The Chain Gang Cycle Tours

Click, Click, Click

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Back in the Eighties there was a fabulous animated version of The Wind In The Willows, featuring David Jason as Toad. I bought quite a few sets as gifts for children and adults, I thought they were hilarious. I’ve no idea where any of them are now, and as they were all on VHS I couldn’t play them anyway. But one episode I remember particularly involved Toad of Toad Hall getting into photography.

“Click, click, click”, he said. “Photography is just the latest thing, the ONLY thing!” Obviously it all went horribly wrong, but that was Toad’s role in life - discover a fad, throw money at it, screw it up, get caught by the Weasels and rescued by Badger.

But it does illustrate a common prejudice about photography. Until I started the Chain Gang I was very much part of the ‘point and click’ school of photography. As a bricklayer might say to a painter, if you can pee, you can take photos.

But trying to find photos to use on our website or in our brochure is next to impossible. We have access to the archives of the National Tourist Offices of both France and Italy, as well as web-based photograph libraries and our own photos. But no matter what you do, when we’re cycling we don’t look cool. Rain jackets are a no no, and I try to avoid the appearance of too many hills. I don’t like clouds, and it’s nice to imagine we might have pictures of cool and pretty people always looking manicured in the sunshine enjoying themselves. But you try, it just never, ever works out.

But I’m from the Toad school of click, click, click. Some people know what they’re doing, people like Paul Lawrence and Simon Moss, and the King brothers, Toby and Ben. Another one is Peter Wesolowski, a cycling nut and an all round good bloke, although we did have the occasional ‘discussion’ on the difference between tax (me) and essential services (Pete). He thinks they’re the same thing.

Pete brought along a little compact camera - although the way he wields it and sets his shots up you suspect he has some serious kit back home. We’d be cycling along, and there’d be Pete lying in a ditch trying to get an angle. But his pictures are just much better than mine. So I’ve set up an album on our Flickr site so that you can enjoy his photographs too.

For some of them, you had to be there. For example, Sasha leading the group out - some people who were there will think Pete’s used Photoshop for that one! And people smiling cycling up a hill? But that’s why Pete’s better than me. I hope you enjoy them - I’ve included a few examples at low-resolution here, but for the real deal have a look at Peter’s album on the Chain Gang Flickr page.

Thanks Peter.

Click here to see a gallery of these photos, and more from The Chain Gang on the Chain Gang Flickr page

Nobody’s Immune To Nutters – They’re Everywhere

Like everyone else, The Chain Gang gets a few nutters along on our trips. One of the nicest and most interesting nutters is Tim Ockwell - I’ll tell you why he’s a nutter in a minute.

His key saving grace is that he’s usually in the company of two delightful ladies, his wife Glenys and their friend Annette. But Tim is seriously into his fitness.

Last year in Semur-en-Auxois in Burgundy, we were all posing under the start line flags of the Tour de France - Semur was one of the start towns in 2007.

French towns make a huge thing out of this and pay large sums to be a start or finish town. We arrived 2 months after the end of the Tour de France, but all the flags and bunting were still out.

The correct etiquette is to pose under the ‘Start’ flags pretending that the peleton of the Tour de France in 2007 included a rider of about 100 Kg, well into his 40s, in shorts and a T-shirt riding a hybrid bike, along with 2 pals one of whom celebrated his 60^th birthday in 2004 as I recall.

Either this was some sort of ‘Legends’ event, or me, Gary and Steve messing about. But not Tim. Although he was on holiday, he had to keep up his training for a triathlon he was entered in, so as soon he got to the hotel, he was off running as part of his training.

Anyway, the point of this posting is to congratulate Tim on completing the London Marathon earlier this month in an admirable three and a half hours.

He has an extraordinary dog as well that runs with him - dogs aren’t allowed in the marathon itself, but two weeks prior to the race, on a 22 mile training run, Tim’s dog ran along quite happily.

Is it possible that there could be dog marathon event? I’ve been to the greyhound racing, which is great fun, but what about dog marathon running?

Tim & Glenys’ dog could easily do it. Anyway, well done Tim, I think that’s amazing.

In the photo you can see that Glenys and Annette have a much clearer understanding of what you’re meant to do on a Chain Gang holiday.