Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1147: Cycling the Roads Less Traveled in Britain with Steve Silk

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Ep. 1147: Cycling the Roads Less Traveled in Britain with Steve Silk · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's your host, Kurt Linville.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi friends, I have a couple of quick announcements for you before we dive into the program today.
0:26
[SPEAKER_01]: The first is I wanted to give you an update about the fundraising effort for WC Hope via the Kilimanjaro climb.
0:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So climbing for change is what we're calling this expedition.
0:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are, oh, I don't know what the count is now.
0:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We're probably 13 people are going up Kilimanjaro and each one of them is raising $20,000 for We See Hope.
0:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And I am climbing in the Adventure Sports podcast family is raising a minimum of $20,000 for We See Hope.
1:00
[SPEAKER_01]: But all the climbers together are up to $77,000.
1:06
[SPEAKER_01]: out of 300,000, which is our goal, so that's a huge effort, $77,000, that's exciting.
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: But I want to make sure that we not only hit that 300,000, that the Adventure Sports podcast family reaches the at least at 20,000, I would like to see us blow that out of the water.
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So, if you want to learn more about that, I recorded a episode, or it was about a week
1:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Kilimanjaro for we see hopes, if you want to learn more about that, listen to that short episode.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like 10 minutes or something like that.
1:43
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2:04
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2:26
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2:35
[SPEAKER_01]: If you would like to be a guest on the Adventure Sports Podcast, try that email as well info at adventure sportspodcast.com.
2:45
[SPEAKER_01]: One more thing about this episode and then we're gonna dive right in.
2:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what happened, but something was wrong with my microphone during this interview.
2:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And my guest Steve Silk sounds fantastic, but I sound a little bit distant and tinny.
3:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry Steve that just happened on your episode, still you did a fantastic job.
3:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a really fun episode.
3:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and I can't forget to say happy Thanksgiving to everyone that's in the States.
3:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanksgiving is one of my very favorite holidays, and so happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.
3:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Now let's dive into the episode about cycling in Great Britain.
3:27
[SPEAKER_01]: My friends, and welcome again to the Adventure Sports podcast, today's show is unique.
3:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to be talking about over tourism, and some alternatives to over tourism, and a lot of you probably aren't even familiar with the term.
3:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you've been in a very crowded tourist attraction and you think, man, if I could just come here when all these people aren't here, what are some alternatives to overtourism and our guest today is Steve Silk and he has put together some adventurous things that he does and written some books about them to be alternatives to overtourism.
4:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's a cool angle.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really all about adventuring closer to home.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we may touch on that too.
4:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So Steve, welcome to the Adventures Sports podcast.
4:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks so much for having me.
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you bad?
4:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's start with the overtourism.
4:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's dive into that a little bit.
4:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So people understand what we're talking about.
4:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But what is overtourism, Steve?
4:22
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you've ever been to a city and in my case, these are normally European cities and you've got there and it doesn't quite add up to your expectations because there have simply so many other tourists there you've been a victim of over tourism.
4:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think most of us were aware that maybe if you were lucky enough to get a very say that would be a thing you'd be thinking, when am I ever going to get a clean shot
4:52
[SPEAKER_02]: This pizza was actually doesn't taste very nice, and I've been taking for a ride that sort of stuff, but I think that was very much the exception, not the rule.
5:01
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, the change has come post-COVID.
5:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think now that this is a problem of success, of course, there are so many of us that are now lucky enough to have a few quit in our pocket and are able to go on these holidays, but we are ruining the places that we love by our sheer presence.
5:20
[SPEAKER_02]: The way that we can prove that now is that there are protest movements starting up in places like Amsterdam, Barcelona, Malaga, where the locals
5:32
[SPEAKER_02]: have had enough and they are protesting, they are going on to the streets, there have been situations where people have gone on to the beaches and squirted tourists with water pistols because they can't get, let's say, they've got young adults as children, those kids can't get a house anymore.
5:51
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason they can't get by house anymore is they can't get on the housing ladder because it's an Airbnb.
5:56
[SPEAKER_02]: That lovely place where they used to go
6:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a trendy restaurant, but if you're living there, it's a real problem, and the most egregious example I've come across recently has been in Amsterdam, where every time a protester told me that a new hotel opens, the hotel is on a massive scale.
6:18
[SPEAKER_02]: So let's say there are at least 300 terraces out of that where people can have a party.
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: But he said,
6:25
[SPEAKER_02]: That means that every night it's someone's birthday at midnight.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That means every night I'm being woken up with happy birthday being sung.
6:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And that doesn't yet, that's funny for the first three times and you share in their enjoyment.
6:40
[SPEAKER_02]: That's happening every day of the year.
6:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a whole different story.
6:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think this is the schedule of our times and I think we've really got to start thinking outside the box a little bit on this important topic.
6:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, let's broaden it just a little bit for the listeners.
6:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very common when people want to go mountain biking or hiking on the trail systems around the United States that they can be overcrowded.
7:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And it leads to conflict, right?
7:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Because hikers and mountain bikers don't go very well together.
7:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Mountain bikes travel faster.
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm always about sharing the trail, but it's always the faster mode of travel that gets blamed.
7:18
[SPEAKER_01]: because it's more startling, right?
7:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And this happens all seasons.
7:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It could be cross-country skiers and snowmobiles, you know, regardless.
7:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be people's noshoeing versus skiers.
7:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so regardless when you have a competition for a resource, then it makes people a little bit nervous.
7:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, I came out here to relax, but I feel like I'm in rush hour traffic on the highway.
7:40
[SPEAKER_01]: right and so it can be a real challenge in a kind of chuckle because I lived in the front range of Colorado near Denver and we had all the city challenges when we were there and the trails were crowded we still had fun we got along you know but there are there are some problems with it but then we moved to Central Colorado where it's not crowded and I really laughed one day I went out and biking and I saw a few other mountain bikers not many
8:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, but when I asked one of the people about how their day was, there's just too many people on the trails.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so crowded.
8:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought no, no, no, this is not crowded.
8:14
[SPEAKER_01]: This is not a problem.
8:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, there is a challenge with this.
8:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And you mentioned Amsterdam and the cost of housing.
8:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I get to remember that correctly?
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have the same thing going where I am now because there were a lot of people that had vacation homes to turn them into VRBOs and then people started building houses to be VRBOs instead of to be housing for the local people.
8:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And it drove the cost of housing up so much that there are many people who are leaving our area now because they're like, I can't afford a house anymore because it's the VRBOs.
8:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So these are all systems of the problem.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
8:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And uh...
8:49
[SPEAKER_01]: So it does detract from our experience and of course there are things that we can do personally to be more tolerant, more patient, to accept our expectations correctly.
8:58
[SPEAKER_01]: So we enjoy reality rather than some fantasy if we wanted it to be, you know, but that's the problem we're talking about.
9:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're, I tell us exactly where you're talking to us from today so we can have context for where you are.
9:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm speaking to you from my house in a very small town in the Norfolk Broads, that's in the East of England.
9:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a national park area known for its man-made lakes for some beautiful sailing yachts and for some historic windmills.
9:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about where I live is about 10 miles from the regional capital of Norwich, which is a medieval city, a chocolate block full of history, a Norman castle, a Norman Cathedral, or that sort of stuff.
9:45
[SPEAKER_02]: which I love, I am a bit of a history nerd and that comes through in all of my books.
9:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And the reason I'm here is that I'm a journalist, I work for the BBC on the regional news program and the regional HQ for the BBC in this part of the world is not.
9:59
[SPEAKER_01]: That's wonderful.
10:00
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's setting helps us to understand where you're coming from a little bit.
10:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone loves Europe, and usually it's because of the historical context.
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, Europe goes way, way back, all the way back to the Romans and before, and it's fascinating to go to a place that has that type of a rich heritage.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And the U.S. of course is much younger.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a shorter history, we have our own heritage, but people love Europe, but that means Europe really does get a lot of tourism, and that's on top of a population density that's much higher.
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: than other places around the world already.
10:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So what are the solutions Steve?
10:36
[SPEAKER_01]: People want to have adventures, they want to travel, what do we do?
10:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, my solution is the humble push bike and my solution is to take it slowly.
10:47
[SPEAKER_02]: The phrase mammal that travels across the pond does it, the middle age
10:52
[SPEAKER_02]: there are thousands of mammals where I am and I like to think I'm not really one of them.
10:59
[SPEAKER_02]: The mammal is interested in going fast from A to B, having all the latest gizmos and for my money not paying half enough attention to the surroundings that they're going through.
11:14
[SPEAKER_02]: The most extreme example of that is going from land's end to John Agroves, the extreme ends of the island of Great Britain.
11:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And people just do that with their head down.
11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I have my then.
11:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I couldn't do it.
11:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It's something like 870 miles and they do it in a crazy time.
11:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm doing what I'm doing at a fraction of the speed of then, but I say because of the nature of
11:40
[SPEAKER_02]: my wonderful country, there are little things to be found everywhere you go and the joy of being the only tourist that's going in this medieval church that's from the 13th century, but isn't an attraction in its own right and chatting to the lovely old lady there who's tending the flowers or whatever it is means I have, I would argue, a much more
12:06
[SPEAKER_02]: and the sense of satisfaction at getting from A to B under my own steam.
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's describe this bike, so people know what you're talking about.
12:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, for go west, I actually cheated a little bit in that I had two bikes, but I've got a Jamis Aurora touring bicycle.
12:25
[SPEAKER_02]: It has the drop handlebars of a racing bike, but it is much sturdier than that.
12:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it's very self-contained in that it carries, uh, spare spokes, uh, sitting there on the next of the bottom bracket in case, you know, you're in darkest Peru and something goes wrong.
12:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, it has, it's very old fashioned, it's, you know, a color that we call British racing green, it has brown, handlebar tape.
12:53
[SPEAKER_02]: and occasionally, I love it when this happens, and old boy will come up to me and say, I was just like the one I used to have in the 60s mate, so I've been, I've been deliberately old fashioned with that bicycle, but it's done me proud, and it's certainly taken me, I've crossed borders in it, in that I've crossed from England to Scotland, for one book, and I've crossed from England into Wales.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: for the other book.
13:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Now for the book that we're mostly talking about today, my new book go west.
13:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually switched bicycles on the English Welsh border.
13:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Wales is that much more of a rugged country and a hilly country than England is in general.
13:31
[SPEAKER_02]: So with a complicated logistics route involving my mates bringing bikes down on top of cars and things, we switched
13:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So, for the second half of my ride, I was on a voodoo, bizango mountain bike with very, very limited ability to store stuff.
13:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a very small panier traveling credibly light, and I'd also just dropped off a few bits and pieces at the pubs or the hotels that we were staying in along the way.
14:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, two different bicycles for two different types of terrain.
14:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Cool!
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, well, let's rewind a little bit what you're talking about is coming up with a way to have an alternative to the overtourism and you're doing this by biking in lesser-known places, but finding remarkable things to to experience in a more intimate way.
14:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I get that right?
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
14:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Couldn't have put it back in myself.
14:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let me draw a parallel here in Colorado.
14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The other day, someone said to me that they were going to go back packing in one of the national parks.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said, I love national parks, but why?
14:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're crowded.
14:39
[SPEAKER_01]: They're busy in Colorado.
14:41
[SPEAKER_01]: There are so many mountain valleys that you can hike up on trail or off trail if there is no trail.
14:47
[SPEAKER_01]: that are never seen.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll have the whole place to yourself and have a unique, quiet, natural experience.
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You could spend a lifetime doing this and never run out of places to go.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: So why go where everyone else is?
14:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
15:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my question.
15:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I'd add to that in my case is because I'm a self-confessed history is that there are some lovely little quirkies bits and pieces to find, wherever you go.
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And for example, there is a museum dedicated to rank Xerox photocopias in a very small, one-horse town in a place called the Forest of Dean.
15:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's run by about five or six people with an average age of
15:28
[SPEAKER_02]: 18 and they're there because that's a stomach accident after the Second World War meant that a company moved out from London which was been bombed with an inch of its life by the Nazis at the time by the left of the home and had to go somewhere safer.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But because of that, two plus two plus two, a few years later they're knocking out hundreds of thousands of photocopies.
15:50
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't do it anymore, but these guys are dedicated to making sure that memory carries on.
15:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Now
15:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Funnily enough, they don't get hundreds of people through the door, but just for the sheer dedication and that little bit of local history, I was loving that work.
16:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And then down the road from that, there's a city of Gloster, an ancient city.
16:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Not that touristy, I was surprised to see a little bit down at heel from time to time, but with an ancient coaching in that actually predates the coaching era, it's called the new end, even though it goes back to, I think it's 1400 and something on it.
16:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, they think that's a new one.
16:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, let's do it.
16:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
16:34
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
16:34
[SPEAKER_02]: That's close to for you.
16:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Shakespeare apparently trobbed the boards there.
16:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's legend.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't know if it's true.
16:40
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was able to sleep in one of those rooms that had been there for best part of half a millennia with those lovely creaking timber frames above and below me.
16:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wasn't paying a fortune for that.
16:55
[SPEAKER_02]: You know,
17:00
[SPEAKER_02]: a quite cheap by jail, you know, I was only doing sort of 40 or 50 miles maximum 50 miles a day, but there was so much variety and one other thing on that issue actually, I was in the Cotswals, which is a particularly picturesque part of England, and it's actually the kind of landscape that I know Americans think all of England is, and some of it is very crowded, but I didn't go to the very crowded bits.
17:27
[SPEAKER_02]: not by design actually but just because my roots to gloss to took me along the bits that don't tend to get the tourists.
17:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But I was standing in the most beautiful churchyard in a tiny village that no one's ever heard of and there was a London taxi there.
17:43
[SPEAKER_02]: So a London taxi about 80 miles out of London is a little bit unusual.
17:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah and I said to the guy who was standing next to it, well that's a bit weird and he was a proper company and I said what are you doing here mate?
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: He
17:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was two American tourists who had promised themselves that they were going on a down to an abby tour.
18:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Down to an abby, they said.
18:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And through Covid.
18:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And Jeff from North Carolina had promised his wife that once all this madness was over, they were going to go to the part of England where down to an abby had been filmed.
18:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So Jeff from North Carolina and I sat in this
18:24
[SPEAKER_02]: of this medieval church in a particular kind of tomb that it's got there and because Jeff was there, I think I appreciated it even more because I was appreciating the the rarity of it through his eyes and I almost got quite patriotic as for ourselves.
18:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's the kind of things that can happen because when you're on a bike you stop and you talk to people, right?
18:48
[SPEAKER_02]: You have every person is a better person when they're on a push bike.
18:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It just makes better humans of us all in my humble opinion.
18:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm absolutely.
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
18:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of chuckle because of, let's talk about psychology for just a second.
19:01
[SPEAKER_01]: My wife is at a deluvve a few years ago when saw the monolisa at the back of the crowd of people standing in front of, which is actually quite a small painting.
19:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, oh great.
19:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I wanted to have an experience with this painting for get it.
19:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I have as a crowd of Graham and she moved on, right?
19:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And she didn't talk to the people there because it was a crowd, not a person.
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the psychology.
19:26
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this churchyard, there was a person, not a crowd.
19:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jeff made it all the more fun because he reached out and said, Hey, who are you?
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Steve.
19:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And we had a conversation about this.
19:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you know his story.
19:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He knows your story.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And you both learned something about this churchyard in the history of the area.
19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what happens when you get away from the crowds to the individuals.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the way humans are wired.
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just what we do.
19:50
[SPEAKER_02]: The thing is that there is nothing intrinsically more beautiful about the villages that I know about 10 miles away, where there are crowds of people, and this one we were standing.
20:01
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there is nothing that it's all about the architecture.
20:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always a
20:04
[SPEAKER_02]: a particular kind of limestone that the buildings are made from.
20:07
[SPEAKER_02]: They are all beautiful, but for some reason, a lot of people, and sometimes I'm as guilty of as anyone else, we go to what I call the honeypot places, and we don't think to just take the road less travel.
20:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Taking the road less traveled is a really, really good motto for going on a holiday, going on a bike ride, going on a trial.
20:26
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, we also try to travel at the time less traveled.
20:29
[SPEAKER_01]: That helps, too.
20:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We love shoulder season and even off season.
20:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So to jack it on, it's still going to be a lovely time wherever you're going.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the goal of the book?
20:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it a guide book or the books?
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: They're too.
20:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they guide books so that other people can do this?
20:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Or are they more example books?
20:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Saying, this is what I did and the experience I had.
20:50
[SPEAKER_02]: They're definitely not guidebooks in that they're not set out here's what you should do today at all.
20:56
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not guidebooks in that because of the way that I do things, I sometimes go wrong.
21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I deliberately don't plan, at least I don't plan when I'm on my own.
21:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I did feel a little bit more of responsibility in the second half of the book when I was with my three mates and I didn't want to get us into going down a dual carriageway or something.
21:13
[SPEAKER_02]: but generally speaking, I don't plan, and that leads to the serendipity and the happenstance of just things happened.
21:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So no, it's definitely not a guidebook, but it is, I hope, in a wide sense, an invitation to hit the open road.
21:29
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a bit of a
21:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess a battle on in great Britain at the moment to try to make roads more friendly to cyclists.
21:40
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're better than the US with honorable exceptions.
21:44
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not as good as, say, the Netherlands.
21:47
[SPEAKER_02]: France has certainly made great Paris as made incredible strides.
21:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I was in the Louvre, just only a three or four weeks ago funding enough.
21:53
[SPEAKER_02]: You made that point and I took a photo of all those people taking photos as well.
21:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what I do give Paris huge credit for is the way that it's just those lovely boulevard that they have.
22:06
[SPEAKER_02]: They've just swept away some car lanes and put in some bike lanes in a very low key kind of way.
22:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just saying cycling's good for us all guys.
22:16
[SPEAKER_02]: These new psychopaths here are great, but we could probably do with a few more.
22:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's sort of low key campaigning, but it's more let's just get out there and enjoy these these forgotten bits of England and Wales and see what we've got out of there.
22:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, let's talk a little bit about the pace of travel because that's a big part of what you're doing here too.
22:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You travel by airplane.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: You look out the window at the patchwork quilt below you.
22:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you get off the plane, if you like, you've been teleported, you know, you left one climb and now you're in another and you left one culture and now you're in another and you don't know how to connect the dots.
22:51
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the way my psyche works.
22:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, okay, I've got to immerse myself here and figure this up.
22:56
[SPEAKER_01]: You travel by car.
22:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly you see so much more.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: You see the transitions as you go the distance.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But still you're flying down the highway quite quickly, right?
23:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't see any details, but you can connect the dots a little better.
23:09
[SPEAKER_01]: When you get to the point of traveling by bicycle, you see individual flowers, right?
23:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And that changes the whole experience.
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And can you speak to that?
23:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and not only that, but you are bypassing the bypasses, and both of the roads that I've gone on are historic old coaching roads that have existed for hundreds of years in some form or other.
23:36
[SPEAKER_02]: These days, of course, when you would drive the route from, let's say, from London to Gloucester, most of the time you would have a dual carriageway in each direction, and the majority
23:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm on that original road, the original straight line.
23:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Other region, London and Gloucester, going through every village and every town.
23:58
[SPEAKER_02]: So those soulless service stations where you're getting an overpay over price burger, I'm not going near them.
24:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to the lovely old cafe in the middle of town where I'm getting a fully English breakfast for about half the price that I would get the price monsters for elsewhere.
24:17
[SPEAKER_02]: So not only are you seeing nature in the raw, but you're also seeing the town centres and the connections between places in the way that they were originally configured.
24:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And the French have a really good word for this.
24:30
[SPEAKER_02]: The verb gamier means to win, but also to reach.
24:34
[SPEAKER_02]: or to earn.
24:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, if I reach, I can reach Gosta by car, but I've earned the right by bicycle.
24:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I've won Gosta.
24:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm absolutely there.
24:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And you really appreciate the place so much more if you have travelled there under your own steam.
24:54
[SPEAKER_02]: One because it's just that sense of pride, but also because you've seen the changes
24:59
[SPEAKER_02]: gradually come upon you as you've made that journey.
25:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you're going as I did from central London, busy city of London, near St Paul's, the commercial centre, the financial district, all the rest of it, all the way out to a little town called Fishguard on the Welsh coast.
25:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I have seen accents change in the case of England Wales.
25:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm seeing the language change, not everyone speaks Welsh.
25:23
[SPEAKER_02]: by any means in Wales, but there is Welsh spoken, and the pace of life has changed, people have more time to talk to you the further away you get from London.
25:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's like any capital city in every country, I'm sure.
25:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can just, you've got time to appreciate the stoneworks change, the accents change, the architectures change, the cultures change to some extent.
25:45
[SPEAKER_01]: So you already mentioned this, but I want to highlight it so we can talk about a little bit.
25:49
[SPEAKER_01]: another advantage to traveling by bicycle and to a lesser degree by motorcycle instead of in a car.
25:56
[SPEAKER_01]: When you're in the car you're behind the steel and the glass and people see cars as competition in robots, not humans in our psyche, but people will walk up to a bicycle or a motorcycle because you're more accessible.
26:08
[SPEAKER_01]: The walk right up to you and say, hey mate, you know, you're a human on a bicycle.
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: How strange is this?
26:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us a story about when that happened and
26:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Funny enough, this new ring in Gloster, I got that and I said, well, where can I put the bike for the night?
26:27
[SPEAKER_02]: The guy sort of was sort of mock annoyed with me.
26:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh god, another one.
26:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's interesting.
26:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And he took me through to a disused function room and I put my bike in there and he was going to be safe.
26:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But there were about a dozen others there.
26:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't have bicycles, not people at that.
26:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the morning, I came downstairs to have my breakfast down these creaking staircases of sure there are ghosts in there.
26:48
[SPEAKER_02]: And there was Tony and Dorothy were coming down the stairs too.
26:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And it turns out the Tony and Dorothy were part of this big group.
26:56
[SPEAKER_02]: both in their 80s, both in their 80s and doing 30 or 40 miles much the same as me that day.
27:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And Dorothy, the lady in particular, was just saying, I'm not going to be able to see him if I might want to be as in the frame at this rate.
27:11
[SPEAKER_02]: I've just got to keep going and really embarrassingly about two hours later.
27:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Somehow they beat me to the calf that I wanted to go to.
27:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It would virtually twice my age and they'd managed to pick with that.
27:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure, no idea how that happened.
27:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So we all sat down together and we all had coffee and scones together.
27:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And we discussed roots and we discussed how things were going and how we do it differently next time.
27:34
[SPEAKER_02]: They were from a completely different part of the country to me.
27:36
[SPEAKER_02]: They were up north, I come from the east.
27:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was just that connection that as you say, you're never going to get, you do get it as a amongst bikes, you're dead right, but you don't get it in a car.
27:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Who is Charles Harbour?
27:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Charles Harper is my cycling muse.
27:53
[SPEAKER_02]: He was an late Victorian Edwardian gentlemen cyclist.
27:59
[SPEAKER_02]: who set out to ride every single one of the main roads that spy while out of London like spokes out of a wheel out of London.
28:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And he did it from the late 1890s to the beginning of the First World War.
28:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And the shorter ones he cycled,
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he thought for the longer ones, I'm going to have to get into this new fangled thing called a bicycle.
28:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think a tiny bit reluctantly he got on these early push bikes.
28:26
[SPEAKER_02]: We were just at the stage where the penny five things had been consigned to history.
28:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And we were now what he would have called the safety bicycle safety because the wheels were the same size and he didn't break one in the front of the left and right into the pent-fafing.
28:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And he is absolutely wonderful because he set out to do exactly what I did, 120 years before I did.
28:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And he thought that he was writing the obituary of these roads, because he was writing before the age of the motor car, right?
28:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So it was the age of steam, everything was going by rail, and he felt that he was writing the history of these lovely old coaching roads.
29:07
[SPEAKER_02]: these coaching ines wouldn't possibly survive and it was his duty to capture some of those memories before they disappeared.
29:15
[SPEAKER_02]: He was also a bit of a snob, so that means that in the English context the further away from London he gets, the more room he gets about the...
29:25
[SPEAKER_02]: the natives and he's also perhaps because of his style and perhaps because it's just a hundred years between the two of us there's quite a lot of purple prose there.
29:34
[SPEAKER_02]: So for my point of view this is gold dust because I can just quote him occasionally to make a point.
29:41
[SPEAKER_02]: to illustrate the difference between now and then.
29:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I did just find myself identifying with the guy and really appreciating quite often we come to the same place.
29:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd have a view about something or other.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd pick up.
29:57
[SPEAKER_02]: his ancient volume from 1901, and our thoughts would be uncannily similar despite the difference in time.
30:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So, I really think that I wouldn't have written the great North Road, might the first of my cycling kilometers, where it not for Charles Hart.
30:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And then by the time I come to right go west, I actually could almost hear him in my head at times.
30:19
[SPEAKER_02]: not in a any kind of weird Ouija board kind of way, but just in a it the old boy put me right, he'd say if I got sick, still do it like this man and whatever it was.
30:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was just wonderful having both his his pros, but also unlike me, he was a he was a great illustrator.
30:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'd open up his book and there would be a picture of what the town of Bortry and South Yorkshire looked like all those years ago.
30:49
[SPEAKER_01]: and how did that inspire what you did?
30:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, with the Great North Road, the Great North Road is such a important road in British terms.
30:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It is our Route 66 in it connects, or not, not in comparison with Route 66, but it connects London to Edinburgh.
31:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Kings and queens have gone up and down it down the years.
31:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So have grand armies, rebellious forces, high-way meant foot pads, pad courses, drovers, all of human history has been up and down the great North Road.
31:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And Charles Harper was the first writer to give it its due weight, I guess, really, as a separate book.
31:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So the minute you go looking for the great north right, you will come across his two volumes.
31:38
[SPEAKER_02]: First volume goes from London to York, the old sort of capital of the north, as it were, and then north of England, and then from York up to Edinburgh.
31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: So once you start doing research, which I did in the British Library and other places, you come across his book and then of course you realise that he's done he covered just about every other road out of London as I say and go west is based on another book he wrote that that goes called the London Gloucester and Milford Haven Road which is just as fun of history.
32:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Great!
32:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a guest on a few weeks ago who said, whenever you travel, try to have a book about the area.
32:19
[SPEAKER_01]: This is, it may not be history, maybe it's a novel, but it's something that's about the area and it was his tip for people that wanted to experience the world when they travel on a
32:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So you did this, but what advice do you have for people?
32:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, how do you know what book to grab or how to use it when you travel?
32:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Or do you want you to read it in advance or is it better to read it while you're there?
32:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you see what I'm saying?
32:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think it's really interesting change happening there, isn't there?
32:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I did a lot of traveling in the 90s and the nauties.
32:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And I wouldn't have dreamt of leaving home without a rough guy too.
32:55
[SPEAKER_02]: dot dot, lonely planet.
32:56
[SPEAKER_02]: There you go.
32:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't feel a need to do that anymore for better or for worse, I think the internet gives me 90% of that, but I quite agree with you, I want something that tells me something about where I'm going to go and that crucially stands up to scrutiny once I'm back home again.
33:15
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want something that's a little bit more thoughtful and a little bit less guidebook.
33:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even think about picking it up until I start the journey as a tourist.
33:26
[SPEAKER_02]: clearly when I'm writing a book I have to do it a bit differently.
33:29
[SPEAKER_02]: What I think my advice is get the book beforehand, maybe it's a novel, maybe it's something historical, maybe you're going to Spain and you want to be the history of the Spanish Civil War but you know it's going to be in that rough part of Spain that you're going to and yeah I would say don't pick it up until you start that journey.
33:48
[SPEAKER_02]: and then the book and the journey becoming twine together and it's just the one thing prompt thoughts of the other and vice versa.
33:56
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's just as you said it's just a nice combination to have.
34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Well I have to point out an observation here.
34:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have the overstitled overbooked tourist trip, instead of a slower paste, you know, go with a flow travel trip.
34:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Then it's hard to read the book while you're there, because there's no time, you're too busy, you know, trying to see the sights get from A to B, glance at it, 10 minutes, I saw that check the box run onto the bus or you know what I'm saying.
34:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So this goes hand in hand with a style of travel you're talking about, the pace of travel.
34:28
[SPEAKER_01]: taking the time to experience it.
34:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I really think too many people have that tick box attitude to it and and sometimes I think they think I'm a man because I can go to a place and I'm not necessarily talking about the places I went to in my book now but just anywhere when I'm lucky enough to be a tourist.
34:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I quite often go there with with only the basic information because I genuinely want to be
34:57
[SPEAKER_02]: and I don't want to go to the TripAdvisor restaurant that may be out of date.
35:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to go to the place that I can see is full and I can see people having good thunder.
35:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
35:08
[SPEAKER_02]: That has to be a better way of doing it.
35:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's risky and I understand why people do it.
35:14
[SPEAKER_02]: They've only got let's say they've got a week and they don't want to have a bad experience when they've saved up good money.
35:20
[SPEAKER_02]: I understand the worries and the concerns in the other direction.
35:26
[SPEAKER_02]: absolutely open yourself to, to more genuine experiences this way.
35:31
[SPEAKER_02]: As I say was, was in Paris very recently with my wife.
35:33
[SPEAKER_02]: We ended up going wrong and getting in quite a dodgy part of Paris near the metro stop called Stalingrad, typically.
35:43
[SPEAKER_02]: But we ended up in a restaurant which was the only time where actually my dodgy French was treated with any respect and actually the guy that's being French because again, understandably in busy restaurants in tourist areas,
35:56
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just going to reply in English, whereas I have some possible French.
36:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And this guy just had the time and we have the mutual respect between us that we just muddled through in the native language of that city.
36:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was the only time it happened because I was off the tourist try.
36:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so beautiful.
36:18
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I traveled the Kenya many years ago and we didn't know how we were going to get from point A to point B.
36:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the last minute we found a man who
36:28
[SPEAKER_01]: and he agreed to drive us around for a small fee.
36:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really reasonable.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We were there for five weeks.
36:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And he ended up being our translator and our friend and the one that could show us the local.
36:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's like having a personal tour guide, but not only that, he was the gateway to meeting all of the people.
36:46
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, getting to interact with people on a meaningful way, because he spoke English and swahili and kuku you.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, those sorts of things when you can connect with so I've interviewed a lot of people, Steve, and I'm not changing the subject here, a lot of people out there, the global travels.
37:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And it seems like in the beginning it all starts out with, I'm going to go from A to B, I'm going to do it this way, I'm going to see these 10 sites, you know, I'm going to cover this distance and this is going to be my feet and then they finish it and it turned into, well, these are the people.
37:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm that.
37:20
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the friends I made.
37:22
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I'm saying.
37:24
[SPEAKER_01]: This seems like often people think they're going to a country and when they get there They find out they're going to a culture.
37:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and and doesn't it always then make you think about your own choices and how you do things and Yes, it ends up being very reflective and very good for the soul from that point of view
37:41
[SPEAKER_02]: you know how many people come back from a big break or holiday like that and start to really question whether they've got it right in the other 50 weeks of the 52 week year so it can be quite powerful content.
37:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh very very much so well let's talk specifically about your book for a minute.
37:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The one that is the Great North Road book that was the first book to wind it down and come out I guess at the first question.
38:04
[SPEAKER_02]: At one I came out in 2021, yeah, so the new book that came out this summer is called Go West, London to the Welsh Coast, eight days, two wheels, and a whole lot of hills.
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And a whole lot of hills.
38:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me tell you, Wales is full of hills, and one of the three guys that I travelled with didn't quite fancy that.
38:26
[SPEAKER_02]: He looked at what I was planning, looked at the gradient profile, and then very stealthily in the months coming up to it, started turning up to our weekly bike rides that we do anyway on an e-bike.
38:39
[SPEAKER_02]: an e-bike conversion in fact.
38:41
[SPEAKER_02]: So I put a battery on, he put a little motor, he'd done it all himself at a fraction of the cost, and that was his little insurance policy against the university graduates of Wales.
38:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But he was very humble with us.
38:53
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to say there was never any showboating from Jim.
38:56
[SPEAKER_02]: He would always say how well we were doing when we were grinding up the hills.
39:01
[SPEAKER_02]: and be sort of super helpful as a pioneer over here or checking out what was over there.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, there was no with it.
39:08
[SPEAKER_02]: There was of course a slight element of Mickey taking and abuse, but it was all within bounds.
39:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't want a bunny trail on the e-bikes, but I will say this, it's amazing how it's opening up bicycling to people that wouldn't have done it otherwise, and I applaud that, you know, within reason.
39:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think that's normal.
39:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great idea that he had.
39:27
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a great idea.
39:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree with you.
39:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I was, I started off as skeptic, but it will only be a matter of time before I get one.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It's horses for horses isn't it?
39:35
[SPEAKER_02]: There's place for us all, and anything that's getting any of us, any of us,
39:40
[SPEAKER_02]: out and about.
39:41
[SPEAKER_02]: However much effort we're putting into it has to be a good thing.
39:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, absolutely.
39:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of silly for us to compare in judging, and try to decide who's doing it the right way, because we're all out there to have experiences and to be humans and to have adventures, and I just applaud that.
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of,
39:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the objective of your book?
40:00
[SPEAKER_01]: When I say book, I'm meaning the go-west book.
40:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did you write it?
40:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you want the reader to get out of it?
40:06
[SPEAKER_02]: I want the reader to be inspired to get out on a bicycle and do more than they think they can.
40:14
[SPEAKER_02]: When I set out on both of these routes, I wasn't entirely sure genuinely that I was good enough or fit enough to make it to the end.
40:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew they were going to be a stretch, but guess what, you always can, you can do more than you think office Steve became replaced by the lesser-spotted action Steve.
40:34
[SPEAKER_02]: and he can achieve more than he thinks he can.
40:37
[SPEAKER_02]: He can achieve even more when he's with his mates because a ride shared is definitely a mileage halved and the sense of camaraderie that you get from that, the sense of just being out and achieving something together.
40:51
[SPEAKER_02]: is a wonderful, wonderful thing.
40:54
[SPEAKER_02]: How we felt when we were on the Harbour Wall at Fishguard looking out to where the ferry then takes you across the Republic of Ireland.
41:03
[SPEAKER_02]: There's always another journey isn't there.
41:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just a wonderful, wonderful feeling and I just can't wait to do it again and do something similar somewhere else.
41:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So how long are these books?
41:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Are they thick books, thin books?
41:21
[SPEAKER_02]: They are 300 pages roughly and what people tell me is that they are an easy read.
41:29
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, people tend to pick them up and get through them remarkably quickly.
41:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And what I try to do is mix the rhythm of the road with dialogue with people that I meet and historical nuggets along the way.
41:48
[SPEAKER_01]: That kind of answers my next question.
41:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I was going to say 300 pages on eight days.
41:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You must have covered some depth there.
41:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, exactly that.
41:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I am going down every single rabbit hole you could possibly imagine.
42:05
[SPEAKER_02]: And I take my hat off to local historians throughout this country.
42:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Everywhere has a local historian who is written a little booklet.
42:14
[SPEAKER_02]: which I always acknowledge if I've used information from.
42:17
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much history in it.
42:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't move without knocking into a battle from the English Civil War here or marauding scots there.
42:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's so much stuff to get in.
42:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That was no problem.
42:31
[SPEAKER_02]: The problem was working out what to chuck out actually.
42:34
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't a problem remotely in filling 300 miles and 8 days.
42:40
[SPEAKER_02]: The opposite
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But the fun of that, I think, is that it aligns with everything that you've been saying thus far, travel more slowly, take time to experience the places where you are, meet the people, have conversations, have real experiences, and that's what builds the density of the experience or the depth or the richness of the experience.
43:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's reflected in what you just said, oh, it was easy to fill up 300 pages.
43:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Those people would say, well eight days, that would be eight pages max for me, right?
43:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I did this on day one.
43:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I did this on day two.
43:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's not what you're writing about.
43:21
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going so much deeper.
43:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I have to confess, I enjoy the research side of it just as much as I do the cycling.
43:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I am never happier than sitting in a some old dusty odd library somewhere and digging out the one book that tells me why that road.
43:35
[SPEAKER_02]: does a dog leg fork then it goes back to Danish times or whatever it is you know there's there's a I love that side of it just as much as I do getting it.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Well when you were writing the book and doing the research then how many times did you stumble across something oh that's what was going on that's why this was here it probably like reliving the journey but was that a common experience?
43:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I did try to do some research before I went, and then there will be a case where do it and you'd throw yourself into something, but then as you were there, you realised that ex museum is closed and you might need to go back another time.
44:11
[SPEAKER_02]: So there was an element of afterwards checking out the research side of it.
44:17
[SPEAKER_02]: but now I think it's crucially important that everything that happens in the book happened to me on consecutive days and everything I'm saying I did I did during that journey even if it's then backed up you know by bits and pieces mostly historical as I say later
44:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, there's there is a in beautiful town of Stamford in Lincolnshire in the English Midlands.
44:43
[SPEAKER_02]: There is a ridiculous, the main road, the Great North Road, does a 90-degree turn in the middle of the no apparent reason.
44:51
[SPEAKER_02]: in the middle of the town.
44:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have to go back, as I say, to Danish times before the Norman Conquest to about 9, I'm guessing it's about the year 900 and something.
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: When the Danes built a protected burr as they call it, a little protected city within walls, tiny by arc and arc comparisons today.
45:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And
45:12
[SPEAKER_02]: All these years later, more than 1,000 years later, the Angle of those two city walls is reflected in the Rope plan of modern Sanford just crazy and yeah, that took a bit digging out.
45:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, that's really really fun I find that the older the road the more likely you are to discover that sort of thing It's one thing that I love about touring around our area.
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I get on our forest road
45:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The well-traveled roads, the county roads, they go straight, they go from point A to point B, but when you get on a really original road.
45:44
[SPEAKER_01]: then it will go around the big tree.
45:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it, because they didn't want to cut the tree, we can just go around the tree.
45:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's because the horses didn't mind going around the tree.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and so... And there's no mechanism.
45:57
[SPEAKER_02]: No mechanized ability to pull down the tree.
46:00
[SPEAKER_02]: It would have to be either human power or horse power.
46:03
[SPEAKER_02]: So it just wasn't worth it.
46:05
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cost of the wood because around the tree.
46:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you know when you're, when you're really on a historic route, when you start noticing those sorts of things.
46:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
46:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And in my case, there are awful lot of those occasions based around the grand British stately homes where Lord Sutton's such was gonna make sure that us commoners were kept at quite a distance from his rounds and that still happens and awful lot.
46:30
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some ridiculous diversions and the guy still there in his manor house, the 11th Earl of whatever he is.
46:42
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, east of Denver in Colorado, they're on i70.
46:46
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a section of road where the the two lanes are four lane highway, but the eastbound and the westbound lanes are separated by almost a mile.
46:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
46:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And it goes for a quite a distance and then they come back together again.
46:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's no reason for it.
47:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Except someone had a brother-in-law that owned some property and the right of way suddenly became huge And I've never researched it, but I know there has to be some story like that.
47:12
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's clever stuff.
47:14
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun to find it.
47:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a reason.
47:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think it's wise when you travel to journal to write down your experiences and to revisit them later and it helps you to remember and to experience it more deeply.
47:26
[SPEAKER_01]: You went beyond that by writing entire books.
47:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But what can you share with our listeners about the value of journaling while you travel?
47:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I really learned as I went on this and I feel that Go West is a more detailed descriptive book.
47:43
[SPEAKER_02]: because of what I learned with the great North Road, because when I sat down with an editor, this is sort of getting under the bonnet of writing a bit here, if you'll forgive me.
47:52
[SPEAKER_02]: But the guys who helped me, he sat me down and said, right, you've done this really well, but what about this?
47:57
[SPEAKER_02]: What about that?
47:57
[SPEAKER_02]: he was always saying to me, what did you feel?
48:00
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you smell?
48:01
[SPEAKER_02]: What could you see?
48:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So every time on go west that I got off that bike and got out my my book, my journal, I just sat there and described in words what all of my senses were feeling and how I was feeling as a cyclist and what had excited me and what hadn't excited me.
48:22
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think my tip is you have to do it in the moment, you have to do it, even doing it at the end of the day, which I know it can be a struggle for some people, but even doing it at the end of the day you've forgotten some stuff.
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
48:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Carrying that book in your small backpack with you and just scribbling away when you have your coffee break or whatever, at least so it's at least three or four times a day if you're being a casual tourist.
48:52
[SPEAKER_02]: which takes time of course takes time out of the day and there are only so many cycling hours and only so many hours of daylight so it can be a bit of a stretch but that's my that's my trick and I found that a struggle when I was on my own no problem when I'm with three lads and there's banter going all the time.
49:11
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that much more difficult to write it down and I would call timeouts to do it But I was getting, you know, a piece most of the time and they were keen to get on with the next bit And I'm saying I'm writing a book here guys.
49:22
[SPEAKER_02]: They were generally very, very amenable But you can, you can see that it's a different relationship when you've got
49:29
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're the boss and then something when there's three or four of you to make decisions jointly, that can be a little bit more of a struggle.
49:36
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, right in the moment, and don't just say what you saw, say what you're heard, say what you're felt.
49:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I love about that is it forces one to take just a moment to say what do I hear?
49:49
[SPEAKER_01]: because we tend to only focus on what is pertinent at the time but if you stop at any point in the day anywhere and you say what can I hear right now there's a plethora of things going on that you can suddenly notice and it brings you into that moment into that experience same thing with smell of course smells maybe the most powerful yeah it's amazing you know if you take and it's a struggle on a bike because you do you know you do build momentum don't you and you
50:18
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, there can be times when you think God is still, there's still X miles to go, I just need to crack on.
50:24
[SPEAKER_02]: But you never regret it, you know, it would regret getting off the bike and stopping just finding a park bench or whatever, just to collect your thoughts.
50:32
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I can put in the understand why people don't want to do that because they are, you know, perhaps worried that they're not going to make it to the end of the day if they, all this exertion going on, they're just want to crack on.
50:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm not saying it's easy,
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's great.
50:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, let's go full, circle.
50:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We started by talking about overtourism and you just gave us beautiful examples.
50:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Two journeys, two books, lots of accounts of the experiences on how you avoided overtourism.
51:02
[SPEAKER_01]: I bring it back up again because I really don't think Steve, that the world is that crowded of a place.
51:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just that we all crowd together for some reason.
51:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And now that you've done these journey, where you got away from the crowds and had great experiences, how does that change your perspective first about humanity?
51:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But then second, how does that change your perspective about how you're going to travel in the future?
51:27
[SPEAKER_02]: What it absolutely restores your faith and humanity doesn't it?
51:31
[SPEAKER_02]: than the Jeff and North Carolina example being the most obvious one there.
51:37
[SPEAKER_02]: But it reminds me that if I take the initiative with those conversations, you normally get a good response back.
51:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a reminder to be proactive and be the one with a smile on your face and a chirpy attitude to life, because it will normally be, you'll normally get it back at least double.
51:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So it absolutely
52:00
[SPEAKER_02]: and it's a reminder to be friendly.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's difficult.
52:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't do that in the middle of New York in the middle of London.
52:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that.
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And in terms of where I travel in future, I am really, really thinking hard about my more normal holidays and places that my wife and I would go.
52:19
[SPEAKER_02]: and my latest idea for a book is to go to the Netherlands because it has this great cycling infrastructure and to ignore Amsterdam.
52:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to call the book don't go to Amsterdam because 9% of people that leave this country for a trip to the Netherlands or Holland and some people call it go to Amsterdam.
52:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, if I go to my local bookshop, and I go to the Netherlands shelf, it will just be Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Amsterdam, maybe one of Rotterdam, cut along the country as a whole.
52:49
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.
52:50
[SPEAKER_02]: There are far too many books on Amsterdam.
52:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Guess what?
52:53
[SPEAKER_02]: There are far too many people in Amsterdam.
52:55
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been lucky enough to go to some absolutely gorgeous places.
53:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Delft would be my particular favorite and my particular top tip.
53:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Place the birthplace of Vermeer, the great artist, who's by the way, who's paintings, you can go to in the Louvre and find no one them because they all on their way to the Mona Lisa, girl or the pearl earring Vermeer's family.
53:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Just explaining things for me.
53:21
[SPEAKER_02]: That was a bit of TV stuff you're doing there, wasn't it?
53:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if Vermeer books that I held up.
53:25
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what that was about.
53:28
[SPEAKER_02]: So there are some wonderful places in the Netherlands that I think are just as wonderful as Amsterdam.
53:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Everywhere in the Netherlands has got gorgeous canals.
53:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Everywhere in the Netherlands has got those wonderful windmills.
53:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Why go to the one place in the Netherlands?
53:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Where there are thousands of other people like the falling off cruise ships to come and look around as a ridiculous red light district area that's completely ruined now.
53:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So,
53:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I'm doing.
53:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm determined to think outside the box and without getting too pompous or high-handed about it.
54:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I think we're going to have to start thinking about is the Airbnb that I'm staying in?
54:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that preventing local people from having a good life?
54:12
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a balance to be had.
54:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course there will be Airbnb, so of course there will be hotels, but is this place that I mean over-dominated by them and do I therefore need to just go 20
54:23
[SPEAKER_02]: stay in somewhere gorgeous like Utrecht or Delfth, where I can have just as nice experience and know that I'm in harmony with the locals rather than an annoyance to them.
54:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, very well said.
54:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Steve tells us the two books and where people can find them.
54:38
[SPEAKER_02]: The two books are the great North Road, London to Edinburgh, 11 days, two wheels and one ancient highway and go west, London to the Welsh Coast, eight days, two wheels and a whole lot of hills and the best place to get them is on-panism.
54:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic, and if people want to contact you, is there a good way?
54:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you on social media?
54:57
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you saying?
54:58
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm on Instagram at Steve Silk 66, and also on Blue Sky.
55:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Fantastic.
55:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Steve, this was a lot of fun.
55:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And an hour flew by so fast.
55:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I really enjoyed talking to you about some of the finer details of travel.
55:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And people might say, well, is that in winter sport?
55:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say, well, absolutely, you know,
55:20
[SPEAKER_01]: biking and learning how to interact with people and to travel and get so much more out of your adventure.
55:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that you just gave us beautiful examples and thank you for your time.
55:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thank you so much for having me.
55:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I've really enjoyed it.
55:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's been fantastic.
55:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And for all of you listeners out there, we say get out there and have some fun.
55:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes it seems like a stretch depending on the subject.
55:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But in this case, I think it would be so easy to do this and have some fun.
55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Take care.
55:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Cheers, that's it.
55:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye bye.