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oye cómo va

in the early years of the velo club, when most of us were still young in the mirror as well as the head, a sunday bike ride would often leave at the appointed hour of 10am from debbie's in bruichladdich and encompass the thirty-plus kilometres to ardbeg distillery, where we'd avail ourselves of coffee and, perchance, a plate of clootie dumpling. in the summer months, the latter was often augmented with ice-cream. from port ellen village to ardbeg is approximately five kilometres along a road that features three malt whisky distilleries. in order: laphroaig, lagavulin and ardbeg.

though it is now possible to avail oneself of modest refreshment at the first two, in years gone by, ardbeg was the only one to afford a full menu and dining in their old kiln café, a facility frequented not only by visitors, but many locals too, often entaiing a bit of a wait for a table, unless the weather was sufficiently kind to allow dining al fresco. for reasons best known to those at head office near edinburgh, at some point in the relatively recent past, it was decided that the food was marginalising the whisky, which, after all, was the very reason for having a distillery there in the first place.

sadly, this clash of catering vs marketing resulted in the complete dismantling of what was once the finest and most highly-recommended dining facility on the island. many of the dining options were transferred out of doors to a repurposed airstream trailer, (ardstream) in the courtyard, despite the island's proclivity for wet and windy even at the height of summer. combine that with an indefensible need to play 70s pop music at high volume during opening hours, and you can perhaps divine why the distillery lost favour with a fervent peloton.

even this year, mid-point dining during the ride of the falling rain was repositioned to the village of port ellen due to ardbeg no longer serving food or even coffee at weekends. changed days indeed.

and what little thunder they might still possess seems likely to be summarily removed when portintruan distillery opens in the foreseeable future, replete as it intends to be with bicycle parking and a restaurant/café offering substantial views along islay's southern coast. to make matters even better/worse (delete as applicable), this much anticipated food stop will be managed by jackie thomson, formerly the visitor centre manager at (you've guessed it), ardbeg's old kiln café.

the more things change, the more they stay the same.

however, the opening of portintruan distillery will immediately require a renaming of the three distilleries path, a facility opened in 2016, taking pedestrians and cyclists from port ellen primary school to ardbeg distillery without need to join motor traffic on the road. for those who are experienced cyclists, riding close to state-of-the-art carbon, the road is the better option; the path was designed for those of a more leisurely persuasion. though i and my colleagues have ridden the path, it becomes endlessly frustrating for cyclists and pedestrians alike, with the former having often to ride very slowly and carefully, interspersed with "excuse me" and "sorry" regularly annunciated along its entire length.

what it has done, however, is remove the often ever-so-slightly inebriated whisky tourists from the path of a marauding, yet ever-so-careful peloton. the dangers of collision between velocipedes and whisky bottles are drastically reduced by our remaining confidently on the road we have regularly plied for over twenty years.

as far as i'm aware, there have been no serious incidents between pedestrians and cyclists on the three distilleries path in the ten years of its existence, and i don't see that changing when a fourth is added before the end of the year. which brings even more attention to the decision by the mayor of italian lakeside city of como to ban all bicycles from the town's historic centre because he was hit by an e-bike. covering about 30 streets and due to come into force in september, the ban will require cyclists on e-bikes or acoustic bikes to dismount. residents and politicians have accused alessandro rapinise of "waging a personal vendetta". there is already a petition calling for him to reverse the ban.

the mayor has stated that the ban is necessary to protect public safety, but you do have to wonder if he'd have had a similar reaction if he'd been hit by a car, which, i suspect, is a more common occurrence (car to car, not car to person). would he have implemented a complete ban on motor cars from como's streets on the grounds of public safety?

i think we all know the answer to that question.

saturday 22 august 2026

working for peanuts

the cartoon characters, charlie brown, shermy and patty first appeared in print in october 1950. over the next fifty years, joined by an ever widening circle of friends, they aged not one whit, but in the process, subtly influenced a large number of today's population. when i attended art college in the early 1970s, i religiously purchased a copy of the observer newspaper every weekend, with the specific intention of cutting out the colour peanuts cartoon that appeared in every week's colour magazine. many of these, i'm proud to say, still reside in a brown envelope in a bedside drawer. one college friend wallpapered his room in the university halls of residence with the selfsame cartoon strips, including the ceiling.

by the time the originator, charles m schultz, had ended his life's work, he had published almost 17,900 cartoon strips, leading some fans to entitle them the greatest story ever told. reputedly schultz was never a fan of the name peanuts, a situation that persisted even after he had put the notepad away and placed his pen in a drawer for the last time. the cartoons had originally appeared, in the three years prior to 1950, under the title li'l folks, but for copyright reasons, that had to be changed. debuting in the original 1950 cartoons and based on one of the dogs charles schultz had owned as a child, was the infamous snoopy, a character whose popularity arguably rivalled that of the strip's principal character, charlie brown. while charlie morphed from an unlucky schoolkid, to an unlucky baseball team captain, snoopy ('a funny looking kid with a big nose'), accompanied by his sidekick woodstock, a yellow bird which spoke only in vertical strokes, inhabited a far more fantastical range of careers.

these included the world war 1 flying ace, the nemesis of the red baron (former mahavishnu orchestra drummer, billy cobham, featured two compositions entitled snoopy's search and red baron on the 1973 album spectrum. this had been preceded seven years earlier, by the pop group, the royal guardsmen who released snoopy vs the red baron, which reached number 6 in the uk pop charts in 1967). he was also renowned as the easter beagle, while the apollo 10 lunar module was named snoopy and the command module, charlie brown. snoopy was also renowned for disguising himself at hallowe'en as 'the great pumpkin' in order to surprise linus, patiently awaiting the arrival of the great pumpkin.

and joe cool.

and snoopy was a noted cyclist.

the latter fact is one with which i'm personally familiar, having received a velocipedinally illustrated t-shirt at christmas from an office colleague over two years ago. it has been well-worn, to say the least. i am, however, insufficiently well-read to know whether schultz included snoopy and/or woodstock on a bicycle within any specific cartoon strip (and if i undertake the research to find out, we could be here for weeks). however, it is possible to acquire a range of apparel featuring the world's most famous dog on a bicycle. the purpose of today's monologue is to persuade you to do so.

while i perfectly understand that your point of view might vary dramatically to that of mine, unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool cycling activist, wearing a snoopy-on-a-bike t-shirt or hoodie is a subtle means of advertising your affection for man's greatest invention (along with, according to graeme obree, the duvet). however, rather than sending a blunt visual that you like bicycles, a tee with snoopy on a bike highlights a more playful and less confrontational nature. and that goes double if woodstock is included. my argument does, however, rest heavily on the apprehension by others that an important statement is, nonetheless, being made.

i'm a firm believer that direct proselytisation is rarely welcome, so if we wish to spread the word in a manner that doesn't include gravel, cyclocross, tour de france, mvdp, or tadej, if only on the basis that these are way too specific for the innocent bystander, there really is no better symbol than snoopy on a bike.

friday 21 august 2026

you're welcome.

growing up?

it's hard to pin down just when the domain of the gravellous first became a thing. travel far enough back through the previous decade of the 21st century, and the clamouring as to who first invented the gravel bike becomes ever more cacophonous, ultimately resting upon the specific definition of the genre. there's probably no real argument over the country of its origin, since north america, by virtue of its size and expanse, appears to be home to more kilometres of gravel roads than any european country. that particular fact was amply demonstrated by the original rapha continental, a group of cycling mavericks endorsed by perren street and its portland office in the upstairs floor of a wooden building, at the foot of the stairs leading to which was frequently a brood of hens.

the yard was mostly gravel.

however, as i have pointed out on many an unpopular occasion, daniel wakefield pasley, cole maness, jeremy dunn and colleagues undertook their popular series of rides aboard handbuilt, steel frames, shod with 28mm continental rubber on their chris king hubbed wheels, that scarcely resembled what we now refer to as gravel bikes. though emulating their road-based compatriots, carbon appears to have supplanted steel as a favoured frame material, but what has changed, and quite dramatically so, is an almost exponential growth in tyre width. yet, though i have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that early gravel bikes had adopted the tyre specifications of the bicycles already capable of achieving that which gravel had set out to prove, it seems logical to view that as a practical starting point. the uci mandates that cyclocross (to which i am referring) hold rigidly to a 33mm tyre width for competition purposes; based on very limited personal observation, many early gravel bikes appear to be fitted with sizes resembling the challenge chicanes fitted to my specialized crux.

if evidence is required to demonstrate the difference (my crux arrived with a pair of in-house 33mm specialized cyclocross tyres), a quick check of the the specialized website, the s-works version of the latest crux model is sold with 45mm tyres, a width which would have you ejected by the commissaires, were you to attempt a head-to-head with tibau nys, michael vantourenhout, or cameron mason. to the best of my knowledge, specialized still grudgingly classifies the crux as suitable for cross. extra expense for 'cross aficionados. even at the opposite end of the range, (the sport model), 45mm prevails.

cycling website the escape collective recently carried out a survey of almost 700 readers, to enquire if they had followed this particular trend - even as far as 50mm. that surely blurs the line between gravel and mountain biking; at those sort of parameters, the only real differences might rest entirely on suspension forks and handlebar style (and even the latter often seems up for grabs). according to the escape collective, the results of their modest survey indicated that a majority tend to be a tad more conservative in their tyre choices. that could be a sensible assessment of the tyre situation, since it appears the increasing width is predominantly at the behest of the racing fraternity.

like many early mountain bikes, substantial numbers of gravel machinery not only never see a finish-line, but rarely take those tyres offroad at all.

but one query raised by the website's survey asked, "has the term gravel become so broad, it has outgrown the point of being a useful definition?" that very question might be turned back on itself, to ask whether the term gravel was ever a useful definition in the first place? much like the term mountain bike, it arguably relies more on a marketing ideal than a barely adequate description. there is no agreed definition of the height at which a hill becomes a mountain, the latter being a highly subjective description. scotland has hundreds of peaks in excess of two thousand feet, the historic height at which it was agreed a hill became a mountain. but for those of us who either own or have owned a defined mountain bike, hands up all those who have ridden any one of them?

but given the uk's preponderance (pre-heatwaves) for mud over gravel, how many of the vast number of gravel-bike owners have regularly ridden on this particular substrate? and just to undermine any potential accusations of prejudice, i will freely admit that i have never entered a cyclocross race (though in my defence, i have dismounted, shouldered the bike, and clambered up a narrow forest track near islay woollen mill).

specific definitions are, however, the beloved sandpit toys of marketing departments the world over. enter any drum store you care to mention, and take a closer look at the apellations screened onto the cymbals; light ride, heavy ride, crash, splash and hi-hat, all applied at the behest of the marketeers. yet i have a particularly heavy ride cymbal that a fellow jazz drummer once used as a crash cymbal. sonority, it appears, is in the ear of the stick wielder. so is a bicycle with wide rubber a better example of gravel, than one sporting narrower? could wout win a gravel race on his uci compliant cyclocross bike? and does anyone really care?

gravel racers point to the increased grip, lower pressures and improved puncture resistance of wider tyres, none of which i find myself in disagreement. but having ridden the crux on 45mm tyres on the road, i can personally testify to the suspicion i was attempting to ride through a field of peanut butter, so slow was my progress. no matter your chosen discipline, subject it to a reality check before you get in too deep. if you're not racing and spending more time on-road than off, you are probably not the target audience for trends at either end of the spectrum.

the middle way has much to commend it.

thursday 20 august 2026

late to the party?

in the early 1990s, i came across ride uk bmx magazine, not as someone immersed in the genre, but as an individual intrigued by an apparent fascination with what i'd always regarded as probably the most impractical of bicycles. though 20" wheels were hardly the latest in fashionable accessories, the notion of building with 48 spokes in an era when even heavyweight touring wheels usually topped out at 36, seemed more of an aesthetic choice than the result of pragmatism (though from the former point of view, i could truly see the attraction). add to that the subsequent questionable practice of chromed spokes and rims on an hebridean island surrounded by the ocean, and my viewpoint seemed unlikely to improve.

however, since at least a small fraction of my income at the time was gained from selling and maintaining bicycles, during one of the cyclical patterns of bmx revival, i thought it best that i explore the meme in greater detail; a means of gaining favour with the cool kids, most of whom, if i'm honest, were actually less cool than was i. i'd be fibbing if i said i could recall from whence the impetus arrived, but i discovered the aforementioned bmx magazine, to which i immediately instigated a postal subscription.

lest you consider this an early attempt at a mid-life crisis, i should disavow you of that notion by explaining that the page layouts of ride uk bmx magazine greatly appealed to my graphic sensibilities. here, i reasoned, was a design innovation i figured i could adopt for my own purposes, particularly as i transitioned to an apple mac computer and adobe's flagship layout software, pagemaker. a subsequent telephone conversation with one of the noble brothers responsible for the magazine's existence, led me onto how it was possible to create the grunge-style letter forms using adobe illustrator, another piece of software with which i had more than just a passing familiarity. that led to fontographer, software not engendered by adobe, but a programme that allowed not only the design of complete font sets of any style, but the ability to generate them as fully-fledged typefaces that could be installed on any personal computer.

however, during said conversation, the magazine's designer mentioned raygun magazine as a source of inspiration, meaning, as you'll be not at all surprised to learn, that i needed to get hold of that particular magazine, originated and designed by influential graphic designer, david carson. the few copies i was able to acquire (and might still possess in an obscure corner of a bedroom cupboard) were revelationary. in an industry where it is de rigeur to leave a defined amount of space between columns of text, carson butted one up against the next, a choice which looked great but made for very hard reading. carson and raygun are still widely famed for publishing an entire interview set in wingdings (a typeface consisting entirely of symbols) and another which, on reaching the edge of the page, continued overleaf. in order to read said article, it was thus necessary to continually turn the page back and forth.

however, in much the same way that the defiant act of wearing entirely patchwork denim jeans at art school was completely undermined by marks & spencers selling crimplene trousers printed with a denim patchwork pattern, carson's graphic and typological innovations were soon copied, arising in publications as far apart from the grunge of green day and nirvana as it's possible to get attempting to emulate his graphic rebellion.

uniform acceptance by the establishment rendered carson's revolution somewhat inert and increasingly irrelevant. in the interim, publishing and graphic design have returned to their far more user-friendly and mundane origins. now that why not? associates, tomato and sunbather are effectively no more, with a diluting influence year on year, it seems possible to look back on the early to mid 1990s as one of graphic design's golden periods, possibly as irrelevant to contemporary times as seattle's grunge movement is to hip hop.

or perhaps not. though i undoubtedly have my opinions, it seems a tad incongruous that one of the 21st century's most successful and hitherto influential cycling apparel company has found it necessary to engage the services of mr carson to popularise their latest capsule collection, a design paradigm that would appear to contradict everything that brought founder simon mottram to bring the first, iconic classic jersey to market in 2004. if rapha, under the current leadership of fran millar, felt it necessary to reach backwards for inspiration, i feel they may have been better advised to revisit 2004 rather than 1994.

why, i ask myself, does the one-time leader-of-the-pack opt to plaster their jerseys with what resembles out-takes from raygun magazine. taken completely out of context, i could perhaps see carson aficionados swithering over a purchase, but even if you were a teenager when raygun was a thing, you'd currently be approaching your fifties, almost certainly with a diluted sense of ostentation, and hardly wishing to get into the situation of relating a potted history of david carson's one-time influence on european and american graphics to the younger members of your peloton.

why does a cycle jersey have to look like anything but a cycle jersey?

tuesday 18 august 2026

the more it stays the same

a couple of weekends past, as i rode southwards along uiskentuie strand, i was passed by an estate car featuring two bicycles on a rear rack. given that a fortnight ago, we were quite possibly at the height of the holiday season, i doubt that there's anything particularly notable about such a happenstance, but had the car had another coat of paint, it would have forced me off the road; and that wasn't the first time that sort of thing has happened. we are, according to the highway code, allowed 1.5 metres of lateral clearance from passing vehicles on a two-lane road; it's 50/50 whether that actually happens, but i would have expected nothing less from fellow cyclists.

of course, the fact that the car was carrying two bicycles doesn't necessarily indicate that the occupants considered themselves to be cyclists. concentrating hard on remaining upright and on the tarmac, i did not take time to check out the occupants of the vehicle; it's entirely possible that there were two teenagers in the back seat belonging to those bicycles. either way, it hardly lets the driver off the hook for passing a cyclist way too close.

however, my sunday morning cycling colleague and i, observant to the last, have noticed what does appear to be both trend and aberration, though admittedly based entirely on our own predilections. had either of us opted to take a holiday with bicycles, particularly on a relatively small island such as islay, we agree that we'd both be likely to park up the car, and cycle. it is an inarguable statement of fact that you will see far more of the island from the saddle than you'll ever view behind a windscreen, and at a considerably more sedate pace. on occasion, when circumambulating loch gorm, and passing kilchoman distillery, it is particularly common to meet cars with bicycles on the roof or hanging off the back, and that's where the aberration kicks in.

loch gorm (which, in gaelic, can mean either loch green or loch blue, though mostly its an odd shade of purple) is a relatively small patch of water on islay's west coast, only a few hundred metres from the north atlantic coast. the road by which it is encircled is approximately twelve kilometres, featuring one or two short inclines, but nothing that might strain those calf muscles. the views are picturesque in every direction. assuming many of the bicycle-carrying motorists will be heading either for kilchoman distillery, machair bay, or saligo bay, the ideal excursion could be easily enabled by parking at one of the above mentioned destinations, removing the bicycles from their racks and enjoying a leisurely perambulation of the loch. yet, week after week, we meet several bike encrusted vehicles from which the bicycles seem reluctant to separate.

could it be that an anecdotal desire to impress the neighbours and fellow visitors that you are of an athletic nature, has actually brought members of the visiting public to carry bicycles that will, in fact, never find use during the holiday? though we do meet cyclists as we wend our merry way around the principality, very few are to be found unencumbered with luggage (though we did meet a couple yesterday morning in which the woman sported not only two rear panniers, but a backpack, while the male, riding a few metres ahead carried nothing. should we have reported it to amnesty international?). though our visual surveys are hardly exhaustive, it does look very much as if the car-mounted bicycles are being used as mere accessories, with no intention of donning padded bibs and actually going for a ride. presumably, on return to their homes, they are expectant of the neighbours, either asking about their cycling holiday to islay, or simply being quietly impressed.

a friend of mine owns a holiday cottage on islay's west coast south of kilchiaran farm. a young couple arrived at the premises a few years ago in a white audi sports car with two bicycles on a roof rack. apparently those bicycles were never once removed from the car. this appears to be the next step past purchasing spray-on mud to apply behind the wheel arches on a so-called chelsea tractor (any variation of range rover), solely to give the impression that you might have used a purportedly off-road vehicle for an action weekend.

even supposing, however, that the bicycles as described above are relatively low-cost budget items, it still seems an unnecessarily expensive way of convincing others of your purported physical prowess. does anyone really care? i have always been of the opinion that cars are justifiable purely on the basis that they can easily transport the more important bicycle. i will be lobbying my msp to encourage legislation that forbids such aberrant behaviour, bringing the bicycle into disrepute.

monday 17 august 2026

virtual reality

part of yesterday's lunchtime conversation revolved around the playing of games; we're talking scrabble, cluedo, snakes and ladders etc., none of which those of us involved in the discussion had any truck with. it was brought to the fore by the subject of family visitors, who apparently settled down after dinner and, rather than re-acquaint themselves with family they'd not seen for quite some time, preferred to drag out the board games from the back of a forgotten cupboard and while away the evening prior to bedtime.

while i'd admit to occasionally enjoying a game of scrabble, i'd be fibbing if i said i could recall when last i had played. i am not, and never have been, in favour of card games; i struggle even to complete a game of snap; anything more complex is not in my games vocabulary, and certainly not anything that might involve money. however, my personal sense of horror is reserved for monopoly, the purpose behind which has never entered my psyche. it's a game that seems to go on for ever, as does the tidying up when it's finished. even the islay edition, once sold by a local retailer, is not within my domain.

in the good old days of yore, when compact discs were still used to deliver software, i was a regular subscriber to macworld magazine. every month, said publication would arrive with a covermount cd, containing software updates, trial versions of utility software, and freeware, the provenance of which was often more obscure than you'd like to hope. and every month there was a folder included entitled games, a folder that, on my computer at least, was never to be opened. invariably computer games arrive with a lengthy tabulation of instructions for play, involving keyboard commands that i doubt i'd ever learn in a month of sundays.

i did not learn them.

i am led to believe that there are even youtube videos which depict individuals playing various computer games. how is it possible that watching someone else playing a computer game has become a spectator sport? as pointed out above, i have no interest in games of any flavour, but i can comprehend that i may well be in a minority, and that others will happily while away the hours shooting virtual stuff in order to win credits or coins that have no actual value in the real world. but watching people play these games must surely be one of life's strangest means of passing the time.

however, having scoffed my double-egg roll, washed down with a soya latte, i departed debbie's to head homeward, via the southernmost portion of uiskentuie strand. it may have been fenced off, but access and egress for bicycles is still possible via the kissing gates sited at bottom, middle and top of the strand. now that the cattle have been (permanently?) removed, there are only sheep with which to contend; they're just daft and not at all threatening to the (very) average cyclist.

the origins of riding along the grassed portion of the strand was at the behest of strafing winds blowing across loch indaal and, when at full strength, often pushing the hapless cyclist into the path of following traffic. not a situation in which you would wish to find yourself of a saturday or sunday morning. but, coinciding with my unbridled enthusiasm for cyclocross, this meant i could combine safety-first with the ongoing pretence that i possess bike handling skills that would come in handy if wout van aert ever knocks at the back door to ask if i'm coming out to play. long have i ruminated and promised myself to learn once again the joys of mounting and dismounting at speed as practised by the professionals. sadly, procrastination has kept learning at bay, and i am no nearer to accomplishing this than i was last time it was mentioned.

and given that the strand is effectively pan flat with the occasional shallow-dip, its verisimilitude to ruddervoorde, koksijde or namur is debatable to say the least. yet still i persist with the pretence, having shod my specialized crux with challenge chicane rubber in the singular belief that amber sidewalls are considerably quicker than all-enveloping black. in other words, despite my earlier protestations to the contrary, i'm playing a game.

and it's not even a game that i'm winning.

sunday 16 august 2026

i apologise for the lack of content this past week, but, as previously advised, i have been in percussive mode since tuesday evening, leaving scant time to scribble anything of velocipedinal interest. however, unless something unexpected transpires, i believe i may have returned for the foreseeable future. whether that's good news or not, depends entirely on your point of view and how much your existence has become dependent on monologues of no particular intrigue whatsoever.

ever since i began purchasing a daily copy of the times newspaper in the late 1970s, i have satisfied myself as a fan of what was referred to as the broadsheets. the uk dimensions of this particular genre of newspaper varies slightly depending on the publisher, but roughly speaking, we're looking at 37.5mm wide x 57cm tall. granted, this was often a tad tricky to read in starbucks, trains or buses (and aeroplanes, for that matter) or even the breakfast table. however, the large format allowed for an expansive layout and, in certain cases, inspired page designs, but it seems that a majority eventually tired of attempting to fold the pages in order to read in one or more of the above examples, and thus avoid disturbing one's fellow passengers, who were quite possibly attempting to do likewise.

i therefore look back with nostalgia to pre-september 2005, the month in which my current daily read (the guardian) migrated from broadsheet to berliner format, reputedly easier to manage, but a move that required a substantial financial investment in custom printing presses. however, after only 13 years of savouring the reputed benefits, the guardian moved to tabloid size, while managing to escape direct comparison with the so-called red tops with which it now shares shelf size. apparently the original departure from broadsheet size was, according to the guardian website, an attempt to counter "free tabloid newspapers such as metro saturating the market alongside access to fast, cheaper broadband internet connection in the home, and 3g phones bringing the web to an increasingly mobile generation."

evidence of the failure to counter the online world can be demonstrated by the newspaper's decline in print sales by approximately 100,000 in the last couple of decades. to an extent, that has been countered, however, by their highly successful embracing of the online world. currently the only uk newspapers still printed as broadsheets are the financial times, the daily telegraph and the sunday times.

newspaper sales are a tad more complex than simply looking at the decline in print, but one aspect that has followed from broadsheet to berliner to tabloid is the infuriating inability to separate the corners when attempting to turn the pages, a factor that remains to this day, when avoidance of licking one's thumb and forefinger to accomplish has become a thing of the past. however, making inherent alterations to previously traditional modes of operation is hardly confined to the newspaper trade. and in the majority of those cases, expecting an improved outcome as a result is often left unsatisfied. uk residents may recall that in 2022, courier company hermes rebranded as evri following widespread customer dissatisfaction, low rankings in delivery league tables, and negative publicity regarding parcel mishandling. yet, despite the change, the company's reputation seems scarcely to have improved.

i was reminded of a velocipedinal instance while playing drums at thursday's annual islay show, as i watched a ponytailed gent continually walking to and fro from the beer tent, wheeling a cream-coloured folding bike of indeterminate brand. long have i wondered about the third aspect frequently cited as ripe for improvement by government and local authorities. 'walking, cycling and wheeling' are three words apparently joined at the hip when funding for active travel is being discussed; but for years i wondered just to what wheeling referred? perhaps thursday's gent embodied that very aspect, though why he would have required funding for doing so, remains something of a mystery.

almost one year past, in september 2025, the artist formerly known as sustrans changed its name to the far less satisfactory walk wheel cycle trust, nomenclature that just rolls off the tongue (not). over nigh on 50 years, sustrans had cultivated an enviable reputation, praised by transport activists while currying respect from the opposition was almost a unique situation. and while it may be a tad soon to assess any advantages or disadvantages that may have accrued, i have yet to read or receive a press release announcing an improved profile and notable achievements as a result of the new name. some people are just too myopic to realise just what they already have.

mind you, edge carbon componentry migrated to enve, and can now be seen writ large on tadej's wheelsets.

saturday 15 august 2026

ninety degrees of separation

a friend of mine has lost his driver's licence for, i believe, a period of one year as the result of a coming together with his car and an approaching motorbike. from what i can gather, it was a smidsy - sorry mate i didn't see you situation, where the motorcyclist may, or may not, have approached at speed and my friend failed to note his imminent arrival. this probably references a point made only a few days past, that motorists tend to selectively look for other motorists; it's not that they don't physically see other road users, it's just conditioning that tends to lower the importance of doing so.

although in a distinctly different set of circumstances experienced at the weekend, where no-one was ever in any danger of injury, one of my fellow sunday morning peloton riders and i observed an oncoming car at least half a kilometre distant. yet, despite both of us featuring flashing white lights on our handlebars, and the glaringly obvious fact that, if we could see the car, the driver had unhindered vision of two bicycles heading in the opposite direction on the same stretch of road, at the point of coincidence, it was clear that the driver had failed to notice either of us in advance.

i know that, when learning to drive, my instructor laboured the fact that i should always look well ahead in order to 'read the road'. judging by practical experience in recent years, that advice would appear no longer to be on the agenda.

however, as is frequently the case, i have digressed.

the fellow who now finds himself legally carless for a period of at least twelve months, has substituted an e-bike as his principal method of transport. he is fortunate to live quite some distance outside of any village conurbation, with impressive views across the landscape and seascape, but consequently, nowhere near anything that might resemble public transport. the gentleman in question is considerably younger than yours truly, but freely admitted that, had e-bikes not existed, he would find the alternative considerably less palatable, despite being apparently fit enough to contend with riding under his own efforts. he remained unimpressed and unphased by my helpfully pointing out that the mighty dave-t, some fifteen years my senior, still rides an acoustic bicycle, having renewed his subscription with pedal power via a new gravel bike only last year.

it is only a matter of days in excess of one week since the annual ride of the falling rain took place for 2026, a bike ride which preceded its subsequent naming by several years. having read in a copy of america's bicycling magazine in the mid 1990s, an article entitled riding your first century, i had set off one sunday morning to undertake my own century ride, woefully underestimating just how difficult that would be for a first-timer on a mountain bike, without sufficient cash to acquire sufficient sustenance along the way. however, from that point onwards, i would attempt to ride a century at least once every year, if only to prove to myself that i could manage to do so.

latterly, each year i placed a brief article in the local newspaper, advising of my impending lengthy bike ride, enquiring if anyone might find it in themselves to join me, even if only for a portion of the total distance. i'd be fibbing if i said i could recall the exact year, but two chaps both named tom arrived at the appointed hour outside the leisure centre in bowmore, and we set off into the unknown.

one of the two is still a fully-paid-up member of the sunday peloton, having since permanently moved to the hub of the universe. the other fellow, who was inordinately slow, yet perfectly happy on the two occasions he comprised the trio, owns a house here, but lives most of the year on the mainland. and despite not having been in contact for a year or two, as i trudged meaningfully back to the office yesterday afternoon, following a medicinal shot of espresso, i met him outside the premises, proudly displaying his retirement bike, a muted red, steel surley, with rear rack, pannier and slightly chunkier tyres than would win him le grand boucle.

fate and coincidence are probably quite familiar bedfellows, but as we discussed his resplendent new bicycle, the disbarred motorist with the e-bike stopped on his way up the road. this is islay; everybody knows everybody, so all three of us engaged in deep and meaningless conversation where i was moved to note that the gent with the retirement surly was also of an age greater than the newfound e-bike rider, and while i will happily agree that e-bikes have their place in velocipedinal society, if the two elder statesmen of the story have no qualms about remaining the progenitors of their own motive power, why is it that a youngster (by comparison), was satisfied to relinquish that task to a motor and battery?

and, had the e-bike not existed in contemporary society, his alternative to an acoustic bicycle would be missing in action; there would be no convenient alternative. it's not, therefore, the portent of an artificial intelligence future of which we need be aware; for some fit and healthy members of society, that particular future might already be here.

odd that, after so many years of evolution, it seems some of us are content to subcontract to artificial means, that which has stood us in good stead over the centuries.

tuesday 11 august 2026