We travelled to Arbroath today so that ‘Tall Child’ could get his annual fix of the Red Arrows aerobatic display team. Once there we took time out before the main event to top up our caffeine levels and indulge in some homebakes in a local café … but Arbroath, I ask you, marmalade on a fruit scone! Really?
A hard bike ride yesterday saw me bail out and return defeated. I’d done about 10 miles of short, sharp hills; the sort where the road just shoots straight upwards without any pretence of contouring and you get no respite as the downhill bits pass by in a flash.
I retreated at that point because, without actually knowing the route, I thought I might get halfway around and then hit the wall, so the better part of valour was discretion and I turned back. I recce’d the full route as I drove home and realised that I’d actually done the hardest part and could probably have managed the remaining 30+ miles, so I’ll be back. Memo to self: recce routes in advance!
Despite failing with the ride it was a joy to pedal through the birch woodlands along the River Gairn – it was only when the woodland gave way to moorland that the climbs took their toll (I really do need to lose a few kilos).
A profusion of lichens explained why the silver bark of the birches looked anything but lustrous even in the sun. In truth their trunks were more like O’Rafferty’s Motor Car (in a good way – forty shades of green) and testament to the air quality of the Cairngorm National Park. It’s consoling to know that you’re breathing clean air when you’re gasping up a hill wishing you had lower gears.
And guess what? The trees don’t just provide a beguiling view. It seems they can give post-ride comfort for your average knackered cyclist in the form of Molton Brown’s Bracing Silver Birch Thermal Muscle Soak! Pricey (£19 from John Lewis for 300g!) but described as:
“A beautiful fragrance that leaves the body feeling clean and refreshed. A dedicated muscle therapy which will instantly enliven and uplift. The fresh, woody aroma of silverbirch, cedarwood, cumin and bergamot will lift the spirits and sooth the muscles”.
Sounds like bollocks to me but it gets five-star reviews all round on the John Lewis website with the following endorsement for bike riders:
“Bought as a gift for a keen cyclist. He found it very relaxing and it has a great fragrance”.
So, setting aside my usual disdain for (i) advertising copywriters, and (ii) male grooming products, consider it added to my Christmas prezzie suggestion list.
.… all of which serves as an excuse to post a pic that I took in the nearby Cambus o’ May birch woodland last autumn. It has a rather ethereal quality I think (and the sharp-eyed may recognise it as the photo from which this blog’s header image was derived).
I don’t think I could ever return south to live, but I do miss the English canal network. I can empathise with this quote from an Italian enthusiast in one of the ‘anorak’ magazines that I sometimes buy.
Francesca Morini: “I usually start walking along the canal carrying the weight of my slightly dull existence on my shoulders and end up with a head full of dreams”.
For those who don’t know, the title of this post comes from the following exchange between Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen:
Charlie Allnut: You know what would have happened if we would have come up against one of them rocks?
Rose Sayer: But we didn’t. I must say I’m filled with admiration for your skill, Mr. Allnut. Do you suppose I’ll try practice steering a bit that someday I might try? I can hardly wait… Now that I’ve had a taste of it. I don’t wonder you love boating, Mr. Allnut.
Sammy Cahn’s lyrics to a well-known Sinatra song let us know that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Well. that’s as may be, but what really goes well together is a ride out on a road bike and decent cafe stop for coffee and cake. Unfortunately, for the modestly overweight recreational cyclist they sometime go together too well, especially if one is planning to lose a few kilos in preparation for an assault on the Bealach na Bà (Pass of the Cattle) in Wester Ross. I’m hoping to ride it later in the summer, but avoiding either of the sportives that include it in their routes.
The statistics are impressive for a hill climb in the UK, a 626 metre ascent over 9.1 kilometres with an average gradient of 7% and a maximum of 20% (did I say lose “a few” kilos; make that many!). The route is about 45 miles in all, so maybe it is best to ‘do’ the hill early on. I’m hoping to get some hill-climbing miles in my legs by training on our own local climb on the Cairn o’ Mount road near Banchory. The Cairn route from the Banchory side is slightly longer than the Bealach na Bà, and some think that it is just as testing, so I will see how it goes and whether I need to invest in a more forgiving set of gear ratios!
The problem with training over the Cairn o’ Mount (apart from the obvious one of it comprising a long, steep hill) is that the downhill return leads you into Banchory and its coffee shops; less than helpful to a chap’s weight loss regimen. One in particular caters well for the cyclist: Tease even has its own Strava group to keep tabs on its members’ biking efforts. I’m not a member or a Strava-naut and although the coffee and cakes are a tad expensive they are rather fine.
I have yet to visit Tease this year, but have something of a confession to make. On a recent visit to the family’s matriarch in Kendal I was determined (and I mean absolutely determined) not to visit nearby Grasmere. I really don’t like the Lake District honey-pot towns of which Grasmere is one, but two things keeps drawing me back (by car, not bike). The first is the ludicrously-named Faeryland tea shack by the waterside, set in an implausibly-beautiful location and, at its best, capable of producing one of the finest cups of tea in old Albion; the second is the opportunity to stock up on gingerbread at Sarah Nelson’s Grasmere Gingerbread shop.
Well, my determination to give it a miss failed and the lure of tea and gingerbread won. On this occasion the tea wasn’t so good, but despite the best of intentions to lose a few kilos I took consolation in a couple of packs of gingerbread and, do you know what, it’s gone already; shared of course with friends and colleagues (well, some of it was)!
Now the weather has turned in our favour it’s time to get serious on the bike and hit the first ‘half-way’ ice cream of the year (the pic was taken at Banchory looking downstream on the River Dee).
“I like Bellowhead”.
“Who?” you ask.
“Bellowhead” I say “a contemporary English folk group”.
“Oh God!” you say, “Not folk music?”.
Or at least that is how I imagine most conversations with the uninitiated would pass on the subject. But Bellowhead is not your average folk group. Oh no. It is an 11 piece folk ‘big-band’ that has headlined concerts for a dozen years and is now, sadly, towards the end of its farewell tour. It is also a band about which The Independent said: “With the exception of The Who, Bellowhead are surely the best live act in the country”.
One of the group, Paul Sartin, has described them thus: “We’re not a period piece band. To be a party band, the music has to be accessible, and therefore contemporary … we use the songs as a template, chuck everything into the mix and see what comes out”. They certainly do and it ticks the “contemporary take on tradition” box that brings both relevance and a wider audience to a sometimes staid cultural heritage.
I mentioned to an acquaintance that is ‘in’ to folk music that I was going to see Bellowhead at the London Palladium. A fairly dismissive reply (“I saw them, they’re just noisy”) immediately identified him as a straw-sucking, acoustic-only, 1960s traditionalist who would gaze softly into the distance whilst listening to the semi-strangulated vibrato of a nasally-congested singer seeking to remove earwax at the same time as spitting out more words than the phrasing within a melody could possibly dictate. Personally, I would rather have a good night out.
And that is why I travelled with ‘Management’ from Aberdeen to the London Palladium where we took part in a shindig of the first order. I won’t go into detail because it was one of those occasions that you had to experience; words alone could not sum it up. Two quick points though: thankfully, the audience appeared very ordinary when contrasted against the imagery of shirtless collars, waistcoats and neck-wringing bandanas that normally conjures up the attire of a stereotypical traditionalist, but more importantly, much more importantly, everyone left grinning widely.
It was terrific. You can get a taste of them here, read about the Palladium concert here and find out more about the band here.
Well, after what seemed to be a dismal and eternally dreich Spring, today the sun finally shone again on Aberdeen and the Shire! And that is reason enough to post a snapshot of our stunning scenery. This one is not the most dramatic Deeside view, but a favourite of mine looking downstream from the Brig o’ Feugh towards the confluence of the rivers Feugh and Dee. Nestling distantly in the background is the Banchory Lodge Hotel whose gardens sit where the rivers join. The hotel’s magnificent situation simply beckons you towards afternoon tea on its lawns!
You don’t have to watch too many highlights of cycling’s Tour de France to know that road racing is a specialist, highly technical and physically gruelling sport that has evolved its own universe of tactics, machinery, nutrition, training regimes and, of course, pharmaceutical aids. Specialism also means jargon and in a world of élites such jargon can also be used to confuse the less-than-élite. And, as French is also the lingua franca of road racing, so it can become even more confusing to a non-Francophone, monolingual, cycle-recreationalist like me. Even the English-orientated terminology can be confusing; after all, who would have thought that it is possible to ride a bike at the same time as bonking?
All of this can be problematic when trying to define the cyclist in you. So, leaving aside any consideration of fitness levels or ability and, given my body type, aptitude, technical skills and doping nutrition preference, what rôle would be mine?
Rouleur: A rouleur is a bit of an all-rounder and capable, perhaps, of managing to win the occasional race or race stage. By definition, an all-rounder must manage hills quite well and I don’t and never did, even when I was younger and quite fit.
Puncheur: These riders thrive in races that combine relative short, steep climbs over an undulating route, but lack the extreme uphill endurance of the specialist climbers that excel on truly alpine ascents; however, the very mention of hills, short or not, counts me out as a puncheur.
Climber: Climbers are petite, lightweight riders that seem able to ‘dance’ on their pedals as they climb ridiculously steep hills at a ridiculously fast pace. I am neither petite nor lightweight and I certainly can’t dance!
Sprinter: Sprinters do what it says on the tin. In a mass finish these are the really big-thighed riders that can summon the strength to outpace all others in what can be an extremely reckless pursuit of victory. They are, by way of compensation, hopeless on the big hills, but that doesn’t help me as sprinters can be foolhardy in the extreme and can get badly hurt in the mêlée of a bunch sprint. I have no stomach for that (or perhaps too much stomach these days 😢)
Time trialist: Individual time trials set the rider against the clock; there are no team-mates to pull you along. It is just you trying to keep your power output high as the pain levels go even higher. This is the one where everybody suffers – really suffers – which counts me out.
So, that all draws a blank, but even though it looks as if I would be a nondescript member of a racing team (in more senses than one) not all is lost. Although I don’t race or ride the vast distances of the audax, sportive or cycle-touring communities, road cycling is my pursuit of choice. My drug of choice is caffeine and, nutritionally, I am all for a nice bit of cake. As an internationalist I am happy to acknowledge French or faux-French as the patois of the road, and this makes me deeply indebted to the Pâtisserie Cyclisme website and to one essayist in particular that has helped me to find my true cycling identity:
“The trundleur is a cyclist who enjoys riding any kind of bicycle, at their own pace for the sheer enjoyment of it. They frequent cafés, stopping to enjoy the view, converse with friends or simply sit and reflect. The trundleur does not care for recording their rides obsessively, nor do they obsess about their speed or beating their fellow cyclists.
The trundleur finds a simple joy in the act of riding a bicycle.”
Mesdames et messieurs, je suis un TRUNDLEUR!
Postscript: Sadly, the Pâtisserie Cyclisme website appears to have been taken down.
Sometimes one’s loving family may not be quite so loving as one thinks. Take for example the gift of a simple bar of soap. This one, a Christmas present, panders well to the cyclist, but the subtle ‘sting in the tail’ that it advertises is revealed to be an embedded exfoliant of ground walnuts; extremely coarse ground nuts (and that’s before a long day in the saddle) 🙁
“It started with a kiss …
No it didn’t. It started with a Fiat Doblo. Although I have easy access to some beautiful countryside, it does become a bit repetitive to cycle out and back on the same roads all the time. If you also consider that the first half-dozen miles out are largely urban (with traffic to match) then it makes sense to load the bike into the car and drive out to one of many potential starting points for a ride. And that is what I do, but there is always a nagging thought that it would be great to drive out a bit further and, perhaps, to kip in the car to make a weekend of it (or more, as I work part-time).
That thought resurfaced the day I saw a campervan conversion of a Fiat Doblo. “Ugly brute” is a fair description and that’s even before the Doblo is converted. It’s even worse afterwards. But it did show that bijou campervans do exist and so, after further research, it has come to pass that we now have on order a micro-camper from those good people at Hillside Leisure. Based on the Nissan NV200 van it didn’t start with a kiss, so let’s hope it doesn’t end in tears either.
Postscript: Just after I thought I had originated a neat pun for the title of this post I discovered that JC Leisure had got there before me. ‘Nissan Dorma’ is, in fact, the name of their NV200 conversion. The one that we have on order (as pictured above) is the altogether less-well monickered ‘Dalbury’.