A short walk across the Alps

In the summer of 1982 I took my first flight to Greece.  I was sitting in a starboard window seat reading a new travel guide, the first edition of the first Rough Guide by Mark Ellingham, when the clouds below cleared.
We were high over a confusion of jagged sharp crystals. The  Alps were scattered below us and far into the distant haze.

Thinking outside the box

This week my trusty but not rusty Marin took me for a ride to celebrate its 14th birthday, and we had a ‘smashing’ time.

The good, the mad and the same – life in Germany

Germany is always ‘dead fucking last’ on any British list of places to live or places to holiday-home. As the only Manx person living here on purpose I offer you the skeet – the good, the mad and the ‘same as it ever was’ of 18 months living on the bank of the Rhine in southern Germany a short paddle from France.

The story of my cycling endeavours – who brakes loses

Beware of all enterprises that require Lycra

Having recently spouted (blogged) about the new cake scale I thought it high time to put words into action and earn a 100 mile cake. The return ride from Breisach to Basle in Switzerland is roughly 130km and to earn a cake I would have to supplement my ‘Rhine right bank upstream’ route with some further meanderings.

The cake scale

“Let them eat cake every 160.9344 km” (attrib. Queenie Marie Antoinette)

I brought my trusty push-bike and my scented running shoes to Southern Germany and though I have succeeded in re-calibrating the bike’s odometer to kilometers I am still stuck in thinking in the Queen’s finest olde Imperial. 

Bandes cyclables & German noodles

The Southern Rhine divides two countries and two very different cycling experiences. In the south of Germany most roads have at least one cycle path, often well removed from the roads. The French have had a go, splashed a bit of paint around, marked a few cycle lanes in cities, printed a few maps and signs but their heart isn’t in it.

Everybody’s gotta be somewhere

“Everybody’s gotta be somewhere!”
Eccles

When I told a neighbour on the Isle of Man that I was moving to live in Germany he advised me that the Manx are “bored abroad” and that the troubles of the world are caused by people who don’t stay where they are put. There is more than a smidgen of truth in the anecdote about the Manx crab: