Lost Lanes

I will generally look for pretty specific things when planning routes to cycle. Its difficult to define exactly what these criteria are, but broadly speaking I sit somewhere fairly equally between the need for  carbon fibre and 1 in 3 gradients, and rolling 2km round the local park. While its always nice to challenge yourself a bit, a bike ride should be a relaxed affair and the sense of achievement and contented weariness at the end of the day is one of the positive side effects of getting this balance just right. 

With this in mind I bought a copy of Jack Thurston's recently published book Lost Lanes - 36 idyllic bike rides around southern England. Jack presents The Bike Show on Resonance FM, so I know his attitude to cycling is quite closely aligned with mine. The text shows just that; an engaging and inspiring mix of social history, travelogue (it seems he rode most of these rides with various pals last Summer), and smatterings of detail giving a general impression of the route. URLs link to printable maps and digital GPS files, apparently, though I had some bother with this.

At the weekend I took a trip out to Kent with Mrs PR and my pal G to ride route number 1, and while there was a bit more 'Lost' than 'Lanes', the sections of the route we actually managed to find were smashing. I should say that the navigational issues were entirely mine. 

Also worth mentioning are the brilliant pictures; cutesy villages, rolling meadows, dewy forests, babbling brooks and plenty of winding lanes. Indeed the whole palette of bygone English pastoralism is here, which is ultimately exactly what I'm looking for in a bike ride.

More of a review is here, too.

Clear out

Looks like this Ebay seller has been asked by the missus to clear out all of that 'old bike rubbish' from the garage/shed. His loss is our gain, and over the last couple of weeks he's been listing some top stuff. Enjoy the edit:

Happy Father's Day

To Dad,

Where would I be without you?

Team Jersey

Admit it, who wouldn't want a customised cycling top with their own blog name and URL printed across it? Thought so. May I present to you the Pastoral Review 2013 Team jersey:

I've had it produced by Eclipse Cycling; a Chinese company who make custom cycling kit with no bulk order necessary. The price was reasonable too so I thought it was worth a punt. I drafted the design and submitted it via Eclipse's and awaited a response. After a few days they got back in touch with proofs of the final design which honestly was a little worrying in quality but I figured it was just due to the way the graphics were rendered on their rather fancy web-based design editor thing. I sent through some better quality versions of the logos, made payment and crossed my fingers...

The finished jersey finally arrived with me about 9 weeks after kicking off the process but this seems pretty reasonable given the nature of the job and the shipping time from the other side of the world. And yesterday, when with trembling hand I opened the parcel I found a beautiful custom cycling jersey! I'll let the images do the talking, but needless to say I'm pretty happy. The fit is good, if slightly on the short side for me, the quality of the printing is spot on and the general finish is great. The jersey worked out at only £28 including shipping, so pretty amazing value really. Of course the designation as 'Team' jersey is really a bit of a misnomer. There is no team, and theres actually only one jersey.

For anyone who's interested, I used Adobe Illustrator to produce the logos and submitted them as hi-res tiffs (with transparent background) and as vector-based pdfs. I am indebted to Jez Andrews of Following The Chainline for his great review of Eclipse and advice on this. Also, thanks go to Mrs PR for the photos.