Again, pics only, but I suppose you will be alright.
I was a marvellous ride of roughly 60 km in hot weather, and the whole peloton was even invited to the refreshments pictured. Thank you very much to the organizers, including families. Definitively, tot volgend jaar, see you next year.
Scroll down for some bike detail snaps.
Instead of a proper post this month, for reasons of lack of time just a few impressions fom the first commuting cycleride this year. Taken in brilliant spring weather, the 65 km roundtrip was a nice start to the season.
Nature is awakening, and cycling to work makes for a very much more relaxed working day than driving, especially now as locals petitioning and pressurizing authorities for cyclepaths has not (yet) succeeded.
The relatively heavy KFS bike with the Rohloff hub is still my vehicle of choice for those rides as I need to carry much luggage, too much for any lighter cycle.
Over the winter some direly needed servicing brought a change in the sprocket, me choosing the largest there is. My rationale behind that was that I wanted to try to use the higher 7 speeds as much as possible to get out of the ratios that produce a grinding sound which I feel also makes pedalling heavier. This was successful as there is hardly any more of that nasty sound at least. Should have done that years ago.
Now, looking at my time budget things have not improved over the last years, and while in the beginning of this blog (seven years ago now!) I was full of ideas and energetic about it, I feel now that my posts have become less than inspirational. ATM I´m pretty sure I´m giving he blog up.
As I have no idea regarding the rules pertaining to a disused blog, if it will eventually be taken down or so, it might be a good idea for readers to scan it for any possible photos or info they want to keep, unlikely as this may be, and download them. Always the optimist, me.
Sometimes you have chance encounters that are quite nice indeed, but then, that´s what you go cycling for, I´d say.
When on our Normandy holidays this year, I had the opportunity to go for a late cycleride one day and met a very nice young Lady who was on a mid-range, but quite well preserved La Perle mixte, and who had time enough to allow me to take some quick snaps.
The machine belongs to her Grandmother who is still living in the area and the cycle has recently been serviced for the family to use, carefully, round the place. Even the leather pouches that belong on the left and right sides of the rack have been removed for safeguarding, so it is easy to assume that this bicycle is appreciated and will be preserved well. It actually showcases a tire size now back in fashion:
The bike is kitted out with Simplex lighting, all original, LeFol Le Martelé guards, a Nervar chainset, and a cute little flag that is lost on 99.9 per cent of bikes today, so a pearl this bike is, no doubt.
The frame as is not top range in the way that there is no Nervex Professionnel or R531, but still it has nice touches. I would bet that all lugs, bridges and what not are from the Nervex catalogue, Série Légère lugs and all.
The very pretty lining is also still in place.
The original idea seems to have been to buy a frame equipped for Simplex derailleur gears which were to be fitted later, but looking at the lever braze on and the rear hanger, this plan never seems to have been put in practice. The paint on both looks untouched.
Brazing quality is mostly very nice and worthy of a big brand like La Perle.
Some typically French touches: rear brake and rack fixtures.
Build quality of the bike as a whole is reflected in the closeness of chainwheel to chainstay, also affording a low Q-factor.
So, what a nice surprise on an evening ride.
No special meet or ride this month, but an update on how my Rohloff equipped bike is behaving. In all, it´s great, save the noise most Speedhubs make in the “lower case”. I have a belly feeling that in those lower seven speeds the resistance one feels also is greater than in the silent, top eight gears. The bottom bracket makes clunking noises now, and also the chain needs replacing soon, so I´ll try to change the ratios by getting a larger sprocket and a smaller chainwheel, thereby avoiding the lower case gears as much as possible. Also, I´ve not used gears 13 and 14 a lot, but 1 and 2 on every ride really, and by effecting the changes to the drive system that will be improved, I hope.
The next oil change is due too now, and the bike has deserved it as I´ve used it a lot this year. I don´t have an odometer, but a conservative estimate is at about 2.500 kms so far this calender year, and a lot more since the last oil change. Gear changes are still 100 per cent precise and instantaneous, there´s no play in any bearings and no oxidation on the shell or any other periphery parts, so the oil change will be all the attention the hub needs, I hope.
The bike as such needs a good clean, though, but all that oily dirt can be said to be a rust and theft inhibitor, meaning, I just don´t care 🙂 I see to it that the chain is lubed, the tires are inflated and the brakes are adjusted, and that´s about it. I do have to clean it soon though to check for any possible cracks in the frame, I know.
Major repairs: The front fork had to be replaced after a slight accident last year, and the Shimano 71 front hub gave up its ghost quite spectacularly in May, replaced with a SON now which runs appreciatively lighter, and that´s not a belly feeling. I bought a reduced price overstock wheel with the SON in it, so I have two different rims and spoke sets in the bike now, shiny and black, but again, I don´t care as long as it works and it does that perfectly.
My commute? It´s an about 32 kms long ride over four slight hills in the Teutoburger Wald area in Northern Germany. It takes me roughly 1:30 to 1:45 hours, which is not fast, I know, and while I´ve never been a fast rider, I´m still not fully back to even that form, after all the lack of time and the illnesses over the last 10 months or so, also the bike is really heavy and carries a lot of load too.
The route crosses no famous terrain at all, there´s no historical interest in that anyone famous was born in any of the villages and towns I cross, no battle has taken place, no famous buildings, nothing. At least, I´m not aware of anything, save maybe the part of the road that doubles as a hillclimb car race track once a year, explaining the heavy duty guard rails:
There´s loads of youtube videos on that race, it´s the Osnabrück or Holter Berg hillclimb, depending on how well the makers of the videos know the area 🙂
So for want of anything more interesting, one has to concentrate on making new friends on the way,
and on the few buildings that are nice.
Noted the colour red in some pics? Here we go for a sugar shock:
And no, the Schwalbe is not the company vehicle of the strawberry sellers´, it´s just in the colour its owner chose when doing up the moped.
Setting out early in the morning, there sometimes are spectacular sunrises, but they occur only when one has forgotten the camera at home. On the days the camera is at hand, one has to be content with simpler things like this:
Some 30 minutes later, the countryside begins to look familiar.
There´s more hills
and more decends
and some flats leading to more hills.
In all, I won´t say anything new in that when one cycles a route that one has partially driven so many times, there´s many things to be discovered, even tiny ones, which one is able to stop for and savour when on the bike.
So that´s the commute and the comment on the speedhub.
But why not more posts? I´ve been sidetracked by some issues with the heating in our house which didn´t render any sexy pics, by the car which did,
Photo courtesy Yannik
and a new love which rendered some spectacular snaps,
Photo courtesy Gideon
but which has put my affection to the test by taking up a lot of patience, even though I´m not new to the hobby of old motorbikes.
Also a lot of fleamarkets have been in the way of blogging.
Editing courtesy Nikki
Plus the century runs I usually do have been bedevilled this spring by adverse weather conditions, be it rain, thunderstorms or heat I couldn´t stand.
But I hope next month my post will be more interesting again.
Quick trigger warning before I start: The post above, which is set on private, is by no means meant to exclude anyone, only it contains photos on which faces are visible and riders can be recognized. What with all the recent humdrum about new data protection regulations, and press coverage about bloggers possibly being fined for showing faces and not being in possession of written consent by everyone in those photos, I thought it wise not to make them public. The password for this post is obtainable from either me or the owner of the retrokoers website. I would like to say, though, that the private nature of the post means that only people who took part in the ride should write in for the password, sorry about that.
And what was that – the blog wasn´t visible at all for nearly a week – very sorry about an error I committed. When trying to set the photos mentioned above on private, I hit the wrong button, the whole blog vanished, and I didn´t notice at first as don´t read my own blog too often 🙂 When I did notice, internet illiterate me had no idea off hand how to make the mistake good again, so it took a few days.
But now, here we go.
Any ride must be great if you can lean your bike onto a bronze pig before the start
and if there´s another one to look on even.
As you don´t get that in too many places, Holten it was again, after a few years of not going to the great KNWU Toertochten that start in the area, see post of yore. This time it was to be a retro ride, of which the Netherlands and Belgium have had that many recently that you can lose oversight. The retrokoers website, which some years ago was still very quick to read now is a really long list of rides all over the Netherlands and Belgium. This is a great development, of course, but if it comes to travelling from the North West of Germany to the South of the Netherlands or even to Belgium, things quickly become difficult. If you then see a ride advertised which is only about 130 kms away from where you live, it´s relatively unavoidable that you go, right?
And it was a good decision, what with the weather being wonderful, attendance high, and the route well planned. We met in the middle of the town, in a place called Smidsbelt, at a café, where the organizers, the tourist office of the town, had erected two long racks onto which riders could hook their bikes for safe storage either with the handlebars or the saddles of their bikes.
Not too many riders came by car, but in any case parking space was ample, and as my son and I were very early, we had the prime parking space – if that matters. So we set about assembling the bikes (and hiding some marvellous vinyl records we had bought in a fleamarket on the way).
We had brought my son´s 1952 Miele Sports bike, and my ca. 1982 RIH. We thought we´d be fine with that choice, and while I was, the RIH being a really great bicycle to ride, my son was hard pressed on his relatively heavy tourer when it came to the run over Holterberg with no holds barred and the group dissolved for a few miles. He coped admirably, though, and the great atmosphere of friendly rivalry saw to everybody being included in the spirit. On a personal note, I may add that my recent intensive training had led to me not being the slowest by far after basically 18 months of absence from riding, so that was good too. I battled it out with a group of riders among which there was one to ride a beautiful red Ko Zieleman, a real marvel of a bike.
Start was at 10.30 for the group which was led by Theo de Rooy, a former Pro and a very friendly man indeed. We had met before in some ride or other, and he remembered me and we were greeted with a handshake, which created a familiar atmosphere right away.
The first round of riding was about 35 slowish (25kph) kilometers, with lots of great conversations possible, and everybody in good mood. I talked to the only other RIH rider a lot, brushing up my Dutch, and finding out once more that the frame number of my bike doesn´t match with the usual numbering system employed in the day – four digits, starting with the expected two digit year code, but then one digit is missing.
While it has to be admitted that not every bicycle in use there was a prime museum piece, the group including also some low range cycles, they all were in very good nick technically, so only two punctures occurred, for the mending of which the group waited, making good use of the time by taking photographs, chatting even more, and looking at each other´s bikes. Here´s a quick photo bomb of the headbadges and -transfers I was able to catch, and as you can see, many bicyces were of fascinating provenance.
So, after about 90 minutes we were back for a round of coffee and cakes at the café. Again, bicycles were scrutinized, and some I found fascinating, some others shocking, like this 1920s machine which had obviously been involved in a bad crash some time in its long history. You could see that something was wrong with the angles from just looking at it, and this was the reason:
Ripples under the top tube, right behind the cable clip, and one big bulge under the down tube. Luckily, steel is forgiving, but it´s not nice in any case.
After the break at the café, or, for those who had brought their own sandwiches, on a round bench under a tree, on we went for the next round of riding, roughly the same distance again, but over Holterberg. The peloton again was moving forward at a moderate pace until we came to said hill, and we met again after it, so te group arrived back at Smidsbelt in more or less one batch. Riding in the group was pleasurable in all, discipline prevailed, no dangerous situation occurred, but all those colourful old jerseys made for a really bright outlook.
Two more interesting bicycles:
One, only represented here in details, a Peugeot randonneuse I have portrayed before, with some gold anodized Simplex accents and some nice transfers:
And the other Theo de Rooy´s bike, one he rode in the day when being a pro, and the only cross bike in the group. Great bike, really, but look at the rear dropout and the seat saty top – are those hairlines in the paintwork also cracks in the metal? Let´s hope not, but they look like it, don´t they?
Is this a cracked seat stay tube?
After a few hours it was packing up again, and back home, but it was very much worth it. I´ll certainly be back next year.
In an earlier post I described what it was like to be in the big meet and retrofestival Gazelle staged on June 10. During that event it was possible to walk through some of their production facilities, like stores, production line and the paintshop. I took some photos, some not overly in focus because light was low in some spots, and Gazelle were kind enough to permit posting (cheers, Paula!).
I have just adored Gazelle bikes ever since the early eighties when I started wrenching, on a small scale, but nevertheless to earn money, and I found that you need to punish a Gazelle very severly to make it impractical to repair. Clever solutions for common problems (drum brakes and chaincases that insure full functionality of the bike in severe weather conditions, yet can be accessed easily, for instance) have always made Gazelle bikes a favourite of mine if it comes to repairs. Then the eighties and nineties bikes with their stainless nuts, bolts, and handlebars, extremely well built wheels, early adoption of high quality lighting equipment – the list is long.
Not to say that Sparta, Union, and what else there was, weren´t good bikes, but in my opinion Gazelle always had the edge. And, of course, there were those wonderful road and track bikes, but that´s what the earlier post is about.
And there I was, in the heart of it all.
I don´t think much comment is necessary, so let´s more or less speak the pics for themselves.
I personally found the sheer volume of bikes overpowering, but then I´m not too often inside mass producers´ plants.
It seems that no production these days can do without pep talk for the workers, if it makes sense or not. BTW, Gazelle is in Dieren, which is in the Netherlands, not in the US.
Some older parts of the works cleverly integrated into more modern buildings.
Maguras – very tasty.
Of course, you daft computer – it´s a Saturday.
Items to be returned as defective.
Attention to detail – not only in the bikes, but also in production failities.
Oh well…
The last two pics are taken in the paintshop – all powdercoating, of course.
It´s about a month since we (wife, son, me) returned from Belgium where we had a great week, all told. We were lucky to be able to rent a small holiday chalet near Bruges, so that´s where we went first, of course. Our abode being about 17 km away from the City, we cycled.
I myself took the 100 Euro Trek again which had given me good service in France already. I must say it´s a quick bike.
Here are some pics from Brugge, as the Flemish call it:
There´s so much to see and do in this most fascinating of Europe´s cities – unbelievable. The combination of waterways and solid, huge buildings never fails to amaze me.
And we really used a genuine, Belgian cobble stone road. The road sign says “Road surface in bad state”. Who´d have thunk.
The windmill we cycled past is in a very good state, though.
Entering Brugge from the North, you come across yet one more bridge, Scheepsdalebrug, that can be lifted for passing ships. This one, however, is very different in that it has a cantilevering system. I didn´t see it work, but it must be fascinating to watch when the large arms roll down as the road surface lifts up to an estimated 45 deg angle. It was opened only in 2011, its predecessor, having survived WWII, having been scrapped despite a public outcry. It´s a bridge with its own Wikipedia article.
This is what you see first. When the bridge opens, the ends of the arms decend until…
… the bolt at the end of the arm…
… engages in the huge hook on the quayside, securing the whole construction. Simple, but very place consuming.
Some photos from the town we stayed at.
A place called de Haan was where we stayed. It´s about the only place left on the Flemish North Sea coast which has not been completely concreted over and built up with high rise flats. De Haan really is a nice place and can only be recommended. The station building belongs to the Kusttram, a tramway which goes all the way from the Dutch to the French borders, a staggering 67km.
Cycling still is the sports in Flanders – you meet many road cyclists, and also you see a number of street furniture items to remind you that you´re in the heartland of cycleracing. Flemish TV will not shy away from showing cyclocross amateur races live all Sunday. And all the drivers I encountered actually treated me, the cyclist, like a genuine participant in road traffic. On small roads drivers of huge tractors actually stopped, drivers slowed down.
People planning and maintaining cycle paths, or indeed road signs, seem to have different ideas, though – cycle paths are there to cause you flats, excepting where tourists are expected to use them, and road signs are non existant. I got lost one day until I felt quite irretrievable and I thought I´d never make it home. It was a very good thing that my Dutch enabled me to ask for the way, and the usual overpowering friendliness of the locals had me heading in the right direction just before nighfall. (A good map and/or SatNav system are perfectly irreplacable if you don´t speak either Dutch or English.) That´s one more thing I really value highly about Flanders: Even in the hottest touristy hotspots people are invariably friendly, helpful and relaxed. One saleswoman right in the middle of Bruges actually allowed me to take my bike inside the store while choosing a T-Shirt.
Here are the two neighbouring towns to the East of De Haan, Wenduine and Blankenberge (the big buildings).
To the other side of De Haan there´s Ostende, a modern looking town, with a more usual bridge construction.
Maybe you are going to dislike this, but I must say I find the modern fifties and sixties buildings in Ostende rather attractive.
The former public cycle race track, now converted to a skater track. Ugh.
But Flanders also is the country of some of history´s most horrible battles, and in the Westhoek around Dixmuiden there are literally hundreds of cemetaries, monuments and other places to remind the tourist of the First World War.
This is what the Begijnhof below looked like in 1918. It´s the exact angle of view.
Dixmuiden was completely destroyed in WWI and has been rebuilt to look quite exactly what it was like in 1914. The huge Ijzertoren of course is a structure that was erected in the early fifties, and its Flemish nationalist and hardcore catholic background make it a a little suspect to my mind.
Ieper / Ypers is another example of a town that was completely flattened and rebuilt.
Don´t really know what the huge ferris wheel is doing in the market, but somebody will.
The Menin Gate is a monument to the missing British soldiers of WWI. There are tens of thousands of names inscribed in every available nook and cranny of the impressively large structure.
Its ceiling strongly reminds me of the one that adorns the recently finished monument to WWII Bomber Command crews in London. I wonder if it´s intentional.
Ypres
London
In spite of the size of Menin Gate, not all names of those missing in action in the battles around Ypers could be accomodated there. There is a huge annex to Menin Gate in Tyne Cot cemetary just outside the town.
More WWI – of course one site must be visited if you`ve got the time. It´s the place where John McCrae invented the Poppy.
Not only is this a place drenched in history, but because of that you´re likely to meet British school children on excursions.
In Flanders Fields
But of course you can´t miss the monuments – they´re everywhere. You cycle along a road, see a sign…
… follow it across a field on a superbly kept path…
… and there you are on yet another site of a forward medical post, a military hospital or just a battle site where so many soldiers were killed quite sense- and uselessly.
This is the grave many British students on excursion leave a cross at. Look at the age of the soldier – he was the youngest Britain killed on active service in WWI.
Very unusual to find a history of an officer´s educational carreer on his headstone. He was a student at the same public school as Robert Graves, btw. Also his family would have paid a handsome sum for the inscription – contrary to the stone itself and the standard data personal inscriptions at the base of the stone were not free and billed by the letter.
But you also find the smaller historical sites, like this field which once was a German airfield. It´s amazing how present WWI still is in the minds of the people.
On a less sombre note, Flanders also is Volvo Country. The Volvo works in Ghent must have a part in this, although I just saw one 760, and no other 7/9 series cars. I can´t imagine what happened to them all, you see them everywhere else in Europe on a daily basis. In Flanders it´s the modern, flashy Volvos that dominate the roads. But then again, there´s the odd exception.
That´s what happens if you leave a 140 series out in the open, close to the sea, for 20 odd years.
Cycled past this one. Aren´t the rims ugly as hell?
My trusty 940 Turbo near Ypres canal harbour…
… and someplace else.
All the chrome, lamps and other brightwork is still good – a real treasure trove
Not only Volvos to catch attention, though.
A Citroen Méhari in really good nick
Hi Nikki! Is this the one?
Our family were quite unanimous in that it won´t be long until we return to Flanders.
During my recent short holidays in Flanders I saw two very nice bikes, both in Bruges. One is a Champion – no idea if this is a repaint decal or the original brand. It is a very nice hand made frame, though, and would certainly merit saving and not being used up as a hack bike as it seems to be at the moment.
Classic Belgian bikes have brazed on carrier racks – advantages and shortcomings of this method are obvious. So the third tube brazed on the rear dropout is a rack stay. Very neat brazing throughout. Also it´s a sports frame with a single top tube and not a Mixte, as usual.
This must be the most astonishing feature of the frame: A strut distributing the forces from the top tube to both down and seat tubes, thereby greatly reducing the rist of deforming or breaking the seat tube, as frquently seen in lady´s bikes. The clamp is by no means meant for a brake; it really seems to be off a Sturmey variable speed hub periphery.
The original, high quality crank – the Solida on the r/h side is a later addition. The Solida is not too well fitted (cotter) either…
Again, very clean lugless construction.
The other bike is an AS-Thor – strange name, but a great bike.
It shows typical Belgian features, like the brazed on rack and the slightly bent French type top tubes.
Also the chain guard is rather Belgian.
When the Belgian Forces left the Cologne area in the early nineties I happened upon one of those bikes in the bulky refuse. It was seriously beautiful with some special constructional details in the frame and a wonderful paint scheme. Would you believe it – I sold it some years later. It´s now in a renowned private collection. Ah well.
France – again and again a wonderful destination for holidays and sightseeing. Last year it was Paris in the rain, or so it seemed. This year we wanted to visit our friends in Normandy again. We were looking forward to short quiet holidays, but the first thing was that I fell ill the day before we wanted to set out. Nothing serious, but there was no way I could travel.
My family then decided to give me the opportunity to try out our recently acquired Volvo 940 Turbo, and left for France in our old 740 which we still had. After I had recovered, I raced after them to save as much French time as possible.
This is what I raced after them in:
If you want more info and visual impressions, watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEB0ppM_PZ8
Funny thing to say on a bike blog, but this car is fun with a capital F. It cuts hours off the traveling time from here to Normandy, and with its LPG installation, fuel cost per 100 km is about 6 Euros at the moment.
Anyway, not feeling completely healthy again, and what with the time saved by using the 940, I was able to have another good look round the Nécropole Nationale de Notre Dame de Lorette. Having been several times, but only fleetingly, I took the chance and combined a long lunch break with a stroll round the newly (2014) built Anneau de la Mémoire which is a ring with a perimetre of 345 m, containing the names of all those soldiers of WWI who died in the area:
The ring is hugely impressive and, to my mind, very much worth a visit.
Looking down at Ablain-St-Nazaire
It is situated right next to the Chapelle and the Tour-lanterne which, together with about 45.000 crosses, make the Nécropole Nationale.
These buildings also are extremely impressive and were erected during the 1920s. Contrary to the many British cemetaries in the area, which have a distinct military feel about them, the Nécropole Nationale reminds visitors again and again how horrible and wasteful WWI had been. It says for instance that the Chapelle was built on “the tears of the French women”, and this plaque, taken from the interior of the Chapelle and now on exposition in the museum part of the Tour-lanterne, speaks by itself:
We offered up our lives for the peace of the world, but we died for the cannon dealers
Many people, especially from the UK, still keep the memory of WWI alive – contrary to the Germans, who by now have all but forgotten it.
I had planned to visit poet Isaac Rosenberg´s grave at St Laurent Blangy, which is just around the corner, so I also looked up his name on the Anneau:
So, after one last look over the huge Nécropole I left and made for Rosenberg´s grave, fully expecting to find a lost headstone somewhere on one of the hundreds of British cemetaries on the Somme. But this is what I really discovered:
Flowers, though whithered, his portrait, many small stones on the headstone in the Jewish tradition. Amazing.
I had planned to carry on straight to Normandy from there, but the road between Bapaume and Albert had been blocked and I had to go on a detour. It was July 23, and the big Australian memorial service for which safety precautions had been taken was under way, this year of course being the 100th since the beginning of the Battle of the Somme. The detour led me to Ulster Tower. I was glad I had a pretext to go because the octagenarian gentleman and his family, who tend to the tower during summertime, always are great to talk to – he is one of the few people who have owned a classic 1950s Ellis-Briggs bike since new, or nearly. I was eager to find out about the bike´s restauration progress, but the usually so forsaken Ulster Tower was in the middle of… Well, see for yourself, or you probably won´t believe it:
Something was afoot – coaches from Scotland – ?
Covering the short distance between the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing and Ulster Tower, c/w pipe band and all
Everyone in recreated historic uniforms, even the VAD nurses
After the parade, a picnic was held on the lawn, and I was able to talk to participants about a part of British folklore I until then had been completely unaware of.
Having also found Roland Leighton´s name on the Anneau at Notre Dame de Lorette,
I decided to re-visit his grave too. It is found in Louvencourt, only a short distance from my route.
Again, this year with its anniversary seemd to have made a difference, and even more flowers and crosses than usual could be found, even a large bunch of violets.
Leighton was Vera Brittain´s fiancé – “VMB” and “RAL” on the centre poppy are their initials. Brittain, one of the most ardent British pacifists of the inter-war years and author of many touching poems as well as “Testament of Youth” and many other books, had been sent a poem on violets by Leighton from the trenches. It´s called “Villanelle” (although, strictly speaking, it isn´t one), and starts with the verses
“Violets from Plug Street Wood,
Sweet, I send you oversea.”
It continues describing how the speaker finds the violets next to a dead soldier “Where his mangled body lay” and that he thinks it strange that the flowers were “Blue, when his soaked blood was red”. (Plug Street Wood was a nickname British soldiers had given to a part of the front.)
After Leighton´s death in December 1915, the day he was due for home leave, Brittain, having earlier joined the VAD, became a nurse in frontline hospitals in France, nursing, among others, German prisoners with the most horrible wounds. Utterly exhausted, burnt out as we would say, at the end of the war, she returned to Oxford and started a distinguished journalistic carreer. Her “Testament of Youth”, in which she depicts her early life, is quite incomparable. She writes, among other issues, about losing her brother, her fiancé, and two close friends. A first edition of “Testament” and a tiny brochure dating from 1920 containing first impressions of some of her poems are among my most cherished possessions.
But on to some more cheerful topics.
One more railway track turned cycle path, for instance. This one goes from Gisors to Giverny, and is most delightful:
And one more little detail. About six weeks ago an acquaintance who does house clearances sold me this bike
Trek 2300, fitted with Ultegra 6500 3 x 9 and pretty new Bontrager wheels
rather cheaply. There was a lot of work as the former owner had had rather strange ideas of what one needs on a road bike, and he also must have been quite hamfisted, but never having ridden an alloy /carbon fibre frame / fork combo before, I thought I´d give it a try. It came in very handy when I didn´t have much energy for packing my car before leaving for France – wheels out, and bingo.
Once in France, I used it on several occasions and was impressed by its quickness. I zoomed along some backroads to destinations my wife had left for by car, coming across two or three really interesting spots in the area south west of Beauvais.
Here´s a really nice village which seems to be untouched by modern times.
I love those age-old signs.
In a neighbouring village, the old roadsign erected by Michelin in the late thirties had been lovingly transplanted on the lawn next to the Mairie.
This sign, in a town in the vicinity, consisting of glazed earthenware, must have been in situ for more than 60 years:
Lastly a wonderful view, bought with surprisingly little climbing:
Hopefully I´ll be back in Normandy in the not too distant future.
starostneradost 