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

Wine Tasting in Balham - Again

Last week was the April edition of Ruth Alexander-Gordon’s new wine-tasting club in Balham, south west London. She’s called it ‘Wines, Vines and Good Times’, or something like that.

Not sure about the name, but we spent an evening tasting some Cabernet Sauvignon wines from around the world in the company of the lovely Sarah, so I can forgive a slight concern over the name.

Here’s a link to Ruth’s notes about the wines we tasted. At the time I must admit I had a bit of an issue on the night, but on reflection (I’m not sure ‘sober reflection’ would be accurate or appropriate) I’m actually rather pleased.

I have a real blind spot about wines that are not from France or Italy. I don’t dislike them, I just don’t know anything about them. Of the wines we tasted, two were from France.

But the first was a cabernet sauvignon from the Vins de Pay’s D’Oc. Well, that’s not going to be very nice, is it? The classic cabernet sauvignon would be an aged claret from one of the better estates of the haut médoc. It definitely wouldn’t be a Vins de Pay de Don’t Bother (what a snob I am!).

We had a 2nd French wine, a claret this time, but a very ordinary version, an Appellation Bordeaux Controllée.

Necessarily a blend (cabinet sauvignon with merlot) - no appellation (AOC) wine in France can have a single variety of grape and publicise it on the label. Except Gewürtztraminer from the Alsace appellation. As an aside, isn’t that cool?

One of the reasons I enjoy Alsatian Gewürtztraminer is because you know it’s the only AOC wine in the whole of France that is allowed to put the grape variety on the label.

I don’t know why, but I like that, and it’s Dorothea’s favourite wine as well, a delightful lady from Freiburg, now of Sunbury-on-Thames, and a Chain Gang Cycling regular.

Anyway, at Ruth’s tasting the stand-out wine was a South African - guess where Ruth’s from? But it was gorgeous, and worth a name check: Annandale 2001.

The only minor gripe I had was that if I wanted to present cabernet sauvignon at it’s best, any Chain Gangers who have cycled the Bordeaux Winetrail could name you half-a-dozen wines from our trip along the Dordogne and into the médoc.

It wouldn’t be a Vine de Pays d’Oc, and it wouldn’t be a plain old AOC Bordeaux. But on reflection it was nice to be taken through a few wines by someone who doesn’t have my disgraceful bias towards ‘old world’ wines. Especially the Annandale, but the wines from the US and from Argentina were lovely too.

I’m minded to do a bit of a shout for the vineyards and the wines we meet. That can be a project for next week. But a lovely evening, thanks Ruth.