roads of stone » 2010

232: Cuba 3 – Havana

Roads — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 00:30:33 +0000

The street outside Graeme Greene’s Hotel Sevilla is quiet, but as the dramatic Prado opens up beyond, suddenly the sheer scale of this paradox strikes me: Havana is truly a world city.

Columbus sighted Cuba in 1492 and landed here two years later. The island has been a prize for empires ever since. Spanish, British and American armies all fought for this land.

Cuba’s history and her population embrace that diversity. Cubans of every shade and colour fill the streets.

And whether descended from white Europeans, African slaves or indigenous peoples, they’re all simply Cubans.

By rights, Havana should be the hub of Latin America, entrancing and captivating in her charm, passion and style as nowhere on Earth.

Yet today she stands as the capital of a nation isolated and completely unknown by her neighbours just across the narrow Florida Straits to the north. And it’s undeniable, when you’re here, that the loss breaks both ways.

For Cuba, with its faltering economy, restricted freedoms and limited opportunity, fifty years of isolation is hardship enough. But for the whole of America, simply not knowing the gifts that this vibrant country, this incredible city and all that her wonderful people can offer — surely that loss is every bit as impoverishing.

Beyond the Museum of the Revolution, with its tank parked dramatically outside, the sweeping boulevard takes me under shady trees and alongside splendidly crumbling tenements.

The legacy of revolution is many things, but commercial prosperity isn’t one of them.

There’s little traffic here — just a few smoky old trucks, Polski Fiats and Ladas as well as the more classical 1950s American sedans in various states from showroom splendour to loving disrepair.

The famous Real tobacco factory falls past on my right — featuring in all the guidebooks but mysteriously shut down.

Has the world’s appetite for cigars faded with healthier living or recession? Either way it’s a blow to such limited Cuban trade as 50 years of the US embargo will allow.

At the top of the street lies a huge open square with an almost perfectly contradictory reproduction of the Capitol in Washington DC. But there’s not an American in miles.

At least, not any more. Until 1960, Americans flocked here on holiday, enjoying the looser living and tropical breeze. Al Capone lived in Varadero not far down the coast, and here in Havana, Ernest Hemingway holed up near the Cathedral to write.

And as I run that way, down busy Obispo, the shop fronts and bars of Havana reel me progressively in.

Because while a guidebook can describe the sound and feel of music and dance on every street, there’s just no substitute for experiencing it.

There’s energy, excitement and a passion for living here, and with the average wage at $18 a month I can’t help wondering just what it is about European and American life that we’ve long since mislaid.

The Hotel Ambos Mundos where Hemingway stayed is still here, surrounded by tourists, but it’s further on, in narrow streets beyond the Plaza Vieja, that I can feel the modern heart of old Havana beating.

These are everday streets, walked by people who are enjoying life while eking out a living. The weather is fine here, but the economic climate is grim. Yet despite the deprivations that brings, there’s so much more determination to let the best of life flow.

Back near the Parque Central, the early commuters are now waiting for their ancient bus to work. I catch the eye of one, a young man wearing dirty builders’ overalls and a widening smile. He waves and calls encouragement as I run by. Maratón!

And it strikes me now that for the past fifty years Havana has required endurance on a different scale. Whatever the world has thrown at Havana — its Latin spirit remains simply irrepressible.

Political and commercial restrictions, cultural and economic isolation, hardship — these are all facts of life since the revolution, just as corruption and excess defined the years which came before.

But you can’t define a country by its GDP, and that’s clearer in Havana than anywhere else I’ve seen.

I run back down the Prado one more time to the Malecón — the great crumbling boulevard where Havana faces the sea. At the weekend, all life is here — families and lovers out for a stroll, and incessant traffic roaring by.

For now, though, it’s quiet, and beside the Castillo de San Salvador just a few old fishermen stand enjoying the calm before a busy weekday begins.

Here, looking out across the Florida Straits, I take a moment to reflect on this incredible world city that is so dramatic, awe-inspiring, authentic, vivacious — you can search for the adjectives, but the truth is that Havana defeats every one.

Today, Cuba stands alone. But isolation can’t last for ever, and one day soon, what gifts to the world she will bring.

178. Full fathom five – on Elbow Beach, Bermuda
98. Off the shoulder of Orion – Costa de la Luz

231. Zürich

Roads — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:59:26 +0000

The October sky is grey and dank and the Zürich morning still half dark as I emerge into Weinplatz. The first leaves are scattered around the square, and at this early hour the weather looks unpromising.

The summer’s smug geraniums still adorn the hotel windowboxes, but they’re looking limp and vaguely threatened now. Autumn is brief here in Switzerland, and the winter’s not all that far away.

Behind me, the River Limmat is swirling gently northwards on its way to join my old friend the Aare near Brugg, and then onwards to join the Rhine for Basel, Germany and the sea. Tall churches and pretty wharfsides beckon beside the river, but for now I leave the waterfront behind me.

I know my way round here, in the biggest small country in the world.

A few moments later, I turn onto Bahnhofstrasse.

One of the great shopping streets in Europe, this wide and clean-swept boulevard stretches long and straight and wide from the station to the lake. Expensive shops and banks line it all the way.

There’s very little traffic – just an errant Mercedes or two. The Zürchers generally go about their business by bus or on the tram.

With one of the most efficient and well-integrated public transport systems anywhere, in city life you scarcely ever need a car.

Ten minutes beside the tram tracks brings me down to reach the shore. Lake Zürich stretches southwards – silver coast to my right and gold coast to my left — its waterside properties offering some of the most expensive real estate in Europe.

A short drag along the busy promenade brings me east towards the river bridges and I double back beside the Limmat.

The day is brightening now, as the Hochnebel – the high grey and gloomy valley fog so typical of a winter in the Swiss Mittelland – is showing promise of lifting later in the day.

Years ago, when I came to live in Switzerland, the first German I learned was from the weather forecasts on the radio each morning. In der Niederungen, Hochnebel, in den Berge, sonnig. Niederschlag im Westen. Schneefallgrenze steigend über 2000m.

Fog in the valley, sun in the mountains. Precipitation in the west, and snowfall limit rising above 2000m. As an Englishman marooned in Switzerland, perhaps it fitted my own nationalistic stereotype rather perfectly that at least I could talk about the weather.

I trot a while through Limmatquai, gazing on a fine array of spires and elegant sandstone buildings across the river, and then I head right into narrower streets lining the hillside up above.

Amongst the maze of alleyways lurk familiar-looking shops, bars and restaurants, and suddenly I begin to covet an unlikely plate of Bratwurst and a cool Feldschlösschen Bier.

Finally, I settle for a swift sprint downhill and back across the Rathausbrücke for a more sedate Swiss breakfast of Birchermuesli and Toni yoghurt with a copy of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung to digest with my coffee and croissants to come.

Perhaps the Tages-Anzeiger would be less strictly highbrow and easier, too, for this Englishman to enjoy without a thick dictionary to hand. But the NZZ reads well today.

* * * * *

The sky is clear and crystal blue by the time I’m at my meeting, standing in an elegant Zürich Kursaal with a fine view across the Limmat.

I’ve given this presentation at least a dozen times before, but today I decide to start in German. I lived not far from here for quite a while some years ago and frankly I need the practice.

But while I may think in best Hamburg Hochdeutsch, as I open my mouth a familiar gurgling comes out. I succeed in introducing myself not just as a one-time resident of Bern, but as that much more rare and hilarious beast, an Englishman with a strong Swiss accent.

For soccer fans who remember Peter Schmeichel’s Danish Mancunian, or his countryman Jan Molby’s Scouse, the full comic effect is easy to imagine.

The hard part of the day now safely done, I can enjoy my lunch more easily, and strike up a conversation with my Swiss neighbour at the table.

‘It’s interesting that you lived in Switzerland,’ he says. ‘Of course, that won’t help you now.’

‘Why not?’ I ask, puzzled for just a moment.

‘It’s klar,’ he replies. ‘In Zürich, we don’t think much of anyone from Bern.’

I look for a trace of a smile upon his face — or even some tiny crease around the eyes, to tell me it’s just banter, or that this comment carried a hint of mirth.

But there is none. He’s entirely serious, or certainly, more or less. I look around me in the conference room, and see I’ve been put firmly in my place. Because this really is the biggest small country in the world.

* * * * *

The afternoon wears thin, and soon it’s time to head for home. My colleagues muse a beer, and a taxi to follow, but I know that’s not the way to go.

It’ll be greener, cheaper, healthier (and probably quicker, too) if instead I walk to Zürich main station and catch the airport train from there.

I’ve a kilometre to walk and a little time to spare and so instead of Bahnhofstrasse I wander up the narrow lanes through Schipfe beside the left bank of the river. And duly I’m rewarded with a wonderful view of Zürich from the Lindenhof, a small park atop the bluff.

This is the oldest part of the city, first settled by the Romans in 15 BC and probably by the Celts before them.

Not far away I find a display recording a gravestone from the 2nd Century showing the oldest written reference to the town founded by the Romans (Turicum) at the ancient crossing of the River Limmat.

This mediaeval city has a much more ancient history, and I never knew it. A dawn and dusk of tracing footsteps beside the Limmat have turned new pages in my own Swiss story here today.

For Andy, wishing you all the best in Switzerland.

230. Autumn leaves and cobalt sky – 2010 London Royal Parks Half Marathon

Roads — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 23:36:17 +0000

It’s ten past ten on 10.10.10 and I’m running across Westminster Bridge. The sun has just come out onto a perfect autumn day and Sunday mornings don’t come much more memorable than this.

London has hosted a famous marathon every year since Dick Beardsley and Inge Simonsen held hands beneath Big Ben to share the first race victory one rainy day in March 1981. And now this soon-to-be Olympic city of ours has a world-class half marathon as well.

I head back along the bridge and east beside the Thames. There’s a soft breeze blowing leaves along the sunlit road under a clearing October sky. Across a silver slice of river, the London Eye is turning gracefully. The Embankment is my spiritual running home, and I’m very glad to be here.

Because although the race course today and the organisation are perfect, they’re much better than my own. A silent alarm clock and poor route planning saw the 0930 start time pass me by on a tube train near Turnham Green.

Five minutes later I’m sprinting up the escalator at Knightsbridge and onwards to the park. I cross the course before the leaders and try to find the start.

When I get there, the road is empty ahead — eleven thousand runners have already gone by and the last few stragglers are filtering slowly through the chute.

The clock reads 16:48 as I cross the line — but with my panic fading I realise it’s an opportunity of a kind, to witness and run a major race right from the back.

The organisers kindly invited me here to run, and with an unlikely media pass and VIP race number to my name today, perhaps I should repay them with some different images and impressions of the race.

The road looks packed in front, but it’s blissful easy running from where I am, and after a minute or so we emerge happily onto Park Lane.

We make the fastest ever transit of Hyde Park Corner and join the Tour de France 2007 Prologue route, down Constitution Hill towards Buckingham Palace.

Soon we’re running along Birdcage Walk and onto Parliament Square. Big Ben stands tall and proud in front of me and when I look back from Westminster Bridge, the time is perfect for my shot — ten past ten on 10.10.10 — and I can’t complain about being late today again.

What can I say about running down The Embankment? It’s just the most inspiring place to run I know.

This busy, noisy highway beside the river feels completely different without the traffic, and on a sunny Sunday morning the view of London opens out in a different way.

In the London Marathon, the sight of Big Ben up ahead says you’ve almost made it. I relive all those moments of my running past today, and with twenty fewer miles within my legs I can more easily imagine a running future, too.

We loop around before Blackfriars, and turning back I check out a few of the runners I’ve passed so far. Starting amongst the pantomime animals was fun, and it’s even better now to see an elephant, a tiger and a fish running slowly towards me. London brings out the fancy dress in a way I’ve never seen elsewhere, and it’s great to see that tradition extending to this race.

We turn right into Whitehall, and then right again towards Trafalgar Square and I stop to take a picture at each, trying to catch the moment. Because it’s just amazing — here we are in the heart of London, and this city is open just for us.

As we turn onto The Mall at five miles, I catch sight of the 2 hours 10 pacer far up ahead, and put my camera away. Immediately I pull it out again — since the view of Buckingham Palace is just too good to miss.

Before I know it, we’re climbing Constitution Hill again, and then it’s onto Park Lane and past Decimus Bruton’s great ornamental gates and back into Hyde Park.

Looking at the course map last night, I packed my I-Pod so that music could run me home through silent stretches in the park once the scenic miles were run. But now we’re here, the crowd noise is just tremendous.

There’s a deafening roar of hoots and cheering from the charity support stations. I look around me and amongst the hundreds of runners that I can see, more than half are running for charities today — for Mind, the mental health charity, for Macmillan Cancer Support, Marie Curie, Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and for Help a London Child.

It’s humbling at times like this, to see how many people have made the effort to let their run help others along the way.

As the Serpentine washes past serene beside us, the halfway mark goes by at 1 hour and 6 minutes gone. My journalistic duties are safely over and so now I decide to put my foot down for a decent time to bring me home from here.

I was worried that these last six miles might feel long, but they flash quickly behind my heels. I glimpse the 2 hours 10 pacer once again, but on the narrower footpaths of the park it’s hard to pass slower runners as I strive to reel him in.

By 11 miles, I realise that he must be making up time as well, since no matter how hard I try, the distance stays the same — as I run faster, then so does he.

With a mile left to run, the Albert Memorial is shining golden in the sunlight, and then we find the final straight, which proves much longer than I thought. With every step I’m passing runners, but I’d be happy to end it now.

The finish arrives in 2:06 — and despite my faster pace, it’s taken an hour and forty seconds to run the second half.

I warm down with a gentle walk beside Round Pond, and amidst my stroll I catch a glimpse of gleaming silver and reflected blue — an Anish Kapoor sculpture, C-Curve, stands surrounded by parkgoers of all ages.

As I approach, now I can see how simply captivating this construction is — from one side turning the world upside down, and from the other framing a perfect view of autumn leaves and cobalt sky, somehow captured here amongst us at ground level and down beneath the trees.

I stand here just a moment, reflecting on this sunny Sunday morning, on the joys of London running, and on this new race I’ve run today. The Royal Parks Half Marathon is a winner — even if you run it from the back.

229. Ryder Cup 2010 – the perfect blue day

Roads — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:13:23 +0000

Clear skies may have been in short supply in Wales this week, but at least by Saturday night the Ryder Cup scoreboard was showing its first hint of blue.

As I left home on Sunday morning to find a TV showing the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor, news came through on the radio. The start of play had been delayed until noon, and then 1.30 pm. I’ve watched the last day of the Ryder Cup many times, but this year the weather and the schedule were both out of kilter.

Instead of a full Sunday programme, play would be restricted to the last nine holes of six fourballs and foursomes which had begun the day before. The singles matches to conclude the event would be delayed until Monday.

For just a very few moments, I pondered turning around. But, meagre as it was, this was all the live golf I would see in this Ryder Cup.

For me, and for many others, the Ryder Cup is the highlight of my sporting calendar. The reasons that the event is so special?

In truth, there are many. It’s all about pride, about fear, and about the vagaries and unique demands of match play in golf.

The Ryder Cup is about individual performance in the heat of the battle, and about bringing a team together to outdo even its own expectations.

On this side of the pond, it’s about proving the worth of the European Tour against the PGA Tour in the US. It’s about showing who are the best golfers in the world — for many years it really was the Americans, which is why we tried so hard to foster the illusion that maybe they weren’t.

That’s the Ryder Cup. It encapsulates so many glories in this game of golf, and it celebrates all that divides us and unites us across the Atlantic Ocean as well.

I did see the Ryder Cup won on Sunday. Not strictly from the final points total — I had to wait until Monday evening’s TV highlights for that.

But in the way the match was remarkably turned around in one afternoon’s golf.

6-4 ahead at the start of the series on Saturday afternoon, the Americans stood well in control. Stricker and Woods had won two matches already, and looked bound to win more. And although the European team was stronger on paper this time, superior American putting was telling, as it had so often in the past.

A rousing team talk over a brief and uncomfortable Saturday lunch had yielded Colin Montgomerie’s Europeans a slender advantage in each game before evening fell, but it was hard to imagine that this brief fightback could live through the night.

British sports fans will remember the rain delay which halted a Wimbledon semi-final in 2001 with Tim Henman on top. Goran Ivanisevich blew him away when they came back on court. Henman’s best ever chance for a Grand Slam title, sunk in the puddles of SW19. Even now, it’s still hard to bear.

In golf, it’s no easier. On a suspension of play, matches are so often abandoned with a hole only half-played.

In the 1970 British Open at St Andrews, Tony Jacklin, the reigning champion, had surged to the turn in 29 shots before a storm intervened with his ball under a bush on the 14th. Picking up his round the next day, Jacklin dropped three shots to return ‘only’ a 67. The momentum was all gone, and Jack Nicklaus duly defeated Doug Sanders in a play-off that year.

When play halted in the top match at Celtic Manor on Saturday, Lee Westwood was left facing a long putt. All night.

What would that be like? How could you think about your game, warm up the next day or sleep even a wink overnight, when every subtle slope and blade of grass would run through your mind across the long hours of darkness?

Line and length would be endlessly pondered. The putter would surely have to be at work on the hotel carpet all through the night. We needn’t have worried. When play resumed, Westwood stood up and rolled in the putt.

‘I knew that was important,’ he said, ‘To inspire the team.’

And even after so many glorious and nail-biting Ryder Cups, I doubt if I’ve ever seen European golfers so inspired.

Luke Donald played brilliantly as a foil to the charging Westwood. They were five under par — a remarkable score in foursomes — by the time they beat Woods and Stricker. The best American pair had been defeated, as the Europeans scored five and a half points out of six on Sunday.

The three point advantage earned was just telling enough to bring the Cup home through an inevitable American onslaught next day.

They all played their part on that most perfect of days. For me, Ross Fisher was the hero, bringing home a lost Padraig Harrington whose game had fallen apart.

‘It was great to play with a true champion like Padraig,’ said Fisher, ‘To have him reading my putts.’

Having a three-times major winner as your caddie inspired Fisher. He carried them both almost single-handedly to a memorable win.

Graeme Macdowell and Rory Macilroy, the Northern Irish friends, added a critical point to the half and the win they would earn in the cauldron of Monday.

With confidence and ability pumping his veins, Macdowell looked every inch the film star as well as a worthy US Open champion.

It was telling when he recounted how the final holes at the Ryder Cup, when the result depended only on him, made the back nine in June seem a walk in the park.

Martin Kaymer’s US PGA victory was just two months ago and his win on Sunday with Ian Poulter was never in doubt. If ever there’s a golfer more enthusiastic than Poulter, he’ll certainly become a Ryder Cup legend as well.

But for me, the most impressive moment of all came on the last hole of the day, when Francesco and Eduardo Molinari, ahead early on but 1 down on 18, stole back a half. Francesco bravely stroked in a downhill four-footer having already missed two putts much shorter than that. I was hiding behind the sofa by then.

For the Americans, too, it was a match to remember. Not just for a narrow defeat — at 14½ to 13½, by the closest of margins — but for their fine play under fire.

We’ll remember this Ryder Cup as the week when Tiger Woods refound his game. Two down against Francesco Molinari on Monday, he was eight under by the 15th and holed his second for an eagle on 12. It was remarkable that Molinari managed to live with him that long.

Who could forget Phil Mickelson’s joy in winning his singles after an undistinguished run up to then? We wish him and Amy well as they fight her illness together.

And we’ll remember this Ryder Cup for the emergence of Rickie Fowler, too. The long-haired 20 year old birdied his last four holes under the most intense pressure to earn a half with Eduardo Molinari. We’ll see much more of Fowler.

European captain Montgomery was a statesmanlike presence, transformed from the moodier days of his younger career. Corey Pavin was also impressive — as calm and gracious as American captain as he had been overbearing as a player in the notorious ‘War on the Shore’ at Kiawah Island in 1991.

So who cared about the weather and rain delays, in the end?

As the Welsh crowd celebrated their perfect blue Ryder Cup Sunday, and a home victory duly played out under perfect clear skies on Monday, the frustration of the first three rain-soaked days seemed worth every second.

The reputations of both teams, of Celtic Manor, and of the Ryder Cup had been enhanced. For all their long wait, the golf fans of Wales and the world couldn’t have wished for much more.

228. Twin peaks in the Surrey Hills – two classic cycle climbs to Winterfold Heath

Roads — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 08:15:11 +0000

Over the summer I’ve discovered two more tough ascents in the Surrey Hills.

Both lead through the woods up to Winterfold Heath, deep in the Hurtwood Forest set high above Cranleigh.

The Hurtwood is one of the largest privately owned estates in Surrey.

Mercifully, most of it is accessible on a dense network of footpaths, one of which is an ancient Roman road.

Maps below:
Alderbrook Road (A to B); Barhatch Lane (D to C)

The two ascents are different.

Barhatch Lane starts easily enough in the northern outskirts of Cranleigh, before becoming relentlessly tougher and fearsomely steep in the final pitch.

Alderbrook Road offers a steadier incline, replete with a left hand hairpin in the middle section and a long haul through a deeply sunken lane towards the top.

And while Barhatch Lane is steeper, arguably Alderbrook Road is a more classic climb, typical of the short, sharp ascents to be found amongst the Surrey Hills.

It’s great to have so many challenging cycling routes so close to hand, even if it doesn’t always feel that way at halfway to the top.

Barhatch Lane to Winterfold (Surrey Hills):
Base: 80 m. Top: 230 m. Vertical: 150 m.
Length of climb: 1.5 mile / 2.42 km. Average gradient: 6.2 %. Maximum: 21 %.

Alderbrook Road to Winterfold (Surrey Hills):
Base: 65 m. Top: 188 m. Vertical: 123 m.
Length of climb: 1.0 mile / 1.61 km. Average gradient: 7.6 %. Maximum: c. 14 %.

227. South Lincolnshire summer: Little Bytham and the Mallard

Roads — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 14:56:38 +0000

“The past is another country” — The Go Between, LP Hartley (1953)

August days are with us now, the ripe Lincolnshire corn shimmering tall and golden in late summer afternoons.

The stuffy, restrictive heat and bustle of London feels a world away from here.

The landscape has changed little across the years — parched harvest fields and desiccated stately lawns still wait ready for a boy or girl delivering some fateful message to Julie Christie in The Go Between or Keira Knightley in Atonement.

Only the slow progress of the monster machines that gather in the harvest serve to tell the tale of a landscape now worked with many fewer people.

Across long, easy days we cycle over gentle Jurassic hills. Three miles to reach another village, four villages to find a pub. It’s a pleasant way to slow down and find the summer.

The pace of life seems slow, and it’s hard to equate this landscape with a world speed record set three quarters of a century ago and still standing firm today.

At Castle Bytham we sink an ale beside the Norman motte and bailey. In nearby Little Bytham, Mrs Bee’s shop offers wonders of a completely different kind.

A traditional village store and sweet shop would be the best description, but that fails to do fair justice.

Entering from Little Bytham’s main (and almost only) street brings a friendly smile from Mrs Bee and a sight to warm the heart of any child, however grown-up they may now be. A memory-evoking selection of magical sweets awaits in tall glass jars atop high shelves.

The slow increments of progress pass unnoticed when you watch them, and then suddenly it’s clear how much the world has changed.

Mrs Bee has lived here for over 80 years, perhaps, or maybe even 90. She knows South Lincolnshire well.

We talk about our ride from Bassingthorpe, and our visit to the Walled Gardens at Easton. ‘It was a lovely house,’ she says, ‘Until the Canadian soldiers came and wrecked it.’

She remembers finely dressed folk turning up in carriages for parties before the house was commandeered for military use in the Second World War, some 70 years ago.

Little Bytham’s High Street is dominated today, just as it was then, by the massive railway viaduct.

The London to Edinburgh expresses roar past above our heads every few minutes, on one of the most historic lengths of railway track in all the world.

Beside the viaduct, a village house built in cream Jurassic stone carries the name of Mallard House. In many another English hamlet that might recall the duckpond, but not here.

A plate beside the door depicts the sleek blue locomotive which set the world steam landspeed record here when Mrs Bee was young.

The stretch of line from Stoke Summit to the south of Grantham was perfect for the attempt — a long straight with a uniform gentle gradient.

Here on 30th November, 1934, the famous LNER steam engine, Flying Scotsman, became the first steam engine to be offically recorded above 100 mph.

Four years later, and with a brave engine driver, Joseph Duddington, at the ready, another LNER engine, Mallard reached a speed of 125 mph between Little Bytham and Essendine on 3rd July, 1938.

A second attempt scheduled for September 1939 was cancelled following the outbreak of war.

And remarkably enough, the Mallard’s mark has never been beaten since.

Today, the locomotive takes pride of place in the British Transport Museum just an hour up the East Coast line in York, alongside the Flying Scotsman.

As we leave the shop to find our bikes for a pedal slowly home, Mrs Bee smiles and says goodbye, until next year.

Time moves slowly here.

I’m sure that Mrs Bee will be here to greet us, and Little Bytham and its world landspeed record will stand unchanged by then.

226. The price of oil: 5 – Deepwater Horizon and the missing toolkit

Roads — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 07:16:53 +0000

Dear Don
And so they’ve capped the well for now, although storms aren’t far away and the oil is still out there across the Gulf. I really hope your Florida beaches manage to avoid it.

Elsewhere around the coast it’s a mess, and although hurricanes might spread the oil, a silver lining from experience of the Braer oil spill off the Shetland Islands in the 1990s is that severe storms may finally help to dissipate the slick.

Deepwater drilling is challenging. High Pressure / High Temperature drilling is difficult.

Combining these operations into drilling HP/HT deepwater wells is new within the past decade, pushing the technological envelope while incorporating the difficulties of both.

Although vilified for his PR gaffes, finally Tony Hayward did get it exactly right in one of his pronouncements last month, when he said that the real problem is we just didn’t have the toolkit to deal with problems in this setting.

In that sense, the Deepwater Horizon, just like the Sea Gem or Piper Alpha, will be a disaster which changes the way we do things for ever more beyond.

The problem is that as we push the boundaries, there is always the temptation to keep streamlining procedures for as long as we keep getting away with it.

BP got it wrong, but the same problem might have happened to any of the companies drilling in this setting.

The environmental manuals foresaw a spill on the scale of hundreds or a few thousands of barrels via a discharge from the rig floor itself.

No one expected that a BOP with its multiple safety mechanisms and double redundancy control systems would fail, but then perhaps no one thought that drilling might continue where those failsafe systems had gone down.

The response effort co-ordinated by BP since then has been criticised for being slow, but they’ve been inventing the missing toolkit in real time and for the very first time.

The response could only ever be about damage limitation until the flow of oil was stopped.

Finally they succeeded, and along the way the missing toolkit has been designed and implemented, more or less from scratch. A huge engineering achievement — if only the toolkit hadn’t been missing in the first place.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, perhaps, this is the crux of my argument against nuclear. The (theoretically) best-managed systems will (and do) break down from time to time. The unforeseen has the unfortunate tendency to occur.

From any reasonable probability analysis, it should be impossible for a modern and well-managed major oil store to blow up 20 miles from central London, but that’s what happened at Total’s Buncefield depot in December 2005.

In the nuclear industry, perhaps they would never keep working when their safety systems were prejudiced. But at the same time, Sellafield is looking at 20% staff cuts this coming year, and pressure on costs can lead to silly and costly mistakes in any operation.

As Chernobyl showed, we don’t have the toolkit to deal with problems in that environment either, and the timescale of the problem there is in hundreds of thousands of years. At Chernobyl, we barely held onto the edge of the precipice through the self-sacrifice of firefighters and helicopter pilots dropping concrete onto the sarcophagus of the plant. But we might not be so lucky next time.

At least oil does biodegrade in months or years, however bitter that really is to live through for all you residents on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico today.

225. Running on Roman Road 2 – from Stane Street to Guildford

Roads — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 07:01:36 +0000

It’s late on a summer’s evening and I’m cycling homeward along one of the most beautiful country roads in England.

This morning’s London to Brighton bike ride is well behind me now and I’m rolling towards the sunset on the longest day of the year.

Eighty miles are in my legs by the time I pass the pretty Saxon village of Slinfold, with twenty more ahead to Guildford.

Beyond the church, I slowly climb a steady rise and turn right onto the main A29. One of my favourite cycling stretches, this — perfect blacktop, arrow straight, and for now at least, heading gently downhill towards the river.

This is Stane Street — the Roman road from Chichester to London. Built in the 1st Century AD, it’s more than good enough for me now. I pause to eat and think at the bridge across the Arun. Here, inside the meander of the river, the Romans built a staging post or mansio.

Set around fifteen miles apart, these settlements offered a place for soldiers and travellers to stop and rest the horses, just as I am now. Aerial photographs show a rectangular enclosure — maybe once a fort, while geophysical surveys have revealed evidence of a string of houses set tight beside the road.

This place, Alfoldean, lies halfway on the 70 mile route from the coast to London. Further north on Stane Street, Roman settlements probably existed on either side of the Chalk Downs around the crossing of the River Mole at Dorking and beside the spring at Ewell.

In a similar way, Alfoldean was sited at the spot where the road crossed the River Arun as it headed north from the open, rolling plains of Sussex into rougher country amongst the Surrey Hills.

Ahead beyond the river lies a steep bluff where the legions had to climb steeply between the trees. On the map today that spot is still known as Roman Woods.

Ten minutes later, I’m rolling westwards once again. The River Arun is on my left now as the A281 to Guildford heads arrow straight to Rudgwick, then turning right up a slow and steady haul to Alfold.

I’ve found no reference to this as a Roman road, but the relentless up and downs seem diagnostic to my tired legs, and the bearing of the road heads for Chiddingfold Roman villa, ten miles south of Guildford.

* * * * *

On another day, a few months later, I cycle west from work in Horsham for a midday foray along Stane Street.

The A29 northeast from Billingshurst is as perfect for a lunchtime burn as I remember it, with only a short, steep rise along the ancient High Street requiring a shorter gear.

I return to Alfoldean with fresher legs this time, and stash the bike for a closer look at Stane Street’s hidden rise through Roman Woods. The modern A29 bypasses the hill here, forking right instead at the Roman Gate roundabout to rejoin the route of Stane Street further north near Ockley.

I used to drive past here each morning, and to the car traveller there’s little sign visible of the old road north of Roman Gate.

But on foot, amongst the trees, a treasure trove is revealed — a 2,000 year-old sunken lane with accompanying ditches and aggers running parallel for much of the way.

I follow northeast, Londonwards, for a kilometre or so in the footsteps of the legions until I reach the hamlet of Rowhook, set atop the bluff. From here, a spur leaves Stane Street to head northwest towards the Surrey Hills.

* * * * *

A summer’s morning high in ancient forest. Atop the longest, steepest climb of all, at the end of Barhatch Lane, I turn left and seek the Roman Road once more.

It doesn’t take long to find it. At a clearing in the trees, I see a narrow valley rising to meet Winterfold Lane.

I’ve cycled here a dozen times before, but now I see that this valley, Jelley’s Hollow, is as tight and steep as any sunken lane in Surrey — worn deep into soft Greensand across the centuries by countless feet and wheels.

Only this one has no modern lane within it — instead it’s the route of the ancient Roman road, forged through the rough country of these wooded hills.

Across the lane, the route tracks northwestwards through the forest towards the Roman temple at Farley Heath. Did the Roman road end here, or carry on towards Guildford?

No evidence is recorded either way, although a possible continuation across St Martha’s Hill and then to Burpham and Bagshot beyond has been proposed. But the soft sands of Blackheath and St Martha’s may not preserve many traces.

* * * * *

Late evening, on a different day, I cycle west from Albury, turning right onto the Downs Link path at Chilworth. The alignment of this track through Lockner Farm is perfect for a continuation of the Roman road — but did it really climb the steep south slope of St Martha?

Perhaps it did — there’s a modern, twisting path ahead floored with flints and rubble which I’ve run breathlessly towards the summit on hot summer days far more energetic than this.

Today I head more languidly across the bridge, through the Gunpowder Mills on the shady path beside the river and homeward across the hills. Back home I consult the local maps, and search satellite images for clues which might not show themselves readily on the ground.

Eventually, I see it — a straight line from Chilworth to a fording place across the Tilling Bourne, then striking left along the southern flank of St Martha’s Hill.

The line of a sandy track sets a course for the pass on Halfpenny Lane, the alignment continuing arrow straight on a forest track through The Chantries and onwards along my old favourite, Mile Path, to crest the chalk ridge at Pewley Down near a patch of pebbles right atop the ridge.

From there it’s an arrow straight continuation down Pewley Hill and beside the Norman castle to reach the River Wey at the fording place below Town Bridge.

Was this a main Roman route, or the fork of a fork off Stane Street? It’s hard to say — the development of the town of Guildford and the sandy soils above the Paleocene strata beyond make it difficult to follow further.

But the alignment is perfect — a continuation on this bearing leads northwestwards to Calleva, the important Roman town of Silchester now lying peacefully abandoned amidst Hampshire fields over twentyfive miles away.

I once ran along the Devil’s Highway, a famous stretch of the Roman road from Silchester to London set deep in Bracknell Forest. But I didn’t realise I ran a Roman route across the Downs almost every single week.

224. Leviathans of the deep – oil rigs in the Cromarty Firth, Scotland

Roads — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:01:19 +0000

As evening falls beneath the deepest black of a December northern sky, a thin veil of dark blue hangs streaked with vivid orange just above the pine trees.

The homeward rush hour in Inverness is a muted, half-hearted affair, and in minutes we’re sailing past the bright lights of the bridge towards the darkness of the Black Isle.

Half an hour ahead, the lights of Cromarty barely touch the depths of nightfall. The white houses of the Royal Burgh are hiding low against the shoreline.

There’s a menace to the silence now, faintly interrupted as it is by the bleak moanful sounds of grinding metal and hammering. Across the water, just half a mile offshore, the leviathans of the deep are waiting.

Here in the Cromarty Firth, oil rigs from around the world are waiting for the calmer seas of spring, wintering inshore through maintenance and upgrade programmes to equip them for ever deeper, more challenging drilling as our quest for oil expands.

* * * * *

Twelve hours later, the hotel door creaks as I fumble my way outside. It’s still completely dark and a thin frost lies upon the road ahead.
I didn’t sleep last night. We left the Cromarty Arms in good spirits — the ale, hospitality and food were warm, and they even offered up their old acoustic for a rusty bar or two. But it was the late-night tales of our hotel’s friendly ghost that kept me wide awake and wary, beneath a light bulb I didn’t dare switch off.

The run out of town takes no more than a minute. A few dozen houses fall swiftly behind me and then I’m alone in black empty silence.

Amidst the cold darkness of the Cromarty Firth, the deck of a semi-submersible is bathed in sodium orange as work continues around the clock while the onshore world is waiting for daylight, still an hour away.

Across the water, another scatter of lights marks out the engineering yard at Invergordon, where drilling and heavy lifting equipment is being prepared for future wells in the North Sea and far beyond.

It’s a strange kind of juxtaposition, this, pitching the urgency of international offshore energy operations into the unspoilt calm of a sleeping Scottish loch.

In the first ten minutes run, just a single car goes past, its driver peering grim-faced through a frosty windscreen on his early way to work in Inverness. And then it’s quiet for another mile of silent running before finally I turn back.

At the entrance to town, the sign announces Cromarty as the birthplace of geologist Hugh Miller, and I follow through the backstreets to find his house.

Born here in 1802, Miller was a self-educated stonemason who became a brilliant natural scientist and one of the foremost of all pioneering geologists, as well as a founder of the Free Church of Scotland. Miller was a gifted writer whose work showed that the Earth had been created over enormous time, with different species dwelling on it as life progressed through the ages.

In the mid-nineteenth century, before publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 and with Darwin’s great, world-changing thesis now formulated but as yet locked away inside his mind, these ideas were revolutionary – as they are still in much of modern North America.

Cromarty’s Georgian merchant houses and chapel are mostly built from the same red rocks of Devonian age which formed the mainstay of Miller’s research.

400 million years ago, giant desert plains and lakes floored the Orcadian Basin in northeast Scotland, laying down a thick pile of strata which Miller assigned to the Old Red Sandstone – a lithostratigraphic term still widely used today.

For many years after Miller, the geology of the North Sea lay quite unknown. Even when seismic surveying began around 50 years ago, it was widely assumed that deep fault blocks in the centre of the basin were of Devonian age, formed of rocks similar to those exposed along the coast.

It was only when offshore drilling began in the late 1960s and 1970s that a thick and unexpected succession of oil-bearing Jurassic rocks was finally discovered.

And across five decades since then, the North Sea has taken its place amongst the most prolific hydrocarbon basins in the world.

Miller’s house stands deserted in the frozen twilight, and so I keep running. It’s almost eight now, but still far more dark than day as I wend my way through narrow streets and down to the shore beyond.

It’s an imposing sight that greets me there, as the first faint light of a midwinter northern dawn is shaping the silhouette of a huge fifth generation deepwater semi-submersible, waiting for the day.

Later on, I’ll board that rig, casting a seasoned eye at the sheer scale and complexity of the endeavour, so distant from the calm of this ancient Scottish fishing town, and yet finally the reason that I’m here.

I pause a while to catch the view, and wander the last few steps along the beach. At the water’s edge, a solitary candle is burning, flickering lonely in the breeze beside the Emigration Stone, standing monolithic on the shore.

I stop to read the inscription of Miller’s words, telling of all the farmers and fisherfolk who abandoned their Scottish home for new lands across deep waters of the far horizon.

In the modern age, a different generation of young Scots has found work across a nearer sea beyond the cliffs upon the North Sea rigs.

Remarkably, Cromarty has survived intact, sheltered from time and tides beside the Firth until today’s new prosperity arrived through Scottish devolution and the growth of nearby Inverness as a capital for the Highlands.

For a moment as I watch, the past and future of this place stand still, inseparably bound with man’s harvest of the seas and the tales within the rocks.

Could Miller ever have imagined that his beloved geology would one day bring a dawn like this?

I turn my heels and run back towards the hotel. There’s a job to do today, and a new view from here to take forwards to tomorrow.

223. Cycling on Surrey and Sussex hills – from White Down to Ditchling Beacon

Roads — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:01:18 +0000

Ditchling Beacon is the high point of the London to Brighton Bike Ride each year, in lots more ways than one.

A whole year of training is finally distilled into one breathless blur of uphill climb.

And no matter how many hills I’ve toiled all winter, it never seems that success on Ditchling is guaranteed — because it’s the toughest ascent I do.

Here’s a map and a profile of the hill, and a comparison with White Down, the steepest climb in the Surrey Hills close to where I live, and the last training test I do before setting off to Brighton each year.

Ditchling Beacon (South Downs, Sussex):
Base: 88 m. Top: 226 m. Vertical: 134 m.
Length of climb: 1.0 mile / 1.6 km. Average gradient: 8.4 %. Maximum: 16.1 %.

White Down (North Downs, Surrey):
Base: 118 m. Top: 213 m. Vertical: 95 m.
Length of climb: 0.6 mile / 1.0 km. Average gradient: 9.5 %. Maximum: 19.3 %.

The key to Ditchling is its length. White Down has steeper pitches in its dark and ancient woods, which hide a World War II pill box beside the road as well.

But Ditchling keeps on climbing into open sky when the strength of legs and will are fading.

You can see the sea and all of Sussex from atop the Beacon. Eleven months of training all come down to eleven minutes to crest the climb. And it’s still the peak of any cycling year.