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Five and a half years

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Well, my bike is packed up in its bag again, most of my possessions were collected yesterday for shipping back to New Zealand and, really, I’m a bit bored of packing. I leave London for NZ – five and a half years to the week after I left to see a little bit of the world – curious if I can settle back in a beautiful country far at the bottom of the globe. At the least, I should get a good summer of riding in. Over dinner with Trish at our favourite local Italian pizzeria the other night, there was plenty to reflect on – many excellent things, only two or three not so great happenings, all memorable.

So excuse me while I try to remember most of them and jot them down for posterity. Naturally I’ll start with the highlights in no particular order, as there are many.

As I delve into the archives, this is proving more difficult to narrow it down than I expected, …

My first port of call was the States – little did I know that would be the first of four visits and about six months in total in the country, it turns out the west is fantastic for scenery and mountain-biking.

A west-USA road-trip with plenty of mountain-biking was always a pipe-dream for when I was in my forties or fifties – thanks to living in Canada & the company of my aunt, Valerie, it became a reality much earlier.

The best biking holiday was my return to Moab last year – fantastic trails, great company & beautiful scenery – click on the photo above to watch the video Megan put together.

I also never intended to visit Africa four times, but somehow that happened. Each of the four safaris were quite different, but all excellent.

But the first one in the Masai Mara was the best.

Seeing the Pyramids on Christmas day was excellent – not very crowded either.

I only briefly went to Asia, on a visit to Turkey:


Gliding over the spectacular landscape of Cappadocia in a hot air balloon is indelibly in my memory.

Five weeks’ vacation almost five years ago in the Canadian Rockies saw me learn to ski, a bit, and then all of a sudden, living in Bow Valley for a year of mountain-biking in the summer and skiing in the winter.


Returning to the UK, I managed to settle into a job that I quite liked – that was, until the rather horrible drawn-out experience of plant closure & many redundancies. It was a good base for travels near & far while it lasted – the long, dry & hot summer of 2013 was especially good with many mountain-biking trips around the south-west. Always good to visit Taunton & also ride with my Somerset riding buddies, the Combe Raiders – whatever the weather.

That summer saw me enter a few biking events too – a six-hour solo (nice trail, but boring riding round & round the same thing for six hours), a couple of marathon events, & culminating in my first multi-day stage event.

That event, as you can probably tell from this photo taken while riding along, was in Africa.

Apart from the redundancy experience already mentioned, only two other notable low-points are worth bringing up. The mugging incident in San Diego the day after I left NZ is still the best if I ever have to tell one story from my travels. The ongoing shoulder dislocation saga was painful in a different way – but after four dislocations I had surgery and it’s been fine ever since.

With all the trips to North America & Africa, I perhaps didn’t see as much of Europe as I originally hoped. But I managed a fair few trips – with Italy being the most visited country, five times now I think. I also loved the time spent living in London wandering around all parts of the city & delving into the history. Due to the demise of work, my bikepacking tour of western Europe was brought forward to this year & shortened (& then shortened even more when I got sick of travelling alone in the August rain & mud).

Straddling the German-Belgian border somewhere.

One of the most pleasing & proud parts of the trip was crossing the Alps over Great Saint Bernard Pass – because my grandfather did the same on a bike sixty-five years ago.

Somehow I ended up spending four weeks living & working on a small vineyard in the north-west of Italy – eating a lot, hiking a bit, making new friends & thoroughly enjoying myself. Learning a second-language, Italian – thanks to work, was something I never thought I’d do – but it turned out I really enjoyed it.

Hiking near Monto Bianco.

Oh, almost forgot the whirlwind two-week trip back to NZ (the only one) for some friends’ wedding, and coincidentally my thirtieth birthday & many celebrations with friends & family all over the country. Hectic, but most enjoyable.

The visit also coincided with my shoulder being declared fit – so after six months of no biking, it was great to be active again – here skiing near Wanaka.

I’ll be back with these fine folks next week – hard to believe we’ll have our first Christmas all together since 2006.

That’ll do for unashamed self-indulgence – thanks to all the family & friends that made all this possible in many different ways (usually providing somewhere to sleep & plenty to eat). Biggest thanks goes to cousin Trish in London for repeatedly opening up her home to this often-vagabond – all this would not have been possible or lasted nearly as long otherwise.

bikepacking, bikes, combe raiders, family, friends, MTB, UK

The South & South-West Farewell Tour

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With redundancy rather inconveniently (in more ways than just timing, it must be noted) for me being timed for the middle of summer, I didn’t waste any time in moving out & leaving the area before heading off on my European bike travels lest the weather get colder.  As such,  I never really said a proper goodbye to all the people in the south & south-west that I’d spent so much time with over the previous three years.

So, another little bike tour was in order to do so.  At least as winter approached & then took hold, I had the luxury of knowing I’d be staying with friends & family – & therefore could carry more clothes in place of sleeping bag, mattress & tent. Luxury. I managed to see many people & almost all that I really wanted to see.  Most of the riding was a means-to-an-end (except for two great final MTB outings around Winchester & on Exmoor), but pleasant as the leaves are all sorts of shades at the moment and the English countryside doesn’t fail to be pretty.  I also managed to time rides so that I’d mostly miss the rain.

Schedules dictated I depart a day earlier than I intended, but as the weather was strangely warm and the first of only two big days was spent riding all day & into the night in shorts & short-sleeve top.  Threading my way across south London & then beyond I followed the Basingstoke canal to the eponymous city before taking the train to Bournemouth.

The next morning it was around 20oC, so I hardly needed much persuasion (actually, it was probably my idea) to get some gelato.

Popping back into the plant (former-work) that afternoon, it was eerily quiet and all rather strange. A couple of hours was enough it was so silent. But it was nice wandering around chatting to those that still survive, for however long that may be.

Great to get out for one last ride on the trails around Winchester with Dan & Chris – my only regular riding buddies I had in the area.

Chris recommended an American burger joint, Seven Bones, excellent food & value. Once again, riding so much just provides an excuse to eat excessively.

Due to timings of visits, I ended up crossing the New Forest four or five times – here along the Bournemouth beachfront as the sun sets.

And my last look at the Isle of Wight – I had some nice long & hilly MTB trips out there.

After a couple of nights in Poole, I used the other half of my return train ticket to get back to Basingstoke and ride north of Reading to Rich’s.

I’m going to miss the history of being in Europe; this a typical discovery while just riding along – a Roman amphitheatre seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

As I was riding through a park in the north-west outskirts of Reading I heard a loud & obnoxious ringing – eventually I saw that it was coming from a phone on top of a bin. Thinking that someone had probably lost it, I answered it feeling I was in some strange bicycle-touring Spooks crossover. I was right, a woman had lost her phone & I tried to describe where I was not really having much idea. I wanted to hand it in at a nearby business and carry on my way as the light was fading fast, but she insisted I wait ten minutes. Eventually, a rather old Ford Galaxy rolled up and I was almost forced to take a tenner from a large roll of cash as payment for my waiting around doing nothing. All rather weird, but it paid for my lunch.

Startling pheasants of the game variety was becoming more normal as I continued; I must note that the pheasants in Berkshire and Oxfordshire are much more handsome – darker colouring. And just rolling down the hill to cross the Thames, again, on a quiet country lane I came across the largest bouquet (who knew?) of pheasants I’ve seen.

The goal for the next day was Bristol & it promised to be one of my longest on a bike.  But as I planned to do most of it alongside the Kennet & Avon Canal, it wasn’t to be too hilly.  Rich kindly plotted a route for me to follow on my GPS that would take me most-directly to the canal on quiet roads.  With rain overnight, the tow-path was decidedly wet – and the rain that continued to fall didn’t help all that much.  Unfortunately, the National Cycle Route I was following left the canal for quite a while and seemed to insist on gradually climbing into a stiff sou-wester – not some of my favourite moments on a bike.

In time I reached Devises and what turned to out to be the end of the climbing. Deciding I was much too muddy & wet for the cafe recommended by a passing cycle tourist, so I quickly snacked before rolling quickly down beside the Caen Hill Locks.  With sixteen locks all in a row here, they do form a rather impressive staircase – navigating in a boat must be tedious, five to six hours apparently.

Caen.hill.locks.in.devizes.arp.jpg

The rest of the way into Bath was pretty flat, but with about twenty miles to go on top of what I’d already done wasn’t particularly fast. As the night closed in I decided I didn’t have the light or energy to ride for another couple of hours – so I took the train to north Bristol to arrive at Laura & Luis’s. I was quite pleased with about 145 km/90 miles for the day and over eight hours moving time. While I had remembered that L&L’s first house is undergoing extensive work, I’d forgotten there was no shower – one was much needed after all the mud & work into the wind. Never mind, nothing a walk in the rain around the corner to the gym couldn’t fix.

A most enjoyable weekend catching up, watching the All Blacks narrowly beat England, checking out a local fireworks night, ripping the kitchen ceiling off and popping down to the centre of Bristol to learn a bit of the city and walk in the sun. I’m still of the mind, if I was to come back to England for any length of time, this is an area I’d try to live.

Builders turning up early Monday morning meant an early start to my departure from Bristol for Winscombe. But this did mean that I got to see the day dawning on Bristol as I rode across the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

Carrying on through Ashton Court I enjoyed trying to spot bits of the course I rode & rode for six hours last year in the Bristol Bike Fest – six hours of riding the same short lap is rather boring. It was a pleasant dry morning for a ride across Somerset Moors and through cider country; I was pleased to do the half of the Strawberry Line that Mum & I didn’t ride in April (that is, the Yatton – Winscombe half).

While Andy & Jo were still at work I managed to occupy myself getting stuck into War & Peace, wandering around the village, cleaning the mud off my bike (an exercise in futility considering the subsequent ride to Taunton), sitting out a truly miserable Tuesday of rain and generally relaxing. Somehow I found myself recounting my travels since April (my previous visit) in greater detail than anyone else has been subjected too – for once I became a very slow eater.

Across more of the moors on the Wednesday I once again escaped the rain before reaching Taunton – which must be one of my most visited places over the last five years, considering how much John & Anna have had me to stay under the guise of popping over from Hampshire for many great rides in the south-west with the Combe Raiders. Unfortunately, Thursday was rather wet so John & I couldn’t get out for a long ride while Anna was at work and Lydia & Esther were at school – a much needed bike maintenance session wasn’t all that successful for my creaking pedal.

The Final Pheasant ride for the Saturday Combe Raiders outing was back on Exmoor – where I first rode over six years ago with John, Andy & Rich. It was great to have all of them back for my farewell ride and with a few others we had a good group of eight to head out on a day that promised all sorts of weather. A very enjoyable and memorable ride that had some decent climbs, stunning views over the Bristol Channel, some rain, the standard navigational debate, a short very muddy hike-a-bike section (that turned out not to be on the route) and much fun on some long rocky descents. Near the end the cloud really rolled in and above Dunster the woods were so misty one could hardly see twenty metres in front – it was all rather eerie. With one last pastie stop in Dunster my Combe Raiders riding career was over; I’ll miss it all the more as I don’t even get to defend my Christmas Hill Climb title this year.

Map discussions – my stopping to take photos was rather woeful throughout this whole trip.

Before long I’d said all my goodbyes to many friends & family in the south & south-west and I was on the train back to Paddington and then riding across London (which I really enjoy, I suspect I’m in the minority) – home for a couple of days’ breather. Thanks to all who took the time to see me & especially those that had me to stay – it sure beat wild-camping in winter! For the record – it was quite a leisurely tour: nearly 800 km/500 miles in two and a half weeks, only two big days over 120 km, the rest nicely between 30 and 70 km.

bikepacking, bikes, Europe, friends, GPS, travel

A return

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With a big pizza, a beer, a chat to family back home and a good sleep under my belt I awoke Friday morning much happier and, although a possibility, I didn’t even really consider heading out east to tour Italy. Heading back to Les Granges was what I wanted to do, but I first I had a couple of hours before having to check out of my hotel in which I could wander around Ivrea without a bike.

Most famous last century as the headquarters of Olivetti, the thing about the city that intrigued me the most from my brief research was the Battle of the Oranges – the largest food fight in Italy. Throwing oranges (the only figure I could find was a quarter of a million kilograms) sounds rather vicious – and a little nuts, as oranges don’t grow around here and have to be imported from Sicily. Still, for some reason, on the last three days before Lent thousands of people form into various teams and throw oranges at each other.

I missed that, being quite some months after Shrove Tuesday – so took a slightly more dignified walk around town.

The ride back to the Aosta Valley was fairly uneventful. This time I had the wind at my back and I did an even better job of avoiding the highway and taking small paths and roads. For the first part of the day this was on the Via Francigena again – although it could be a bit of fun trying to spot the trailmarkers. This was for two reasons – every so often they’d completely change, and the trail is really for going to Rome, not the other way as I was headed. I met a nice elderly couple fairly well loaded up going towards Rome; from Trieste and Trento (both places I’d hoped to get to, sigh), they are doing the Via Francigena in sections and had come over Great St Bernard Pass the previous week in snowfall. Such encounters are one of the things I’ll miss of touring – but trying to choose off-road routes rather limits them and they are fleeting.

The pictogram of a pilgrim that often was the trailmarker daubed on posts.

Still managing to keep off the highway, with the odd dead-end sending me backtracking, I wanted to get closer to Forte di Bard than I did passing it in the other direction. Little did I know that that would send me up the steepest pitch of road I’ve dragged my bike up on the whole trip. With the sun beating down, those few minutes to struggle forward only a hundred and fifty metres, but at over twenty percent gradient, were some of the hardest earned for quite sometime – possibly since having to push my rig up muddy slopes in the Ardennes. Bard is the smallest commune in all of Aosta Valley, so it didn’t take long to roll down its narrow streets, avoiding those struggling to walk up, back to the river. I thought I deserved lunch and found a bar, a beer and a delicious panini (more of a big toasted bun) filled with salami, cheese and artichoke hearts.

The remaining distance was fairly uneventful – there was the big climb up to Saint Vincent on the highway, more gelato at Saint Vincent and then very familiar mountains coming back into view before the last climb off the valley floor to Les Granges. Generally, I’m probably a bit too predictable – but I must say, it is quite fun completely surprising people. Rather hot and sweaty, I stowed my bike in the garage and wandered back into the house to see who was around. The mixture of surprise, excitement, and moderate amounts of disbelief were more than I was expecting (I’d only been gone about thirty hours) and enough to let me know that I’d definitely made a good choice.

With the fun of surprising people over, it was time to get back to work – making red wine. Apparently I’d missed two big days of harvesting (that was well timed) and everyone was pretty tired. The first stage of red wine production is much quicker and simpler than that of white wine. Of what is harvested, the only thing that doesn’t go in the vat is the stalks. The grapes, skins and pips included, are removed from the stalks by a rotating shaft with paddles attached and then pumped into the vat. There’s a lot less waiting around and the cleaning is easier. Saturday was also another big harvest day with many friends and family turning up again – I got reasonably good at explaining in Italian that I left and then it was no good touring alone, so I returned. People I can hardly hold a conversation with seemed a lot more pleased by this turn of events than I expected – everyone is so friendly here. The lunch crowd was much bigger this time, so a couple of big trestle table were set up and the salamis, cheeses, large rice salads, kilograms of potatoes and large jugs of red wine straight from somewhere in the winery flowed.

bikepacking, bikes, Europe, GPS, travel

Harvest day, wine-making and a departure

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I decided to stick around until at least Wednesday to help out with the big harvest day with many friends and family coming to help, and also for the opportunity to see at least some wine-making start. Tuesday was a pretty slow day, so I was looking forward to departing and exploring again. Come Wednesday, all sorts of people turned up to help – friends, extended family, neighbours (whose grapes we’d help pick the week before). We picked most of the Pinot Grigio that day and ate a lot for lunch with more at the table than the usual ten.

Random grapes.

There was finally enough grapes to warrant using the mechanical press – the previous small batches of grapes had been stamped by foot (such fun) earlier, from what I can tell to get the fermentation going and adding to the larger batches later.

Starting to load the press.

The press is a large rotating drum, half of which has inside a material layer (seen on the far side of the inside of the drum above) that presses the grapes using compressed air. Pre-programmed, it takes about two hours for it to go through its full cycle of rotating, pressurising, de-pressurising and so forth. There was plenty of lifting of boxes of fresh grapes in and then plenty of cleaning to done afterwards. Although it’s all inside work, I find it much more interesting than harvesting grapes and cleaning out the bad ones from the bunches.

Shovelling out the remaining skins and stalks after the pressed juice has all been pumped to a vat. All this goes to make grappa somewhere.

Slowly it leaked out that I intended to leave the next day – I’d tried to keep it quiet in case I changed my mind again. I didn’t change my mind, but after getting everything ready to go (again) I had to wait quite a while for some of the other volunteers to get back from an early shopping trip to Aosta. It was another big harvest day, so there were grapes to be picked while I waited. In good time the others arrived back – although most of them got a little lost getting to the vineyard, so I didn’t actually see them: that was a waste of ninety minutes of potential riding. So I said goodbye to most of my new friends and a small part of the world I’ve come to love in less than two weeks and rode off down to the valley floor for a couple of months of exploring Italy alone.

A problem with such a relatively narrow valley being such an important transportation link is that you can’t really get far from it all – the highway, the autostrada or the railway. Even though, for the first twenty-odd kilometres I managed to be on a cycle trail to Saint Vincent. Such valleys also tend to funnel wind – even when I turned south I was still pressing on into a headwind. With no other option as the valley narrowed, I joined the highway to climb from the floor over an escarpment. It was a little odd eating lunch alone in peace and with only a small amount of food in Verres.

Going from such friendship, companionship and having some sort of purpose in my day’s work to the prospect of two months of solo-travelling was beginning to weigh on my mind as I set forth for the afternoon, mostly off road through fields near the river.

As the valley narrowed again, I was on the highway for a while. I came across Forte di Bard – there has been a fort here since the fifth century, except for a brief period of time in the early 1800s after Napoleon had it destroyed. He was understandably a little less than impressed that this fort and only four-hundred soldiers should stall his 40000-man army from progressing to a surprise attack further down out of the valley.

The vineyards seem to get steeper and steeper as they clung to the side of the valley.

In time, the valley opened up a little and I started to see a feasible route to escape to the east over hills, not mountains, and stop heading towards Turin alongside the autostrada. Of course, as I climbed out of the valley with the sun beating on my back I lost the wind. To my disbelief, on what was such a quiet road, I came across a sign telling me that bikes were forbidden. Around the corner I found a big unlit tunnel – I debated for some time whether I should just turn my lights on and ride through it, turn around and go back to the valley floor and skirt the bottom of the hills or retreat a little and take the other road up and over the hills. I, for some reason, chose the hardest option – up and over. As I slowly went up what is apparently a Catergory Two climb, I don’t believe it although parts were 17%, things were starting to get a bit lonely again. When I reached the hill-top town of Andrate, I stopped and stared at this lovely view for quite some time, contemplating how many more wonderful things I’d see on this trip and not have anyone to share it with at the time.

It doesn’t look so impressive in a photo…

By this time I thought I had better start thinking of tomorrow’s breakfast, as there was actually a small bakery in the village shop. As I sat eating whatever sweet treat I bought, the prospect of plain bread for breakfast in my tent instead of the customary egg for which I’ve become infamous crossed my mind. In one of those small decisions that has quite unintended and unforeseen consequences, after checking the GPS, I followed the sign for Biella (where I was vaguely heading) and plunged off the hill. This put me back on the road I was on previously – after the tunnel I’d stood in front of; but unfortunately on this quiet road in front of another big tunnel I was not allowed in. But also, very strangely, for such a B-road in the hills with little traffic on it, in the general vicinity of a hideous-looking prostitute who, for the language difference, resorted to crude gestures in trying to make a sale. Now, I know nothing about turning tricks, but I would imagine location is quite important; my mind boggled from the whole encounter – why would you even bother on a road where I’d seen nary a car, let alone a truck/lorry. I still can’t understand it. This time I chose the easy option of riding down the hill again.

Somehow, I found the Via Francigena again. This is an old pilgrim’s path that goes from Canterbury to Rome and it passes just below where I was staying in the Aosta Valley. I decided to follow it for a little while as it’s generally on quieter roads and paths and it was going the vague way I wanted to go. Because of the kit I was carrying I had quite a few people stop and ask me if I was going to Rome, I was a little more surprised by this than I should have been I suppose. There were also a lot of people out on mountain-bikes, which is always a good sign.

Beginning to wonder where I might buy dinner and then make it to afterwards to put my tent up for the night, I stopped in a small village (Palazzon Canavese) as some sort of meeting was finishing and people started filing out of the church.

In typical Italian fashion they all really seemed to be enjoying each other’s company in vocal fashion. As I watched on with envy, the traveller passing through again,  what I was doing began to seem more and more ridiculous. Perhaps I was more tired from battling into the wind, riding near a hundred kilometres and climbing a big hill for naught than I realised – but my previous resolve to try at least a week of solo-touring crumbled. As I looked back on my travels over the previous five years, it’s obvious while I often travel solo I rarely go too long without visiting someone I know.

Now for the second time in a month I was leaving people I care about to go exploring on a bike solo and I was even less happy about it this time – as I knew what was in store, and two months alone looking for wild-camping spots, searching for a bathroom each morning, dining and the probable rain in October (I’ve been warned) were frankly unappealing. And for what – so I can see yet more new places and go wherever the fancy takes me? There will always be more places to explore. It turns out I may be slightly goal-oriented – wandering aimlessly for two months just to see more of Italy began to seem pointless. As all this raced through my mind and I struggled not to be overcome by it all, a nice woman from the meeting came up and started talking to me – it turns out my Italian has improved more than I thought, but she spoke slowly for me and it turns out her daughter lives in New Zealand. I was hoping she’d take pity on me as I struggled to hold it together and invite me for dinner, but I’m not very good at dropping hints when I’m speaking Italian it would seem. Realising that it’s riding bikes and being around close family and friends is what keeps me sane, and not one of those by themselves, I turned around and went to find a hotel in Ivrea.

So, sorry if you were rather enjoying following my little bike trip here – but it seems now I’ll have far fewer bike and travel stories to tell in the next couple of months. That may be the only downside, but I’m not fussed – I wake up to beautiful mountains each day and know I’ll spend the day working and eating (loads) with wonderful people.