Okay, maybe it’s time to confess what this blog is really about. Trish and I are very excited about our bikes, and our rides, and even all the great stuff we’ve had an excuse to buy. But the truth is that a lot of the excitement stems from the realisation that we can ride at all. We’ve touched on this… Read more »
My daily ride around the neighbourhood wasn’t over-pleasant yesterday. Although there is little traffic around us, and in general I have found French drivers very courteous (their presumed liability probably helps here), I am still very nervous about traffic and yesterday I found it all a bit much. In an hour or so (just over 15km), I normally encounter two… Read more »
No, we don’t mean follow us down the road. We just want to point out that you can follow this blog in various ways to make sure you never miss a post. There’s the good old RSS feed. We tweet our posts to @bocagebiking. And you can follow this blog at Bloglovin.
Trish discussed hi-vis clothing a little while ago. Frankly, I think this is a no-brainer: it’s better to be seen than to be stylish (an argument I have used for my clothing choices for years). But it’s not just about wearing something bright. Above you see me dressed in highlighter yellow with a screamingly green helmet. And yet, while it’s… Read more »
Apparently, the Copenhagen Wheel is finally in production and you can pre-order it now. It’s a clever product, but I think its arrival has greater significance than just the availability of a cool new device. It seems that the age of the e-bike is truly upon us. We ordered our Gitane Organ e-bikes in Early August and mine still hasn’t… Read more »
I love riding down the voies vertes with the dogs. In fact, any outing is made more pleasurable by their company as you watch them discover things you hadn’t seen. But it does make for some complicated cycling. We made a short, 6km (each way) jaunt down a section of the Véloscénie today. We’d previously walked a small section of… Read more »
I’ve now been cycling pretty much daily for a month. At first this was on the stationary bike, but since I got the Gitane, a week ago, I’ve been out on it every day. My first journeys were my old routes for walking the dog, which I discover on Mappy are 5.0 and 5.2km in length. The roads round here are pretty… Read more »
Our trip down the vélo francette last Wednesday was truly lovely. It was such a beautiful September day – 19 degrees, dry and sunny. As Steve mentioned, I was towing Zola and because of that I found myself using the assist more than normal. The slight upward gradient of the old railway line was quite noticeable when towing a 15kg trailer with… Read more »
While our bikes came with lights already mounted, I felt they needed more. Call me old fashioned but at night I really like to see where I’m going. And extra lights are a bit boost to conspicuity both at night and during the day. So we bought Cateye Volt front lights – the 200 and 700 models. Each light has a… Read more »
Trish’s bike came with a very ordinary saddle. Somehow it was just, well, dull. It had to go, and in its place we’ve added something with real class. If you think about quality saddles, the first name that comes to mind is Brooks. All these fancy modern saddles with their gel and contouring and heaven knows what are all very well…. Read more »
Okay, it’s true, I’m a geek. Whenever I take up any new hobby – whether it’s flying or cycling or watching movies (yes, dammit, that counts as a hobby), my first thought is, what software do I need for this? It was inevitable both that I would get a cycling app for my iPhone and that there would be such an… Read more »
The recently inaugurated Vélo Francette (VF) cycle route runs from Ouistreham (that’s the port at Caen to most travellers) to La Rochelle – a distance of over 600km. Our ambition on this ride was somewhat more modest. There’s a stretch of the VF that runs south from Flers to our local town of Domfront, which is where we started. It’s… Read more »
So, yesterday we tried out both the e-bike and the Doggyhut for the first time. For our first ride out, we chose the usual route where we walk the dogs on the voie verte. Normally we join at a certain point and turn either right or left, walk about 2.5km and turn round and come back. We figured that for cycling,… Read more »
Trish made her inaugural ride on her new Gitane Organ e-bike today. For me, it was a chance to catch up with an old friend. I needed something to ride. A while back, Trish bought a mountain bike, but it’s way too small. I mean, I’ve ridden it, but it’s not anything a sane person would do. About a year… Read more »
We’ve now had a bit more time to play with Trish’s new Gitane Organ e-bike. This isn’t going to be a review – that will come but we’ll need far more experience with the bike first. This post is more in the way of first impressions. And what’s the first thing you do with a new bike? Why, pimp it out… Read more »
