The Road Ahead

| Zapfly

Seven weeks today I shall be off on the first day of my ride to Nordkapp. To say that I am a little trepid at the thought of it, would be a huge understatement. In the interim, I have to gather together all the kit I will need for the trip. Going that much further north than last year, the temperatures might drop to near zero on the coolest nights north of the Arctic Circle. However, the average daytime temperature should be somewhere around 15 degrees Celsius.

My soul wish is that I do not experience the amount of rain encountered last time. I anticipate that I will be camping far more frequently due to the sparse population in many of the places I aim to cycle through. In fact, chances are that I will end up free camping most of the time. This means both good and bad things. On the plus side, there is nothing quite as liberating as finding an isolated spot and camping out for the night. If you like peace and quite, and I do, this is just the ticket. On the other hand, laundry, washing and conversation will all be far more complicate.

Part of the route I will be following will take me through Germany. Unless I take a rather lengthy detour on my way northwards towards Denmark, I will have to traverse Hamburg. Not that I dislike the city, cycling through large conurbations tends to make life all the more tricky with cars blazing past you and getting hopelessly lost.

It would necessitate the need to carry yet more kit that requires recharging. On that note, I had the first stab at a kit list yesterday. By Jove, I’ll be carrying a lot of gear. That’s the consequence of doing this solo I suppose.

A couple of people have indicated their interest in joining me on the ride. I’d love to have company. The more I think about it, life would be so much easier with another person present. For example, shopping; I will have to leave my bike, albeit chained up, along with all my panniers, which do not have locks, attached to the bike outside of the shop. In smaller towns and villages, this should not present too much of an issue. However, in a larger metropolis, I’m not sure it will be there when I emerge from buying groceries. Then there is all the end of day chores. Last year, Pete, Mary and I shared the cooking, laundry and tent pitching, which worked out really well. It won’t me a problem, probably something I get used to very quickly. Just that after several houses cycling; it would be nice to share the load.

All that aside, I am completely focused on the ride. I cannot wait to see the places that lie ahead of me. From all the cyclist’s blogs I have been reading, it should be a trip of a lifetime. So, now I must marshal my forces and complete preparations for the next Long Way Up ride.

My book, a presentation and Gok

| Zapfly

What a month it has been! So much has been happening since the end of February. My principle focus has been on completing my first book. I am so close now that I can smell the ink drying on the first draft. My book is all about my cycle ride last year from Lands End to John O’Groats. I will be utilising the Blurb platform to publish it. It is a mixture of journal and landscape photography. Watch this space.

Other news includes all the preparation for this year’s cycle adventure, London to Nordkapp. I aim to be off within the first half of June. I have decided to cycle along the North Sea Route for part of the way. This will take me through England, over the channel to Belgium, then on through The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and eventually, Norway.

En route to John O'Groats

I gave a presentation to the good people of the Child’s I Foundation last week as I shall be supporting their cause for this cycle adventure. I hope to have a few bloggers filling in for me whilst I am away. Relaying information from the various corners of northern Europe should be an interesting challenge but something to relish rather than fear!

I will start to post more information about the route in the next week, along with preparations and training. Ending on an exciting note, I did a shoot last week for the Gok Fashion Fix show website that will appear on the Channel 4 platform. Hyperlinks will be available from this Tuesday / Wednesday.

Dangerous animals en route

| Zapfly

Courtesy of BabyDinosaur on Flickr

I think I have decided upon where I am going to journey this summer.  Although I love Iceland and would love to circumnavigate the island, my original desire to cycle to Nordkapp is captivating me more.  I love the idea of travelling through Europe’s last true wilderness.

Due to the nature of where I intend to go, it will be necessary for me to wild camp on a regular basis.  To this end, I have been looking further into what treats may lay ahead for me if I pursue this course.  As I delve deeper into researching my route through Scandinavia, I have started to uncover something that I had not contemplated before, dangerous animals.  It was actually in conversation with a Swedish friend last night that alerted me to the perils that I might encounter on the road.  The list runs from nuisances, such as mosquitoes hordes, which are particularly prevalent in the north during the summer.  Although they are most active around dawn and sunset, I will be north of the Arctic Circle for a couple of weeks, truly in the land of the Midnight Sun.  So, this means that if I camp along the way, I am likely to be under attack most of the night.

Other insects that may provide me with issues are Gadflies, with painful but mercifully non-poisonous bites.  In addition, Sweden is home to large plagues of wasps, so I will need to be careful with any foodstuffs that may attract them.  A more serious issue will be ticks, widespread in southern Sweden and northern coastal regions.  Ticks can transmit Lyme’s disease and more serious TBE (tick-borne encephalitis) through a bite.  I have the choice of either staying inland with the mosquitoes or on the east coast with the ticks.  Tough choice…

Sweden does have a venomous snake, the European adder.  Fortunately, the snake is not very common, although ubiquitous throughout Sweden except for the north.

Then there are the top two mammals on the bloc; the brown bear and the wolf.  This worried me considerably as I will be headed through the areas where both species are most commonly located.  I did take solace in the fact that bears in Sweden have killed no more than a handful of people since 1900 and that wolves have not killed a human being since 1821.  This information was marred by the accompanying caveat of how to deal with a bear encounter in the woods.  Evidently, the done thing is to walk slowly away from it whilst talking loudly.  This I could probably muster.  The tough bit is what to do in the event of a bear attack; the answer, to play dead, protect your head and make yourself as small as possible.  However, once could adopted the opposite approach and start screaming as loud as possible at the creature, jumping and making oneself as large as possible.  Always a worry to be presented with such conflicting options.

I just read an article that brown bears mate between May and June. During this period bears are active both at night and during daylight hours. Young males are searching for females at this time and cover long distances in their search, while last year’s cubs are making their first independent forays into the world.  I am likely to be on the road towards the end of this period, so I will be vigilant.

To round up then, I will have to be acutely aware of various animals including the brown bear, wolf, moose, wolverine, lynx, the very rare Arctic fox, reindeer and perhaps even the golden eagle.  Don’t misunderstand me, I’d love to see all of these animals, just from a safe distance and not whilst trying to sleep in my tent, completely along in the absolute middle of nowhere.  Then, I may take issue with such beasties dropping by for a snack, which could ultimately turn out to be me!

File:Saami Family 1900.jpg

Putting all of this jeopardy to one side, one of the truly exciting parts of the expedition will be once I reach Lapland, or Sápmi, on the northern side of the Arctic Circle.  Here lies the ancestral home of the Sámi, or Lapps, indigenous people of the region.  The Sámi people are among the largest indigenous ethnic groups in Europe.  They are renowned for tended their herds of hardy reindeer for millennia.  I aim to visit an old Sámi settlement to find out more about their culture and way of life.  I may even succumb to the touristy urge to stay in a traditional Sámi tepee. It should all make for some stunning photography.

Getting back on the road

| Zapfly

Fit for a long cycle ride?

By way of getting this year’s cycling adventures off the ground, I shall be organising a London to Paris cycle ride.  It will act as a pre-curser to my long summer ride.  Has anybody completed the London to Paris cycle ride?  Was the route taken an interesting one?  I am looking at two different options, both of which should take about 4 days of cycling with a fifth day to return to the UK.

Unfortunately, my cycling companions for this summer’s excursion to Scandinavia have pulled out of the ride. This means that I will be completing the ride along. From a filmic point of view, I suspect the journey will be a lot more introspective than it might otherwise have been. Spending five weeks alone on the road, through all types of terrain and weather will most certainly be character-building.

On the plus side, going solo means that I will be able to grab as many shot as I choose. With the advent of digital photography, the need to carry bags of film has been replaced with the need to find power points to keep your kit fully charged and functional. I ordered a new Canon EOS 5D II a couple of weeks ago to fulfil my photographic needs on this summer’s ride but it looks as though I will have a wait on my hands as many people seem to be chasing the illusive supply of 5Ds. At least it means my 24mm lens will actually be 24mm and not 36mm as it is on my Canon EOS D20. The camera has served me well but after thousands of actuations, it is beginning to get rather long in the tooth.

One of the key outlets I have for my photography after an expedition of this nature is via publishing a book, thanks to the advent of affordable self-publishing. To this end, I am working on a book documenting last year’s cycle ride. I have almost finished the first draft and hope to have the first versions available in the next 6-8 weeks. I will be using Blurb as they have the best publishing software, although I have just looked at Lulu and they offer a package with an ISBN, essential if you are keen to sell online through the likes of Amazon and via bookshops.

Has anyone got any feedback on any of these service providers?

Sports Programme Manager

| Zapfly

Along with my various photographic endeavours, I like to combine my work with expedition style material. This can range from mountaineering to trekking, or in more recent times, long distance cycle rides. To that end, I like to complete at least one sponsored ride per year.

This year, I may well end up completing at least two. The reason for this increase in altruism is mainly due to joining forces with a new charity called the Childs i Foundation (CiF). They are raising funds to build an orphanage in Uganda for all the parentless children who are abandoned after the recent turmoil the country has suffered. I have been given the lofty title of Sports Programme Manager, which is nice.

So, one of my new jobs is to create some exciting sports programmes to raise money for the charity. First on the cards for me is getting my plans together for this summer’s ride, which I shall be doing for CiF. There are a couple of plans afoot at present, both of which involve Scandinavia. Pete and Mary should be joining me, so that will be really exciting. At present, we are deciding whether to head to Iceland or cycle from London via a ferry journey from Harwich to Esbjerg in Denmark, via Sweden and Finland up to Nordkapp, at the northern tip of Norway. Either option should be exciting but time will be the critical determinant in the end.

The other ride I will be looking at completing will be a quick four day stint from London to Paris. This will be the first ride that I organise on behalf of Childs i Foundation, so hopefully it will prove to be a popular ride. If everyone is altruistic in their approach, giving their time to help put the even together rather than just raise funds in isolation, this should be both a very accessible and comparatively inexpensive endeavour for volunteers.

More on this once I have looked into it further with my lovely CiF colleagues.

Lost weekend in Guernsey

| Zapfly

I was fortunate enough to be in Guernsey last weekend. The main purpose of the visit was to see my good friends Mary and Pete. We had a lot of things to organise. Firstly, about 60GB of HD video footage we shot on our Le Jog ride last year. Thanks to opaque technology and the need to have multiple external hard drives capturing the output of huge files via various video programmes, we spent most of the weekend indoors, struggling with the computer.

Fortunately, the results from the first MTS file transfers look good. Once we have managed to drop out the videos as manageable QT files, I hope to upload a selection of 1 minute files for each of the daily rides for the Le Jog ride to YouTube and link into this blog. More on this when I get round to it.

The other big focus of the weekend was to decide upon the timing and location of this year’s big ride. I have elected to raise money for a charity called Child’s i Foundation, set up by some of my Endemol colleagues. There is plenty of great information available about various charitable endeavours on their website, which is another WordPress blog like this one.

So far, we have chosen two rides that we would like to select one to undertake from:
1) London to Nordkapp (Norway) via Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. This would be an epic 2500 mile ride, taking us well past the Arctic Circle.
2) Circumnavigate Iceland, which would be considerably shorter at a mere 1,200 – 1,500 miles.

I would love to do both rides but due to various fiscal and time limitations for all parties concerned, this is highly unlikely. What it will ultimately boil down to is timing. When there are several people involved with varying calendar restrictions, finding the sweet spot is complicated.

Does anyone have experience of either of these cycle rides?

Welcome to All Terrain

| Zapfly

Welcome to the All Terrain blog. This is a blog based around photography and filming in all types of landscapes, in all weathers and any location.

Rather than continue to communicate through the antiquated channel of a static website, All Terrain Photos will now be broadcast via this blog. I hope to enter into a more two way communication in this way. Social media is a great way to integrate a very social skill, photography, into the collective consciousness.

I set up All Terrain Photos and All Terrain Films in 2004, after returning from a year in South America where I was an expedition photographer based in southern Chile for several months. I took the opportunity to take in new adventures and see some incredible things.

Upon re-entering life in the UK, I became involved in a lot of film work. I have worked with the British Army when they attempted to summit Mount Everest via the West Ridge in 2006 and with Ford on an online comedy shot across Europe during 2007.

However, my principle interest has always been photography. I shoot mainly landscape, travel and expedition photography all around the world. I am a panoramic specialist, shooting mainly 6×12 or 6×24. However, when mountaineering or trekking about the furthest reaches of the globe, a large camera can often be too cumbersome. So I shoot also occasionally shoot on 6×9 and digital.

For me, the main focus of this blog is to discuss interesting places to shoot, good kit to take along and exciting adventures to be had and open up a conversation with the wider world.

Please comment!

Done and Dusted

| Peter

19 days and 1200 miles later and we’re all finished.  Thanks loads to everyone who’s been so generous with their dosh and donated to our justgiving sites.  I just had an email from Cancer Research UK thanking us and you….so thanks!!!!  We couldn’t get the internet connection to work properly on the mobile phone and when we did it was pretty impossible to add to this blog, so for what it’s worth here a retrospective account of Le Jog.  There’s so much to add to this blog that I don’t know where to start.  Actually I do know exactly where to start, I just won’t know when to finish.

The journey was:
– Hard work
– Rewarding
– Full of friendly, helpful, unfriendly and angry people
– Loads of other amazingly supportive bike riders
– Lots of other people doing, done the ride already
– Good and bad advice
– More B&Bs than I thought
– Best campsite was the first one we stayed in ‘Lower Treath Campsite’ at Landsend.  We were welcomed with a cold beer!!
– Amazing weather for the first half, pretty much for our ride through England.
– Rubbish weather the second we got to Gretna… that put me in a real stinker of a mood. The whole thing changes when the weather turns bad.
– Some very friendly landlords – Mark at the Temple Bar Inn, a very warm welcome after a ridiculously hilly and tough day in Wales. Even did our laundry for us. The people at Bank farm in Wales, both not only gave us discount rates but sponsored us on our quest too…thanks!!

Here is a link to some of Pete’s snaps (there trillions more on my flickr site)

This was one of the coolest, epicist views of the trip.
This was one of the coolest, epicist views of the trip.

Us at the very begining of the trip outside Penzance train station. Photo taken by a guy we met who had just finished John OGroats to Landsend, for the second time in as many years.
Us at the very begining of the trip outside Penzance train station. Photo taken by a guy we met who had just finished John O'Groats to Landsend, for the second time in as many years.We were all trying to ween our way off fryups

Getting back to civilisation

| Zapfly

Cycle ride from John O’Groats to Wick
Total mileage: 18
Terrain: Very fast cycle ride over quite flat terrain

Our last day saw us cover a small distance from John O’Groats to Wick, where I had booked a B&B for us. Pete had tried in vain to book a return rail trip from Wick to London, so we were forced to either catch a bus or cycle it! Fortunately for us, our landlady had been kind enough to accept three bike bags we had ordered via the Blackberry on the way up, once we knew we were not going to get a space on the train.

We arrived quite early in Wick as the terrain had been flat and easy to negotiate, which meant that we cycled the 18 miles at a very healthy space. We hung around in a café for a couple of hours until the tenants leaving our B&B checked out. Mrs McDonald, our landlady, still had to tidy the place up but we were able to leave our bikes and change clothes.

Wick is a pretty nasty town when all is said and done, with very little to do. We wondered around the very small town centre for a few hours until we were able to head back to the B&B. We all chilled for the rest of the day and watched crap TV programmes.

The following day, we had to check out early and wait until 4pm when our bus turned up. Carrying the packed down bicycles to the bus stop, about 1km away was absolutely exhausting. Far easier to cycle the damn things!

Our mammoth return journey included the following legs:

  • Wick to Inverness
    This was very pleasant, as there were few people on the bus and the weather was pretty awful making us happy that we were on a bus rather than cycling. The landscape was stunning as we tore passed it at a pace were had become unaccustomed to.
  • Inverness to Sterling
    The journey was very pleasant with more beautiful scenery and not too many people on the bus.
  • Sterling to Glasgow
    The bus stop in Sterling was like a large public lavatory. Fortunately, we did not have to wait too long for our hour-long connecting bus to Glasgow. By now it was getting dark and the rain continued to fall.
  • Glasgow to London
    Although we had stated to the bus company prior to purchasing the tickets that we all had bikes, National Express had overbooked the bus and had to call in another company to help with the final leg of our return journey. These cowboys tried to charge us an extra £15 per bike. Considering the entire ticket had cost us £35 each, this did seem more than a little exorbitant. We fobbed the driver and conductor off saying that we needed to withdraw money from cash point and them promptly fain sleep to prevent them from extorting the cash from us. By the time we reached London the following morning, there were so many people buzzing around the bus, we were able to scarper without being forced to pay. We went to the National Express helpdesk at Victoria Bus station to ask them if this was normal practice for them, to which they said no. As a consequence, we complained and told them that she needed to be more prudent choosing extra bus suppliers in the future.

I was extremely happy to see Bryony at the bus stop. She took us all out for breakfast before poor Pete and Mary had to press on with their journey and catch a bus from London down to Weymouth and re-assemble their bikes there, before boarding the ferry back to Guernsey. From subsequent conversations, I can assure you that we were all very happy to be back home with all of its conveniences and comforts.

I cannot recommend this journey enough to anyone interested in cycling or seeing the country. Physically, it does have its challenges but that is not to say that it is not equally blessed with rich and rewarding experiences all along the way. Although I am and have been for quite some time, an ardent cyclist, I have been indoctrinated into the world of long distance cycling. I am determined to find a new challenge in for 2009. Perhaps Pete and Mary will join me, who knows?

In additional to all the images here and on Flickr, I have also uploaded many to my gallery on Alamy.com
Stock photography by Julien Buckley at Alamy