This blog started as a self-advertisement, the idea being to generate interest in or at least awareness of my book about cycle touring in France – France On Two Wheels. I also seem to be using it as a dropbox for unused travel articles, having lost quite a few recently on a crashed computer. It gives me the luxury to write what I like and tinker with it to my heart’s content, but deprives me of the chance to blame editors and subeditors. I have promised not to write anything rude about my friends, fellow travel writers or anyone else. There is more than enough rage on the internet without a contribution from me. But if a little rant makes me feel better and saves my dogs a kicking, why not?
Let’s hear it for audible
It seems that today is not independence day, after all, but thanksgiving day, brought forward by half a year. Up and down the land, those fortunate enough to survive lockdown have been out and about, singing a Fleetwood Mac song … Continue reading
Women’s Day
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Did Mrs Le Blond found a Ladies Ski Club?
Continue readingA piste of history
The first British Ski Championship, Jan 6/7 1921
Continue readingLe Carré: ‘far and away the best ski cartoonist in the business’
“I have only ever written by hand. The lapsed graphic artist in me actually enjoys drawing the words.” John le Carré, The Pigeon Tunnel (2016) In all the tributes that have proliferated over the last 48 hours, I have neither … Continue reading
An Everest in West Oxfordshire
It is a not unusual occurrence, while I toil up Uffington’s White Horse Hill on what I refer to as my daily mortification, for me to cross paths with another cyclist, not once but three times: twice – an overtake … Continue reading
Gone for a swim
When I learnt from http://doggolf.info/ that Wales is among the least dog-friendly golfing corners of what for the moment, however inappropriately, we still call the United Kingdom, I felt an extra surge of pride in the lovely course and excellent … Continue reading
Up the Downs
My base camp at the foot of the Lambourn Downs (north side) is well placed for bike rides up to the Ridgeway – short bursts of exertion that raise the pulse rate in beautiful surroundings. There are more than a … Continue reading
Golf and covid: the new abnormal
At least the lockdown spared us the torture of golf. Tasting an unfamiliar hint of serenity in the mixed salad of my mood, I can only attribute it to an absence of missed tiddlers and sliced drives onto the railway … Continue reading
Time to rediscover old favourites
A PR contacts me, having been alerted by google to an article of mine that has just appeared on the Telegraph Travel website, mentioning a client of hers, Le Touquet. She isn’t a subscriber to Telegraph Premium or whatever it’s … Continue reading
On the George Sand trail
This morning’s Radio 4 Lord Bragg show about George Sand took me back to my first university year, when someone on my staircase had a sophisticated American girlfriend with a drawl that might have been Charleston, Boston or Vivien Leigh … Continue reading