Revolution and Love

It is that three weeks of the year when the Tour de France dominates my waking hours and in part, my restless dreams. 

I re-enact, through the slick TV coverage, my own patchy exploits in competitive cycling when much younger. 

Although the same sport there is a vast difference between a National Tour and the sort of events that I participated in- usually in the unsociable early hours of a sunday morning on some deserted stretch of trunk road or on a rural circuit under the gaze of a few inquisitive sheep and cows. However hard you wished there were never any team cars or mechanics. If you suffered any physical afflictions or bike failure you then you had a long walk ahead of you to get back to the village hall that served as race headquarters.

1985- middle of nowhere, Yorkshire

My racing days were back in the 1980's when cycling in the UK was very much a minority sport, the domain of a few dedicated participants and an army of volunteers and enthusiasts.

It was simply not a trendy activity. 

Then came Channel 4 coverage of the Tour de France in 1986 which brought cycling into the mainstream for a wider audience. I came across some of my old VHS recordings of the early years scheduling but now unplayable as I do not know anyone who still has a workable video player. 

Fast forward to the last few years and the roads and byways are crammed full of weekend racers and leisure riders. 

This year has seen full start to finish coverage of the Tour de France Stages for the first time and I have dipped in and out of the daily four to six hours broadcasts enjoying every single second of action and the tactical build up to sporadic action before the frantic final kilometres. 

The bike is now very popular in this country which is no mean feat given the fiercely guarded status in traditionalism and nationalism of the minority sports of cricket and tennis. 

After watching,  from the comfort of my sofa, a momentous first weeks racing in France I have been re-energised in all things cycling and in celebration I would like to reproduce this wonderful poem by Pablo Neruda which captures the atmosphere surrounding, as well as the essence, romance and purity of, the bicycle. 

Not bad for an inanimate object, not bad at all.

I was walking down a sizzling road: 
the sun popped like a field of blazing maize, 
the earth was hot, 
an infinite circle with an empty blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles passed me by, 
the only insects in that dry moment of summer, 
silent, swift, translucent; 
they barely stirred the air. 

Workers and girls were riding to their factories, 
giving their eyes to summer, 
their heads to the sky, 
sitting on the hard beetle backs of the whirling 
bicycles that whirred as they rode by bridges, rosebushes, brambles and midday.

I thought about evening when the boys 
wash up, sing, eat, raise a cup of wine in honor 
of love and life, and waiting at the door, 
the bicycle, stilled, because only moving does it have a soul, 
and fallen there it isn’t a translucent insect 
humming through summer 
but a cold skeleton 
that will return to life 
only when it’s needed, 
when it’s light, 
that is, with the resurrection of each day.

- Pablo Neruda, 1956