A bit beyond Bath...
What to do today in Bristol? I'm tempted to cycle to Bath again, it is such a good ride, but decide instead to take the train as bit further on to Bradford-on-Avon and ride back.

Ticket machine.
"But it was out of order, sir, see?"

I get a free train trip. I would have been quite happy to pay but there was nowhere to buy a ticket at my station and no one at the other end either. The bad thing about this is I feel like I can indulge myself having saved a few quid, and when I find a perfect little cheese shop with a deli counter I go a bit overboard laying in supplies for a picnic by the Avon. But the good thing about cycling days is they need to be fueled.

That's why a cycling holiday in France is the perfect option, folks. You have to do it! Not only do you get see the best of the country, you get to over-indulge on French food and wine.

I have a policy of trying a local cheese so this is a Bath Wyfe and rather nice. But that's jumping ahead.

and red peppers stuffed with feta

My morning coffee has become such a habit that I start to get a headache mid-morning if I havn't had my fix. Just down from the station in Bradford-in-Avon I spot this little place. I'm not exactly aware of it yet because I have not read this article, but I am SOOO cool that I have been deliberately trying to avoid the hipster factor without even knowing it, but for whatever reason, this looks like the perfect place to stop.

The garden courtyard behind
is rather nice too, but let's
sit in the Coffee Room

 He only does filter coffee and he was wearing a yeoman's shirt which I thought was just normal until he pointed out that his dress was in keeping with the period, as are the fittings, made by himself after a lot of research. Coffee parlours like this, with little booths, were all the rage in London in the seventeenth century.

The digital fire is a nice touch!

Roses on the table, table cloth,
this place is a gem

My yeoman is a pensioner and has been serving coffee here for 18 years. He makes a living from it, but only because he has lived in the house above for so long that he is not paying a mortgage. He bakes his own cakes, scones and shortbread and does soups for lunch. And he has a subscription to Wallpaper magazine because he likes to keep his mind open to new ideas.




This man is the only other customer while I'm there. He has dementia and doesn't speak most days now because half way into a sentence he forgets what he was saying. But he's wily enough to regularly escape from his carer to have a coffee out. Check out that suit. Yes, I did ask him could I take his picture. I think he was chuffed.

Maybe co-incidence, but I come across two Australian connections today.

In Bradford there's an old mill that has been made into posh retirement apartments but at one stage it was the headquarters of the Australian Cycling Corps.

"The cyclist battalions were organised like the infantry, and were mainly used as despatch riders. Later, during the periods of semi-open warfare in 1917 and 1918 they operated in a manner similar to cavalry, conducting reconnaissance and patrolling."

In fact this proved to be pretty much impossible on the ground, and I believe they ended up spending a lot of time doing burials.

Then in the afternoon I happen to be riding through a little town called Bathampton where I spot an old church with a lovely graveyard.

It is St Nicholas's and it is where Admiral Arthur Phillips, founder of Sydney, is buried.

Various bits of the church have been gifted by Australian states.

I imagine this is a very nice lurk for the Australian High Commissioner Alexander Downing (Hon.)













Back in Bradford-on-Thames though. It's a lovely town climbing up hills either side of the Avon. Unfortunately a busy road goes through the centre of town.

Lovely grey stone buildings

Waiting to cross the road I get into conversation with an even more dapper old man - this one is wearing a cream blazer, pink shirt and bow tie, and he's struggling a bit walking up the hill.  He's had two electric bikes in the last six years, one was stolen, the first one kept breaking down (a common complaint). "Have you been to the new bike shop up the hill?" he says. "I've been looking, The electric bikes are so much better now. The new batteries add about 30 miles. I'm thinking about shouting myself one." "Do it!" I urge him. I hope he does.

The Town Bridge and Lock Up is hard to miss. Two of the bridge arches are from when it was first built in the 13th century but the lock up is a modern addition from the 17th century. wouldn't it be fascinating to be able to see what traffic will be crossing in another 500 years. Or passing under.

There's also a Saxon Church thought to have built for the nuns in the eleventh century - the nuns who were given the village of Bradford-on Avon by King Ethelred in 1001.


Must be my day for talking to people on the street. Next thing I'm chatting to a man called Alan who insists I have a look at the Buddhist temple in a 17th century building that used to be a hotel. I wonder briefly whether he also has some etchings to show me, but no, inside he introduces me to Chinese monk from Sydney who is too busy chatting to a man with a huge head of rasta dreads to talk to me. I admire the temple appropriately and wander on.

These Tea Rooms would be surely be worthy of a visit, but the sun is shining and what could be nicer that to spend the afternoon cycling along the Kennet and Avon Canal to Bath?



It's school holidays and there are plenty of hire boats pottering along.

Maybe not a hire boat,
this man really looks the part

 At The Widcombe Locks the Sweet Shop is doing well.  Jars of old-fashioned sweets are set out along both sides of a moored narrowboat, with a sign inviting passing boats to tie up alongside. Likewise a boat that offers teas and icecreams - this one has some little tables set up under a tree for the walkers and cyclists.

Plenty of boat owners are making the most of the fine weather to catch up with maintenance and there are lots of power tools and paintbrushes in use.

The water in the canal is disgustingly brown and when I tangle with a rope across the towpath and nearly fall off, it is fear of ending up in the water that somehow keeps me upright. Also, I'm over the idea of living on a narrowboat. Often as I ride by there is this miasma of dank and mouldy air emanating from a moored boat. Plus I travel faster and get to see much more.

Though a boat would be better for taking advantage of those canal-side beer gardens, like this one.

Hmmm, that blur of white?
A bunch of people in the beer garden.

I get into Bath after 6.00, it's a Friday evening, and there are groups of people sitting and  lying around on a carpet of green plastic grass that has been laid down the centre of the main shopping mall.

The bridge has to be wound open with an alan key 

England - Then and Now

Fifteen years ago it was, that I lived in England for a year. Here are some impressions about what's changed, and what hasn't.

New
⦁ A woman Prime Minister!
⦁ Cycle mania. London is being overtaken by cyclists. Rural train lines are being closed down and replaced with cycle ways. Bike shops are big business
⦁ Smart phones - and the mobile networks are running slow, slow, and even slower; down to no reception at all at times in London
⦁ Fewer obvious homeless and not so many people begging. Where have they gone?
⦁ Pop-up food, south american street food, food market revival, cheap and cheerful eating outside (BYO umbrella)
⦁ Self-checkout machines - in Boots, W H Smith, every supermarket. Banks and banks of them
⦁ Flat Whites. Everyone's favorite coffee.
⦁ The London skyline. Very Dubai with all those new high-rise.
⦁ Train destination boards at Waterloo were actually working every time I was there!
⦁ Public libraries staffed by volunteers
⦁ Falling house prices - well, so they say. Having risen astronomically over the past 15 years, does this small decrease post-Brexit really count?


Same old
⦁ Traffic congestion (but this time I don't have to take a thermos with me on the M2 because I'm one of those cyclists getting in the way of fast cars and slow
⦁ Queues
⦁ Crisps or chips with everything
⦁ Young overweight girls smoking while pushing prams around dismal council estates.
⦁ Sandwiches made with tasteless, soft and textureless bread (they might call it ciabatta or granary but it's all the same pap)
⦁ The English love of Englishness
⦁ Familiar favorites in every high street; Boots, Costa, Nero, Pret-A-Manger, Waterstones
⦁ Family-friendly pubs that serve teas, coffee, and meals (compulsory chips and mushy peas)
⦁ Charity shops full of decent cheap books and clothes - why would you bother to shop for new anything?
⦁ Travelling by Tube - convenient but overcrowded, stuffy, with broken escalators. And heaven forbid that you might TALK to someone.
⦁ London Eye
⦁ Finding an unsigned, uncelebrated 12th century church in the middle of ugly suburbia
⦁ Huge baskets of flowering plants brightening up the streets (especially around any ye olde pub)
⦁ Pharmacies chock-a-block with sweeties and crisps


But I have to say, it's great to be back.

Get your Wellies, we're off to Wells

Forecast is for rain. Let's take the bus to Wells, England's smallest city with about 12,000 inhabitants. The reason that this town is a city is the Cathedral and that's what I'm going to see.

Front seat upstairs in a double decker bus gives an exciting ride, lurching around corners between high-rise buildings with inches to spare, ducking under low over passes (well. I ducked anyway), and brushing past the trees that have formed a bus-shaped tunnel along the country roads. Those roads! Absolutely no room for cyclists. The bus is hard up against the kerb on one side and hanging over the double white line down the centre of the road on the other side.

Check out how much passing room there is with a tractor. It would have been suicide to try to cycle.

And this is way too much fun to miss. Not only am I dry, but the tannoy is announcing the stops along the way and it is like listening to a poem about the English countryside. "Temple Bridge Farm. Roger's Close. Gibbet Lane. Pensford Bridge. Sheep Lane. The Priory Lodge. Featherbed Lane (let me off here). The Cottages. The Crossroads. Rush Hill. Hollow Marsh. The Ploughboy Inn. Chewton Mendip Way. The Old Rectory. Sleep Lane (there's a theme here), Back Lane, Clutton, Whiteley Batts, Countersip Gardens. Cholwell Farm. Seriously, I didn't make up a single one.

Maybe what brings poetry to mind is the brochure I picked up on the bus, which says 'Wells Cathedral is "the most poetic of the English Cathedrals". A masterpiece, both beautiful and historical, it goes on to say. The front of the building (which is a bit hard to appreciate in the pouring rain) is described as one of the biggest galleries of medieval sculptures in the world.

So this is obviously not one of my photos.
Blue sky is the clue.

Inside, the stand-out feature is the huge scissor arches that look so modern, but in fact were put in during the Middle Ages as internal bracing to stop the towers from collapsing because of sinking foundations.

Construction of the cathedral began in about 1175 and it is the first cathedral in England built in the Gothic style.



I loved the symmetry of the interior architecture but browsing through the images that the masses have selected to put up on Pinterest, most photographers (like this one) choose angles that play off this tidiness to find a deliberately unbalanced harmony.

The cloisters were a bit disappointing.

They are very plain but wikipedia tells me this is because Wells was never a monastic cathedral, it was secular. Now there's a puzzle. How can this thoroughly religious site be called secular? The Oxford English dictionary explains all, you can check it out for yourself.






The clock is the second-oldest surviving clock in England. It has had an electric winder put in but for hundreds of years it had to be wound for an hour 3 times a week.

This clock strikes every fifteen minutes when jousting knights charge at each other to the sound of Jack Blandifers, who strikes the bell above him with his hammer, and two more below him using his heels.

Who's Jack Blandifers? I have not got a clue.

Alongside the cathedral is Vicars’ Close, possibly the only complete medieval street left in England. 

The Vicars' Close and all its buildings, including a library,  are Grade I listed. The current occupants still include all twelve men of the Vicars Choral, plus the organists and vergers.

Something else that has been important in the history of Wells is cheese. The only cheesemaker left these days is the Cheddar Gorge Cheese Company. Their mellow cheddar won bronze in the recent British Cheese Awards. They say their cheddar is the only cheddar made in Cheddar. I have to try some. Off to the deli.  

Getting lost in Bristol

My house sit in Bristol for three weeks in August is a tiny flat in a northern suburb about 4.5 miles from the city centre (except Bristol doesn't really have a centre as such - it lacks focus, is drowning in commercial development that doesn't seem to have any coherence). I have a talking cat to care for. She wakes me at sparrow fart to go outside, tells me when it's mealtime and likes to just say hello every now and again. Really, she clearly says "hello".

I arrived in the rain which seemed appropriate for this mid-war dreary suburban sprawl with strip development comprising off-licenses, indian take-aways, sex shops and the like.

The first day I rode into the city, had coffee in the Bristol University precinct, visited the Museum cafe but not the Museum (typical) and spent the afternoon having coffee in Waterstones and reading books from the travel section.
Bristol has a big initiative to be a Green Capital with the aim of reducing carbon emissions.

This is the Cathedral on Green Square.

It is ironic in a way that this green city is built on nine hills. Cycling here will certainly keep me fit. Bristol was the European Green Capital in 2015, an award won for cross-sector efforts to make Bristol a healthier, happier city. They project and image of a circular economy based in recycling and waste prevention. Instead of putting my food scraps into the tiny yard behind the flat, they go into a food collection bin that council empties once a week.

So I picked up all these maps showing the cycle routes and studied them carefully. Next day was Saturday so I set off to see one of the major landmarks, the Clifton Suspension Bridge (lured by promises of pleasant cafes in the oh-so-genteel Clifton Village). It didn't take long to get side-tracked - how could I resist a bakery with this name with a table outside in the sun?

From then on it went seriously wrong. Yes I picked up the now-familiar National Cycle Route 4 which was meant to take me towards Clifton. Except I happily headed off going the other way, didn't I.

Call it a day of exploration. Blaise Castle Estate was my first discovery. The Castle itself is a folly and anyway there was some children's fair happening. But then there was a road sign saying Blaise Hamlet. Whip out the phone, dear google, what is it? What a treasure. Nine rustic cottages around a small village green with a pump.

Blaise Hamlet was given to the National Trust in 1943. The cottages, which are still lived in, have been modernised inside, but keeping the tall chimneys, thatches and seats. They were designed by John Nash (who also did Buckingham Palace and Brighton Pavilion) in the 1790's, his commission being to provide housing for the servants of Blaise Estate when they retired. If only there were more people like the Quaker owner of Blaise who had these houses built.

Then I came across another vast historic estate, Kings Weston. It used to be a royal manor in medieval times. The mansion is mostly used for weddings now and surprise - has a lovely cafe with a terrace looking out over the Severn. The wind turbines being one of the best features of the view - anyway, the pea and spinach soup was really good and it was a good spot to sit a while with the Guardian. In the sun!

Another cycle path goes 9 miles along the River Avon into the city centre. Passing under Clifton Bridge. Yay. The tide was out so the river didn't look so great, but it has a 13 metre tidal fall so would be quite different at high tide.


Getting to the bridge was a really good ride, but then I had to push the bike a long way up to the park at the top of the bridge, which is the site of an Iron Age settlement, 2000 years ago.

I was going to say the bridge was designed by Brunel, but it turns out that his original design didn't actually get built at all because of the Bristol Riots.

In 1794 the populace of Bristol were said to be "apt to collect in mobs on the slightest occasions; but have been seldom so spirited as in the late transactions on Bristol-bridge." The Bristol Bridge Riot of 30 September 1793 began as a protest at renewal of an act levying tolls on Bristol Bridge, which included the proposal to demolish several houses near the bridge in order to create a new access road, and controversy about the date for removal of gates. 11 people were killed and 45 injured, making it one of the worst massacres of the 18th century in England.  (from wikipedia)

Apparently the first bungee jump was off this bridge. Did that have anything to do with A J Hackett?

I was going to ride home across The Downs, but meandered down a quiet residential street called College Road. So here's Clifton College. Isn't that where Harry Potter went to school? I rode through a wedding party, which seemed to include about 20 bridesmaids in royal blue gowns.

Yep, I did make it home, past this lovely little cottage sitting splendidly among the boring stucco row houses along Henleaze Road. It's The Old Lodge, and it is the only privately-owned thatched house in Bristol. How about that for a discovery? It has spy windows so the Coach House man could keep an eye on passing coaches while he was having his lunch.

Down the Loire - off on a rocky start.

This blog is going to jump around a bit now as I catch up. The next few posts cover the bit of the Loire that I cycled, from Orleans to Angers.

First there's that funny scene in Bordeaux. I have a ticket to Orleans, I have checked with the conductor on the platform and, yes the velo carriage will be be there at the W sign down the platform towards the back of the train. The train pulls in, its a mile long. I'm looking for the velo sign and an elderly woman pushing a bike runs past me shouting over her shoulder "first carriage". She's tearing off down the platform towards the "A" sign, and I'm running along behind pushing Betty and trying to dodge passengers with huge suitcases on wheels and not fall into that gap between train and platform and this train is a mile long and she's still running in front of me and the first carriage is miles away and now I'm on the pedals trying to keep up and weaving between people down the platform and here it is but there are 3 steep steps up and I'm trying to lift and drag bike with all its load up into the carriage and someone gives me a heave from behind and somehow we get three puffing old people and three bikes and a bike trailer into that carriage just as the train pulls out. Turns out they are from Tauranga. They are at the end of their ride down the coast from Brittany.


I said goodbye to them in Tours, and took another train to Orleans, by which time it was early evening. I picked up the Loire à Vélo signs from right outside the railway station. Incidentally, there was a bunch of people cycling inside the station. Several of the railway stations across France have set up stations where people can recharge their devices by pedal power and people really seem to like the idea. Check out the video.




“Loire à Vélo” is a well-travelled easy cycling route that is mostly off-road. 800,000 cyclists take the Loire à Vélo each year. The gigantic project cost €52 million. The route attracts huge numbers of tourists, including about one-third from abroad, mainly from Europe (Dutch, German, Belgian, British…) but also from further afield (Americans, Canadians, Australians…). I saw a few Japanese. I met three kiwis and a few riders from the UK, but the route is clearly popular with the French themselves and most of the people I talked with in the campgrounds and along the way were French.

The route joins up with Eurovélo 6, a massive trans-European route that follows the Loire, Rhine and Danube, linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea over a distance of almost 3,600 km. Now there's a plan for next year.

Meanwhile in Orleans I was on the route, nicely separated from most of the rush hour traffic and spinning along happily until I started to suspect something was a bit wrong. Either the river was flowing the wrong way or I was headed for the Black Sea. Yes, I'd gone in the opposite direction to the one I thought I going. Again! Plus I needed to visit an ATM. That involved a few cobblestone streets. Practice for what was to come as I followed the river downstream and eventually out of town. Lanes became paths and then narrow tracks but I kept bumping along until I had to get off and push through long grass.

Google maps said I was headed for a campground. With only about half an hour of daylight left but at least back on proper roads again (read roads, with cars - not the Velo Route), the 'camping' turned out to be an abandoned bit of parkland in a dodgy suburb. What to do but keep cycling.  A bit further along the river there was an Aire - an overnight parking spot for camping cars. No toilet facilities but there was a tap and that was all I needed so I put the tent up and crawled straight in. Not exactly stealth camping, but free.

Next morning I followed the road a while before I finally picked up another one of these green signs and got onto the proper route again.

The actual cycle route is a bicycle superhighway.
But easy to miss a signpost, and following google maps
certainly makes for some bumpy rides until you get back on route.