21 Cycling Climbs - The Book - First Draft

Publisher Wanted.

Twenty-one of the most famous, not-so-famous, and infamous mountain climbs of the European cycling world. Favourites of the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and just about everyone able and willing to turn a pedal.

What is fine art photography? or to put it another way, when does fine art photography become fine art photography? Who decides what is and what is not fine art photography?

Jonathan Jones wrote recently in the Guardian newspaper: Photography is not an art. It is a technology. We have no excuse to ignore this obvious fact in the age of digital cameras when the most beguiling high-definition images and effects are available to millions. My iPad can take panoramic views that are gorgeous to look at. Does that make me an artist?

This is a simple technique that seems to be under-used in the digital age due in no small part to the ability of digital cameras to compensate for just about every 'mistake' Shooting into the light enables the photographer to simplify 

Curiosity is both vital and extremely valuable, forget technical skills, expensive equipment, around the world plane tickets, curiosity is worth all of the above put together and levels the playing field. What does it look like from the other side? what's just around the corner?

3/4 of the way up the last climb of 14 climbs on this sportive from hell, slumped against a low wall like a mortally wounded soldier, taking his last few desperate breaths lay an exhausted, fallen, cyclist. I stood on the pedals, lungs bursting, legs burning, making just enough forward movement to stay upright, he muttered almost under his breath, I know just how that feels.

And he did, I knew he did, just like all the others who have gone too far, too hard, for too long, and are way, way, beyond empty. When no amount of energy gells or tritronic drinks makes any difference - we enter the realm of pure survival. It’s not a question of mind over matter, it’s about shutting down the mind and pretending it doesn’t matter.

Soon, on a sunny sunday afternoon all over this green and pleasant land of England, cyclists will once again be fighting a last ditch battle, mainly with themselves, to the death, or at least to the end of an endless sportive designed by some narcissistic sadistic motherfu*ker. To think it all started so well just a few hours earlier, full of the joys of spring charging along like a plague of locust devouring the earth, according to the Daily Mail. Only to end up like the exhausted climber clinging by his fingernails to a shear rock face, so close to the top, but shredded, with not a molecule of energy to be found even in the depths of your soul.

 Is this the new normal? I think it might be.

These are the dog days of recovery, the slog when nothing seems to change, no light at the end of the tunnel. Can only hope what I do now will stand me in good stead sometime in the summer. Heading for the first outpatient appointment with the surgical team to review the scans and X-rays and find out if I will walk again.