There’s a crow sitting on the telephone wire that arcs from pole to pole from where I’m writing this at Crosshands, loops up the road to Hints and beyond to Clee Hill. The two are connected: as the crow flies our village is only 19 miles from Coalbrookdale, the settlement on the banks of the River Severn near Telford where the Industrial Revolution took one of it’s first significant turns. And while this part of the county with it’s coal and dhustone quarries was on one of the spokes of that revolution, it’s been rather left behind in the telecommunications revolution that, in its own way, is every bit as important.
Crows are clever corvids but I doubt mine is bright enough to know the wire beneath his feet is copper. By now, of course, it should be a fibre optic cable. But the high speed service only goes as far as the green cabinet next to the world’s ugliest bus stop (with, admittedly, the world’s prettiest view). So down in Coreley we’re in the slow lane of the information superhighway – and at times on the hard shoulder – with connection speeds barely high enough to enjoy a Netflix night in. And with the village pub now all but closed a night out isn’t an option!
But superfast broadband brings business as well as entertainment down its optical cables so we’re being left behind a bit like an area without those former superhighways, the railways and roads. Our business ACM Training, for example, could employ more people in the parish with a faster Internet connection. But BT and it’s infrastrucure arm Openreach refuse to even put a date on when the final leg from that cabinet to our village will be upgraded. I pointed out to them that they missed a golden opportunity to lay the cable in the same trench as the new water pipe that was laid last year. Is it too much to ask the utility companies to combine forces where it would save them and us double disruption as well as money? Clearly it is.
So if like me you believe super fast broadband is a necessity not a luxury write to BT. Better still send them an email. But just remember for now it won’t be much quicker than the post.
Manchester skyline. A reminder of the city’s rich, industrial past.
I’ve been working in Liverpool and Manchester the last few days and it’s painful to see how two, once mighty and proud industrial cities have been brought to their knees. I’m not deceived by blue skies, Instagram filters or rose-tinted spectacles. I realise life in the mills and foundries and dockyards was hard and that by most empirical measures we’re better off now. But that doesn’t make it any less urgent for these places to rediscover meaning in a post industrial world. We can’t all work in the service sector. As the community historian, Professor Carl Chinn, once put it to me in relation to Birmingham: “The problem is we’re not mekin’ things anymore.”
So what can Britain’s former industrial heartlands do to reinvent themselves? A lot, of course, has been done already. Running along the Mersey from Pier Head via a statue of the Beatles to the Albert Dock and beyond, that much is clear. But most of what has been done is refurbishment – looking back to a real or imagined past rather than forward to a brighter future. It’s the same in Manchester. And beyond those narrow strips of hope , further along the towpaths and riverbanks, the other side of the crunch of broken glass underfoot, lies despair and decay. The tide went out in the 70s and 80s and it’s been out ever since.
A sign of the times in Manchester. Did we turn our back on industry?
That’s not to say there aren’t modernist beacons shining out like the lighthouses that guided ships through the shifting mudbanks a generation before. The Echo Arena, for example. I can’t help thinking, however, that the lack of ambition in much modern industrial and commercial architecture is unwittingly contributing to the malaise. No need to look after it. It’s temporary. Unlike the handsome red brick structure at the top of this post which at least has the feeling of permanence. Or the Radio City Tower pictured below that dominates the Liverpool skyline. Daring. Bold. A statement to the rest of the world. But built in 1969.
I’m woken by the Dawn Chorus. Not yet the full orchestra. A solitary blackbird playing oboe (chirping is too unrefined a word for it) from the uppermost branch of the wind-stooped apple tree and the dot-dot-dot-dash-dash refrain of a wood pigeon playing Morse code in the rhythm section where the telephone wire arcs up to meet the pole: that tar-barked tree which a bar later reverberates to the staccato beat of a woodpecker tapping up breakfast or test drilling for a new housing development.
I’m up now. Watching as well as listening. A cock pheasant is picking his way across the silvery field like a cross-dressing party goer in high heels. Not wanting to get his feet wet and weaving a snail trail across the dew. All burgundy and wine bottle green with neck curved up and tail curved down. A tipsy tightrope walker turned through 90 degrees.
The hen bird is dowdy by comparison. Brown but not mousey. Making her way up the hedgeline from the stream with an arthiritic strut. More Max Wall than Max Factor.
They’re on a collision course these birds of a feather. Choreographed perhaps? (It’s not just the sap that’s rising). A dance set to music. But if it is, he doesn’t know the moves and she rises entrechat* in a crescendo of ruffled pride. Her alarm muffled like an overwound clockwork toy heard through a blanket. And for a moment the chorus is quietened.
*Entrechat (pronounced: ahn-truh-shah’) is a ballet term which means to jump in the air from two feet – beat the legs together in the air, land either on one or two feet.
Dangerous I know, mixing business with pleasure. But here’s a sneak preview of the new ACM Training cycling kit. I’ll be wearing it to promote the company at cycling events over the year and they’ll also be available to buy. Details to follow.
Calm. The steam from your pre-ride espresso rises vertically.
Today I cycled from Aberdeen to The Lecht ski centre in the Cairngorms and back. Whichever way I pedalled the wind was slapping my face. Which got me thinking about the Beaufort scale.
The scale was devised in 1805 by Francis Beaufort (later Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort), an Irish Royal Navy officer, while serving on HMS Woolwich. Clearly he wasn’t a cyclist. If he was, this is what he’d have written…
0 – Calm. The steam from your pre-ride espresso rises vertically but only because you’re slap bang in the middle of a high pressure system that stretches from Scandanavia to the Bay of Biscay. Night time temperature’s have plummeted to – 12C and the road is covered with 3″ of black ice.
1 – Light air. The drift of bumble bees indicates wind direction which, inevitably, is always directly towards the unzipped neck of your cycling jersey. Other, stingless, insects remain stationary.
2 – Light breeze. Wind felt on exposed skin which is a blessing in summer but leads to chillblains in winter. Leaves rustle but you think the noise is coming from your chain so you stop pedalling. Wind vanes begin to move – towards you.
3 – Gentle breeze. Leaves and small twigs constantly moving. The dead ones snap off and land in your path. You swerve to avoid a slightly bigger twig just as an articulated lorry starts to overtake you. The weather beaten flags left up after last year’s poorly-organised sportive are extended.
4 – Moderate breeze. Dust and loose paper raised. The dust gets in your eyes even though you’ve just shelled out £200 for a pair of wraparound, anti-nuclear, eye protectors (formally known as sunglasses). Small branches begin to move but you can’t see them because your eyes are watering so much.
5 – Fresh breeze. Branches of a moderate size move. But you still can’t see them because by now you’ve accidentally rubbed cherry-flavoured energy gel into your eyes in a desperate attempt to get rid of the grit. Small trees in leaf begin to sway. You begin to sway.
6 – Strong breeze. Large branches in motion. You’re in motion. But slower than you’d expect for the effort because, whichever way you head, the wind is always on your nose. Whistling heard in overhead wires and in your helmet. Umbrella use becomes difficult and you begin to wish you’d brought that Gortex cycling onesie instead. Empty plastic bins tip over. You tip over empty plastic bins.
7 – High wind, moderate gale, near gale. Whole trees in motion. You’ve ground to a virtual standstill and dismount to squirt water in your eyes because, while that cherry-flavoured gel tastes lovely, the methadioxydrone, or whatever gives it its taste, stings like hell. Effort needed to see where you’re going. Effort needed to walk against the wind.
8 – Gale, fresh gale. Some twigs broken from trees. Some spokes broken from wheel. Cars veer on road. Bikes veer on road to avoid veering cars. Progress on foot is seriously impeded so you decide to keep pedalling. Progress on bike is seriously impeded (by twigs and veering cars).
9 – Strong/severe gale. Some branches break off trees, some wheels break off bikes. Some small trees blow over. Some small bikes blow over. You wish you’d still got those stabilisers from back in the day. Construction/temporary signs and barricades blow over but only at the precise moment you’re riding past them.
10 – Storm, whole gale. Trees are broken off or uprooted. Cyclists are broken and upended. Structural damage likely, particularly to the aero carbon frame that you re-mortgaged your house to buy.
11 – Violent storm. Widespread vegetation and structural damage likely. Most of the vegetation ends up in your face. Most of the structural damage is to the most expensive components on your bike. The dérailleur hanger is the only bit that remains unbent.
12 – Storm force. Severe, widespread damage to vegetation and structures. Debris and unsecured objects are hurled about. On the third attempt you finally manage to open the back door to fetch the bike from the shed only to realise that there is no shed. You head back to the house inexplicably humming Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the Wizard of Oz to find the back door has blown shut. You haven’t got a key and there’s nobody else in the house. You utter a string of un-Dorothy-like expletives and sit on the step in your bib shorts cursing while the storm blows itself out.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this post please consider donating to my Just Giving page. I’m raising money for Willen Hospice by cycling from Paris to Nice via the Alps. Hopefully not into a headwind!
P.S. You can read about the proper Beaufort scale here and see how spookily similar mine is to the real thing!
It is, as headlines go, a little confusing, I’ll grant you that. Certainly not up there with “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster” which has the simple virtue of telling you all you need to know without having to demean yourself by actually buying a copy of The Sun (wot published it.)
Courtesy The Sun
And not in the same league as my personal favourite, the Carlisle News and Star’s “Budgie’s Death Now Being Treated As Suspicious” which has the opposite effect and makes you want to take out an annual subscription (at least to the Silloth edition).
Courtesy Carlisle News
No! “T am S y” falls into the cryptic category and as such probably belongs more in the back page crossword puzzle than on a front page headline. The clue is in the gaps. Fill them in with the missing letters and you’ve solved it. Or, if you prefer your clues a little more gnomic, Rupert Murdoch on your bike will give you the same result and also, by a bizarre coincidence, link the hamster headline with mine.*
Yes, you’ve cracked it: “Team Sky.” Cracked being the operative word because the Team Sky lettering on my very expensive Rapha bib shorts has cracked after just one wash and dry (ahem) cycle. My other pair of even more eye-wateringly expensive shorts haven’t and they were put through the wringer (so to speak) in several ride through laundromats on my epic trip across America.
I didn’t notice Chris Froome sporting am Sk kit as he showed the competition a clean pair of cleats on his way up to the summit finish on La Pierre Saint-Martin. I didn’t see the motorcyclist cameraman getting an arse shot of Richie Porte’s shorts with “2 s Cent y Fo ” emblazened across them.
Courtesy my tumble drier (on sportswear mode)
All of which leads me to conclude that Team Sky and Rapha are fobbing off us amateur riders with second rate kit.
Or to put it another way: “Team Sky’s Bib Shorts Are Pants.”
If I want to wear something that needs mollycoddling in the laundry department I’ll buy a G string woven from unicorn fur thank you very much. Cycle wear is going to get sweaty. Fact. And as such it’s going get whanged in the washing machine and tossed in the tumble drier. So make them more durable please. Either that or persuade the boffins at Bosch to design a cycle cycle on the next generation of washers. At least then I’ll be able to freshen up the G string and the bib shorts in the same load.
*Rupert Murdoch’s companies have stakes in both The Sun and Team Sky.
By the way, if you’ve enjoyed reading this and you’ve got a few bob to spare I’m riding from Paris to Nice in a few weeks time to raise money for Willen Hospice. You can donate safely and securely via my Just Giving page. Thank you.
I should have seen it coming. The van that is. Three thousand miles across car-obsessed, gas-guzzling America without a scratch. Three hundred miles in bike-obsessed, pedal-pushing Holland and…
I’d arrived in the Netherlands a few days earlier to put in some training for Ride for Willen 2015 – an eight day, 800 mile ride from Paris to Nice via two Tour de France summits in aid of Willen Hospice. Not, on the face of it, an ideal place to prepare for a ride that takes in Alpe D’Huez and Mont Ventoux. But my thinking was this: what the country lacks in vertical ascent it more than makes up for in bike friendliness. And, I have to admit, beer. Those seductive blonds that at the end of a long session make you realise just why you took up cycling in the first place – to eat and drink what you want.
Nothing like a cold one after a long ride.
Beer apart, the Dutch don’t do things by halves. There are dedicated cycle lanes in virtually every major town and city. The tarmac is smooth. The demarcation lines freshly painted. Why, there are even traffic lights just for bikes! And even where two and four wheels share the same bit of carriageway, drivers behave so impeccably towards cyclists that you can get your head down and concentrate on your training regime without worrying about where the next threat is coming from. It’s probably because, when they aren’t behind the wheel, motorists are themselves cyclists. You see everybody in Holland rides a bike. All except one.
…without an alstublieftthe driver of the black Renault Trafic (funny how you notice these little details) a wheel-length or two ahead of me swerves into the cycle lane to avoid a car pulling out of a side road. I swerve too. But the hastily- executed manoeuvre only results in a face plant on the van’s right rear door instead of the van’s left rear door. I say face plant. It was more of a head plant, as I had just enough time, or instinct, to tuck in my chin to let my helmet take the full force of the impact. Which it did very well. Though it’s a shame cycle gloves aren’t made out of the same material because my right thumb took the next full force – of my impact with the black top. It’s only when you break such a small and apparently insignificant bone that you realise just how significant it really is. With one hand’s worth of opposable digits out of action for at least a fortnight, you don’t need an evolutionary biologist to tell you that human beings wouldn’t have made it down from the trees without fingers and thumbs. Hell, they probably wouldn’t have made it out of the water and up to the trees in the first place.
So next time you’re asked why fish don’t wear shirts you’ll know the answer: without thumbs they can’t do up the buttons!
Thumbs up.
Back home the nurse in the minor injuries unit at Ludlow Hospital (note to NHS do NOT close it) entered the word TOOSH in my medical notes. Ever the journalist I asked him what it meant. “Trauma on out-stretched hand'” he said.
“No trauma at all,” I replied. “Not compared to those at the end of their lives being cared for at Willen Hospice.”
You can donate to this exceptionally good cause on my Just Giving page. Please do. I’ll give you a thumbs up.
Last year when I cycled nearly 3,000 miles across America you asked what are you doing it for and how much money do you hope to raise and, to my shame, I had to reply just for me and nothing!
Well this year I’ve decide to salve my guilty conscience with a sponsored ride. I’ll have a lovely time. But it’ll be even lovelier if I know that every turn of the pedals is bringing me closer to my individual target of £1,000 and the collective target of £100,000. So please give as much as you can via my Just Giving page and click donate.
I’ve long been struck by the saw (old saying) that says a dead tree is more alive than a live one. Which is why I’d been reluctant to take the other kind of saw to the cherry at the bottom of the orchard even though – to misquote Housman – of my three score years and ten it wasn’t going to bloom again. At first I hoped it had succumbed to some temporary malaise and that the following Spring would turn slowly green via a drift of baby pink confetti as it had done every April for the 22 years I’d lived at Crosshands. But now I’ve been hefted to this Shropshire spot for 25 years and instead of dropping leaves it’s dropping branches. It was the smaller ones at first. Twigs really. Sapless stick-fingers the first to dry and brilliant tinder for the wood burners we’re still lighting (in late May) to keep the latent chill of the clay earth from creeping up the solid cottage walls. But now the bigger branches are falling too, threatening the limbs of those whose lifeblood is still rising should they be unlucky to pass underneath at the wrong moment. Which, statistically, may be unlikely but a chance increased because the tree is on the path to the compost heap – a part of the plot frequented more at this time of year than in winter. Rhubarb leaves and the less malignant weeds piled on top (we burn the really persistent ones like dock and dandelion); sweet-smelling mulch to nourish this season’s vegetables pulled from the bottom. An eternal cycle of death and re-growth. And a handy home for hedgehogs.
