Tales to be told

This crank has been here there and everywhere.

High Street in the Lake District, Drovers' roads in Mid Wales, Tuscany and down (and up) various hills in the Pyrenees.

It came off my favourite bike, a Gary Fisher Paragon, which was too small for me, had fairly regular mechanical issues and which cost me a small fortune.

But it's not about the money. This crank has got me to the top of a pass on the French-Spanish border, into an Alpine meadow, still spattered with winter snow, where we sat gazing across a mind-blowing view, knowing we had made it there under our own steam.

Perhaps I loved that bike because it coincided with a period of my life in which it was hard not to be fit, slim and have a risk seeking outlook.

It's a bit harder to be slim and fit these days but I still love the surge of adrenaline that a rocky descent through the woods produces. That is a moment of pure 'being in the zone' that sitting in the garden can't replicate!

Anyway, they came out of the bike bits box that I keep in the shed. You never know, I might find a use for them yet..