminds me of the British in Palestine, 1917-1948. A lot of government policy was set in London by people who had never been to Palestine (which then comprised the current territory of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories). Their policy formation was based on idealistic dreams, unrealistic ambitions and sectarian politics. They often ignored the advice of the people on the ground in Palestine.

The administrators, soldiers and civilians in Palestine itself, faced with the day-to-day troubles, were practical and realistic in their suggestions. But they were ignored by people who thought they knew better – but who knew nothing.

I think this is one of the most important lessons of travel. How can I talk about Iran when I’ve never been there? Any talk that blew out of my mouth would be nothing more than so much hot air. How can I talk about a church window in Stoke Poges when I’ve never been there?

The more I travel, the more wary I become of talking about places I haven’t been – or of listening to other people who haven’t been either, no matter what their professional qualifications are. You can find the inaccurate angel-window story repeated endlessly across the internet, mindlessly regurgitated by people who’ve never been to Stoke Poges.

So I urge you: verify the angel!

* There are a couple of things here. Apparently the glass of the window was recycled (ho ho!) and a part of it has been dated to 1643. Which is the 17th century of course. The internet seems to be in some dispute about whether it is the bicycle part which is from 1643 or not. Either way, Wikipedia is wrong.

The information comes from Stoke Poges Parish Council website. The image is probably not a bicycle either and could be a “one-wheeled contraption that was often associated with cherubims and seraphims in mediaeval iconography” according to Jim Langley’s website.

The Secret to a Proper Holiday

Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to go on more than 60 holidays, both in the UK and abroad. In the course of all that to-ing and fro-ing I’ve been to 33 different countries. I’ve also taken 77 aeroplane flights.

Fancy flights and holidays graph. Click to enlarge.

But finally – after going through 77 passport controls, 77 customs halls, 77 departure lounges, 77 immigration queues, 77 more customs halls, 77 baggage carousels and 77 arrival halls – I’ve realised one thing: flights aren’t holidays.

You could be forgiving for thinking that they are.

In 2017, UK residents took 46.6 million holidays abroad, up ten-fold from 1971, and we flew for 39.7 million of them, over 85%. The proportion of holiday-makers who fly is rising. Conclusion: everyone wants to holiday abroad and, to get there, nearly everyone flies. But why?

But why does everyone fly to Abroad?

There are some obvious and not-so-obvious answers to that question.

1. It’s quicker to fly.

Obviously. But there are two aspects to the speed:
a. Not everyone has the time to take the leisurely travel option, even if they wanted to. We only get two weeks’ holiday a year and we want to spend as much of that on a beach as possible.
b. Travel is horrible, so the less time spent in transit the better, even if it’s as traumatic as flying.

2. It’s cheaper to fly.

It really is, incredibly. Even if you cycle the whole way and swim the Channel with your bike strapped to your 48″ chest – you’ll still spend way more on food during your Ironman expedition to Magaluf than you would have done on a Ryanair return.

One way to Bordeaux by bike cost me near enough £240 in calorific fuel. The Ryanair flight back was £60.

3. Because everyone flies to Abroad.

Huh? Everyone flies because everyone flies? Yeah. That’s right. I’m saying that we don’t even think about it. Imagination disengages at the point of picking up the Thompson brochure. We think about the destination, not about how to get there.

But…

But, but, but my friends!

1. Flying is only quicker if you are travelling long distances.

And travel is only miserable if you’re cooped up in Ryanair-sized cattle-pens and subjected to intrusive and very dull immigration procedures.

2. Flying is only cheaper if you are travelling long distances.

And, even then, only if you forget that my ten days’ cycling was so much more than transit – it was a wild-eyed sun-blaze of fun.

3. Flights aren’t holidays!

If there’s one thing I learnt while I was slogging over the hills of Normandy on my way to Bordeaux – or while I was standing around on the side of a road in Glasgow trying to get a lift to Ben Nevis – or while I was trudging through the snow, sixteen hours into an eighteen hour walk home for Christmas – it’s that flights aren’t holidays!

In fact, the less flighty the holiday, the better. Less flight means less stress, less queuing, less being treated like cattle – and, therefore, more fun, more unique – and more holiday!

And this should be a cause of optimism for everyone.

If we don’t have to fly to Abroad, then the world of holiday is blown wide open to us. It means that holiday isn’t a two-week stress-ball carbon-guilt flight – it could be a trip down to your local shops. Why can’t that be a holiday?

A holiday for everyday

This morning, for example, I went on a holiday right near my house.

I didn’t mean to go on holiday. I was just on a walk, a fairly standard constitutional walk around the local fields that I do all the time – and then, suddenly, I decided to go on holiday. I climbed through some hawthorn shrubs, over a wall and onto a disused railway. It was hot and sunny, so I took off my shirt and walked down the tracks, basking in the sun.

I was somewhere I’d never been before and tanning. How is that not a holiday?

Rejoice! Forget flying; holiday today!

But there’s more!

(The environmental bit tacked onto the end to make me look ethical.)

My flying CO2 footprint over the years. Click to enlarge.

If we needed any more encouragement to ditch recycled air, carry-on luggage limitations and ear-popping madness, then it’s surely got to be the thought of our carbon footprint. In the last 28 years, I’ve ejaculated 28 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, thanks to my use of aeroplane transportation. And I don’t mind admitting that it was mindless. I flew because I didn’t think twice. If I wanted to go to France, I bought a plane ticket.

That changed in 2009. I wanted to go to France, so I bought a plane ticket. But the flight was cancelled due to heavy snowfall and I couldn’t go. I still wanted to go, but suddenly flying didn’t seem worth it. I wanted more from my travel. So I cycled.

Is this the Secret to a Bigger Life?

Life is what we remember. Most of your life isn’t spent now; it’s spent then – in memories.

To get a bigger life, therefore, you might think we need bigger memories.

But our memories are selective. To use my favourite cycling metaphor, while you will inevitably spend most of your time going uphill – what you remember are the downhills. Our memories cut the boring stuff.

So we don’t need a bigger memory.

We need bigger time.

Time and Travel – or Time Travel?

Consider this: you spend weeks and weeks looking forward to your holiday. Time in the office seems to drag on forever. Finally you get on the plane and shoot off to a beach on Bermuda.

Lying here, with the sand between your toes, the office seems a million years away. Why is that? But your two weeks of cocktails and beaches fly by in the blinking of an eye – and suddenly you’re back in the office.

Now it’s Bermuda that seems a million years away. Did time get mixed up in the Bermuda Triangle?

A physicist might put it thus:

A displacement in space is equal to a displacement in time.*

Or, to put it another way, travel makes time bigger.

Continuity and Happening

Think back to what you were doing ten seconds ago – chances are it was the same thing you are doing now – can you remember how you were feeling then?

Doesn’t it feel weird to think about how you felt just a moment ago? I bet you weren’t really feeling much in particular, at least not until you thought about it.

That’s continuity for you.

The brain seems to have two modes: one for when things are happening and one for continuity. And the more we allow continuity to build up, the less we can pull out of it and remember. It all blends into one.

Our brains don’t bother to make a distinction between this moment reading a blog post and that moment ten seconds ago reading a blog post. In our memories it’s just going to go down as ‘read blog post’ – if that. More likely, it will just get subsumed under ‘just another day at the office’ and none of the specifics will be remembered at all.

For all your brain cares: that moment of your life simply didn’t happen.

Happening and Memory

Happenings, however, break up periods of continuity – and, in doing so, happenings also create a bigger life. Happenings mean that less of our lives get lost in the long tedium of continuity: happenings give us pegs from which to hang the memories of our lives.

For example, how many times have you placed a rogue memory with this kind of dialogue?

‘Oh, that was just before John broke his leg – yes, and not long after Fran won the three-legged race at school – hahaha!’

Travel is a kind of happening. The chronology below shows the effect of continuity and happening on life/memory:

  • Location A: continuity
  • Event 1A
  • Event 2A
  • Event 3A
    • Travel to location B: a new continuity
    • Event 1B
    • Event 2B
    • Event 3B
  • Travel to location A: resumption of continuity
  • Event 4A
  • Event 5A
  • Event 6A
      • Travel to location C: another new continuity
      • Event 1C
      • Event 2C
      • Event 3C
  • Travel to location A: resumption of continuity
  • Event 7A
  • Event 8A
  • Event 9A

Events in locations B and C are distinct and separate from the memories made in the other locations. They seem to stand out more due to the unique nature of the location in which the memories were made. It is harder to place event 5A in the logical progression of the year than 2B or 3C, for example. Although the time spent on the activities may be the same, event 5A appears smaller in life, in the memory, than event 2B.

This has serious implications for our lives. Allowing too much continuity to build up makes our lives smaller!

Breaking up this continuity is the secret to remembering more of your life and thus having, not a longer life (who really wants that, wrinkles and all?) – but a bigger life.

Happening + Bigger Time = Travel

Happenings are not always good (poor old John). They are not always desirable.

Travel, however, is a form of happening that is usually (more of less) in our control. It is also (in the form of a holiday at least) designed to make us happy. That seems to make it a particularly good sort of happening.

Furthermore, because travel creates bigger time, the power of memory associated with it is multiplied. Travel is a happening that leaves an impression on your memory disproportionate in size compared to normal life.

Think about this: despite the fact that you spent 230 days in the office last year, the moments you remember best from that year were those 14 days on a beach in Bermuda. It broke the continuity and created big time.

It made yours a bigger life.

*The incredible distances achievable by flight seem to totally fox our poor little brains. It seems literally unbelievable that we could have been at work in Croydon yesterday, when today we are sipping a Piña Colada on Elbow Beech.

You can test this out. How much travel is needed to blow the mind. Walk down the street and look back at the hundred or so metres you’ve travelled and ask yourself if you can remember what it was like to be you back then. What about a longer walk? I think the brain starts to break up its continuity when the distances become unobservable. A trip of twenty miles or more definitely has the ability to make the brain marvel – when you think about it.

Population density: Escape the statistic

I’ve come to Cholsey, in South Oxfordshire. Very nice. Normally I live in New Cross, which is in the London borough of Lewisham. Different, but also very nice.

The population density of Lewisham is 7,441 people per square kilometre. It is the 12th most dense place to live in England. “People going down to the ground, buildings going up to the sky,” as Bob Dylan once put it. Indeed.

If one A4 piece of paper was one square kilometre, this is Lewisham – crowded. Click for bigger image.

I walk about a kilometre to get to New Cross Gate train station. The thought that I could have up to 14,882 eyes on me during that journey is positively terrifying. No wonder we walk with our heads bowed down.

By comparison, South Oxfordshire has a population density of 190 people per square kilometre. It is the 249th most densely populated area in England, out of 326.

The same idea for South Oxfordshire. You can see the blobs are smilies now!

In the towns and villages of South Oxfordshire, it doesn’t feel sparsely populated, but the surrounding countryside is accessible and near empty. A country walk might have you crossing paths with one or two other people and a few cows. But that’s it.

Lewisham, on the other hand, is surrounded by Southwark (9,635 people/sq.km), Tower Hamlets (11,154), Greenwich (4,708) and Bromley (2,015). Not too many opportunities for escape. Even the Thames in London is busy with pleasure cruises, police launches and boat-folk.

It is perhaps fitting that the least densely populated place in England is called Eden, in Cumbria. Here, you can expect to share your square kilometre with just 23 other people.

Look at all that lovely white paper – smilies never had it so good!

“I wandered lonely as a cloud,” Cumbria’s most famous poet William Wordsworth once wrote, “when all at once I saw a crowd…” The crowd Bill saw, though, was not New Cross Gate during rush-hour, but “a host of dancing daffodils.”

If Sartre was right and “Hell is other people”, then Eden is paradise indeed. Escape the statistics and get more of this:

Cycling Home: London to Cholsey

Yesterday I cycled 39.5 miles from London to The Countryside in 4 hours 12 minutes, instead of taking the train.

What does that mean?

In economic terms: I saved the cost of the train fare, about £14, in exchange for about 3 hours of my life. And muscles that refuse to work quite the same the next day.

I didn’t use anything but the fuel of a nasty pizza and some chocolate raisins.

Cycling is slow enough to enjoy the view, quiet enough to hear the birds, hard enough to be a work-out, efficient enough to cover distances and fast enough, at times, to be exhilarating.

Other Things

The visceral power of a journey by bicycle is inestimable. Here are some other things.

I saw a badger, a cock and his hen, a hedgehog and several rabbits – all road-killed.

I flew like a wizard on vertiginous downs, and felt my thighs popping out my skin on the corresponding ups. But most of the time I plodded along at a steady 10 miles per hour.

I felt the sun on my neck. I crossed the river three times and cycled into the sunset.

I was overtaken a thousand times by cars, some passed me close, some gave me room, all choked me with their fumes. None of them understood me, I couldn’t understand them.

I went to Egypt.

I felt fine. I felt the joy of cycling on a smooth country road without a car or a care, sailing along, one hand on the tiller and one hand throwing chocolate in my mouth. I sang and cycled.

I wanted it to be over and I wanted it never to end.

View Larger Map

Another London: Stamford Hill and the West Bank

Yesterday, I went on a day-trip to Stamford Hill ↑, home to London’s largest community of orthodox Jews. I was an unashamed tourist: dawdling around in the sunshine, gawping at the sights, noshing my way through bagels – and, of course, taking tedious photographs to share with you today.

↑ I have no idea what this means, but it sure as hell tells me that I’m a tourist, that I’m an outsider looking in. I like this feeling. I like to be a tourist, it makes me see things.

↑ I do know what this means: this is called irony*! I really wanted to take a photo of an orthodox man who was hanging around near this sign.

This appositely named street is slap-bang in the orthodox heartland. Opposite is a bagel shop, a kosher meat shop and a kosher supermarket.

Followers of irony will also be pleased to hear that the West Bank is separated from the East Bank by a “weak bridge”. The residents of the West Bank are also fighting a losing battle to preserve the West Bank nature reserve.

I kid you not. ↓ (Although these workers are undertaking important conservation work, I’m sure.)

Another highlight of my little holiday was bagel-based. And… ↓

Yes. ↑ Aubergine and chilli peppers. Very pink. Quite tasty with the application of bagel, reminded me of a similar Turkish pepper sos I ate during my No Supermarket days in January.

On the Street

Nothing screams Jewish orthodoxy like a pram. The women also have head scarves or hats (sometimes with charming flowers affixed) and black coats and these odd heavy shoes stitched in leather.

The men wear double-breasted dress coats and stylish wide-brimmed hats, with matching hair-cuts – and glasses. All the men wear glasses, even the kids. Comes from too much reading. I also wonder if it’s a fashion, in the same self-defeating way that kids in my neighbourhood wear their trousers halfway down their arses.

Nothing scares me quite like a large group of people in uniform.

Orthodox men hurry past with mobile phones pressed to their ears – in silence – carrying transparent plastic cases tucked under their arms, which hold (I guess) a book of the Talmud or the Torah and – a pillow?

Three kids walk past, shaved heads and hats and long coats and glasses all – they can’t be much more than twelve years old. They run across the road, chasing the flash of the green man, slightly awkward, like little boys tucked up in oppressive school uniforms.

A tired looking young woman rolls past with her pram.

Another London

I love the fact that I can travel eight miles in my city and find another place entirely. Stamford Hill isn’t all about orthodox Jews, it’s a diverse, fascinating area – like the rest of London.

I walked with swans, alongside the reservoir, admiring the community gardens. I choked on the dust of yet more ‘living space’ construction (19 minutes to Bank) – and was surprised that notices posted were inviting applications for jobs on the building site from local residents. And I took a stroll through the library, browsing the extensive Torah collection, with DVDs and CDs for children.

Hurrah for Stamford Hill.

* Yes it is. Or isn’t. Discuss. It is: orthodox Jews in the one place they shouldn’t be: the “West Bank”. Or it isn’t: orthodox Jews in the one place they should be: the “West Bank”, AKA Judea and Samaria. See: Israel to expand settlements after family killing – The Guardian

Cairo: Selected Parks of Zamelek

Further north from Opera are the grounds of the Zamalek club, open only to members, the sly and the persistent. But my favourite garden in these parts is the Aquarium Garden Grotto. The grotto is a fantastical place, whose aquarium has long since dried up, leaving its friendly bridge to curve over nothing more than a tiled hole in the ground.

The centrepiece of the garden (in Arabic, a hadeeqa) is an artificial hill, which soars (if one uses one’s imagination) above the grime of the city. Better still, is the grotto that has been carved out of the plastic hill. But the main attraction for the lovers who gather here is the shade provided by tall palms, on the grass beneath which they can hold hands, talk and pick at lunch.

Not so peaceful is the corner devoted to the young of Zamalek. A collection of recreational furniture clamours for their attention and their squeals and screams carry far beyond the high fences.

For the Khedival sum of two Egyptian pounds, you can gain entry to a more tranquil hadeeqa a little further along the Corniche el-Nil. Here the palms trees block out Cairo’s hot and high-rise buildings, while fountains thrum out a cooling rhythm amid carefully-tended beds, where marble cobras rear up with impotent anger at the flowers.

That extra guinea buys me something else, too. Benches: nice, wooden benches, scattered around the gardens, as you would hope. The Aquarium Garden Grotto is all very whimsical, but its benches are arranged in a circular sort of formation, so that the two sexes can eyeball each another. It’s a little confrontational for my liking.

Another bonus of this hadeeqa is its coffee shop. Before I get a chance to sit down properly, an urgent waiter in a bow tie is upon me. After we share the necessarily florid greetings, he reveals his purpose:
“You sit down; you drink. Coffee, tea, orange…”
“Ah – no, thank you,” I say, politely.
“Yes – you drink. Coffee, tea, orange…”
“Ah – yes, very kind – but no, thank you.”
“Yes, yes. This – ” he (rather improbably) indicates the bench – “coffee shop. You drink.”
As far as I could see, this was a bench. “But I’ve already paid to come in here!”
“Yes for – ” and he mimes the act of walking with his index and middle fingers.
“No – that’s ridiculous!”
“Yes – you must drink!”

Besides the fact that I’m not thirsty, I am footsore and I don’t want to give up my comfortable bench. I look around, somewhat desperately, for some help breaking this rather awkward impasse. But no one is watching us. Everyone else in the garden seems to be in a couple, arm-in-arm on the benches, gazing into each other’s eyes… Oh – there’s the answer!

“But the other people,” I say, triumphantly, “they don’t have drinks!”
And it’s true: arm-in-arm, none have the threatened tea, coffee, orange (which, in any case, strikes me as a slightly distasteful combination).
“Yes they have!” he says, with unlikely optimism.
“No! Look – no one has a drink.”
Suddenly, the waiter smiles and gives me a high-five, walking away, laughing.

If you know how to stand your ground, Egypt is a fun place. Now, having won that round, I think I will just have a little walk around, after all.

I walked there in January 2009. I wonder what it would feel like now.

Haute Cuisine in Sarajevo

A restaurant in Sarajevo. My friend is interrogating a waiter about his establishment’s unhelpful menu.

“…and what’s in this – the Sultan Bey soup?”
“That’s lambs brains fried in offal fat.”
“And this one?”
“Sheep liver with beef.”
“Er, what about this one?”
“Chicken with two types of ham.”
“And this… Tahamoa?”
“No meat.”

My friend pauses to take this information on board. Then he resumes his attack.

“What exactly is in the ‘fishy fillet’?”
“Fish.”
“Thanks. I’ll have that.”

The waiter leaves.

You know, for a city that makes such a big thing about how disgusting the food was during the siege, they don’t seem to have celebrated a return to haute cuisine.

I was in Sarajevo in summer 2007. I loved it.

Sarajevo gives thanks to the UN

“We needed two things: arms and food. So the UN gave us malaria tablets and condoms – well they had promised to ‘protect’ us! We felt very safe.

“The food they sent us was varied. Sometimes it was left-overs from the Vietnam war – cans of food twenty years out of date. Sometimes it was pork – in a city where half the population is Muslim. But most often it was this can of beef called icar. This was the most disgusting thing imaginable. When I ask my grandfather if he would ever eat icar again, he says:

If there is another siege, I would rather die than eat icar.

“One of the first things the UN did was to put an arms embago on both sides of the conflict. This was very fair: the Serbs had the former Yugoslav army, the fourth largest fighting force in Europe, fit for fifty years of war; and the Bosnian army did not yet exist – it was made up of ex-policemen and criminals, the few people who had weapons.

“So we had to smuggle weapons into the city, against the wishes of the UN. In this, we got a lot of help from Colombian drug cartels. They did more to help save Sarajevo than the UN. There is always talk that we should build a monument to acknowledge their aid.

“There is a monument to the UN. It is a sculpture and the plaque on the sculpture reads:

In grateful acknowledgement of the humanitarian aid provided by the United Nations. We will never forget.

And the sculpture? It is in the shape of a can of icar.”

Yummy icar!

I travelled to Sarajevo in the summer of 2007. I heard these stories from the people there.

The Country Game: Official Rules

The Country Game is a highly contentious parlour game played by travellers all over the world. These are my rules, developed in association (and in great disagreement) with the Cholsey Country Club.

What is a “Country”?

NB: “Country” has no specific legal definition. Therefore we can call it what we want, to satisfy the needs of the game, which should reward travel, not politics. So:

A country is an entity which AT THE TIME OF VISITING satisfies any of these conditions:

  1. It is a member state of the UN.
  2. It is an observer member of the UN AND is EITHER a non-member state OR claims statehood.
  3. It is on the UN list of Non-Self-Governing Territories.
  4. It is recognised as a state by at least 10% of the full membership of the UN.
  5. It is an overseas possession of a country satisfying 1, 2, 3 or 4 above AND is outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (which extends 230 miles overseas) of that country.

At the time of writing, this means that there are:

  1. 192 members of the UN.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_member_states
  2. 4 observer members of the UN: Palestine, The Holy See (Vatican City), The Cook Islands and Niue.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assembly_observers
  3. 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_list_of_Non-Self-Governing_Territories
  4. 2 further states recognised by at least 10% of the UN membership: Kosovo (38%) and Taiwan (12%).
  5. Many other places, including Puerto Rico (US), The Canary Islands (Spain), Réunion Island (France) and Greenland (Denmark).
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_Economic_Zone

Notes:

  • This definition is deliberately broad because the world is a very big place. I want to break it up as small as possible. We’re all different, aren’t we?
  • For ease of implementation, I’m taking the EEZ of every country to be the maximum 230 miles, rather than going by the official extent, which is frequently less.
  • I’m also applying this 230 miles overland. Basically: if it’s within 230 miles of the possessing state, it doesn’t count as a separate country. I think that’s fair. If it’s that far away you must be travelling specifically to visit that place. You deserve a point.
  • It is important to note that the definition is made AT THE TIME OF VISITING. This means that if you visited Yugoslavia in 1972, you visited Yugoslavia. You did not visit Croatia.
  • That might seem silly, but it would be even sillier for your list to be changing every time there’s a war. It also means that you can have visited countries that no one else will ever be able to again – caché!

How to Score

Okay, so that’s just the definition of what counts as a country. Now we can start counting them.

A player scores one point (and one point only) for each country (according to the definitions above) they have visited in their lifetime IF:

  • They spent at least 24 hours in that country (see note below). 
  • They did something ‘of cultural interest’ during their stay.

And that’s it – simple!

Notes:

  • There is one exception to the 24-hour rule: The Holy See (Vatican City). This is the ONLY exception because it’s impossible to spend a night here. Score a point for any visit.
  • It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve visited a country, you will only EVER score one point for it.
  • ‘Cultural interest’ is defined with common sense. It is there to prevent sneaky travellers from counting a transit stay in an airport hotel. If you haven’t left the airport / train station / bus, it’s not interesting.
  • This is a stupid game. There are a lot of things wrong with it. I don’t care.

Walking Home for Christmas: Maps & Pictures

In 2010, I walked home for Christmas: trudging every single one of the gloriously snowy 38 miles from London to Cholsey. You can read more on why I walked home for Christmas and also read the minute-by-minute Twitter updates I wrote about the journey. But here are the pictures and, due to my upsetting Google a few years ago, only the first map.

Heathrow Terminal 5 to White Waltham

15 miles on B roads (AKA ‘The Boring Bit’).

White Waltham to Henley-on-Thames

About 9 miles cross-country.

Henley-on-Thames to Cholsey

16 miles cross-country. In the dark.

Yep: the day after my walk, I drove back to London to pick up my sister… Same journey, in reverse, 2 hours. 😉

Walking Home for Christmas: The Updates

In 2010, I walked home for Christmas: trudging every single one of the gloriously snowy 38 miles from London to Cholsey. You can read more on why I walked home for Christmas and see some of the pictures I took of the journey. And for those of you who didn’t follow my progress on Twitter (shame on you!), here are all my updates, recorded for posterity. Yes that first one does say 5:39…

From New Cross to the M4

Here we go! Leaving New Cross- I’ll be taking spreadbets on how far I’ll get- 0-38 miles. Any takers?
5:39 Dec 23rd via txt

Phase 1 complete. At Heathrow terminal 5- the walking starts here. First task: get out of the terminal…
7:18 Dec 23rd via txt

First sighting of pseudo-countryside, two horses in a paddock and a few trees near Horton…
8:18 Dec 23rd via txt

Arrived in Datchet- and arrived onto my map! Cholsey only an arm-length away! Time for some pizza.
8:53 Dec 23rd via txt

Got my first walkers’ “Morning!” – London is definitely over.
9:07 Dec 23rd via txt

Crossing the Thames at Royal Windsor- good day ma’am!
9:36 Dec 23rd via txt

Oakley Green! That was a pretty boring walk through Windsor- but here come the footpaths- yeah!
10:37 Dec 23rd via txt

I’m on the M4! Well, I’m over the M4- nice spot for lunch…
12:08 Dec 23rd via txt

From the M4, through Henley-on-Thames and on into the Darkness

Walking down a snow-bound lane towards Knowle Hill, delivery vans out in force today-Christmas presents I guess…
12:52 Dec 23rd via txt

Crazies Hill! Named after me (probably) – on the descent now though, through a snow-capped wood with crows overhead…
14:02 Dec 23rd via txt

And halfway too- 19 miles to go!
14:11 Dec 23rd via txt

Nothing hurts more than back-tracking…lucky it was only a couple of hundred yards…but here’s Henley!
14:44 Dec 23rd via txt

Right- back on the path after a nice cup of tea and a cake in Henley. Note to forecasters: you have 30 minutes to provide the sunny interval you promised me …
15:33 Dec 23rd via txt

Got lost, got found. Just me and snow and wooded hillsides. And birds. I saw a fox earlier too- and got chased by a dog…
16:05 Dec 23rd via txt

Through the Darkness

No idea where I am, but Nettlebed 3 miles can’t be all wrong…
16:44 Dec 23rd via txt

Following the tracks of some kind of heffalump in a field in the middle of somewhere. Couldn’t be better.
17:03 Dec 23rd via txt

Witheridge Hill! Not withering yet – I almost know where I am…
17:34 Dec 23rd via txt

Having a bite to eat at the Maharajah’s Well. Pizza’s still delish, body’s still holding together…
17:57 Dec 23rd via txt

Couple of cars skidded off the road near Wellplace Zoo- drama! They’re fine. I’m fine- got snow chains for these shoes…
18:37 Dec 23rd via txt

Just nailed a totally pointless hill in ankle deep snow. Not easy after nearly 12 hours walking… Now walking down the hill…
19:03 Dec 23rd via txt

12 hours walking and I’m still not home. I only popped out for a pint of milk…
19:29 Dec 23rd via txt

The Thames Path to Cholsey

Calling Cholsey, calling Cholsey- prepare to recieve- ETA 1 hour, repeat 1 hour…
20:05 Dec 23rd via txt

I’m so close I can almost reach out and touch it- no, wait, I can touch it- I’M HOME! THE SEASONAL HAS LANDED!!
20:55 Dec 23rd via txt

Walking Home for Christmas: Heathrow to Cholsey

Yesterday morning, at about half seven, I walked out of Heathrow Terminal 5 heading for Cholsey, a proud village in Oxfordshire and my ancestral home. It was rather snowy, as some of you may have noticed. The longest walk I’d ever done before yesterday was about 16 miles. Now I was going for 38 miles – and the mathematicians among you will realise: that’s more than double.

At 8:59 p.m. I arrived in Cholsey.

You can read the minute-by-minute Twitter updates during the journey and admire some pretty pictures of me eating pizza, but first I’d just like to tell you why I did it.

I’m interested in travel. I’ve done a lot of aeroplane travel in my life, quite a bit either into or out of Heathrow. I’ve travelled many times from Cholsey to Heathrow and back. I’ve travelled even more times from Cholsey to London and back. I’ve done the journey by car, by train and by bus. But never by foot.

Travel by car, by train or by bus is forgettable, almost unconscious. A train journey we pass by reading a book or by staring vacantly out of the window. I’ve been gripped by a need to understand what it means to travel. Now I understand what that journey, Heathrow to Cholsey, means.

It means 13.5 hours of walking, trudging, shuffling, limping, tramping, traipsing, marching. It means never stopping, it means not letting the mind break down when the body does. It means country lanes, paths, bridleways, A-roads and B-roads. It means left-turns, right-turns and wrong-turns. It means foxes, crows, rabbits and cranes. It means walking at dawn, at day, at dusk, at sunset and at night. It means hills, valleys, woods, fields, rivers, streams, towns, villages and hamlets. It means West.

This journey is about understanding. I hope that my journey will help other people make their own journey and find their own understanding, just as Alastair Humphreys’ journey last year inspired mine. Next year, why not walk home for Christmas?

How to travel anywhere without disappointment

The heart of all disappointment is expectation. The same is true of travel. It is particularly acute with travel, however, because we are all the time harried into building expectations of a destination. Guide-books and travel articles in newspapers urge us to make itineraries of places to go, places to see, things to do, things to eat, all of which add up to make ‘the experience.’ Very often we already know what these things look like from photographs or videos; very rarely will we be surprised and delighted by some reality of the object that was hidden in the description in the guide-book or the photograph in the magazine. I remember being a bit underwhelmed by the Pyramids of Giza when I first visited them. I remember thinking that they were like the photographs, but less beautiful, more uncomfortable and a lot of effort under the blazing sun.

But we cannot avoid expectations. That would be ridiculous. No one would bother travelling at all if it weren’t for the expectation of something. So how to travel with expectation, but without disappointment? I suppose one way would be to have low expectations, but it is very hard for us humans to manage our expectations, especially excitable optimists like myself. So what can I do?

1) Avoid itineraries.
Remember that whatever is on an itinerary will usually be the default tourist option and thus the most boring thing you can do at that particular destination. You will share the space with hundred or thousands of other tourists and, unless your particular interest is the ethnography of tourists, then that is pretty boring. Don’t just tick off a selection of sights that represent, say, ‘London’ to a collection of guidebooks. What is ‘London’? I’d say that it is an amorphous, phatasmorgorical amalgamation of random events. It certainly isn’t an itinerary.

2) Travel more realistically.
What do I mean by ‘realistically’? I mean that travel in the olden days used to be for a clearly defined purpose. People would travel to market or on a pilgrimage or in a gold rush. Nowadays people seem to travel just to see ‘London’, which as we have seen, doesn’t exist. A more realistic example of travel would be, not to try to see a ‘London’, but to go to see a real and concrete object. For example, the paintings of Rothko in the Tate Modern or The Phantom of the Opera at the theatre or the Rosetta stone in the British Museum. These purpose-driven excursions may well disappoint, but the disappointment will be real and directed at the object, rather than the destination of the imagination. Also don’t try to travel in time. You cannot go to London to try to see Dickens’ London or London in the time of Boudicea. It doesn’t exist. Which leads me on to:

3) Treat the destination with respect, as a living, breathing place.
Do not treat it as a museum or a gallery, but as a town or a country; a place of the world that will continue to be a place of the world until such a time as the world disintegrates. It has a past and a future. Do not expect the past and the future to be as you see it today. Do not expect to see Oliver Cromwell at the Tower or Oliver Twist running down the back streets round London Bridge. The people you do meet have nothing in common with the past and are all working towards their own future, different again. As a frequent traveller to Egypt, I have seen this mistake happen again and again with travellers (and with myself over the years). The past is not a country.

4) Travel to learn.
Don’t travel to see ‘London’ and don’t expect anything of ‘London’. That would be to travel with a closed mind. Travel instead with an open mind, with a mind willing to learn. Travel instead for what London can teach you. Be less selfish with your travel: you sure as hell won’t leave any impact on London, but what impact will London leave on you? Listen, look and let it work.

Bicycle Film Festival: Program 9, 10 & 11

After twelve hours of watching films about bicycles, what is the feeling I’m left with?

Well, apart from a blinking aversion to light and cramp in my legs, I feel like I’m beginning to understand the truth about bicycles and that truth can be summed up in one word:

FREEDOM.

A Swarovski Crystal Low-Rider. Yeah, that’s freedom.

Sorry it’s not more profound than that, but do let me expound a little.

Freedom isn’t just feeling the wind in your hair, although there was plenty of that on show today and throughout the festival. Freedom is the power to be self-reliant, to unbend the yoke that ties us to cars and lorries. There was a short film about the Pedal Co-Op in Philadelphia in the US. They use long trailers attached to their bikes to make green deliveries around the city. For every forty trips they make with these trailers, that’s one truck off the road. It gave me the feeling that anything is possible with pedal power. Why shouldn’t we trade trucks for trailers for use in the local economy?

There was a great little piece about freedom from stereotyping and night buses (I may be reading too much into this one) called Heels on Wheels, in which a bunch of girls go out for the night on bicycles. Why not? I don’t approve of them drinking heavily before setting off, but otherwise, this is a great advert for people using bikes under any circumstance. You don’t have to turn up sweaty, take your time, cycle slow and safe. And so our girls get to the club with all make-up perfectly applied and not a hair out of place. But then the film goes and ruins it all by having one of the bikes stolen. What is it about stealing bikes on today’s program? The only message that comes out of this is: don’t bother, mate, it’ll only get stolen anyway. A bit annoying.

But I love the freedom of Project N. A bunch of kids break into an abandoned gymnasium, set up a bunch of obstacles, drink some beer, roll some spliffs and have some damn good fun. It looks pretty cool to me; but then the police come and shut it down. A bit annoying as well. You can get a taste of it here: http://vimeo.com/10033943.

There was more emphasis on fictional stories in today’s program. The highlight of which was Bicycle Thieves, a classic Italian film from 1948. It’s a film about freedom and poverty. I won’t spoil the plot for you, but the protagonist needs his bike to do his work and when it gets stolen he is driven to further and further extremes of desperation. Sample quote:

There’s a cure for everything – except death!

Don’t worry, be happy (or miserable, like the end of this film).

Jitensha was a Japanese story which reminded me of a Murakami plotline. A loner quits his job because he got punched in the face by a colleague. He cycles around a bit, looking miserable. Then he gets his bike seat nicked. Over the course of the next few days more parts get stolen until our hero just sticks a piece of paper onto the remains of the bike saying, ‘Dear Thief, please take the whole thing.’ The next day, he is surprised to find a reply fixed to the bike, which says, ‘Thank you for your kind offer, but I am not a thief. Sincerely, God.’ When there is nothing left but the bicycle bell, God leaves a package with details of where all the parts are hidden with the message: ‘This is the world in which you live.’ And so our hero rediscovers his sense of purpose and on the way connects with all sorts of people, from a young family to a gang of youths and a street hawker. Eventually he finds the last part, the saddle, with the help of an old man who is using a metal detector on the beach. When the detector goes off, our hero runs over and starts madly digging and then uncovers it, shouting:

‘I found it, I found it!’
‘What did you find?’ the old man asks, meaningfully.
‘My bicycle seat.’
The old man looks at the saddle and says, ‘Sometimes you have to rely on others to find what you are looking for.’

I don’t know why this is profound, but I’m sure it is.

The evening program had some pretty cool features in it, but if I have to watch one more old man welding, I think I’m going to go insane. Seven – I’ve just counted them – that is the number of films which featured old men welding.

Note to film-makers: there is nothing dramatic about welding unless it is with laser beams and they are travelling very slowly between James Bond’s legs towards his groin. 

I’m sure it looks great on film and I appreciate that there isn’t very much dramatic at all about building bikes, but please: no more welding! I kept myself mildly entertained by noting the difference in safety precautions between the US (visor, goggles and gloves), The Netherlands (welding box, like it was radioactive or something) and Japan (bare hands and dark glasses). Having said that, the film about Dario Pegoretti was pretty good actually, once I had finished cursing about the welding. It was pretty good because it was about a real human being who spent most of his time swearing and talking about girls. I learnt that luomar meant a heap of shit in Italian, for example. In fairness, the last of the welding stories was also bearable, but only because of these quotes:

The bicycle is two wheels, a chain and a brake; the bicycle is not the machine. Man is the machine.

and, in allusion to bicycles:

Sometimes ugly girls are beautiful – and all the beautiful ones are beautiful, right?

Can you tell he was Italian too?

But the high point of the day, really, was the sheer exuberant joy of On Time, a blaxploitation flick from 1985, the first big hit for director Ari Taub. Our hero is a bike messenger who has to deliver a package to an address in New York for a 2pm sharp deadline. It’s pretty dramatic, and he ends up with his bike in bits and getting chased by some brothers who think he’s a thief. But when he finally delivers the package, right on time, it explodes. But the real hero of the film was the theme tune, which played pretty much throughout the whole thing:

The wheel’s are turning
And your body’s burning
Meet the deadline everyday
Nothing’s gonna get in our way!

You can check out a preview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sWZBb0xwpc – but it ends, tantalisingly, just before the song kicks in.

You know what, I’m going to miss these films, but at least I didn’t miss them. I can only say: you’d better go next year.

Bicycle Film Festival: Program 4,5 & 7

Phew, tough day in the life of a bike film reviewer. Not as tough as for Abdul Aziz, an Afghani asylum seeker who found out today that he is going to be deported on the 10.00am flight from London on Tuesday. Thanks to the new government, there’s a bit of a clear-out of left-over Afghanis going on at the moment. We don’t want them anymore, apparently, so we’re freighting them out at the rate of one flight every week, Tuesdays at 10.00am.

‘What’s that got to do with bikes?’ You may very well ask. Well, Abdul Aziz has been one of the beneficiaries of a wicked little scheme in Bristol called The Bristol Bike Project (all the creative genius has gone into the project, not the name), which takes bikes no one wants anymore and pairs them with people no one wants anymore. After a spot of repair, these bikes are given to the asylum seekers, who struggle to survive on the £35 of Tesco vouchers they’re given every week. I mean, can you imagine doing ALL your shopping at Tesco? Complete nightmare. I can give you an example from my own life only today: shopping around for some patisseries, I discovered that Tesco Express do Pain au Raisin for 84p whereas Sainsbury’s do 2 for £1! That’s the sort of value you need when you’re on £35 a week, trust me.

I should also mention that these vulnerable men, women and kids (remember, they left their countries because they were going to be killed, dude) are not allowed to work by the government here. What? And we call them scroungers? Why not let them do something useful and earn a bit of money then? Because doing something useful is a primary human need; without feeling useful a little part of us dies and we do stupid stuff. So a lot of these asylum seekers get involved with voluntary groups, just to feel useful, you know? But there’s a problem, of course: Tesco don’t do buses (yet). How the fuck are these people supposed to get around? How the fuck are they supposed to get to English classes or to their asylum interviews or to their voluntary work – or just to fucking Tesco’s for that matter?

Answer: bikes.

More than the practicality of riding a bike, though, is the spiritual element of unshackling the feet from walking for the asylum seekers:

I feel free on my bike. Just me and the road and my bike.

I feel like an eagle, like a bird…I feel freedom and peace…and no problem for me like I had before.

So hats off to the Bristol Bike Project.

That was actually the last film of Program 4; don’t worry, I won’t go on like this for all of them. There was Ben Hurt, bike chariot combat in Portland, Oregon; there was a 25 metre chain reaction like those car adverts, but this time with bike parts in Japan; there was papergirl delivering art to unsuspecting strangers in Berlin; there was a day in the life of a paperboy in Italy; there was a bike kitchen doing repairs using the alternative economy in Vienna; there was some nutty German woman doing handstands on her bike in Beijing and there was a 62 year old biologist who recently started to commute to work in Budapest (he takes secateurs with him to tend the cycle paths – ahhh, what a nice old man).

So that was all pretty heart warming (apart from the bit about Abdul Aziz getting deported, Tuesday, 10.00am, but I won’t go on about it). Program 5, in contrast, was pretty vacuous. It was all either arty or enthusiasty. I overheard some friends leaving the show, one saying to another, ‘…and Katie forced us to watch some bike geek-fest…’ and Katie replied, hurt, ‘ – it wasn’t geeky!’ Oh yes it was, Katie, oh yes it was.

But we were back on form for the evening show, imaginatively titled Program 7. It was a sell-out for starters and we all got into the swing of things with a little call and response:

RIGHT SIDE OF THE ROOM: Bikes!
LEFT SIDE OF THE ROOM: Rock!
RIGHT: Bikes!
LEFT: Rock!
RIGHT: Bikes!
LEFT: Rock!
RIGHT: Bikes!
LEFT: Rock!
ALL TOGETHER: Biriokekess…

Unfortunately, the ‘show-piece’ of the evening was a film about the wankers I mentioned yesterday – you remember the guys who cycle like idiots around New York? Well, it turns out they’re assholes as well as wankers. I don’t understand, I really don’t. They race around cities: fine. They don’t care if they kill themselves: fine. The problem I have is that if / when they kill themselves, they’ll almost certainly be using someone else to do it. Just smacking the road isn’t likely to be their demise, no. It’ll be some poor sod they’ve dashed in front of and he’ll have their blood all over his windscreen. Nothing he could have done about it, but there it is.

It seems particularly perverse to have this film showing at the BFF considering that it was started after the founder got hit by a bus! If that seems perverse, then my mind does half-pipes when I see that this film was sponsored by the BFF itself. I don’t get it. Perhaps, if the BFF is all about publicising cycling and raising awareness of cycling to motorists, then getting smashed up is about the best form of deterrent there is. For sure it gets headlines, for sure it scares the crap out of motorists and for sure they’ll look twice next time (if they’re not in therapy, that is). That’s the only logic I can see. If that isn’t the logic, then it really is just self-indulgent bullshit, suicidal wankdom. A quote from the guy who films these ‘Alleycats’:

People think we’re crazy or reckless or lucky – 

No, mate, we think you’re wankers. Arrogant wankers. I sort of feel like I should be checking this guy’s Wikipedia page on a regular basis, just so that when he dies I can write on the bottom: ‘Dude had it coming.’

But I’m not going to finish on that sour note of hostile bitterness, no. That would be unfair to the great films that preceded the self-indulgent crap. The most important moment of the evening came fairly early on, during a film of some American dudes cycling from Tokyo to Osaka. They were helped along the way by a Japanese cyclist, who was mad on bikes. They asked him why and he told them this (I paraphrase):

This bike was my father’s. He raced on it in a qualifier for the Tokyo Olympics. He passed away three years ago, but before he died we raced together, him and I. He was old but still he beat me! So now every time I ride my bike I feel like I am chasing him. I am still chasing my father.

Maybe we should all jump on our bikes and chase after that plane that’s taking Abdul Aziz away, Tuesday at 10.00am.

Bicycle Film Festival: Program 1 & 2

I have the pleasure of covering the Bicycle Film Festival at The Barbican for the London Student. Yes, I am still a student (technically). This means I get to watch films I would never have even considered paying money for. In fact, I thought I’d spend most of the evening looking around at a half-empty auditorium wondering what kind of person paid to watch pedals turning on a big screen. I suspected that I would be sitting with various members of the lower strata of the London press and that the sounds of our biros clicking in and out would be the most interesting thing happening in the room.

How I was wrong. 
Not only were the two showings pretty full, but the crowds were positively raucous and the films were – good! I wasn’t expecting that, I have to say. Now, this isn’t the place for a film review because, frankly, you’ve missed it, it just happened, but I will give a quick run-through to encourage you to go tomorrow or Sunday – or next year, maybe. (Yeah, ok, I know you won’t, but dammit, play along with the conceit will you?)
So first of all there were a series of three shorts. The first was a bunch of idiots cycling like suicidal idiots around New York City. They even boasted about how safe they felt while ‘riding the wave’, i.e. jumping red lights. Wankers. Can’t wait for one of them to get strawberried – actually I can because that would mean some poor sod is responsible for scraping them up off the road (and, being a city-cyclist myself, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but still – wankers). The second one was a fascinating story about ‘the world’s most prolific bicycle thief’, a Slovenian immigrant to the States called Kenk. Three thousand bikes he had when the police busted him. He said he stole them to demonstrate the wastage of the consumer society. Fair enough. The third one was about Rollapaluza in London, where people get up on stage and Fight Club-style bike it out against each other in 500m sprints. 
Then the main event had the crowd hooting and cheering even before it began. It was the story of Mat Hoffman, who is, apparently, a bit of a legend in the world of Big Air. Yeah – no idea either. But it was a great story and boy did that guy get hurt for something he believed in (doing big stunts on a BMX for those of you wondering). Couple of inspirational quotes though: 

Nothing is impossible; you’ve just got to keep coming back to it.

And: 

If I die with a body that isn’t completely wrecked I’ll feel like I’ve wasted it.

No danger of that, mate.
The second programme started in rollicking fashion with The Tweed Run, which takes place in London every year. A few hundred people cycle around Buckingham Palace and Saville Row in their finest tweed (and other gentlemanly attire). They stop off for tea and sandwiches in Hyde Park and finish off with a stiff gin and tonic. Spiffing. Then there was some boring Los Angeles short which was a bit pointless, but very artistic I’m sure. That’s ten minutes I could have spent getting a sandwich myself. Then there was a short about taxi-bikes in Cuba (the serious documentary of the day – there’s always one). It was genuinely interesting, though, and beautifully done too. It peered into the bicycle-heart of the social, economic and political life of Cuba. It’s major cinematographic contribution was a shot of these taxi-bikes going around and around in circles. I couldn’t spot the metaphor. It couldn’t have contrasted more with the bombastic piece of pointless fun that followed: a bunch of boys arsing about around Sacramento.
The main feature of the second program was about a bunch of pro skaters (as in skate-boarding – yeah, they do exist) who decided to cycle the length of New Zealand’s North Island to find some good skating along the way. They soon realise it’s not that easy. I felt for them, I really did, as they discovered the same things all first-time bike tourers do (including me – especially me): 
  1. Most of your time will be spent going uphill (without bending the laws of physics – work it out.)
  2. There’s a limit to how wet you can get.
  3. If you just keep going, wheel by wheel, you’ll get there in the end.
All in all, a great night’s entertainment. Just a shame you weren’t there and I was. Never mind. Oh, and I had one of the Barbican’s huge chocolate brownies as well – but I had to pay for that.

What is travelling?

It’s a verb of motion, that’s what it is *. But why choose that verb over a hundred others? When are we travelling rather than simply going?

Here’s my answer.

Travelling, like writing, is about asking questions.

I’m going to Egypt, puts the emphasis on the destination, as if the goer and the transport mean nothing, contribute nothing to the meaning of the sentence. Going is almost passive; we all know that it’s the aeroplane that will be travelling and the goer is simply being transported. I’m going to Egpyt doesn’t beg any questions. You would never suspect that the goer is doing anything other than transporting himself to Egypt by conventional means for a holiday. I’d never ask the goer How are you going to Egypt? I just wouldn’t expect an interesting answer. By using the word going the goer is already pushing his journey into the mundane.

I’m travelling to Egypt, on the other hand, asks more questions than it answers. It puts the emphasis on the traveller and on the journey. Travelling seems to be more active, more conscious and more deliberate than going. I might very well ask the traveller, How? and I would expect an interesting answer.

Most importantly, though, travelling also begs questions of the traveller. It is hard to say, in all seriousness, I’m travelling to Camden, without thinking of what that means to you as the traveller and what implications the decision to travel has on your journey. You would ask yourself, How? and already the act is more active, more conscious and more deliberate.

I did this, in fact. Last Friday, I wanted to go to Camden to visit my friend Ben. Fine. I live in South London and I could have quite easily gone to Camden by public transport. But the idea of going bored me so I made the decision to travel. So my question to myself then was How? and suddenly I was part of the journey, not just passive cargo for a train or a bus. Cycling was out of the question because it was pissing it down with rain. Then it struck me that I didn’t know what it meant to travel 7.5 miles across London in the pouring rain.

We are in the situation today that we can transport ourselves vast distances without thinking about it. We can go 7.5 miles. A few hundred years ago going 7.5 miles would have been unthinkable. Travelling was the only option. So I wanted to reconnect with that time, I wanted to understand what 7.5 miles in the rain meant.

So I ran 4.2 miles (in the rain) and then walked the rest (in the rain). It was as simple as that. Now I understand (only a little bit: I caught the train home). If I had gone by public transport then I wouldn’t have been travelling. I would have forgotten what I was doing and I would simply have been going. I would, instead of travelling, have been reading or people-watching or something else, filling time, enduring the transport. But by deliberately changing my mode of transport and by asking myself questions, suddenly I was not going, but travelling.

And that’s the nub of the matter: travel always involves a question or a series of questions. If you don’t ask the questions then you are just going. That doesn’t mean that travelling must only be done at leisure; a commuter can easily travel just by asking questions, by becoming conscious of his activity. Instead of taking the same train at the same time he could walk or run or take an earlier train or a later train or a bus. But it’s not even just about the mode of transport. The commuter could transform his journey by talking to his neighbour on the train or by taking photographs of the journey or by writing a story about the journey – anything to become a conscious part of the locomotion. The traveller is constantly aware of his travel, for him the journey is as relevant as the destination.

This, I believe, is why travel writing is always interesting, because it seeks to ask and perhaps answer questions about the world or about the traveller. There is conflict in those travel stories: will the journey be a success? Will the questions be answered? All stories are questions. All journeys are questions.

And once you stop asking questions, once you stop thinking, you stop travelling and you are simply going or commuting or – worst of all – enduring.

So I always try to ask myself:
How can I travel today? How can I turn my transport into a journey?

* All right, all right – it’s a verbal noun, but who’s splitting hairs?

Hitchhiking: London to Oxfordshire (and Back)

26 September 2010
Distance: 55 miles (one way)

Lesson: The Right Reasons

I got a train out to Gunnersbury to hitch from the side of the road onto the M4. It didn’t work. I stood near a bus-stop with my sign, people looked at me and accelerated up the slip-road. So I took a bus from that bus-stop to Hounslow West and walked to Heston Services. Unfortunately the M4 was half closed and going at a crawl past a traffic accident (I believe). But still, I got a lift no problems, from a travelling solar panel salesman. It took us an hour to get past the accident site, by which time there was nothing left and all lanes were open. But it was a great conversation, he told me all about his dad who was the first military pilot for Abu Dhabi and his brother who was a commercial diver up in Aberdeen. He dropped me in Reading and I walked across town to the railway station. I could have hitched from there to my destination, but time was short and the bus was only £2.90. So I caught a bus.

The next day, I caught a cold. No one would want to pick me up like that and I didn’t fancy standing on the road side in the sharp Autumn. So I caught a train from Reading back to London. It cost me £13, about what it would have cost if I’d bought a return ticket from London to Goring the previous day. My hitch had saved me nothing. So was it a waste of time? No chance. I’d know a lot less about solar panel sales, underwater oil rig repairs and the Abu Dhabi air force if I’d just caught the train.

Don’t hitch for financial reasons, hitch for the right reasons.

Hitchhiking: London to Winchester and Back

19 – 20 September 2010
Distance: 190 miles (including detours)
My first solo hitch in the UK.

Lesson: The Right Question

I picked up my first ride from the side of the road. A man drove past me, stuck in traffic, went to the end of the road, turned around at the roundabout and came back, pulled up and waved at me from the other side of the road. I assumed he must always pick up hitchers, but, no, he’d never done it before. I would have just driven past. My second lift was from Fleet Services. I asked my usual demographic, an older, single male: able to look after himself, unlikely to want to rape me and likely to drive safely. He accepted me, but then revealed he had a wife and a five year-old daughter in the car as well. It was a joy. I just played around in the back with the daughter, watching a DVD with her, admiring her spelling homework, laughing. They dropped me in Winchester. It couldn’t have been a simpler journey. It took me an hour and a half from London to Winchester, 70 miles. There was no need to ask any questions: I stuck my thumb out, I asked people nicely and they all said yes.

But then there was the journey home. I was dropped off at Chieveley Services by my friend. No problem, it was just off the M4, perfect for heading East to London. Or not. I asked and asked and asked for two hours or more. No one was heading East from Chieveley Services. I was bashing my head against a brick wall. I was asking the wrong question. No one stops at Chieveley and then goes East, it is actually just off the A34, which goes North-South and is on the South-side of the M4, convenient for people heading West, not East. After three hours, I changed my approach. I would head West, go with the flow and then try to hitch back from the next Service Station along. The first man I asked took me. The service station was full of people only too glad to help me, but I was asking them the wrong question. I asked the right question and was back in London within three hours.

Ask the right question. Always think of the people you are asking, where are they going?

Hitchhiking: London to Scotland and Back

25 – 29 August 2010
Distance: 1125 miles (approximately)
My first hitching journey in the UK.

Lesson: Optimism

This was a spectacular introduction to what is possible with hitchhiking. It took us a day to get up from London to Edinburgh, only an hour longer than the National Express bus and a whole lot cheaper. We had no idea where we were going to end up when we started – we even discussed what we would do if we failed to get out of London (try again tomorrow) – but the elation of that first lift, and then the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, pushing ever further North, was indescribable. Meeting the friendly and helpful people of this island was joyous and an education in itself. Walking from the Tube station back to my house, I felt the barriers to limitless travel falling away. Impossible situations ‘worked out’. Stuck in the outskirts of Edinburgh for a couple of hours, tired, failing, something turns up and three hours later we were in Lancaster. Optimism.

17th of April: The Windmill, Brixton

I shall be giving a 5 minute lecture on:

‘A Fantastical History of Thee Bicycle’

At the Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences album launch, ‘Apologies to the Enlightenment’. Look ee here for more interestingness on that fine band: http://www.silenceisawkward.com/

This shall take place at The Windmill, Brixton, London on Saturday, April 17th from 6pm. See here for knowledge about the venue: http://www.windmillbrixton.co.uk/

The show, besides me and Thee Awkward Silences, also features more lecturers (A Radical History of Britain among others), more bands (David Cronenberg’s Wife, Tim Ten Yen, Extradition Order, Steven Evens, Superman Revenge Squad), DJs and a barbecue.

Unmissable.

Bike to Bordeaux Route

In Spring 2009, I cycled 547 miles from Cholsey in Oxfordshire to my friend’s house in Bordeaux, France. I was raising money for an asylum charity in Oxford, Asylum Welcome.

View Bike to Bordeaux in a larger map

19th April: Cholsey-Portsmouth (92 miles)
19th-20th April: Portsmouth-St Malo (by ferry, not pedallo – kind of cheating I know…)
20th April: Getting Lost in St Malo (6 miles)
21st April: St Malo-Dinan (20 miles)
22nd April: Dinan-Trudeau (45 miles)
23rd April: Convalescence in Trudeau (0 miles)
24rd April: Trudeau-Painfaut (43 miles)
25th April: Painfaut-St Brevin Les Pins (53 miles)
26th April: St Brevin Les Pins-St Jean des Monts (53 miles)
27th April: St Jean des Monts-Les Sables d’Olonne (35 miles)
28th April: Les Sables d’Olonne-La Rochelle (62 miles)
29th April: La Rochelle-Saintes (52 miles)
30th April: Saintes-Bordeaux (86 miles)

Living expenses: Egypt 2009

!!! Disclaimer: Some of these prices are subject to negotiation with your vendor. They are guidelines only. However, I do not claim to be that great at haggling so these are neither as cheap as you can get, nor as expensive as you can pay. I try to buy from markets aimed at the local inhabitants but still expect to pay a premium for my tourist status.

Travel

Taxi

Zamalek to Maadi, Cairo 25LE
Cairo Airport to Zamalek 75LE (should be marginally cheaper, therefore, to down-town)

Train

Cairo Metro ticket 1LE
Cairo-Aswan 109LE
Edfu-Cairo 98LE
Aswan-Edfu 17LE
Elbalyana-Cairo 85LE

Accommodation

Hostel in Downtown Cairo, 2 persons, no bath 120LE, with bath 140LE
Hotel in Zamelek Cairo, 1 person, with bath 190LE
Hotel Aswan, 2 persons 80LE
Hotel Edfu, 2 persons 150LE

Communications

Internet 5-10LE per hour
Mobile Phone SIM card 90LE

Food & Drink

Market Fruit and Vegetables

1kg tomatoes 0.50LE
1kg Guava 3.50LE
1kg Melon 5LE
0.5kg Peppers 1.50LE
1kg cucumbers 2LE
1kg bananas 3LE
1 egg 0.50LE
1kg oranges 1-2LE
1kg Apricots 5LE
1kg carob 24LE
1kg peanuts 13LE
1kg pumpkin seeds 26LE

Take Away Food

1 Taamiyya in pitta (Felafel) 1.50LE
1 pot Koshuri 2LE
Omelette 3LE
Fuul 1.50LE
1 Maison Thomas Sandwich 25LE
1 fiteer 11LE
1 large kebab 8-10LE

Restaurant Food

Penne al’Arrabiata and drink, Didos, Zamalek 20LE
Salad at Al-Azhar park 18LE

Drinks

1 large bottle of water 1.50LE
1l mango juice 12LE
1 cup of tea 1.50LE
1 cup of coffee 1.50LE
1 mango juice 1.50LE
1 orange juice 0.50LE
1.5ltr Asab (sugar cane) juice 3LE

From the Bakery

1 piece hot fresh bread 0.05LE
1 leavened bread roll long 0.25LE
1kg biscuits 10LE
1 chocolate croissant 1.50LE

Tourism

Ibn Tulun Mosque entry 5LE
Normal park entry 1-2LE
Al-Azhar park entry 5LE

Other

Cigarettes 8.50LE
Sheesha (apple flavour) 2LE
Postcard small 2LE, large 5LE
Print 1 page text 1-3LE
Small bag of Ariel washing powder 1LE

How to enjoy waking up at dawn

After waking up at the Krakadorn every day for forty days, I’ve become something of an expert in how to enjoy waking up early.

Here’s how I did it:

  1. Get a good alarm clock.
  2. Get excited about the novelty of getting up so early. It’s so ridiculous that it’s funny – now jump out of that bed!
  3. Imagine you are going somewhere really cool and exciting.
  4. Go somewhere really cool and exciting (use your imagination).
  5. Stare at the sun, wonder at the natural miracle of dawn. It does this every day, while you are normally snoring your head off. Think about how lucky you are to be watching this celestial event.
  6. Take pictures, draw pictures, write a paragraph. Use your creativity to get inside the morning.
  7. Find something or someone to laugh at. (This isn’t hard – even at this ungodly hour there are plenty of commuters) (But don’t be cruel. Maybe bake them some flapjacks.)
  8. Look closely at the world as it’s waking up. These are things you don’t see normally. The frost still on the ground, rubbish bags ripped open by rats overnight, the morning call of the birds, the soft hum of the milkman’s float. Appreciate.
  9. Return home and reward yourself with a breakfast fit for royalty. Make it a real feast of tasty goodness, none of this cold muesli rubbish. Why should breakfast be boring? Cook something you love, or copy something you once had at a fancy cafe. Make shakshuka or pancakes. Be creative.
  10. Forget the hasty shower: treat yourself to a long hot bath (with bubbles). Yeah!
  11. Then look at the clock and see it’s only half eight.

That is how you learn to love the dawn.

40 Photos of the Krakadorn

In 2008, I was struggling with over sleeping so I decided to challenge myself to wake up at dawn every day for 40 days.

Rather than simply getting up and getting on with my day, I made sure that I got out on long walks around the areas I was living at the time (London and Oxfordshire).

On these early morning rambles I learnt a lot – especially when, halfway through the experiment, I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid. So THAT’S why I was sleeping too much!

Anyway, here’s the gallery: one photo from each dawn witnessed during my Krakadorn project, 9th April 2008 – 18th May 2008.

My dad is an early riser and his birthday was only three days after the end of my experiment. So I printed out all the photos and stuck them in a massive frame for him. He said it was the best present he’d ever received!

The Man on the Train

The man on the train leans forward: ‘I did not put my ticket in the machine – is okay? I have not used the train before.’
‘It’s fine, as long as you have a ticket, yeah?’
‘I have’

He is tanned, with a friendly fatty face, roughened by stubble. His eyes and nose bulge disarmingly. Spanish.

He complains about the number of stops to Oxford: ‘Is 20 stops!’
‘You going to Oxford then?’ I ask.
‘No, Hayes,’ he replies. ‘I have never been outside London. Except to Brighton.’
‘London-On-Sea.’
‘Yeah, if London had the sea…’
‘Oxford is quite nice though- the river and the, um… forests.’
I’m not too good on conversation.

Now I notice his red Ferrari shirt. I am confused. Italian? Surely not; he’s far too engaging.

Couldn’t he just be a Spaniard wearing a Ferrari shirt? I begin to doubt myself. Not Italian, not Spanish. I’m out of ideas.

‘Where are you from?’ I ask.
He replies: ‘Lebanon.’

The smile on my face freezes for a moment as I ponder where I have heard that name recently.

Holy shit, I remember: World War III just broke out.

‘Oh…’ I manage, eloquently, as I feel the muscles of my face frantically reconfiguring to register Concern.
‘… Gosh.’
‘Yeah. It is bad.’

At this point I am thrown into shock mode: I follow his monologue with little more than nods, shakes, tuts, buts and ahs.

‘Last night was the worst. My street, I live in South of Beirut, my street is bombed.’
‘Your family?’
He wrings his phone in frustration: ‘I have been trying. I cannot. My sister. They’re not answering.’

He looks pained: ‘No electric, no water – it’s summer, yes? People will die without fan, without water. They forget what is water, what is electric.’

I look down at my bottle of water.

‘South Beirut is like Zone 6 London: all tall houses for all the people, not small houses like this,’ he gestures out the window to a field of warehouses.

‘All tall buildings, all gone. You must understand: all Lebanon is Hizbollah: they are not army, they are not terrorists, they are people.

‘I am Hizbollah, my family is Hizbollah, you are – like you are English – they want to kill everybody.

‘Like Hitler bombed London in 1940, 1945, 1948, I forget these dates, he aims to get everyone. Israel wants to kill everyone.’

He gestures constantly, out the window, at my water, with his phone, up to the sky. His eyes thrust in every direction; my retinas burn when I meet his look.

‘When will it stop? They say today it will not stop. It will stop when we give them anything they want.

‘Since Wednesday they are bombing the airport. And there is English, American, French there on holiday, you know? Helicopters come to take them away – what about us?

‘How can Lebanon defend itself? It is big country against small country – like England against London.’

He realises this doesn’t capture the scale. ‘Or Britain against Luxembourg or…’ His eyes light up and a finger punches into his palm: ‘Malta.’

‘This morning the Israelis say to the border towns you must leave they want to make it to the ground.’
‘They want to flatten them?’
‘Because they want…’ He stares accusingly at the fields rushing past through the window and slices his hand through the air, palm down. ‘… A clear view.’

‘And all the people in these border towns are poor, not like the people in London, in Oxford – they are all rich more or less, not like in the border towns. They are all poor and the UN says no to these people because you know in 1996 the UN building it gets…’ He punches down through the air.
‘Bombed?’
‘And the UN says no so the people get into trucks you know, trucks that they load with stones and rocks, and the Israelis bomb them.’

‘Newspapers here don’t show anything. You must see these pictures – find an Arabic channel, you’ll see the pictures: a child’s arm, you know,’ he bares his arm and grips his shoulder, ‘without the body.’

‘A baby’s head,’ he cups his hands together, ‘smaller than, smaller than…’ He leans forward describing a small sphere in the air with his hands frantically before throwing himself back in his seat, eyes despairing his linguistic failure.
‘Smaller than… a football.’

‘The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Mirror they are all for the Israelis. Hitler did not do so bad to Jews as they say, he didn’t burn them, kill them… Anyway that was in World War.’ He brings his hands together to indicate global cataclysm.

‘Americans, English, French always with Israelis. We have only god to help us, we forget about these people: we live, we die. Not like here where you live, you enjoy, you die.

‘If we die now, 5 years, 10 years is no matter for us. And then they make a film, Hollywood film, out of our lives and will only show Israelis dying.’

I proffer support: ‘But not everyone is with the Israelis, I mean, the intelligent, none of my friends agree with what the Israelis have done…’

He cuts me off: ‘Well they must do something. They are meeting now in St Petersburg and Bush says Israel are defending themselves. They must stop this now.’

We both see Hayes and Harlington pull into view.

‘I must get off here,’ he says. ‘It’s been nice talking to you.’

I shake his hand as he stands; I struggle to my feet and touch him on the shoulder, desperately signing comradeship.
‘I hope your family are alright.’
‘It is life, my friend.’

He is gone. I sit down heavily and gaze hopelessly at the people around me, they seem unaware of our conversation.

I wish I’d asked his name.

This conversation occurred on Sunday the 16th of July 2006 on the 13:48 train from London Paddington to Oxford, between London Paddington and Hayes and Harlington. I spent the rest of the journey writing down everything he said.

The 2006 Lebanon War is believed to have killed between 1,191 and 1,300 Lebanese people, and 165 Israelis.

It severely damaged Lebanese civil infrastructure, and displaced approximately one million Lebanese and 300,000–500,000 Israelis.

Carmen in Seville

All I knew about my host was that she was called Carmen and was ‘looking forward to poisoning me’. At least that’s what my ‘Welcome To Seville’ introductory letter should have said. Perhaps I might have sensed the dark portents of staying with a Carmen in the city of Seville, but I was optimistic and knew absolutely nothing about opera.

So it was that, in the blistering sunlight of high noon, underneath a sky of the deepest, most photogenic blue, I found myself outside an anonymous looking apartment block. Once I circled it- like a matador about his fated prey. Twice I circled it again- as if I were a bailaor caught up in the flamenco of a furious pasión. Thrice and again around- increasingly like a hapless Englishman who couldn’t find the blasted door.

Having eventually located an entrance, I struggled up the stairs in the heat. Carmen kindly made herself known by banging something disturbingly metallic against the door; she was the one in pyjamas. I made my way inside and took a sharp intake of breath. Not from any shock or horror, I just don’t find stale air very comfortable on the lungs. Many florid hand gestures exchanged between us and I assumed I was welcomed to her cosy casa.

Taking refuge in my designated cell, I perused a notice on the back of the door. This was, essentially, a list of benevolent injunctions from my host, such as ‘No food in room’, ‘No TV in room’ and ‘No guests in room’. Added to the list were some, rather disparaging, additions made by previous guests, which Carmen had not been astute enough to delete.

A sharp knock startles me, and my host gurns at me from a round the frame:
‘Would you like some lunch?’ (translation of frantic hand-to-mouth signals).
‘Yes please, that would be lovely’ (international language of cheerful nodding).
She closes the door and the sound of pots and pans being clashed together breaks the quiet, still heat: magnífico! Two minutes elapse before another rap on the door – ah! – she’ll be asking if I want an aperitivo with some deliciously smoked jamón and queso before the speciality paella de la casa –
‘Lunch is ready’ she signs.

I take this opportunity to show-off my advanced Spanish: ‘Qué?!’
I enter the kitchen to see on my plate the culinary equivalent of a multi-lane motorway pile-up: a deep-fried sausage juggernaut has smashed into the twisted wreckage of a microwaved meatball and spilled its load of deep-fried potatoes all over the oil drenched tomato salad. The fact that the emergency services were not immediately called is something that astounds me to this day.
We ate in joint silence in front of the television: mine explained by a mixture of disbelief and nausea; hers by a fascination with the death of the pope. I was prepared for a culture shock, but this was a little hard to swallow.

I spent the afternoon prostrate on a park bench, wallowing in gastric distress: bloated and oozing oil and fat, desperately burping and scraping my tongue in some futile effort to cleanse my palate. When the park attendant began to tire of this display, I dragged myself back to the flat, just in time to witness Carmen deep-fry dinner for herself. Although from this evidence I couldn’t be certain that she lived on a diet of battered offal, as I tossed and turned in my bed that night, bowels a-shudder, I thought of the weeks ahead and decided that I wouldn’t be the sucker who found out.

I rose early and composed a fiendishly ambiguous note in my worst Spanish, which I propped, suggestively, against the poisonous deep fryer. Then, taking one last, ill-advised, lungful of Carmen’s air, I skulked out of the apartment.

I bounded down the stairs, sensing freedom so close, but – alas! – blocking the door to the street with razor-sharp teeth and menacing bark was a fierce dog, hackles raised. Ok, ok- he was the size of a rabbit with a bark that was more of an irritating yap, but the teeth looked sharp alright. I dithered uncertainly, then suddenly strode forward and threw the door wide open! Without so much as a backward glance the dog was away, head down, tail up, flying down the open road. Never before have I shared such a feeling of camaraderie with a canine.

As far as mortal operatic revenge goes, loosing the local dog probably seems a little anticlimactic, but I thought, on balance, that a swift dagger to the breast would have been a bit harsh on old Carmen. So I hitched up my bag and stepped out into the early morning sunlight, which was already tangoing playfully over the surface of the languid Guadalquivir.

Travel expenses: Spain & Morocco 2005

In the Spring of 2005, I travelled to Spain and Morocco to study Spanish and tour el-Andalus and the land of the Moors. These were my travel costs:

Flights (to and from Spain):

£84.48

Spanish travel costs:

£1055.06
39 days @ £27.05 / day
Travel primarily by coach: Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, Madrid, Gibraltar

Spanish language school (including accommodation):

£356.50
14 days @ £25.46 / day

Morocco travel costs:

£177.91
14 days @ £12.71 / day
Travel primarily on bus and train: Tangiers, Rabat, Marrakech, Casablanca, Essaouira, Fes, Chefchaouen