bikes

One of the first books I remember reading as a teenager was �Green Mountains� by Bernard O�Reilly. I borrowed it from the local library and was transfixed by the account of his search for and discovery of the Stinson aircraft that crashed in 1937 in the largely unexplored MacPherson Ranges. While the official search was out to sea off Ballina, Bernard O�Reilly followed his own intuition and set off alone to scour the remote ridges and valleys near the O�Reilly property. He found the wreck on the second day of his search and then trekked sixteen kilometres to raise the alarm and guide the rescuers back to the crash-site. Three men survived the crash, but, tragically James Westray fell to his death while going to get help. But for the tenacity and bushcraft of Bernard O�Reilly, the two survivors would have also perished. Years later, I read the wonderful Judith Wright poem, �The Lost Man� a haunting, almost gothic account, of the imagined final moments of James Westray.  Although the...

Alpe d�Huez is the most glamourous mountain in French cycling, featuring in nearly every Tour de France since 1976. It draws cycling fans like no other. Half-a-million people cram its slopes and the twenty-one hairpin bends during the race, many of them Dutch, whose riders have a knack of being first up the hill. The winner of the Alpe climb is nearly always a contender for the yellow jersey or the King of the Mountain.  Aware of this symbolism, the authorities have named each of the twenty-one bends after a mountain victor, starting with number twenty-one at the bottom. It�s a tad cheesy, but who am I to disagree with millions of cycling fans who count off the bends and the names. The morning is bright and sunny and Anita, the owner of the Bed & Breakfast, offers me a huge breakfast. Nervously, I check my gear three times before leaving the B&B a few kilometres south of Le Bourg d�Oisans. I try to relax into the warm-up ride along the valley. Alpe d�Huez looms to my left. ...

My wife and I have been in Europe for the past three months. In that time, we've cycled a number of iconic bike routes including the Canal du Midi; Canal du Garonne and the Danube Cycleway between Ulm in Germany and Linz in Austria. I've also cycled up a number of Pyrenean mountains. What follows below is an admittedly ad-hoc and impressionistic 'review' of our experiences, in no particular order. I apologise in advance for the petty generalisations and inane conclusions... they were all fully intended! 1) Firstly, the obvious. Australia, my home country, is so far behind Europe in terms of cycling infrastructure and bicycle 'awareness' that it sometimes feels like another country. Oh, wait. Change that to feels like another universe . A universe where the car is King, where a lack of awareness of cyclists is often worn as a badge of honour by motorists and where cyclists are viewed as either law-breakers or freeloaders who don't deserve an inch of road spac...