And so I’m back

Well I have hobbled, wheezed, crawled, skidded and stumbled into 2024. When I look back at my unseasonal enthusiasm for the last couple of new years, I feel a million miles away from that. I have felt depleted. I have no big goal this year and I think that’s part of my inertia too. Even this blog has taken a back seat. I have kept one foot in front of the other though. Or rather one welly in front of the other.

It’s probably a jumble of everything – still feeling the effects of grief in my body, still recovering from a virus in the autumn, the abysmal weather, the fecking menopause, the lack of light. I’m seriously thinking of booking a few days in the sun next winter because the impact of the weather this year has been so disruptive. Maybe I just really needed to rest?

I have still been cycling though, I missed a few days here and there because of a horrible bug at New Year and work and exhaustion. I am not burnt out, I’ve been there before and it doesn’t feel like this. I have tried to be gentle and compassionate with myself. It’s been hard. I’ve put weight back on, I’ve lost some fitness, my diabetes has been pretty wonky over the last few months. But I’m on the road to getting back to where I was.

I have had to do some of my cycles indoors and last year I had bought a second hand road bike and turbo trainer with great ideas about pedalling away in the sitting room. I absolutely detest it with every fibre of my being. I have an exercise bike that I’m perfectly happy on, but the turbo is quite frankly torture. I finally admitted defeat, took it off the turbo and round to my local bike store to get it checked and sorted out as a proper road bike. Shout out to Magic Cycles in Bowling because that guy is literally magic with bikes.

So meet Dory. You might notice her pedals look a bit different, yes they are for clipping in. For someone who has generally been quite accident-prone since childhood, this may not be the best idea. But someone kindly gave me their old cycling shoes and because I’d practiced clipping in and out on the turbo, I was determined to give it a try. And I didn’t fall. I did wobble, once, realising very quickly you can’t just clip out on one side, you have to do both. But I did fly home on this light wee nimble bike. When the weather is better, I’ll definitely be putting some miles on her.

But Ruby the gravel bike will always be my beloved one. She can go absolutely anywhere, any terrain, any weather. My bike doesn’t judge me. She is a consistent friend and companion, waiting patiently for me to get my mojo back so we can have more adventures. Just writing again feels good, another step forwards. The wee flowers are starting to bloom and hopefully I will too.

How to heal your heart

When your heart hurts you can’t take a painkiller, there’s no one way to soothe the pain that life and loss can bring. Our instinct can be to hide from the world, to stay away from others because we feel jaggy. Sometimes that’s helpful for a while but what we really need is connection with others. To allow ourselves to be loved and cared for. To be with our tribes and not have to explain yourself. And for me, also chucking myself along bike trails. I had the chance to do all of that visiting Canada again for the first time in four years.

I fell in love with Newfoundland in Canada 15 years ago, after being invited over by a fellow trainer and friend, who also sadly passed away a few years ago. I was made to feel so welcome and was blown away by the hospitality and generosity of these good people. Friends at home thought it was weird that I could find so much joy at a suicide prevention training conference, but I did. And I learned from the Newfies that I was now FFA – Family From Away. I was so happy to share this feeling with some UK colleagues and to show them round the place I’d fallen in love with. Sharing adventures, fun, food and laughter with with them was also precious and healing.

I can’t exactly say why I feel so much affinity with others who are working to prevent suicide and to educate others in reducing stigma and how to talk to people when they are struggling with suicide. I think maybe because it just really bloody matters! And also it feels like doing something in the world that makes a difference. No, we can’t stop everyone thinking about suicide from acting on their thoughts. But even helping one person in a lifetime feels worthwhile. And being with people who think the same is so life affirming for me.

I also loved every minute that I got to cycle in Canada. Some of it on a fantastic borrowed bike – again the generosity of friends in Newfoundland. But some of it was on a hired e-bike – without the speed restrictions that we have in the UK! Oh boy, I enjoyed that far too much. Bombing along the trans-Canada trail on the old railway routes, I could get used to that. And was I going so fast that I fell off? Of course I flipping was. Skinned knees and a sore hand but no permanent damage.

But I wasn’t zooming so much that I missed the scenery. It is an incredible landscape, much of it like Scotland, but bigger. The stunning autumn reds and golds among the mighty evergreens was breathtaking. And the complete silence on these trails was salve for the soul. I didn’t see any moose or bears, a good thing, although it would have been super exciting. Lots of chattering squirrels. And just miles and miles of open trails.

I know that nature can heal me. It is the place where I feel most like myself. It is where my body remembers what it felt like to be a child looking for the best leaves and stones and staring at the clouds with awe. But I am also human and need human connection. Back home I have tribes I connect to.

I don’t think it’s an accident whether or not you find people in the world you can be deeply connected to. I think it happens when you are true to what your heart needs. When you are honest with yourself about what matters to you. I know there’s so many jobs I could do to earn more money, but I choose this because it matters to me. I choose life. I choose to be with others either consciously or unconsciously because this stuff matters to them too. And because they make me feel that I matter. And that by being together we can make a difference in the world. My life matters.

Grief and joy

Woah, this the longest I’ve gone without writing my blog, I never even realised until I logged on to start writing. Boy this grief stuff really pulls the rug from under you. This time around, with the death of a very dear lifelong friend, I’ve been paralysed but didn’t even realise I wasn’t moving. Of course I’ve been out on my bike every day, but now it feels as routine as brushing my teeth. So my legs might have been moving but I’m not sure the rest of me has. At some points I’ve felt like my breath paused too.

It seems ironic, I’m the one left behind, I’m the one that’s still alive and yet I can’t find my breath. To say I’ve felt a little wonky would be an understatement.

Grief is a universal experience and yet when we feel it, really let ourselves feel it, it’s one of the most isolating emotions. And as I write I am acutely aware that this is only my own perspective on my grief, I can’t speak for others. It is not comforting to see others grieve, even for the same loss. It’s an internal journey, a pain that cannot be lessened by sharing or saying out loud. It is jabby, prickly, razor sharp and suffocating all at once. It subsides and moves into the background and then jumps back into sharp focus. It cannot be digested in one go, it is too big. So the incremental release of it drags on and on and on. Until you pause, and remember to keep breathing.

Maybe it seems odd to hear a therapist say the pain isn’t lessened by sharing, does that mean we shouldn’t talk to someone when we are grieving? No it doesn’t mean that. There is relief in sharing how we feel but there are no shortcuts for grief. We absolutely need to talk about it because grief needs an outlet. Yes, it really is too big to get it over and done with in one big crying session. So we have to truncate our grief, let it out a little at a time. And every time we do, we have to feel the pain again. Is this tedious? Yes. Is it exhausting? Yes. Is there any way of avoiding it. Yes, of course there is, but only for a time and eventually it will come and bite you on the ass until you deal with it.

I have just completed my tenth 100km gran fondo ride this year. That’s a lot of pedalling and a lot of thinking and processing time. There are many parallels between grief and these long haul rides. I absolutely wanted to give up. It’s cold now and weather has been miserable so I left it and left it until the last day of the month. I backed myself into a corner with nowhere to go except get it done or give up on my goal for this year. The “something” inside me that would not let me give up, that’s the same something that keeps me going through grief. And to know that there will always be a beautiful sunny day in the middle of life storms.

Grief and joy can co-exist. You can, in the pain of loss, still laugh, still love even when your heart is broken. We are designed this way, otherwise grief would kill us too. Laughter and joy are pain relief for grief. You can find pleasure in the world even when a loss has left a gaping hole. That is not disloyal, that is not a betrayal of your grief feelings, that is not distasteful, that is survival. And the strength inside comes from the deep love we still feel for those who are gone because that part will never be lost, we will always carry that love inside us.

So I keep on cycling, even when I don’t feel like it, when I would rather hide from the world. I find a way to engage with the parts of the world I can tolerate when I feel raw. For me, that is seeking out nature and my bike takes me to the most incredible places. It also means gravitating towards kindness and gentleness, people who will accept where I am at in all my wobblyness. For a time, it might also mean staying away from those I find harsh and difficult or letting go of situations that I have limited capacity for. Many of my recent rides have been short or opting for the indoor bike. In times of grief I need to find a way to be kind and gentle with myself while still creating opportunities for connection with the world, other people and my cycling.

He ain’t heavy

Being that this is my blog and all that, I only like to tell stories that are my own. It’s not right to tell other people’s stories unless they are okay with it. I’ve started writing this without permission because whether anyone reads it or not, my heart needs to put it on a page. If you are reading this, it means it’s been approved. It’s a love story. And it’s entwined with my love for cycling.

It’s a love story about two brothers. One is vibrant, imaginative, inspiring, fun, with a huge and sensitive heart, a little bit wild and sometimes struggles to wrap his head around the insanity and injustice in the universe. The other is funny, sensitive, playful, stubborn, wickedly sharp and heart-breakingly innocent, and sometimes very angry at being dealt a rubbish deal with his body and brain. Both are very handsome men.

One brother has always taken care of the other brother. He looks out for him because he can’t look out for himself. One brother is not the same as everyone else who walks the earth. The other brother treats him like he is the same. He takes him to the pub and helps him live like other people. He fights for him when the world treats him unfairly or ignores his value. He knows he is not the same. He knows it can be challenging to live with him everyday, so he gives his mother a break.

He lifts his brother up 3 flights of stairs to his flat, so he can hang out with him and their mother can get a break. He ain’t heavy, he’s his brother.

This brother deserves a bike that ain’t heavy. A bike he can easily carry up his stairs. A bike that can make him feel free in the world, because let’s face it, you never really feel free when you have people who need you, I mean really need you. These brothers need each other. One to take care and the other to love unconditionally. Any brother like that deserves a bike. Something for himself, something to make him feel light and less weighed down by the relentless struggles of life. So we bought a “new” recycled bike. You gotta love a new bike day.

And yes these humans are my humans. Our lives have not been easy in a world where you have to fight for everything. No wonder I get full of rage sometimes, I can’t blame menopause for all the rage I feel, it’s been there a long time. There’s also so much sorrow and incredible joy too. Those feelings have to go somewhere. When I say cycling saved my sanity, it’s because of this difficult life. It’s because it gives me a breather from all the things I have to do when you are responsible for caring. Cycling gives you a sense of freedom that nothing else can bring.

I hope the brother who now has a bike will ride the hell out of life, enough for both of them. I hope he will have epic adventures and feel free. I hope his bike will take him to new places and meet people who will see how special he is. I hope he feels completely alive and gets to soak in every glorious moment. I hope his bike gives him what mine gave me.

Even more poignant that he got his bike on the seventh anniversary of my mum’s passing. She loved these brothers will all her heart. She wanted life to be easier for them, for me, but it’s not. Sometimes it broke her heart, which broke mine. But this huge hearted brother was a beacon of light to her even though she also worried so much about him. She was immensely proud of him, as am I.

Sweet dreams are made of this

There’s a moment when you are starting to wake up when your dreams carry you out of your dream world and into the waking world. If you want to get technical, it’s called hypnopompia. A transitional state,where the conscious and unconscious worlds meet. I love those moments, I turn over in bed and clamp my eyes shut, desperately trying to stay there, but it’s like grasping clouds.

What’s that got to do with cycling you may ask? Well sometimes in my dreams I’ve cycled the ever-elusive 100 miles, a “real” century. Or I’ve been on an epic bike-packing trip or ridden my bike to the top of a mountain. I consider myself lucky to live a double life – one during daylight hours and another existence in my dream life. And like some people I’m also lucky enough to remember my dreams. As a therapist, dreams are often a great source of material, or as Jung theorised a doorway to the unconscious. I’ve also ridden dragons, fought mythical creatures, lived whole lives in castles and mansions and off-grid retreats. I’ve also fallen out the sky, crashed, been chased, had my fingers cut off and lots of other not so pleasant things.

The Kelpies

Dreams can also linger with me for days. The most powerful and lasting ones are those with strong emotions attached. I am a person who feels my feels in the daytime, therapist and all that. But sometimes emotions are so overwhelming they do get shoved down and dreams are a place to process them. Anyone who has ever lost someone or something they deeply loved will be used to that feeling of waking up from a dream where you got to hang out with that person again, or at least in your dream everything was just fine or the way it used to be. Then on waking, you realise it’s not true and the waking truth hits you with force again, like the wind on a bridge.

Forth rail bridge from the Forth Road bridge

This doesn’t mean dreams are lies. They contain the truth of something else. The love you felt was real and that love is still alive, even if what or who you loved is not. The excitement is still real, the ability to have adventures is still real. Everything you dream is a real part of you. I choose to hold on to anything helpful that follows me from my dream world. I definitely choose to hold on to love.

That sense of adventure has taken me to gran fondo number 7 this year, July’s 100km ride across central Scotland in a loop from Stirling to Edinburgh. Another really tough ride with strong winds and more elevation than I’d planned. I felt completely wiped out afterwards, for days. I really wasn’t feeling it this time and set off later than planned. I was surprised that I actually managed to finish it, but the views were incredible and I’m still glad I did it. And I saw something that could almost have been a dream. A small herd of fallow deer grazing up on a hill. These exquisite creatures were just gently going about their business and it felt like a piece of magic to get to witness them in nature. There are some moments on a ride that stay with you forever.

I have lots of plans for life and for cycling, some of them hatched in my dreams. And some of our dreams can actually become reality. Dreams can be intense, sometimes even more intense than real life. None of us can stay in that comforting dream space forever, but I still believe it’s a gift from our unconscious. And I’ll take it.

Let it all out

Every time I take a long train journey I am reminded of the Philip Larkin poem, the Witsun Weddings and that line: “and none, Thought of the others they would never meet, Or how their lives would all contain this hour.”

Travelling down to London for my big 100km ride through the night, I met an interesting collection of women. Travelling alone, you never know who you are going to be sitting with, so it’s a nice surprise when you meet some fascinating folk.

We talked about grief, writing, suicide, clutter, hoarding, babies and cycling. Before getting off the train one of the ladies gave me a generous donation for my charity cycle ride. I was deeply touched and humbled because she had told me her story of not working for many months due to a cycling injury.

As I arrived in London to a downpour of rain, I felt so much gratitude. I felt I learned something from these strangers’ stories. The hour, or hours, we shared together were purely by chance and yet I feel we changed each other and there was something serendipitous in the connections we shared. I have been so concerned with the what I’m doing this weekend, the cycling, that I’d lost sight of the why. These random conversations brought that back into sharp focus.

The thing that struck me most from our conversations was this experience of having grief blocked by well-meaning others. The need for unlimited weeping, pouring out grief instead of blocking it or holding it in, raging against the unfairness of death, sitting with the confusion without answers or solutions, these are so often shut down. Maybe we need to let it all out.

And blocked grief causes so many other problems. It becomes like a festering wound, seeping out in all sorts of unhelpful ways. Grief gets blocked in many ways, even comfort can block grief in its bid to stem the flow of tears. Hugs and hankies can block grief. Pats on the back, cheering up, taking your mind off it. They all have their place but sometimes I’m not sure we have the awareness that often our attempts at comfort are about us, and our discomfort. We see the other person in pain and we can’t bear it, so we want to take it away. But grief doesn’t need taken away, it needs to be felt, deeply, and moved through in your own time. There are no shortcuts and avoidance just takes us all to the same place eventually. Losing the people we love hurts and it hurts because we love. I don’t ever want to not feel love, so I accept that grief is part of it.

Ride the night London raises vital funds for women’s cancer charities. It’s a fun event, riding through London at night. But behind every rider sparkling with pink and fairy lights and tutus, will be a story of grief, of pain, of loss, of love. Sometimes grief is about weeping, sometimes it’s about doing things to try and counter-balance the hideous losses we feel, sometimes it’s about doing something to try and make the world a brighter place, if only for a night.

On a lighter note, London, what’s with all the rain? I was expecting tropical weather down here and I’m sorely disappointed. I hope it stays dry on Saturday night as I join hundreds of other women doing what they can to honour their grief and those they have lost to cancer and those who might be saved by funds raised for research and support.

I’m recovering from yet another yucky bug so hoping my spirit, body and legs are up to the challenge! And of course I couldn’t do this without the support of those who love me, especially ITOL (Incredibly Tolerant Other Half), who will be worrying about me right up till the final kilometre. Humble thanks to everyone who has donated 💜

Unbroken

Do other people get inordinately attached to inanimate objects? (Whisper – I even feel bad about calling my bike an inanimate object). Ruby is animated when I am riding her, she comes to life and sometimes seems more in control of the ride than me. I can’t ride without her and she can’t go anywhere without me. We need each other. And I was so happy to get her back from the local bike store. Shiny, sleek and feeling like a new bike – unbroken.

I’m curious about the concept of unbroken, as oppposed to being fixed. It means whole, I think it means something being made the way it was always meant to be. This is definately the way my bike was meant to be, but she is not new, she’s been through the wars, like me. I have felt broken in my life. I have been through things that have put me on my knees, thinking I’d never be able to get back up again. I’ve felt loss that shattered my heart into a million pieces, and yet, it still beats. I have felt gut-punched, like when I was diagnosed with diabetes, wondering how I could find a way to keep myself alive. These days I feel – unbroken.

I have spent a lot of my working life with people who think they are broken, hearing their stories of loss and pain and disappointment. Therapy doesn’t fix people, but I do think it can make people feel unbroken, whole and healed. Maybe it’s not that different to sorting a bike. Let’s take that part out, have a good look at it, clean it up, straighten that other part out and lubricate with some compassion.

If only it were that simple, we humans are complex with lots of moving parts we have layers of conscious and unconscious stuff going on. It can take a while to figure out what is going to help.

But therapy is not the only thing that helps, other things can heal us too. I believe cycling has been a part of that for me. A part of me that finds a way to be free from everything that feels wrong in the world. A way to feel released from the things in my life that I can’t change or fix or make better. I don’t have to figure out anything, just follow the path ahead.

I was listening to the birds in the trees today and thinking how lucky I am to be in a place where I can hear the birds. But it’s not luck, I made a decision to go out on my bike. I made a decision to pay attention to the moment when the birds were singing. I stopped to look at the sun dancing on the water. It hasn’t solved all the problems in my life or given me any great ideas about how to manage the ever-increasing cost of living. But it made it all not matter for a wee while. And that is utterly precious. It made the world feel unbroken.

Loch Lomond

I am okay with being attached to my bike, she is my gateway to healing, joy, peace, understanding myself, fun and freedom. A friend reminded me of this last week (you know who you are) and it actually made me cry. How wonderful to find something that can do all that for you. I hope you find the thing that helps you feel unbroken.

Shout out to Magic Cycles in Bowling for making my bike like new again

The end is nigh

I’m having very mixed feelings as the end of the year rapidly approaches. I’m in the final month of my year long challenge. I wish I could say it’s got easier as the year went on but it has remained a mixture of excitement, elation and real hard slog. The winter months are definately the toughest. I am heading towards the end, but an ending allows space for something new.

When I’ve tried to reflect on how I feel about this challenge ending, I noticed that I feel quite avoidant. I’ve said in earlier blogs that setting a year goal takes the decision-making process away, your decision has already been made so you just go. I have found that comforting, it has saved some mental and motivational energy. I thought I would feel relieved, but I don’t. I have been working towards something and I think it would be accurate to say I feel a sense of loss about it coming to an end. In fact even writing this, I feel tears prickling at the back of my eyes and my chest constricting. I feel a bit panicky about setting a new goal. I could just keep going with daily cycling but that feels like a cop out.

The end of anything creates mixed feelings of loss and grief, and emptiness, especially when it has meant something positive. If it’s been something challenging then it does open up space for something new and it’s a chance to reflect on everything you have learned and to decide what you are going to do with that.

I have learned that a daily practice of any kind works well for me. I think being outside every day is good for me. My body is definately used to moving every day. I have learned that I love cycling and I want to keep it as a big part of my life from now on. But exactly where do I go next?

This is not something I can just decide on December 31. Any goal requires some amount of planning in advance, otherwise it just won’t happen. I have a holiday coming up in December when I’m going to have to do my daily cycle on an indoor bike. That will feel very different but I think it might help me to think properly about my next goal.

I’ve already signed up to do Ride the Night London next April, so I’m mulling over attempting a 100km gran fondo ride every month and some sort of movement every day, either walking and or cycling. But maybe 100km rides are too big a goal? That’s the whole point though. Goals should be something you just don’t know if you can achieve.

Hmmm there I go again, even thinking about next year is a way of avoiding the sadness and anxiety of ending. So I have to find a way of staying with the difficult feelings, of sitting with the sadness and letting that teach me something too. Let myself move through it so that I can really feel the joy on the other side.

Endings and beginnings happen every day with the rising and setting of the sun. Both are equally beautiful.

When the world stops turning

I read something recently about using cycling as a way to deal with grief. I have been a therapist for many years and have never seen this on any of those handy lists of things to help you grieve, which is why I think it might be a genius idea.

I am not a fan of these lists. I think sometimes they make people feel like somehow they’ve failed at grieving on top of all the pain they are already feeling. The only useful “advice” I’ve ever seen is to be gentle with yourself and that your grief is not like anyone else’s. So do what helps you, not what helps everyone else.

So why might cycling through grief be useful? What struck me is not the cycling bit, but the movement bit. Grief paralyses us. It makes it difficult to move your body, get dressed, walk, move through the world. Your body feels sluggish and your mind foggy as you stumble through a world that has changed in utterly inconceivable ways. Nothing makes sense.

Moving your body is a completely sensible way of processing emotions. Our feelings can get stuck in an endless swirling cyclone, but moving your body can shift you out of this and give you some balance. It might be cycling or walking or getting in the water or dancing. We can often underrate how much power movement has.

For me, I can turn the wheels of my bike, even when the world has stopped turning. I worked in a hospice for a while and saw grief show up in so many different ways. As therapists we are trained to talk people through things. And yes, verbal processing can be powerful. It’s so important for shifting some of the unhelpful beliefs we have when someone dies. It’s helpful for shifting self-blame, anger, confusion and distress. But we are not just mouthpieces. We are not only made of words. Our bodies contain vast amounts of wisdom about what we need. And movement can help you listen to your body.

We carry the people we have lost with us all the time. They are not isolated memories in our minds, they are part of the fabric of who we are. When I have yet another tumble off the bike, I can hear my mother’s worrying voice although it’s six years since I’ve heard it. I can see my friend Steven’s face full of mocking amusement and a tinge of pride at my crazy goal to cycle every day for a year. Even though I haven’t seen his face for seven years. I can feel the warm hug of my friend Simeela, who died by suicide, when cycling helps to boost my mental health. Even though I haven’t felt her embrace for more than 20 years.

All these people and many more are a part of who I have become. They are gone, but not really gone. They are still here because I am still here. The world keeps turning and so do my wheels.

Smile for the camera

A few people have commented on me smiling in all my pictures and it made me think about how we are so conditioned to smile for the camera. I remember as a child what a rollicking my brother got when one year his school pictures came back and he was grimacing in every one. It was actually because he had lost a tooth and was trying not to show it.

We want to remember ourselves as happy. I’ve seen people I know burn pictures of themselves that they didn’t like. I guess that’s even easier now we can just press delete.

But I want to be brutally honest here. Just because my snaps are of me smiling doesn’t mean I’m happy all the time. The goofball picture above was me trying to maintain my sense of humour in the middle of treating a low blood sugar hypo. My hands were shaking, unfortunately not due to having a wee dram at a whisky distillery, but because my body has a violent reaction to hypos. There’s shaking, sweating, heart palpitations, brain fog and the frustration of having to wait till it’s over before getting back on the bike. When I took this pic, it was 100 times worse because I was getting eaten alive by midges. I’m sure my diabetic blood is an extra tasty treat for them.

I know I’m not the only person who has cycled with tears streaming down their face. Either because of some personal crap going on in life, feelings of grief or despair, or because you’ve been defeated by a hill, or are just so done with this damn ride.

I’m sure I’m also not the only person to rage cycle. Frustration driving every turn on the pedals. Body full of anger-fuelled adrenaline, riding for miles until the emotion has finally shifted gears. But just like the sun sets every night and rises again, that emotion will shift.

Emotions are incredible and excruciating and wonderful and awful. They can be intense and overwhelming. We often treat them like an enemy invasion, battling to get rid of them, frequently medicating against them. But they are messages, they are information. They are a flow of information from the brain to the body, telling us important things. Fear is telling us to be watchful and careful, there is danger somewhere. Anger is telling us a big no to something – that’s not okay, you breached a boundary, you put me in danger, you got in my way, you tried to take my power or autonomy away. Disappointment tells us about what’s really important to us. Grief is telling us that we loved – someone or something and that it really friggin mattered.

Society seems to place more value on what are labelled as positive emotions. Millions have been made from the idea of happiness as a goal. Positivity is now a brand, stamping its huge clown feet all over what is at the heart of human existence. Psychologists have been researching the idea of toxic positivity in recent years. I am actually a fan of positivity, but not to the exclusion of realism and all the other emotions. Even when it hurts, I want to feel everything.

My smiles on the bike are real. Usually because I’ve stopped to see an incredible view or I’m chuffed I’ve made it to the top of a hill. Cycling makes me happy, but it also helps me to process and move through lots of other emotions. Somehow the movement of my body creates movement on the inside. Things make sense on the bike, even when the rest of the world doesn’t make sense. I pedal, I move forward and I end up somewhere different, or I find my way home.

The idea of smiling for the camera is so interesting books have been written about it. In the 1800s when cameras were first used, no one smiled for the camera, in fact, they were encouraged to look serious. Once cameras became accessible to everyone, advertising was the thing that encouraged us to “capture the moment”. We have become conditioned over time and by lots of clever advertising. I am in awe of proper photographers who capture incredible portraits of real human emotions. And I love photographs when people don’t know they are being snapped. Those really are captured moments.

Cycling makes me smile. Nature makes me smile and fills me with awe. Those things may not make you smile, but it’s important to find out what does. For me, it’s impossible not to smile when you see views like this 😁