Category: Blog

12th September 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 282: Veloforte

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Marc and Lara Giusti

TOPICS: A 50-minute chat with Veloforte founders Marc and Lara Giusti.

TRANSCRIPT :

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to Episode 282 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 12th of September 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fred cast. And of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of the spokesman cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information, check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the Spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:10
Bear with me as I sample a smidgen of fresco energy chew along with a little chunk from a hazelnut coffee and cocoa flavoured Tuscany-inspired treat. That’s more like a pan forte than your traditional energy bar, which let’s face it is often on the functional spectrum, rather than a foodie one. I’m just gonna taste this, hang on.

Carlton Reid 1:37
Yep. Oh, that’s mint

Carlton Reid 1:39
Oh, lemon it’s also mint and lemon. It’s got the consistency of kind of Turkish Delight. It doesn’t taste like Turkish Delight, but it’s got the consistency of Turkish Delight. And that’s Fresco from Veloforte. And made in small batches, Veloforte is from London. The products I’m enjoying here are made with natural time-tested ingredients, not fancy schmancy gloops. I’m Carlton Reid and on today’s 50-minute show I’m talking – and eating – with Veloforte founders, Marc and Lara Giusti. Their brand is now five years old. And unusually for an energy bar company, its halo products have won numerous Great Taste awards. After we’d finished recording, I was kindly sent an all-products sampling box and I can exclusively reveal — well, not very exclusive — but I can reveal that everything in Veloforte’s range is super tasty, including the Fresco there which is now half chewed. Let me just open the Mocha so the Mocha is hazelnut coffee and cocoa

Carlton Reid 2:59
and it’s like a pan fortre I’d have I’ve have had a few before so I’m just tasting this one now.

Carlton Reid 3:07
So if you’d like pan forte, at Christmas or whatever you would like Sienna-sourced products well I guess you’re like this. Let’s taste this one.

Carlton Reid 3:21
Yeah, okay. That’s also

Carlton Reid 3:25
yummy.

Carlton Reid 3:26
I’ll cut this audio out. Yeah. Okay, I’m now back in, I’ve cut the sound out of my chewing there. But that was also tasty, very, very tasty. Because these products are made from real food, not fillers. There’s like big objects of hazelnuts in the Mocha I can see on my desk here. And there are none of the bloating and you know those emissions-related problems that is common with other some other gels. Anyway, here’s my chat with Marc and Laura. I started by asking about the surprisingly long history of pan forte

Marc Giusti 4:04
Way back in a sort of Roman legions before even there’s evidence of

Marc Giusti 4:13
essentially fruits, nuts, berries, honeys, those sorts of produce being pulled together by

Marc Giusti 4:22
in this case the Roman legions as they marched through Europe.

Marc Giusti 4:26
And using these ingredients to sort of fortify the armies the soldiers you know, the the teams as they marched through the land.

Marc Giusti 4:37
And of course, what that became them was a sort of a dough really a mixture of, of these different ingredients brought together. But as time went on,

Marc Giusti 4:47
began to include all sorts of herbs and spices and in a new and interesting foods as they went through different lands and countries. So ginger

Marc Giusti 5:00
And cinnamons and you know, a whole host of fruits and who knows what.

Marc Giusti 5:05
And as this happened, the, the fruits of stops being, if you like, a fortifying dough for, you know, the plebs and the masses. And it started to become a bit more of a speciality it started become the almost sort of pharmaceutical away because of the the gingers and other spices that had some healing benefits in and they were finding that, you know, the the soldiers and the generals and the and the leaders were, were, you know better for it. And so it sort of started to become something of a speciality in this special food for,

Marc Giusti 5:39
I guess,

Marc Giusti 5:41
higher, higher and higher up the food chain, so to speak. And then as many hundreds if not a couple of 1000s of years have moved on, it’s now really seen in Italy as a as a classic delicacy, largely centred around the area of sienna. And around Florence, you can find it everywhere in Italy, of course, but it’s sort of central gravity seems to be that sort of Tuscan food. So that’s the snapshot and, and the reason that’s connects to to us is that my family’s from Florence, Lucca near Sienna. And there’s a long history of panforte to being a

Marc Giusti 6:25
Well, it’s true many Italian families were panforte is a thing that your, your nonna, your grandmother teaches you how to make. And if you if you don’t know how to make it, then you know you need to.

Marc Giusti 6:39
And it’s a staple, really, and of course, the the the recipes for these are very closely guarded sort of family secrets. And that’s the backdrop to how it’s in. And I guess our lives and

Marc Giusti 6:54
Laura, as well, over the years has developed an incredible capability as an award winning baker, not only

Marc Giusti 7:04
also for heart, lung, respiratory specialist as well. And so combining those skills, this provenance of food,

Marc Giusti 7:12
our interests for creating

Marc Giusti 7:16
natural ingredients, natural foods for, for sports context, that’s essentially the the moons were coming together, it looks a little bit like that. And when when, when the moons coming together, gosh, there’s so slowly at first, because we didn’t invent the recipes in order to create a nutrition brand. It was it was actually that was that’s where we ended up the the beginnings of this was just really to help fuel me on my own sort of cycling adventures. And I was sort of sick to death with this was around 2017, I think

Marc Giusti 7:51
2016 maybe 2017 I was fed up with all of the typical synthetic nasty gloop in tubes that we’ve all had to suffer for years that you know, you’ve most bike shops, or wherever you might get your food.

Marc Giusti 8:05
And all of it pretty unpleasant, all of it

Marc Giusti 8:09
was impossible to understand the what’s in it, let alone what it’s supposed to do, or how to use it. And so it was for me a case of I wanted to find something, I could trust him and something that I wanted to eat and something that I understood. And

Marc Giusti 8:24
so Lara turns around says, Well, I’ll make it for you. I know exactly how to do that. I know, from my home, as I said, from herbs of medical, years, 20 odd years.

Marc Giusti 8:33
And that side of her life, was saying what I understand recovery in the human body and performance perfectly. I also understand how to how to make this stuff at an award winning level. So why aren’t we making it for you, so it started there. And then of course, I’d have too much in my pocket, no doubt here and there. And we’d hand it to friends and friends and hand it to their friends. And all of a sudden, we were staring at an opportunity to develop the brand.

Marc Giusti 8:59
And it kind of built its own path. Really, my past previously was 25 years brand strategy for all sorts of international brands. So we sort of converged that thinking and Lara’s skills with the foods and creative metaphor.

Carlton Reid 9:19
And from what you’re saying, it sounds like you, you you, you issue and you don’t have in your ingredients maltodextrin which is the kind of the basis for many

Carlton Reid 9:30
foods out there.

Lara Giusti 9:30
No, Carlton, we don’t use any highly processed ingredients at all. So what was important for me when I’m curating the range when I’m building any new products is that you almost want to be able to make it yourself in your own kitchen, be able to open your own cupboards and get your dried fruits, get your plant based syrups your Maple syrups and your nuts and be able to you know create these incredible incredibly powerful and delicious

Lara Giusti 10:01
recipes at home. But we do it for you, of course. And so it’s important for me that you understand what’s in the recipes that your body understands how to digest what’s in the recipes. So we steer away from any sort of synthetic ingredients or heavily processed ingredients and try and keep it as natural and as simple as possible.

Carlton Reid 10:20
Does that not I mean that the reason companies use is apart from the fact that maltodextrin a one point was an incredibly cheap ingredient

Carlton Reid 10:28
was that long shelf life and then that’s, that’s their benefit. So what is your how’s your shelf life compared to one of your your

Carlton Reid 10:39
competitors who are using these other ingredients?

Lara Giusti 10:42
So that is obviously that lots of things that we taking into consideration when we do make new products. But when we started with the bars, we knew that pound 40 was highly appraised for its shelf life, that’s how it would live in the Roman legions packs as they would storm across the countries. And so and it has natural preservatives in it. So it has a fairly high sugar content. And as we know, from jamming, it’s a natural preservative, you don’t need to add any artificial preservatives to that, to maintain a shelf life. The bars themselves are fairly low in water content. And so the moisture is trapped within the dried fruits within the bars. And so there’s nothing really to grow any mould or or affect any shelf life. So we have now up to 14 months on our bars have natural shelf life, too.

Lara Giusti 11:35
So rather than refrigerators refrigerated, they cope amazingly from 40 degree heat down to you know, minus two degree heat.

Lara Giusti 11:45
The they maintain their texture, and they’re the most fantastic portable fuel.

Marc Giusti 11:52
And it’s the same with with the chews, with the gels with hydration with our protein shakes, none of the ingredients include anything synthetic or or preservative based or additive based. And then all of those have somewhere between 12, 16 and 18 months shelf life. So it has not been mean we just simply don’t subscribe to the I guess the thought that we need to pump the products full of convenient ingredients from a manufacturing point of view

Marc Giusti 12:26
In order to either gain margin or to gain sort of shelf life, when you can have what or if you did we believe that you you have a huge issue with your quality, the provenance of your ingredients, the digestibility of the ingredients.

Marc Giusti 12:40
It’s it’s just not necessary from our point of view.

Carlton Reid 12:43
So how about expense wise? So have any of these facts that you’re using real ingredients rather than the maltodextrins of this world, does that make your product more expensive?

Marc Giusti 12:54
Well, it certainly makes it more expensive to produce. It’s much more complicated for us, you know, we don’t just go and buy, you know, n litres of gunk and stick it in the steel vats and you know, job done. The the the issue for us is absolutely that we want to know where the food is coming from. We know to some level even understand who the growers are, I know we have an absolute

Marc Giusti 13:18
focus on the provenance, the quality, the taste, the efficacy, the digestibility. And the experience, we will talk about three different things natural, powerful and delicious. And unless those three things are true, we won’t make the product.

Marc Giusti 13:34
But yes, that makes it harder for us to source it makes it harder for us to to ensure that we have the same. So for example, a batch one batch of dates might be more squidgy and moist than another batch of data. So all sorts of sourcing issues become a problem for us that we need to manage. And we do very well.

Marc Giusti 13:53
It doesn’t necessarily translate to more expensive on the shelf. But yes, there are absolutely some products that you could buy materially less. You know, there are some very well known brands who do 60% off sales pretty much all day every day. And and and that’s fine. But that’s not really where we’re not coming from that place.

Lara Giusti 14:14
It’s reflective on the cost of their raw ingredients so we don’t stint on quality on anything. The peels that we’re using our bars come from Sicily, they are candied in the most traditional way we want to stick to the heritage of our of our roots really, and we don’t want to compromise on quality and that means that we do put more cost base into the manufacturing side of it.

Carlton Reid 14:40
And where are they manufactured now?

Marc Giusti 14:42
So all over we did the very beginning was the kitchen quite literally and we turned our house.

Marc Giusti 14:49
It was a case of I think we had the cleaner and all of her friends turning up into little white hats and blue nets and so when they were doing the cutting in the mixing and the wrapping

Marc Giusti 15:00
And we had Laura and I making in the kitchen and it was, you know, quite a homemade affair. We then moved that to our own facility. We’re very modest facility in North London. And then since then as we’ve started to scale a business where we now have, you know, I guess you might call grown-up facilities with all the sort of BCR ratings and you know, Informed Sports qualifications and everything else that you need these days to have a really compelling nutrition product, and it’s all in the UK.

Carlton Reid 15:33
So I’m going to ask you about that so so an athlete can have faith in your product because

Carlton Reid 15:41
the certain product that might be in other companies products definitely won’t be there. So that’s all accredited?

Marc Giusti 15:47
Yeah, so the the main thing with the whole banned substances thing is that you know, where something is made, particularly for using facilities that have all sorts of other people’s products in them to you know, set some ingredients can cross pollinate if you like, or somehow infiltrate and, and also some people will want to add these products in or these ingredients to their products. So, Informed Sport came about some number of years ago now to try to give athletes that confidence that the foods that this particular product or brand or this particular product, have got us a rubber stamp accredited, you know, it’s safe to eat this banned substance assured also no banned substance or short

Marc Giusti 16:33
label and also we have, whether it be celiac or whether it be vegan, whether it be brcc throw BRC a ratings and that’s about so quality and cleanliness and

Marc Giusti 16:47
a whole load of traceability, traceability of food markers that the food industry have put in place for self regulation as well as for for more legislative record regulation.

Carlton Reid 17:00
And so cos you’re producing with for want of a better expression, real food, that’s what attracted people like Ashley Palmer-watts and Justin Clarke of LeBlanq to your brand, how did you meet them?

Marc Giusti 17:14
So that came about because of, and we’re very fortunate in that, because our food is very high quality. And we I’d argue we’re really the only all natural brand you can buy from in terms of the range of, you know, before, during, and after your exercise your sport, be elite or pro. Because we have such a high, highly regarded quality products, we get to meet and get introduced to quite a lot of very

Marc Giusti 17:45
serious sports people, everyone from Formula One racing drivers to tennis players to, you know, cyclists, runners and all sorts of people. And part of the,

Marc Giusti 17:55
I guess, introductions we get are people who are doing interesting things, you know, creates introductions with interesting people. And

Marc Giusti 18:02
I think when you’re probably somebody like Ashley, and when you’re at the highest end of your, I guess the food industry and you see a brand, changing the way that that the bits industry, in our case, sports nutrition, operates and starts to provide products to a quality level that you would normally expect from in a professional kitchen or in the restaurant quality foods, you know, with the only nutrition brands with one, I think more than 10 or 12 goal, Great Taste awards now.

Marc Giusti 18:31
And so we managed to, I guess reach a level of

Marc Giusti 18:35
recognition in that space that that piece, some of those chefs interests and we’re getting those introductions all the time.

Marc Giusti 18:42
And through our retailer and our eventing over networks, you know that these,

Marc Giusti 18:49
in this case, LeBlanq cycling events, they came to know this they saw our story they recognise it was very much in tune with what they were trying to do and and Lara is I guess you like the solution to the on bike part of the LeBlanq story. And if the if Ashley is looking after the off bike piece, how do they assure the same gastronomic qualities on the bike and that’s where Lara and her food comes in.

Carlton Reid 19:13
Mmm. And you mentioned there about retailing. So how how do people get hold of your product?

Marc Giusti 19:20
Well, mostly it’s direct to the website. So predominantly, we are a DTC brand as it’s called and people come to the website they order and you know we deliver.

Marc Giusti 19:30
Otherwise, we’ve got a whole bunch of

Marc Giusti 19:33
independent retail and large retail outlets, you know, sports shops, gyms,

Marc Giusti 19:39
health clubs in all sorts of different shapes and sizes of those all around the country as well as internationally. And there are you know, we’re growing it although it’s very modest still we are growing our footprint into Europe and into other sort of international regions. So it we are not hard to get hold of

Marc Giusti 20:00
It’s hard these days is things like Brexit, and also getting it to be delivered on time when you don’t own the logistics, you know, but but we’re easy to get hold on, it’s not a problem.

Carlton Reid 20:10
Hmm. So yeah, I was I was expecting mainly website, because that’s where everybody gets their stuff from now.

Marc Giusti 20:18
It is i think i think one really important thing, though, is that we’re not we’re not trying to be exclusively, sort of the website, only the, we believe that every channel be it Amazon or be it our website or be it your local bike shop or be it,you know, the gym, you go to, you know, in any number of places that we should be readily available, we should be accessible to you there in the best way that we can be. And that’s very much our plan.

Marc Giusti 20:44
The convenience side of it and the affordability side of it comes in because often when you when you buy sort of onesie twosie items from a bike shop on a Saturday morning before you ride out, for example. And that isn’t really a very effective way for you to manage your nutrition requirements you might have for your, you know, the weeks ahead. So inevitably, people come to the website, they buy boxes of their mixed bars, or their, you know, gels and powders or whatever it might be that they’re looking for. And it’s a much more efficient and effective way for them to manage their nutrition. And we have a subscription programme where you can do that. So you can come and say, I’m training for the marathon, or I’m training for a sportif, or, I don’t know, I’m a professional tennis player, and I’m training every week, whatever the scenario is, and we can build a subscription model around that for you to say, Well, this is the kind of product that you need on these weeks. And this is a sort of cadence new engineer delivered in and we tried to put that together for you.

Carlton Reid 21:43
Do you ever regret calling it Veloforte, which then, you know, solidifies it into cycling when it could have been like something like Sportforte, or just more general?

Marc Giusti 21:54
It’s a conversation that I’ve had with myself many times. No, is the short answer.

Marc Giusti 22:00
The. To me,a brand strategy is very much about

Marc Giusti 22:05
giving brands meaning, right, they can be called whatever you want to be; Google when it first came out was you know what, what does it even mean? Nobody understands it, if it has a, it needs to be given meaning. And what we find is that the provenance of where we started, which was very much in cycling very much to help in a very high endurance and high consumption needs to have this sort of food and to have the quality of the foods.

Marc Giusti 22:31
And that that is sort of set behind you know how we can also feel your marathon or your outdoor swimming or your

Marc Giusti 22:39
tennis playing or whatever it might be that you do

Marc Giusti 22:42
is just a straight line from there, there. There is really isn’t a downside. And an often I see when you talk to cyclists, of course, they they appreciate the name velo being in, in the brand. When you speak to non cyclists, they often don’t actually recognise it or think of it as some sort of exclusive cycling word.

Lara Giusti 23:05
Velo be seen as velocity. So you’ve got velo strength, so velocity, speed and strength.

Lara Giusti 23:09
So it’s really, you know.

Marc Giusti 23:11
So I think it’s a it’s a, it’s a fair question. But I I don’t think it’s something that’s going to limit the business at all. And I think it’s a story that we want to tell you know, that’s where we started.

Carlton Reid 23:23
And Peloton is kind of proving at the moment that you can have a very, very cycling word, and it doesn’t really matter, because you can sell running, even though you’re a cycling brond originally.

Marc Giusti 23:35
And people’s active lives now, like cycling is not only one of the largest consumers of our kinds of products as a as a category, but it’s also now becoming ever more part of certainly UK at least and it’s true, of course, in Europe and all around the world, but it’s becoming evermore a part of people’s active lives. And so you’re seeing brands and names and terminology, you know, bleed across different sports. I think it’s a it’s one of the sports that enormously impressive feats of, you know, human endurance come from those sports. So I think it can only be a good thing we would, we would only be looking for those provenance points if we had called it something else. So it seems to come more naturally from the name.

Carlton Reid 24:22
You mentioned pro sport then what what sprang to mind was pro cyclists, clearly and obviously, are very often

Carlton Reid 24:32
anchored to particular brands of energy food and everything else, of course, but for instance, like the Gabba jersey, you often get pros will use

Carlton Reid 24:44
a Gabba jersey, but they’ll take off the Castelli stuff. And and do you know I don’t want you to spill the beans in it. But do you know of any pros that are like they’re sponsored by one brand, but they don’t taste? They don’t like that crap. They want your

Carlton Reid 25:00
stuff.

Marc Giusti 25:00
I’d say in the low hundreds would be my actual answer to that are of pro cyclists who like our food very much and need to put it in a different bottle.

Carlton Reid 25:13
A different packet? Yes, yes. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 25:18
Yes. So you, you are the gabbeh of the well,

Marc Giusti 25:21
I would like I would very much love for us to be the Gabba I’m absolutely sure I would be I’m not sure they quite the Gabba yet. But yes, we’ve seen that at the time. And I think it’s also the case that people need to have confidence in their digestion, right. So there’s, it’s not just that our food is delicious, or, or just that it has some natural ingredients, there’s a, it plays a very important role in the on on and off bike, or whatever sport you’re in,

Marc Giusti 25:50
kind of regime. So it’s very much more about health and wellness, rather than just simply performance, you know, there and then at the end of the moment, so, where how people eat, you know, what they choose to have on a Monday morning versus, you know, a training session versus a recovery session?

Marc Giusti 26:08
Are all it’s all part of the same discussion. And so it seems it would seem odd to say to somebody, you know, only eat natural foods, you know, at certain times and eat a lot of synthetic foods and other time that just seems

Marc Giusti 26:22
particularly also as it’s very commonly the case that synthetic ingredients, cause so many sort of gastro issues for people in one of the most common stories is people saying my county jails is never tell me go funny or, and many other worse stories than that.

Marc Giusti 26:38
And, and our ingredients have completely eliminated that we have none of that. None at all.

Marc Giusti 26:45
It’s it’s simply because our bodies know how to digest those sorts of ingredients and sugars and the ratios that we put them together in.

Carlton Reid 26:54
because of the long provenance compared to the short providence of maltodextrin. etc.

Marc Giusti 26:59
Yes, exactly.

Lara Giusti 27:01
It’s not just the maltodextrin. It’s all the artificial sweeteners that go into so many products, it’s been proven now to completely wreck your gut biome. So we stay clear of anything like that. And we only use natural ingredients throughout. So we know that we’re going to keep your, your you know, your internal bacterias on track and keep your gut happy. And that motivates you to go further. If you’re not having to worry about cramping and needing the toilet, you’re going to concentrate on running faster, longer, riding harder. And that’s what you’re wanting to do want to enjoy your fueling, so you can enjoy your sport.

Marc Giusti 27:37
Yeah, and we see a lot of that a lot of people say, I don’t like them, so I don’t use them say a gel, say or powdery chalky bars that they’ve, you know, perhaps bought from elsewhere. And what that means is that they don’t feel when they should do it sort of try to work around, and lo and behold, they start to bonk, and then all of a sudden, they’ve now got to recover from that rather than, you know, maintain their

Marc Giusti 28:02
I guess their performance. As I was saying there’s a there’s a balance to be had. And, you know, before, during and after. And our food allows people can because normally when people are making food for themselves, they they’re looking for the highest quality, natural, you know, clean, good stuff to eat out there.

Marc Giusti 28:19
And so why would you then go buy a bag of synthetic gloop and chuck that in your tummy just because you happen to be on the bike. You know, it just seems a strange thing.

Lara Giusti 28:26
When you’re pushing the body the hardest, why would you put the rubbish in then?

Carlton Reid 28:31
Yeah. Yes. Laura, you mentioned that the microbiome there. And I’m kind of familiar that because I’ve got a medic daughter and I’ve got a doctor wife. So let’s let’s let’s talk medical stuff for a second now because that that intrigued me right at the beginning there when when your medical background was mentioned, so so tell us a bit about that.

Lara Giusti 28:52
So I trained many moons ago as a physiotherapist and specialised as a cardio respiratory physiotherapist. And that meant that I was working on intensive care units with people with long term lung disease, but also working with people who have cardiac operations and, and getting rehabbing them back into health, which included working with a fantastic team of nutritionists of occupational therapists of sports therapists. And that really enticed me into looking more into nutrition than I’d ever really done before. And so I did a Master’s in that and decided to focus my attention more on the nutrition side, and as Marc said, I

Lara Giusti 29:42
love my baking as well. It’s sort of a stethoscope in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other

Lara Giusti 29:49
end so I managed to put both of my talents and my passions into one place by developing this sports nutrition range, which really does

Lara Giusti 30:00
allow you to feel the way that your body wants to feel.

Carlton Reid 30:05
Hmm. So so let’s talk through your products. Now you’ve got a, you’ve got a bar

Carlton Reid 30:10
line, you have a gel line, and then you’ve got like a post exercise energy shake line, what else are we missing here? What are you.

Carlton Reid 30:19
So Lara wil take you through the, how each of them, I suppose do the job that they were but as a sort of range of bars, a range of chews, a range of natural gels, a range of hydration, which is sort of electrolyte powders, and a sort of performance protein recovery shakes range.

Lara Giusti 30:40
Really, the challenge was how to create a range that we say it’s from trainers on, to trainers off, or cleats on to cleats off. How are we going to make sure that you’ve got what you need, when you need it in a portable fashion, that means you’re never going to go hungry, and you’re never going to bonk or hit the wall. Because you’ve always got Veloforte in your back pocket or in your running pack.

Lara Giusti 31:05
So yes, we started with bars, and started just with three bars and then extended the range, we’ve now got eight in total, including to recovery focus bars, which can contain complete protein. And we try and use the most easily digestible protein. So in our thoughts of protein bar, we use egg whites, which is quite unusual for recovery and protein bars on the market. Right now we use egg whites because your body is the highest digestibility store is really fantastic form of protein without all the additional facts associated with it. And we use nuts in all of our our bars, which give a baseline of line of protein alongside the natural carbohydrates from the dried fruits and the syrups. That means that your energy sustained, so you get a nice boost from the sugars in the syrup in the bars, you get a prolonged energy release from the fructose from the fruits and from the proteins from the nuts. So you don’t just get this boom and crash which is so common with the maltodextrin based products, which is just one type of carbohydrate. We try to span it across forms of carbohydrates and also include low level proteins in the majority of the bars as well to keep you on an even keel.

Lara Giusti 32:24
So they’re the bars.

Carlton Reid 32:26
Sorry, sorry, before before you go on, you mentioned egg whites, so then that just immediately went all vegan? So do you have a vegan option as well?

Lara Giusti 32:35
Absolutely. So we have a vegan recovery bar as well called our Mocha bar, which is totally delicious, as well as obviously on point for nutrition that’s made from a blend of pea and brown rice proteins. And you need both of those to complete a complete a complete amino acid profile. And it’s important to have that complete profile because when you’re trying to rebuild your muscles, you need all of those nine essential amino acids that your body can’t produce itself. And so we use a mix of hazelnuts and those two plant based proteins to give you that extra protein boost in the recovery bar from Mocha.

Carlton Reid 33:11
Okay, so sorry, I think you’re about to go into gels.

Lara Giusti 33:13
So yes, gels.

Lara Giusti 33:16
Again, steering clear of the synthetic sugars, we use plant based syrup. So we use a mix of data at Maple syrup and brown rice syrup. And they’re flavoured with real fruit juices and with spices and so they’re really a lovely texture. They’re like a maple syrup textures. They’re not thick and gloopy. And they’re not super runny. They’re quite small in size. So instead of carrying a 16 ml hydro gel that is commonly available, our jails have just 33 mls. And so you get the same carbohydrate load from a smaller packet that you do from one of these larger synthetic packet. So they’re easy to carry, they’re easy to swallow, you’re not faced with this huge mouthful of gel. And they taste fantastic because they’re flavoured with natural ingredients.

Lara Giusti 34:05
And then

Lara Giusti 34:07
hydration mixes and quite difficult to come up with a hydration mix that is chemical free. What you’ll find in lots of hydration is that they’re a little tablet form so they’re heavily compressed. And they’ll use chemical compounds, magnesium sulphate and sodium chloride and sodium sulphates in them to up your electrolyte balance. Obviously they’re they’re lab based made ingredients, not natural occurring ingredients and finding agents and binding agents and then you need effervescent to make it fit in your water so it dissolves and all of those things are together. Really, what are my experience of them give you a sore tongue after a day in the saddle because the effervescence sort of eats at the side of your tongue and they’re overly sweet and overly flavour too.

Lara Giusti 34:59
With what are termed as natural flavourings, but really what that means is that say if something’s like a blueberry flavoured hydration tablet, they might have never seen a blueberry in its life. But there are natural occurring ingredients that when they put together will create a blueberry type flavour. So what we don’t, we don’t use any of those at all our hydration mixes are based from freeze dried coconut water, which gives you natural potassium, Pink Himalayan salt for really clean sources sodium, and then they’re flavoured with freeze dried fruit powders, and with herbs and botanicals. And so we use the freeze dried fruit powders, they’re picked at their prime, they’re rapidly frozen to trap in all the nutrients and then their ground. And then what happens when you add them to water is that they just reconstitute and you get the wonderful flavours and the colours and the textures of the fruit as well. And so altogether, it’s an extremely natural way to rehydrate and to add electrolytes into your nutrition plan.

Lara Giusti 36:07
So that’s the hydration, and then the chews.

Lara Giusti 36:12
looking at the marketplace, what I tend to do when I’m looking to create a product for Veloforte it needs to hit a function, it needs to taste amazing, it needs to have the right nutritional profile and it needs to challenge what’s already there on the market. So if you look at choose currently, you either get jelly beans, or you get wine gum type cheews, and both of those are very sticky in texture, they stick to your teeth, that’s not good for your dentine. And so what I went about to do was to create a very soft, textured chew that would just almost melt in your mouth rather than stick in your teeth. And so our Veloforte chews

Lara Giusti 36:52
are lovely and soft. Again, they’re made from natural sugars, beet sugar, they’re made from fruit juices and spices and there’s nothing artificial in there. They sit really nice in your tummy. And they pack a really good energy punch as well. So a pack of chews will give you 42 grammes of carbohydrates. And we have natural electrolytes in there, again, from Pink Himalayan salt. So they’re going to keep your energy sustained, and your electrolytes on balance. And they’re really easy to take, easy to carry, and then won’t pull your fillings out as well.

Marc Giusti 37:25
All of these as thinking not just in isolation too. So you know, our belief is that whether you want solids or you want liquids, or you want to choose or you want, you know, protein shakes will come into it in a second,

Marc Giusti 37:37
you should be able to have all of those and furthermore, to be able to sort of coexist.

Marc Giusti 37:43
I guess sort of happening not only from your palate and tummy point of view, but also as a performance perspective, from your electrolytes to your sugars to your proteins and some

Marc Giusti 37:54
And then the shakes.

Lara Giusti 37:55
And then the shakes are our latest release. Super proud of those. Again, lots of bad press about recovery shakes and protein shakes about the texture. They’re often sort of gritty, sandy textures, they often give really bad gastric side effects of bloating and wind. And so I went to create two different recipes one for our plant based customers. So our Nova recovery protein shake is made of a blend of pea powder, brown rice and pumpkin to give a complete amino acid profile. And that’s flavoured with cocoa and freeze dried banana and has all your electrolytes in there that you need to recover. And also we’ve added some adaptogens to our recovery shakes, we’ve got Macca in our plant base shake and we’ve got a ginseng in our low lactose whey based supershape which is flavoured with super berries in antioxidant rich and I chose to use adaptogens because they’re well known to help to combat the stress that your body goes through when you exercise vigorously. And what you need to do is to try and calm everything down and to rebalance yourself after your heavy sessions. And so the Macca and they didn’t seem go hand in hand with the proteins and the natural carbs to really give you effective recovery.

Carlton Reid 39:16
Some well known energy bars you can be really really very very hungry to eat them in an emergency.

Carlton Reid 39:25
Which I have done in the past when I’ve been incredibly hungry at a hotel late at night or something I will dig into my bag and find the energy bar that I’ve stashed that 10 years previously but Justin from LeBlanq was saying you having to fight people off from eating your product as almost as a snack as as a genuine food. So do you deter people from this, do you recommend that he This is a food is this is this like you don’t have to be going out for a three hour ride to eat your product you can eat you can eat this is just a this is a yummy bar.

Lara Giusti 39:59
You could eat absolutely as a yummy bar and if they’re brilliant breakfast replacements, if you haven’t got time for lunch, you know you’re eating on the run. And they are high carbohydrate products and they’re designed to fuel you to energise you. And so I wouldn’t say you know, sitting on the sofa and eating three in a row is what we generally recommend, but we have customers who chop them up and serve them at dinner parties

Marc Giusti 40:24
Yeah, we do

Lara Giusti 40:26
you know, they are they are wonderfully delicious as well as nutritious and and and very versatile.

Marc Giusti 40:32
There’s nothing about them from a performance point of view, if you’d like from a sort of fats and sugars point of view if you like that, the next and bad news to have at any time we just naturally if you’re that we’re building arrange around active lifestyle, so if anybody’s eating, you know, snack food and staying sedentary, then that’s not quite the right way to be using our products. But yeah, absolutely, it’s the case that we mean all of us in our own way, and nibbling on these things, thankfully, we get we get good access to them all the time. And funny enough, there’s a bit of a story that when when we were making them at home,

Marc Giusti 41:08
because it would be we’re baking them in essentially within trays and we would have to take them out and cut them and you cut the sort of the edges off so that you get a nice clean shape that you can then cut the bars from rather than having the wobbly edges.

Marc Giusti 41:22
And so those cuttings so the off cuts became like a currency between friends and family and people would literally come around and say can we have some of those off cut things and we would have bags and bags and bags and bags of these things don’t really know. So we would just give them away.

Marc Giusti 41:39
And you know, that was just proved to us that these were truly delicious. And so yes, they they span and that’s part of that point about the diet and and that’s pretty much what the Veloforte brand wants to do for our customers is to say you know, no matter what you’re where you are in kind of the day or in terms of your lifestyle, we want you to be able to open the cupboard and see that you know when you want to go out for a run or when you want to go out for a ride or when you want to sit at home and relax or when you want to recover or when you want to give some for the kids or whatever the perspective might be that that we’re able to give you the confidence that this is you know so much better choice than conventionally we’ve been able to find you know in the shops.

Carlton Reid 42:21
Mmm. Now I’m sure we have people listened to this where they will also have problems with rumbling tummies no doubt and we have whetted their appetite for for what you’ve been talking about. So how can people

Carlton Reid 42:37
because you haven’t you have a taster box is that how you get people is there’s like

Marc Giusti 42:42
There’s a bunch of things I guess we try to say too, because a number of our customers they already know what you know bars and gels and drinks and and protein shakes are and so they understand the context of it and so of course they can choose whichever ones they want. For other customers who are you know, just getting started or they’re not really sure which ones they like, but a bunch of different packs, we have a starter pack which is a if you like it kind of best off, you know, here’s a couple of interesting that will give you a chance to you know try essentially the range without having a whole range in there. And then on the other hand, we’ve got something called a complete pack which is a one of everything of the entire range and and almost everywhere in between and as I was saying before you can go to any of the product pages you can say okay, I have one of those or three of those or 10 of these or a mixture like that and compile yourself off a little box.

Carlton Reid 43:32
Marc, how much are those packs? How much of those two different packs?

Marc Giusti 43:35
So the, gosh off the on my head?

Lara Giusti 43:40
£17.99.

Marc Giusti 43:42
And the complete pack I think it’s £35, £38 pounds … I need to double check it

Lara Giusti 43:53
But they are they offer good savings as opposed to buying individual products. One of our best selling packs is our family box bar which is 50 bars and you think goodness me 50 bars, that’s a lot of bars. But it’s a good mix of all the flavours and that offers a 25% saving over the cost of buying them individually. So we do for our customers who want to order large there are there are perks to that too.

Carlton Reid 44:22
Sorry, Lara sorry, what are the flavours of the bars?

Lara Giusti 44:26
Of the bars? so we have the first three flavours Classico is based on a panforte Margarita recipe which is Marc’s nonna’s recipe which is where it all began. So it’s a citrus fruits, almonds and honey. And then we have a De Bosco which is red berries pistachios and almonds and Choco which is dates and cocoa and almonds. And then we have a ZenZera which is stem ginger and pistachios that’s delicious really good for your digestion. We have a Venti which has sea salt in it so great fuel

Lara Giusti 44:59
electrolyte replacement as well. It’s like pecan pie meets salted caramel, it’s totally delicious. We have Forza which is a one of our protein recovery bars which is made from apricots, almonds and fennel. And fennel gives a nice sort aniseed kick or try to do with all the recipes is use spices to accent the fruits. Because what I want to do is to stimulate your tastebuds stimulate your saliva and your digestion so the minute you put it in your mouth, because then your body’s getting ready to digest something. It’s not a synthetic flavours. It’s not not something your body’s going ‘ugh, this is horrid.’ Some of you actually want to be in so that’s the first stage of your digestion. So we use spices in all of our bars. You’ve got the Mocha bar, which is your coffee and chocolate and your protein and he’s on that so that’s like a Juan absolutely delicious. And then we have our Pronto bar which has a little bit of caffeine in it as well for if you need an early morning pick up and that’s figs, pistachios and lemons. So there’s plenty of flavour choice to be had something for everybody in there. And also if you’re out in the long run, if you’re doing an ultramarathon, or if you’re doing a long sportif, then you’ve got a full range of flavours to keep you motivated because being motivated by your fuel actually helps you to eat and helps you to go further. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 46:18
All sounds absolutely gorgeous, and definitely having problems with tummy rumbling. So Mark, I stopped you and I think you’re just gonna get me the price head you’ve gone into your website to get it.

Marc Giusti 46:26
Yes, the complete pack is £38.99, the starter pack is £18.79 and you can get some smaller packs for example, the chews are £6.99

Marc Giusti 46:38
and the gels £7.50 the drinks £5.25 so this price range is all over the place and and you can if you subscribe as well, you get an all sorts of benefits of we have a rewards programme. We’ve got discounts on the subscriptions as a bunch of other ways that we try to help people if they’re doing training programmes and so on. So there’s it’s much more flexible than just simply the list price. If you take a moment to have a look at the site, it’ll explain.

Carlton Reid 47:05
Brilliant, thank you and how do people get into would tell me your website. Tell me your social media. Tell me tell me all your contact points.

Marc Giusti 47:13
So veloforte.com is the website v e l o f o r t e dotcom. The same is so just @veloforte for Insta and Twitter, and Facebook.

Carlton Reid 47:27
Thanks to Marc and Lara Giusti. There, and there’s a photo of them on the show’s website at the-spokesmen.com. Our next episode features American academic Peter Norton talking about his soon to be published, future-facing book Autonorama but meanwhile, get out there and ride …

In conversation with LeBlanq’s foodie founders Justin Clarke and Ashley Palmer-Watts.

22nd August 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 280: Jus, not gels: In conversation with LeBlanq’s foodie founders Justin Clarke and Ashley Palmer-Watts

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Justin Clarke and Ashley Palmer-Watts of LeBlanq

TOPICS: The founders of LeBlanq drill down into their upscale gastronomy-based cycling getaways and why, for them, it’s got to be jus, not gels.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 280 of the Spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday 22nd of August 2021.

David Bernstein 0:25
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA. Jenson USA where you will find a great selection of products at unbeatable prices with unparalleled customer service. Check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast. And, of course, I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast since 2006. For shownotes links and other information check out our website at www.the-spokesmen.com. And now, here’s my fellow host and producer Carlton Reid and the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:11
Welcome to the Spokesmen Cycling podcast brought to you in association with Jenson USA. I’m Carlton Reid and today’s show is a 40-minute chat with the foodie founders of LeBlanq, the upscale cycling weekender firm that’s more jus than gels. Events specialist and ex-professional cyclist Justin Clarke teamed up with Ashley Palmer-Watts, the former Exec Chef of the Fat Duck Group, to curate LeBlanq’s joyrides. These exclusive road cycling getaways visit stunning locations, stay at luxury hotels and feature day rides with cycling celebs such as Eddy Merckx and knights of the realm Chris Hoy and Bradley Wiggins. It’s cycling as the new golf but with knobs on. And want to know how to make the world’s best porridge? Listen on …

Carlton Reid 2:05
Jus, not gels. I love that. That’s a great, that’s a great way of encapsulating what you’re doing there. So tell us exactly and I’m gonna be difficult to know who’s going to be talking here. First, but let’s let’s go for Justin first. So what why what’s wrong with gels first? What’s wrong?

Justin Clarke 2:27
So there’s nothing wrong with gels, provided they taste good, but it’s very rare that they do. And a good meal tends to be the best way to refill if you can. So our belief is that you shouldn’t compromise. If you’re a highly trained professional athlete, then there are certain things that you need to, you know, take out of your life like joy, and, and you know, a diet that actually makes you happy. But if you’re not a highly trained professional athlete, I think that you can, you can exercise Well, you can train well. And you can eat an amazing diet, which is both good for you, but also delicious. So that the point of that line was food shouldn’t just be about calories, or fats or proteins, whatever food should actually be something you enjoy. And that’s, that’s what that line means.

Carlton Reid 3:22
And Ash, you’re kind of famous for producing food that people enjoy. Tell us a bit about your background, your culinary background.

Ashley Palmer-Watts 3:32
Oh, okay. Um, so

Ashley Palmer-Watts 3:34
yeah, I mean, I’ve been a chef for probably, for nearly 30 years actually start very young, working in kitchens. And I spent the last 20 years working at the Fat Duck group running various restaurants and dinner by Heston in London for the last 10 years. And yeah, sort of left at the end of 2019 to open my own place and pursue a couple of other amazing projects, which one of them is is LeBlanq and, and here we are, post COVID coming out the other side ready?

Carlton Reid 4:09
Because the the event we’re going to start, and then COVID got in the way, is that right?

Justin Clarke 4:14
Yes, yes, that’s, that’s why I’m actually in the Isle of Wight right now doing our final, final final checks on the events that is pretty much a year after it was due to be originally so the original dates of the first event were 23rd to 25th of September, the actual dates of the event and now the 17th and 19th of September, so so just inside a year from when it was actually first due to be stage. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 4:42
And Ash, are you a cyclist as well?

Ashley Palmer-Watts 4:45
Yep. Yeah, I have been riding since probably, well, after after the Olympics in 2012 I decided to buy a bike. And that really, you know, sort of got quite heavily into it from there really. And yeah, literally about to go out for a bike ride in about 10 minutes. So

Justin Clarke 5:04
We live the dream.

Ashley Palmer-Watts 5:06
Exactly.

Carlton Reid 5:07
And how did you two meet?

Justin Clarke 5:10
Do you mind if I take this one? So um, because it’s it was a chance conversation. I’ve known Ash for probably about 12 or 13 years, I was one of the team that started Taste of London and then developed into Taste festivals all over the world. But also there was that there was an event that we used to stage down in Western Australia, little tiny place called Margaret River. And at the opening, almost like kind of, you know, the cocktail party and the press reception, and all of those things. Ashley had just been on stage. And he’s just been introduced as one of our amazing chefs that have kind of flown in and, you know, really, really brilliant. And so we’re in this tiny little place and Ash kind of drops in there quite casually said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I brought my bike.’ I was like ‘Wow, you’ve brought your bike from UK, all the way down to Australia. Wow?’ I just said out of interest, what bike is it? And he said, Oh, it’s a Pinarello F8. And this was about four, four and a half years ago. And at the time, the F8 was the absolute top draw Pinarello — it was an absolutely amazing bike. And, and immediately I said ‘At some point, Ash you and I’ve got to do something with cycling and food.’ I’ve been running food festivals for last 20 years. Ashley is one best chefs in the world. We both love cycling, it was just a natural thing. It was a case of when not whether. But that for me. That was the moment that the penny really dropped.

Carlton Reid 6:40
And Justin, how did you transfer from cycling? Because then you went to IMG, which is kind of like a sports agency. So I’m struggling. Why would IMG have a culinary platform?

Justin Clarke 6:53
Yes. So. So I worked originally for the business called Brand Events, which was a almost an event creation business. And so we imagined Taste, it didn’t exist before. That idea that if you brought all the best best chefs from around the cities, one place, you know, set in a beautiful location and have a whole bunch of signature dishes being served. Wouldn’t that be a really nice thing, if you love great food? And it turns out, yes, the answer is yes, that would be a great thing. No. Literally, IMG bought the business of Taste. Actually, it was just at the start of, of 2012 into 2013. And the reason why they bought it is because they could see that the food had gone from being you know, just something that you did in restaurants had become a almost like a media and experiential subject and a passion point. You know, back when we started Taste, no one would regard themselves as a foodie. Whereas nowadays, almost everyone regards themselves as a foodie so it’s it’s IMG certainly isn’t just about sport models, I’ll be faster and etc, etc. So it’s way beyond just sportt. But I’m definitely so food has been a passion point they wanted to get into and Taste was the, you know, the biggest, most successful food festival brand.

Carlton Reid 8:16
This is a question for for both of you. But I’ll go to Ash first and ask you, but maybe Justin, you can you can give your point of view on this as well. Is there like an absolute crossover between your existing clientele at the Fat Duck, or in your new venture, and cycling? Was was there was there like a you had a base bunch of people, you know, this would fit perfectly for? Or were you completely throwing this open? And you weren’t like relying on anybody that you knew already?

Ashley Palmer-Watts 8:53
Well, I mean, from a from a, from a guest point of view, I think, you know, from from when Justin and I were chatting about it in in Margaret River, you know, the kind of the driven character of people that that ride bikes for pleasure, as well as you know, competing, but obviously, we’re all about the pleasure side of it, you know, the people that are detailed and driven, usually top professionals in whatever profession, you know, they, they, it kind of goes hand in hand. It’s it’s, it’s the enjoyment of food and wine and you know, sitting around in a beautiful place and riding your bike in a beautiful place. It just the experience didn’t exist yet. But I think it was fair to say if, you know, I think Justin would agree that you know, we had a very good idea that people this would be something quite special and some really great experiences from a food and cycling point of view. And then of course you add in the the legends of cycling as well and, you know, I can speak from, from my own experience of you know, speaking with Bradley and Sean Yates and Adam Blythe and Matt Stevens, you know, it’s quite mesmerising actually what you know, when listen to the stories and getting access to their experience and vice versa. They love the kind of world of food and chefs and it’s, there’s a kind of real mutual camaraderie and respect between the two, two crossover things really,

Justin Clarke 10:24
Completely agree. Just some, I mean, from my perspective, I had this incredible insight really, which was IMG, hugely famous for golf, obviously, is where IMG was founded with Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormack. And whilst so I was at IMG for probably about nine years. And what I was witnessing was that golf is a pursuit, its popularity, its interest, its money, etc, etc. It was kind of dwindling, it was on the decline. And then ING was also getting big time into cycling and bought commercial the rights to the Giro d’Italia, etc, etc. And I could just see, literally kind of before my eyes that the people who had previously loved golf, was starting to love road cycling. And, and I kind of figured, well, I understand golf very well. And hospitality is built into the golf experience. So these people that we were wanting to target, appreciate the lifestyle can afford the lifestyle. But really, it was one of those things that the reason why they’re not going for it is because it doesn’t exist. So so i was i was just kind of convinced that you know, that moment are met, actually, we kind of have that chat is like, well, let’s go and make it exist. And it’s proven to be true.

Carlton Reid 11:46
Because that was definitely going to be one of my questions. And then it’s the cliche, of course, the cycling is the new golf, but I was gonna go there, and you’ve kind of gone there before I went there, but I’m not done press trips in incredibly exotic golf resort in Portugal, where they, they are gonna have to attract cyclists now or other activities, because that golf has just … I don’t think it was just President Trump, it was, you know, the former President Trump, it was coming before that. But golf has certainly lost a lot of its cachet. So that cliche of cycling being the new golf, you are basically you’re living it. That’s not a cliche at all. You are you’re absolutely plugging into that. Yeah?

Justin Clarke 12:33
Yeah, absolutely. For sure that there’s that there were a couple of other factors that they’ve kind of made the timing of LeBlanq, right. And because then the other part is cyclists. I mean, I was a pro cyclist over 20 years ago. And I don’t speak out of turn, but diet, diet wasn’t actually about eating great food, it was about eating as little as you can and take drugs. That was it. Whereas nowadays, every professional World Tour professional team has their own professional chef, because they understand diet, they understand natural ingredients, how to prepare, timings, portion size, all those kinds of things. So it’s, and also INEOS, or what was Sky, that they did a huge amount of research on the fact that food is a reward mechanism for great training. And they realise that if you actually great food, you train harder. And that’s why jus not gels, because it’s actually you know, if you understand what’s going into it, it makes you feel better. You know, and therefore it’s, you know, you train better, you race better, and etc. And then the third part was that Ash isn’t alone in being a chef who loves cycling, is really a growing trend. And, Ash, I think it’s fair to say that you’ve become the almost like the dealer for bikes is everyone. Everyone who’s a chef who is like ‘what bike do I need to get?’ I need to speak to Ash first’. And you know, you’ve got a pretty much a succession of top-end chefs saying, you know, I am a bit OCD. I do want to get into this, what do I do? Is that right?

Ashley Palmer-Watts 14:07
Yeah, absolutely. It’s quite amazing, you know, people say, it just looks brilliant. ‘I’m gonna buy a bike, what should I get?’ And they’re just like, I don’t think they have an idea of the detailed barrage of questions that that, you know, come back that you need that information to try and get them on to the right thing. But, you know, you’re just trying to save people a lot of time wasting a lot of money. And just urging them to, to do what I didn’t do, because I didn’t you know, I just kind of bought a bike I thought fit, right, but it didn’t. I kind of had a bit of a mishmash of stuff and I bought a decent bike and then it’s like everything you start upgrading and before you know it, you’re on your third bike and you finally got what you should have got in the first place. So but it’s great. You know, you get into such detail. I think chefs love detail. They love sort of nerdy precision and technology and, you know, become obsessed with lightweight everything. And so I think, you know, there’s a lot of synergy between the two. And, and, yeah, and it’s one of the only things you can really do that, that gets you out on your own. It doesn’t matter who you are, because when you got a helmet and glasses on in cycling gear, you know, as famous as some of the guys are, you wouldn’t know who he is cycling past half the time so they can have their own space, their own time, you’re out in the fresh air, and you’re actually doing something that then come back and have some great food and nice bottle of wine. And it all sort of it’s like a little ecosystem really, I think, yeah,

Carlton Reid 15:42
Can we talk about portion sizes, because you’ve talked a lot about taste and enjoyment, but you need to have fuel, you need to have some good carbohydrates that you need to have, you know, if you’re going to cycling, so, do you have a bit more food, a bit more on the plate, than you would if you were doing a different kind of event? I’m asking you how much you’re going to eat on your events?

Ashley Palmer-Watts 16:05
Yeah, I mean, we’ve kind of got different stages planned out for the different meals. But if I mean, on the Isle of [Wight], with our last event up in Scotland, we started making porridge for the guys in the morning. So I said, look, I’ll make the porridge. No problem, blah, blah. But then the other two guys were making the eggs and, and whatnot. And the porridge word spread. And it was just like, I did about 19 different porridges, like, one after the other. And then they were talking about it. And Chris Hoy, he was saying, ‘yeah, some of the best porridge I’ve ever had in my life, like, how’d you do it?’ And I was like, ‘well, I’ll tell you what, 7.30 tomorrow, whoever wants to learn how to make this porridge my way, come into the kitchen.’ And well, you know, we’re doing a little masterclass. And, and I think simplicity. And I mean, porridge for me, personally, is what I would have, because it’s just that slow burner, you know, that’s going to get you from start to finish and then supplement it with some really good natural, actual foods, not not gels. I’m not, I’m not a massive fan of gels. But I’d rather actually something, you know, whether it’s a date bar with pecans, and a little bit of chocolate in it, for example, but actual food foods. But yeah, I guess different people feel different ways. And I think once you start understanding about fueling, especially as a, as a non, let’s say, a food expert or something, I think you’re going to get so much more out of your riding at the same time. So hopefully, your guests can kind of pick up on that as, as they go through the weekend, too.

Justin Clarke 17:43
Yeah, we are also lucky enough to have Veloforte, who, although they do gels, they call them nectars. But it’s it’s a brand that has kind of sprung out recently, which there is nothing artificial and synthetic to it. It is what Ashley just said. It’s natural nuts, it’s fruits, it’s it’s produce that you would eat normally. And many of the riders have said ‘yeah, Veloforte, the only problem with it is it tastes so good that you want to eat it all the time’ — so that there is the practicality of fueling whilst on the bike. But equally, you know that this was my preconception before. Before starting taste, I used to think that food is just a lot of food is that’s not the case foodies appreciate and consider what they eat. And they really select the best so it’s about eating well, not eating huge amounts. And you know that the writing the writing for a weekend of LeBlanq is, you know is tailored to the capability of the rider is not designed to be brutal and break people it’s designed to challenge but it for it to feel an exhilarating escapism, rather than, you know, can’t walk for five days because, you know, gone way beyond the limits and capabilities. So it’s kind of an in that case, the feeling is just it’s about timing is about quality is not actually about involves you.

Carlton Reid 19:09
You whetted my quality appetite, I won’t eat so much I’ll just I’ll just stick to quality. And no more gels on rides only nectars. In the meantime, I’d like to go over to my colleague David for an ad break, so hang on for a second.

David Bernstein 19:23
Hey, thanks, Carlton. And hello, everybody. It’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast. And as always, I’m here to talk to you about our longtime and very loyal sponsor, and that’s Jenson USA at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen and that’s j e n s o n usa.com. Have you ever wondered about why does Jensen exists? Why are they out there? You know, the other day I I do things like this, I had the opportunity. And I went to Jenson’s About Us page and I read their mission statement. You know, have you read these mission statements and their corporate gobbledygook and they don’t really mean anything? And I just really liked what they said. And I wanted to share it with you because it’s really apropos of why they’re here, why they’ve been sponsoring thes Spokesmen for all this time. Their mission statement says simply, ‘we are cyclists here at Jenson, USA. And it’s our mission, to help inspire you to get out and ride, experience and explore. Now, it’s not something that we set on the spokesman forever get out there and ride.’ That’s really what it’s all about. This isn’t as I said before, some corporate behemoth that is owned by private equity or a New York Stock Exchange, looking to just squeeze as much money out of you as possible instead, just as they’re loyal and have been loyal to the Spokesmen, they are endeavouring for you to be just as loyal to Jenson. And they do that in a variety of ways. Number one, they’re cyclists like they said, just like you, just like Carlton, just like all of us, and they get it, they get the cycling lifestyle, they understand who you are, and what you like to do for fun, or for commuting or for all the various reasons that you that you’re a cyclist. They get it. And that’s why they have such a great selection of brand-name, late model products, why they offer them at such great prices. And why — and this is really critical — why they have such great customer service through their gear advisors. Their gear advisors are people like you and me. They’re cyclists. And so when you call and you’ve got a question, they’re going to be able to not only answer the question, but nine times out of 10 they’re going to be able to say, ‘yeah, I rode that. And this was my experience.’ And that really is how holistically, they’re really able to make sure that they can take care of you and me and everyone like us; again, whether we’re road cyclists, or we like to go out on our gravel bikes or BMX bikes or mountain bikes, or commuter bikes, Jenson, has you covered. Go ahead and check them out at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. If you’ve never been there before, if you’ve heard these ads and just have never clicked, go do it. You really will be glad that you did. And of course, if you’ve heard these ads, you know what I’m talking about. So next time you’re looking for something tyres, apparel, tubes, a pump, complete bikes; think of Jenson first Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. And as always, we thank Jenson for their support of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast.

Carlton Reid 22:51
And thanks, David, and we are back with Justin. And with Ash, and Ash, I want to I want to go backwards, if you don’t mind. And that is how do you make porridge? How do you make this porridge that Chris Hoy says is the best ever and you come in come in at 7.30 in the morning, we’ll find out how you didn’t tell us, you kind of left us there. You’ve now got to tell us you understand that.

Ashley Palmer-Watts 23:13
Okay, well, I think there’s a couple of things you can do, one, you really need to shake the box of oats to get all the fine bits down the bottom. So the more fine bits that you’ve got actually in the pan, they become really gloopy and gluey, which you don’t want. So if you want to go the first step is shake the box of oats and only get the oats not the real sort of fine flour.

Carlton Reid 23:36
Not the Ready Brek.

Ashley Palmer-Watts 23:39
Exactly exactly and then I’ll do semi skim milk. Probably go about I don’t know about half an inch over the top of the oats, a little pinch of sugar, a little tiny pinch of salt, and then probably I mean a couple of tablespoons of water and then literally put it on the heat and bring it up to a simmer slowly. And literally, I’m doing this while I’m talking to you over the internet but I’m kind of stirring thin air but you stir it really really slowly rather than you know going hammer and tongs stirring the thing because you’re scared it’s gonna stick, kind of really gently just what you don’t want to do is really mix overmix the porridge because that will just work that porridge into a gloopy mess. Once it’s simmering, then you just it’s a bit like a risotto. You just add a little bit more milk, gentle kind of incorporating stir, let it simmer a little bit more, probably give it about two or three minutes. Then just take it off the heat and let it rest for like minute and a half, two minutes, three minutes, whatever you want to do, make your coffee or tea, come back to it, put it back on the heat, another little bit of milk just to loosen it. Find a little bit of heat, gently incorporating that milk and then into the bowl. And personally, I know it’s the enemy but I love a little bit of unrefined sugar that melts just on the top and that’s the guys in in Scotland, they were like, I’ll have it however you have it and I was like well I do this and it the texture of it is brilliant. It’s like making a great risotto. But if you stir at too much unlike results you’ll get this gloopy mess, so it’s all in the control.

Justin Clarke 25:27
That’s it. That’s That’s your secret out now.

Carlton Reid 25:30
This is gonna be my most popular podcast ever I think because we’re giving away the secret for the best porridge. I will try that Ash, thank you very much. I will I will shake my porridge oats. What about so you’d recommend like Irish like fine cut or is it like a Scottish one or is it the oats are also important you got to tell us that as well.

Ashley Palmer-Watts 25:50
Yeah, I mean, there’s less that’s preference I would say you know some like jumbo some like normal loads. I like the Scott’s porridge oats, the original Scott’s porridge oats they, to be honest, it’s what we used at the Fat Duck for snail porridge and it makes the best porridge for breakfast.

Carlton Reid 26:06
Well, that’s what’s in my cupboard. So I’m a foodie. That’s great. Okay, now guys, you’ve got to tell me about the events themselves. So first of all, tell us about the first one which you’ve had one event so far, then you’ve had a believe a sell-out like when you were made the announcement for the second one that just instantly went bonkers and just sold out. And then you’ve got other events. So let’s let’s go through first of all, the first event that you’ve actually done, how did that go? Yeah, how many people need to have on it? Let’s let’s let’s hear about that, Justin.

Justin Clarke 26:39
Yeah, okay. So so the the first event that that we did was the Surrey Joyride And that was designed to be a single day ride, riding through many of the roads that Adam Blythe who was one of our ride leaders and Joanna Rowsell is a local rider. And it was her training ground that she used to train on to become an Olympic champion. And for Adam Blythe, it was it was the roads that he is the only British winner of the London Surrey classic. So again, he was revisiting roads that he’d actually been a champion on so that the ride leaders were there to almost kind of both, you know, challenge the riders but also relive the moments that were special. And but Box Hill was the kind of the start and finish points. And we did three different distances, five different groups, all of them with a following Aston Martin vehicle, amazing how when you’ve got an Aston Martin following a group of riders, no other car drivers want to have any kind of issue. It’s like wow, the Aston Martin is so um, so that that was the the format we had 44 guests and then we have two of our road leaders per team. So 54 Riders on the road. And then the afternoon was at a restaurant which had come across about four or five years previously, when we shortlist that is one of the best openings in the world is called Sorrel restaurant. It’s got one Michelin star but it’s absolutely beautiful restaurant so that that was the afternoon in Sorrel and Steve Drake, the chef of Sorrel, the special five course tasting menu, and absolutely brilliant, brilliant feedback, great reviews, and people really enjoyed it. And then the the second event which also sold out very quickly was in Perth. Sure, a little tiny, tiny village called Aberfeldy. And we had 20 guests alongside Chris Hoy. And there was there was some chef called Ashley Palmer-Watts who was Ash was actually doing the majority of the cooking for the weekend. But you also worked with the the guys from Ballintaggert in terms of the time or place in it in the trash.

Ashley Palmer-Watts 28:51
Yep. Yeah. So yeah, they we had a local I wouldn’t say how it’s like a hotel with rooms or a restaurant with rooms kind of set up lots of per share, produce all local, they’ve got their own farm etc. And so they cook the Friday night the guests arrived in the afternoon, chilled out for a bit. All met each other. Friday Night was Ballintaggert dinner, which was amazing five courses, sort of showcasing local produce. And then the Saturday was the was the big ride in the morning. So breakfast then the ride, they came back. They had great coffee stuff on the way got back to the to the house. They had massage. Some did some yoga and some stretching. We were pushing on in the kitchen at the time. But but it was a great social kind of Saturday because everyone felt very integrated into the the experience of the house and you’d have guests wandering into the kitchen going ‘oh my God; smells amazing, what’s for dinner?’ and you’re like, well, I can’t really tell you at the moment, it’s all going to be revealed a little bit later. And then down for dinner. And on that event, we were decided that we were going to sort of tailor the menu to the six Olympic gold medals that Chris Hoy won. So he won one in Athens, three in Beijing in 2008. And then two in London in 2012. So I use those cities as inspiration for the style of cooking for those particular dishes. So we started off with a Greek hot and cold grilled Greek salad. And then we went to, into three Chinese dishes, one based around kind of peanut broth called jiangsu, with langoustines, and asparagus from Scotland, and then we’re on to grilled scallops with exo sauce. And then we had this most amazing Highland wagyu, from literally about half an hour down the road. And grill that and it was slightly the Sichwuan glaze and this peanut and cucumber salad. And then back to London for two desserts, strawberries and cream. And, oh, there was a there was a quite a good story, actually, there was a we billed it as seven courses, but Chris only won six Olympic gold medals. So yeah, we made we made that is amazing. We made a little thing of it saying, you know, it was gonna be seven. It’s actually six, because, you know, it’s about the gold medals. And everyone kind of was, you know, laughing a bit. And then after the main course, I went out and, and tapped a glass and got everyone’s attention. And I sort of said, I didn’t say it was six courses. It’s actually seven. But this is a little surprise cos both Chris and I have a mutual friend. And when he heard that I was working with Chris on this ride he said ‘look, when you when you meet Chris the first time you really must give him some some hassle about one of his dishes he does at home, we all take the mickey out of him for it.’ I said ‘okay, right. So what is it?’ He said, ‘they’re, um, mushrooms done on the barbecue stuffed with Stilton cheese. And everyone apparently takes the mickey out Chris for this. And so I said, ‘you know, we’ve got this mutual friend story’. And I said, ‘Look, I’ve done my own little homage to, we’re going to call it the Hidden Hoy cheese course. And he just couldn’t believe it. It was so funny. Because it was I think it epitomised everything from the weekend, it was just this kind of really comfortable, social, friendly, big household of sort of food and drink and really approachable sort of chats and, and whatnot. And then after dinner, we had a brilliant interview by Annie Emerson, sort of sitting down and chatting through Chris’s career and some really sort of poignant parts of his career that that, you know, resonated with a lot of people I think, whilst also tasting the local whiskey from Aberfeldy, which is brilliant. And then the Sunday, got to do all again, go for another ride. Come back for some lovely food. We’re a little bit more casual. We had some wagyu burgers and some sort of chunky chips and a little bit of pannacotta for dessert. So you know, it was just, it was just so good.

Carlton Reid 33:48
All right. What about vegans and veggies? Can they can they come on your tours as well?

Ashley Palmer-Watts 33:53
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s, um, we didn’t have any vegans this time. But we did. We did have one full vegetarian who, but I mean, it was fine, which is sort of, you know, I mean, to be honest, in where I’ve come from, and the restaurant I ran for 10 years of vegetarian cooking, we’ll put as much we put as much effort into that as anything else. Really. So yeah, no problem. vegetarian, or vegan is a little bit more tricky. But you know, when

Carlton Reid 34:29
I’d like to go on to the events that are coming up in a minute but first of all why LeBlanq cos I know you’ve got in one event you’ve got coming up you have got it’s hosted by Raymond Blanc, is it associated with what so where’s where’s where’s the name come from?

Justin Clarke 34:45
yeah, it’s um, so the actual name in the original event was always going to be on the Isle of Wight.

Carlton Reid 34:53
Okay. Okay, the Isle of Wight.

Justin Clarke 34:56
There we go. And, and so that There was a bit of toying around with a few different names LeBlanc Tour, Tour de Blanc, etc. So we were just thinking of kind of, you know, going with the white theme in terms of Isle of Wight and, and, and yeah, it kind of went from that, and then it stuck. And then the C became a Q. And then the first chef that I asked outside of, of speaking with Ashley was Raymond Blanc. And they did say, Have you named your event after Raymond? And we said, we know, but it is a nice coincidence. And they said, No, no, that’s, that’s great. So yeah, it was it was mainly around the Isle of Wight been the kind of the catalyst for the idea. But yeah, we wanted to create something that was quite unique, that was, you know, sat there quite differently. We like the the the French kind of connotation of it, because obviously, it’s cycling and gastronomy tends to be deeply rooted in, in kind of French language. And that’s that that’s the reason that

Carlton Reid 35:58
I’ve noticed on the press release here that so it wasn’t just that one event. We’ve got Aston Martin cars, you’ve got Aston Martin cars. So you know, the cycling credentials of Aston Martin? Yeah. Very cycling brand.

Justin Clarke 36:13
Yes, absolutely. It’s when you, when you get to know the guys from Aston Martin, virtually all of them ride bikes, and is the second biggest pastime of all the Aston Martin owners, which is why there were so drawn to what you’re doing. And, and and we all like, you know, beautiful cars and Aston Martin. So the most. We had a bit of both that actually yourself just had a philosophy that one could go for being best in class in everything it does. So the bikes, cars, the food, the destinations, we want to always be best in class.

Carlton Reid 36:50
so let’s talk about best in class future events. So that one of the events that sold recently. So where are you going next? Basically?

Justin Clarke 37:00
Yes, so that the next one is, is with Raymond Blance at his home in La Manoir in Oxfordshire. So that that event is on the fifth of September. That is the event that the it’s 40 places sold out in 15 minutes, which was which was great. The the event two weeks after that is here on the Isle of Wight, which you know, third or third time of asking. So we were originally going to do last September, then April and now it’s this September. And then two weeks of that weather that that event on the Isle of Wight is where we introduced Bradley Wiggins for the first time to our guests. And I’ve known Bradley for a long time I think it was probably 12 when I first met him he incredible athlete, incredible character, real personality that I think is going to embody a lot of what LeBlanq wants to wants to kind of offer as guests but then the final events of the year is going to be in the Champagne region at the Royal Champagne Hotel and Spa and the the rider that we have there is a chap called Eddy Merckx so we kind of figured we you know if you’re going to go for best in class then that there is one undisputed champion of cycling and that’s it so that’s that’s where we’re going to be working with Raymond Blance probably

Carlton Reid 38:19
Sweet, at the it’s sold out when when you put these through to your your your lists etc are there people who are coming time and time again so you’ve got like a core 10 people or whatever who’ve been on every trip so far and are going to be on every trip?

Ashley Palmer-Watts 38:37
Yeah, it’s

Justin Clarke 38:38
It’s interesting because to the call we actually want to create a club is called the Joy Rider’s Dining Club is not about cycling, it’s about joy riding. So yes, we do have natural, you know, founder club members already. And you’re right in your number it is around 10 to 12 that are absolutely you know, ‘whatever you guys do, we’re there.’ But some but equally, we also want to make sure that we mix up the the events, the riders, the talent, the destination. But yeah, we’ll be doing more events next year it will grow and capacities are always going to feel pretty intimate. So rarely above 100 people and you know, the smallest event is probably going to be around about 20, 25 biggest will be 100 people. But what we’re also doing is not just the experiences themselves when when we do the rides when we do the menus, etc. All of that will be shared straight after the event. So you can literally ride the same route so we did you can you can understand what what we ate where we went, where do we recommend so it’s almost like a kind of an advert for amazing places to go and ride and dine. The event just happens to kind of give that place you know, that kind of promotion and visible

Carlton Reid 39:50
I’m sitting on my chair. So you can now tell me how much these things cost.

Justin Clarke 39:56
With the the the event that we’re doing at The Manoir is only £135. That’s that it’s, it’s primarily it’s a breakfast and it’s meeting Raymond Blanc and then it’s been led by a bunch of fantastic pros on some really great riding around the Chilterns. And then it goes all the way up to the place in the, in the Champagne region, which is £3,500. And that’s what that

Carlton Reid 40:21
That’s without travel? So that you got to get there, you get there in your helicopter, yes, and get your Pinarello out of the back?

Justin Clarke 40:29
There we go. It’s um the the the travel point is interesting because but most people who are coming don’t actually want to be I want to say tell they don’t want to fit into the travel arrangements because many of them are travelling already many of them are starting from one point coming to the event going to a different place. So the travel it just became the easiest thing to just exclude it and the experience starts when you arrive

Carlton Reid 40:53
Sounds wonderful. Tell people all of your social media channels. How can they find out about this give us your website give us everything that you tell people about your event.

Justin Clarke 41:04
It’s I mean, in terms of the the the way to describe it is the finest cycling you can possibly do amongst friends in beautiful locations with the best food that’s that that’s the proposition. We found that many people quite like that it’s it’s quite appealing. In terms of how to find out search LeBlanc you go straight to the website at leblanc with a Q or in so

Carlton Reid 41:30
It’s not like a C with Raymond Blanc or the white it’s it’s

Justin Clarke 41:36
leblannq.com But yeah, the Instagram channel is is very healthy. If you want to know the latest of what we’re doing sign up to the newsletter, which you can do via the websites. And that’s that’s the best place but we’ve also got a number of different media partnerships with with Rouleur magazine with the national Times, with Great British chefs etc. So there are many ways in which we’ll find out about. But the best one is go online check out leblanq.com and go from there.

Carlton Reid 42:08
Thanks to Justin Clark and Ashley Palmer-Watts there and thanks to you for listening to the Spokesmen cycling podcast, show notes and more can be found on www.the-spokesmen.com. The next show will be out in early September. It will star my doctor wife in the Cairngorms riding an electric mountain bike equipped with Shimano EP8system. Now, she rides to work on a bog standard single speed electric bike normally, so it’ll be interesting to see how she gets on with this premium bit of kit. Meanwhile, get out there and ride.

Jude Reid 43:12
Still getting a workout in an electric bike.

1st August 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 278: Genetically redundant at 40: The Midlife Cyclist with Phil Cavell

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Phil Cavell

TOPICS: Talking with Cyclefit’s Phil Cavell, author of “The Midlife Cyclist.”

LINKS:

“The Midlife Cyclist,” by Phil Cavell.

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 278 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was engineered on Sunday, 1st August 2021.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the- spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:09
Hi there I’m Carlton Reid and welcome to today’s episode of the Spokesmen Cycling podcast brought to you in association with Jenson USA. Today’s show is a chat with Cyclefit’s co-founder Phil Cavell. We talk at length about his new and rather excellent book, the Midlife Cyclist. What’s it about? Grow old. Get fast. Don’t die, says a snappy line on the back cover. Now, I’m definitely midlife — the book defines that as plus-40 by the way — but I’m by no means an athlete so the book’s not aimed directly at me but I still discovered loads, including why pedalling circles – that’s often known by the French word souplesse — is cycling’s version of the flat earth theory. Here’s our chat.

Carlton Reid 2:15
I have got two pages of questions to ask you. Normally I don’t I kind of do free flowing stuff, I just do stuff off the top of my head. And but your book was fascinating. And I have made copious notes that i i would admit, I did get two books in the post very kindly, and one I have absolutely slaughtered with blue ink, which is terrible of me to mark a book. But it was fascinating and and we will get onto your book in a second because this is what we want to talk about stuff today. But before we do any of that, I just wanna ask you a bit about you and where you’ve you’ve come from so before we get to your your absolute expertise, let’s go backwards. And if it’s okay with you, when when we go through the chronology, before we even getting into your book, I would quite like to go into your crash, your spinal injury, and then from from what it said in the book, or what you read in the book was that was a big impetus for writing the book. So that’s that’s absolutely

Carlton Reid 3:22
something I think we ought to talk about with your permission. But first of all, I think

Carlton Reid 3:29
I would like to ask you about your second name. So are you by any chance related to Edith Cavell who obviously was a famous nurse in the First World War?

Phil Cavell 3:40
Yes, allegedly. According to my father

Carlton Reid 3:46
So, potentially great, great something?

Phil Cavell 3:52
My great great grandfather’s aunt allegedly — I’ve never done the family tree, Carlton.

Phil Cavell 4:01
So I’m qualifying in there but my father was an

Phil Cavell 4:06
honest, decent person. I don’t think he would have misled us. And apparently there’s not many Cavell’s in the country and we’re all related. Apparently

Carlton Reid 4:17
Yes. It’s an unusual name so that’s why I’ve got Smith it’s like well, you may be you are

Carlton Reid 4:24
either, okay. Yes. Yes. Okay. So that’s something I’ve never asked you and I have known you fell for probably the best part of 30 years. And even before so you are known for cycle fit. Okay. People will will will absolutely know Phil Cavell

Carlton Reid 4:41
and your and your partner Julian — Jules — for cycle fit. But I knew you before that. So I knew you. When this is very late zeitgeisty now to have bike parking. That’s, you know, recognised thing. It’s good thing to have bike parking for people to

Carlton Reid 5:00
To protect their bikes, but that’s what you did. Is that how you got into the industry into this fear by doing that Covent Garden bike park?

Phil Cavell 5:09
Yes, at the age of I was 30 and Jules was 29. I was in the music industry before that, and I’m I’d always made an intention to get out in the music industry. By the time I was 30. I was already racing bikes. At that I’m losing I were racing together, we raced all together. And at 28, 29 I got out the music industry, and we started Bike Park, which is very much our baby really. And so we rented this little building around the back of where we are now in Stukely Street and we rented it for a princely sum of £6000 per annum and we converted it with our extremely good friend Guy Andrews who then went on to found the Rouleur magazine empire. At the time Guy was between jobs, we were all between jobs. The three of us converted the space

Phil Cavell 6:11
that we rented in about three months all by hand. And Guy Andrews was the site foreman, he was Captain Manwairing

Phil Cavell 6:20
Also was,

Phil Cavell 6:21
was a bit I think it was a bigger one, the Scottish was always

Phil Cavell 6:25
saying “we’re doomed., Captain” Jules and I was unfamiliar…. And we just converted it ourselves. And then we it was just all was all one of those things that all you thought through all emotion and tension. And then we open seven o’clock in the morning to 11 o’clock at night, seven days a week.

Carlton Reid 6:46
Would it be fair to say it was ahead of its time and it failed?

Phil Cavell 6:50
Well, you know, it’s the other way around, it failed.

Phil Cavell 6:57
Probably ahead of its time.

Phil Cavell 7:01
Remember, because at the time John Smith had just died, the Labour leader, it was all it was, it was your word is right, as I guide it, you know, John Smith died, I think a couple of days before we opened. Labour leader, it was a very strange times coming out of recession early 90s is a bizarre time.

Phil Cavell 7:21
We I mean, I think I think it’s true to say that cycling, we hadn’t thought right way, when or a little wave, you know, lots of careers.

Phil Cavell 7:29
Lots of people cycling around London, but it’s all based on how inexpensive some works rather than how healthy works. And so we report the wrong wave had we done it to 10 years later, when we did the cycle that we probably would have bought the right wave.

Phil Cavell 7:46
I think that’s true to say, having said that, we didn’t

Phil Cavell 7:51
know I had been

Phil Cavell 7:54
on a lifestyle. All we wanted to do was rate up bikes. And you know, it was very much London cycling based so we didn’t need much money. So we kept going for 9, 10 years.

Phil Cavell 8:04
And you know, we kind of got by on repairing bikes, renting bikes, parking, bike parking, but it didn’t make any money.

Phil Cavell 8:15
You know, it was it was great, actually. It was brilliant.

Carlton Reid 8:18
So we will we will organically come onto Cyclefit just when we when we when we go through your books. We don’t need to go from Bikepark to Cyclefit.

Carlton Reid 8:27
right now. Although absolutely, I totally want to. But I’d like to go straight into your book. Phil and I am going to be quoting snuff back to you. I’m going to be going from like page to page to page even going to like a one point I’m going to three page references at once to pick stuff that that you have repeated. And I thought that’s interesting. I’m going to ask Phil about that. So this is called “The Midlife Cyclist, the roadmap for the +40 rider.” And before we go into into the gubbins of it, and I should say the subhead is who wants to the plus for the rider who wants to train hard, ride fast and stay healthy, but you’ve got some absolutely stellar blurbs on here. So on the front, Phil Liggett says an amazing accompanied verb and I have descended behind Phil, he has an unbelievable early good. downhiller, which you do talk about going downhill in your book quite a lot. I always thought about Phil, when you were talking about that. And then you’ve got Fabian Cancellara. Now, I’m assuming and in fact, I’m not assuming because in the book it says so. So Fabian was a client. So you helped him?

Phil Cavell 9:32
Yes, we joined we sort of in-house bike fitters to Trek from 2012 onwards. So we came there probably the same time that we came to in the same time as Fabian actually, and Andy Schleck.

Phil Cavell 9:49
Radio Shack and the team was very much in transition later to become

Phil Cavell 9:55
Trek factory racing, Trek Sega-fredo so we sort of saw it through those transition period.

Phil Cavell 10:00
We all came together in

Phil Cavell 10:03

2012. Yeah. So we were all fresh in the team. And so we we drove out to the first holding camp training camp in Kalk Bay where we were introduced the theme and became a sort of in house bike fitter to the next four years, and Fabien was one of those.

Carlton Reid 10:23
So there are a few pro cyclists in the book, but mainly it’s not really about pro cycling, is it? It’s mainly about

Carlton Reid 10:31
hardcore amateur cyclists. But you know, who pushed themselves perhaps you do talk about this, perhaps they’re, they push themselves a little bit too hard. And then another quote on the book, which then jumped out to me, and I think I did remember that this guy was a cyclist, but I had to kind of google it just to make sure that’s Gary Kemp of Spandau Ballet, who says “I’m determined to grow old gracefully in Lycra. And Phil Cavell has been helping me to do it successfully for years.” So you’ve got a pretty interesting clientele list there.

Phil Cavell 11:01
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. I mean, Gary, I would have met in our music industry days because a very, very close friend of mine was his agent. And I mean, it’s not one of those separation of lives, we just, you know, we only really met and became friends and professionally acquainted, if you like, when I stepped out the music industry and went into the bike industry. And so yeah, I, he’s always been a client for many years as as as his as his wife.

Phil Cavell 11:32
Yeah, so we’ve helped them by fixing issues and things that come up when you keep a middle aged cyclist on the road. So we don’t call it a riding together as well. And when I think Gary looked phenomenal, and I think he really, he really is, is it I think, for me an exemplar of what cycling and for somebody, if they take it up at the right time and do it properly. Isn’t fantastic.

Phil Cavell 11:56
And there are other other 80s music people who are our clients as well. And it’s like, bewildering how good they look. You know, it really is they look amazing. They, you know, they they’ve aged very gracefully, they’re very slim, very fit, and very strong.

Phil Cavell 12:18
I think Gary is an examplar of that.

Carlton Reid 12:20
So an example of this also for the whole book is the quote right at the bottom of the back cover, and that I love this quote. And that’s so that this is what the whole book is about. Basically, it’s it “Grow old.” Period, full stop. “Get fast.” Lovely. Not for me, and then “Don’t die.” So that’s pretty good thing to live by there Phil?

Phil Cavell 12:43
Do you know I’m so pleased you’ve picked that out.

Phil Cavell 12:46
I love that. And I wanted it on the front. And I said, you know, we will put in the cover in the property as well. I’d like this right on a couple of days, right underneath midlife cycles. I want him to be letters. Gold, right? fast. Okay, fast. And I that’s what I want. You can’t do that. Have I on the cover of the book? If you can, so I didn’t get it on the cover.

Phil Cavell 13:09
That’s my that’s my thing. That’s what I said. That’s my very, very small elevator pitch.

Carlton Reid 13:15
Yes, I can understand that. And the “get die” bit, of course, is chapter three. As you say in our emails, the infamous chapter three, the don’t die chapter, which is long, and detailed and fascinating. And you said it’s like, you know, going down rabbit holes. I don’t think it is I think it’s fantastic. I particularly like the first paragraph, but we’ll get into that when we when we I’m going to I’m slipping, you know, non chronologically around the place at the moment, but we will come kind of like chronologically into the book

Carlton Reid 13:48
as we go through. But I would like to say as as you gave me kindly gave me permission. You said I was allowed to talk or get you to reminisce which which can be painful. So 2011. How did you crash?

Phil Cavell 14:02
I was riding home from work and I I hit a pothole

Phil Cavell 14:10
in front of it. I didn’t see it. It was a bicycle lane.

Phil Cavell 14:15
And it’s really encapsulates some of my other interests of something advocacy that the bike lane wins into a lane bus stop. And the bus stop was kind of like tiled where the cycle track went into the bus stop. There was a pothole where the tiles move. I didn’t see it. It was so sharp. And I ended up somersaulting over my bike and landing pretty much in the bus shelter, and it was one of those beautiful British moments where no one said a word when I lay there panting like a beached dolphon. Eventually I have to kind of say, “excuse me, I’m in a lot of problems

Phil Cavell 14:55
Can anybody please call an ambulance?”

Phil Cavell 14:57
At which point someone said “Yeah, no problem, man.”

Phil Cavell 15:00
They called me an ambulance and the ambulance came.

Phil Cavell 15:03
And

Phil Cavell 15:05
I’d really i’d hurt myself quite badly, although that wasn’t immediately diagnosed at the hospital, but I’d actually fractured my spine in a bad place in a particularly acute and extreme way. And

Phil Cavell 15:20
that’s started a chain of events that culminated in surgery that failed.

Phil Cavell 15:26
surgery that failed and a subsequent infection, and

Phil Cavell 15:31
really just trying to get

Phil Cavell 15:34
back was to resolve

Phil Cavell 15:39
all the time while my spine was getting worse and deteriorating, and the area that was

Phil Cavell 15:48
collapsing on itself, if you like, and then subsequently, so I can cycle through the theory of cycling, I was still working on and off.

Phil Cavell 16:00
I couldn’t find one then after I had more surgery in 2017.

Phil Cavell 16:06
Which was a much more serious nature, but it was what’s called 360 degree surgery. So they go through the front.

Phil Cavell 16:14
And

Phil Cavell 16:16
like, spaces in your spine, and then they go through the back and, join all that with much bigger surgery. But it was spectacularly successful. And really, you know, even though it kind of worked. So I’ve now got big scaffolding poles and

Phil Cavell 16:32
spacers in my spine.

Phil Cavell 16:35
So you know, mobility is not a very, you know, there’s a lot of structure there. Am I going into too much detail now, Carlton?

Carlton Reid 16:42
No, no, no, you’re going to the some of that detail in the book. And so it’s not. So that’s fascinating. Thank you. And we didn’t you didn’t talk about the crash, the crash was, you didn’t even mention how it happened or any of that. So I wanted to dig down into more detail on that. So yeah, that’s that’s that sounds awful. And the fact nobody’s helping you a great deal was sounds awful, too. So it was until page 254, where you mentioned, this was the impetus for writing the book and the fact that you are fixing in your day job, you are fixing broken cyclists. But here you were incredibly broken, and weren’t even riding at this point for a good few years. So that must have been awful for your your mental health.

Phil Cavell 17:24
I think you’d probably look in retrospect, I think it was often Yes, I think it was I didn’t acknowledge it at the time. And

Phil Cavell 17:32
if you ask my wife, she would say, lost seven or eight years, from 2011 to 2017, 2018 when I have this second seizure.

Phil Cavell 17:46
Yes, so I was having to work with cyclists. I’d kind of at that point, to be honest with you, I had written myself off as a cyclist. And my goals were to try and, and live without pain, not to ride a bike again, that was the sort of what that was, those were my immediate goals. And the way I earned my living was by helping cyclists, so you had to be separation to state and there really is not for me anymore. You know, it’s, you know, I can derive a lot of satisfaction from doing my job. Well.

Phil Cavell 18:18
And, and did you know, and I managed to do that. So I managed to sort of function.

Phil Cavell 18:26
My function is to function efficiently my work even though it wasn’t something I could do anymore. It wasn’t something I used to discuss , you know, I feel it was something which I was vaguely embarrassed about really, you know, I was here I felt a little bit fraudulent on occasion, but this is, you know, I was trying to help him do something that I could no longer do anymore.

Carlton Reid 18:48
Thank you for for, for sharing that that’s a must have been both metaphorically and figuratively painful for a number of years, both physically and mentally.

Carlton Reid 19:00
So thank you for writing the book as the impetus for that. Also. Now, I’m not going to I’m going to pick out three quotes and throw them back at you. And I know where you’re coming from, I was a fantastic way of expressing this when I eventually read these quotes out because I’m a bicycle historian. So I’m absolutely cognizant of exactly what you’re, you’re talking about here, but I’m gonna I’m gonna read the quotes and then you can either defend yourself or not. So it’s basically about the the actual thing that we ride each day and and I think a historical thing called “path dependence,” which maybe we can we can we can talk about. So you say that you’ve spent the “better part of your professional life essentially fitting caveman and cavewoman to a Victorian curiosity.” And by that mean, we mean “that our genome is substantially unchanged in 250, 000 years

Carlton Reid 20:01
but a bicycle’s dynamics are only unchanged since the the Boer Wars,” you’re basically saying

Carlton Reid 20:10
we’re not really fitted for these weird Victorian contractions, that’s page 49, you know, I’ll then jump to page 63. So you’re basically dissing bicycles here. But anyway, “modern bicycles are almost identical in architecture, dimension and biomechanical interface to something that was designed around the same time as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.” And yeah, you kind of mention it. It is kind of weird that we’re riding these carbon fibre bicycles, that actually, the shapes haven’t changed a huge amount. And then page 202. Phil, “Despite how much we love them, bikes are a Victorian daydream preserved an aspect for well over a century because of a speciation event involving the UCI (union cycliste internationale) path dependence, and a huge dose of nostalgia.” Phil, why do you hate bike so much?

Phil Cavell 21:03
I think I say in a book, Carlton.

Phil Cavell 21:06
It’s good that you picked this up actually.

Phil Cavell 21:10
In the book, The bike is good enough, the design is big enough, the Victorians didn’t get that far wrong. Essentially, what I was saying is that the bicycle in a sense has got stuck in the Victorian era, because it’s failed to revise itself in the same way. And I think the example I use in the book is, you know, I’m staring down at QWERTY keyboard that was designed around the same time, Remington,

Phil Cavell 21:36
by

Phil Cavell 21:38
design around the same time to try and avoid the keys jamming; keys won’t jam any more because we still use a QWERTY keyboard. It’s like a path dependant,

Phil Cavell 21:49
or butterfly effect. We’re now living with the consequences of a failure to revise technology within the way that we interface with it is keyboard, also bicycle. What that means is, certainly with the keyboard, and also the bicycle are the best versions of themselves.

Phil Cavell 22:11
And the answer that almost certainly is no in both cases. The next question is

Phil Cavell 22:16
knowing, you know, because the bicycle is no longer

Phil Cavell 22:21
this version of itself, it’s a nostalgic device that we all love. And no one loves it more than make up and until you know them. It’s really, it’s just not the best version of itself. And the failure to revise it. It’s because of the speciation of and we’ve talked about in the book, where, you know, it’s the opportunity to revise it was kind of was missed.

Phil Cavell 22:44
So, the only reason in the book is one because it’s a lot of science and stuff in it. And now and again, it’s just nice to riff off in a different direction, it’s a bit less challenging. And also to be to add some context, in a lot of people that doesn’t feel great a lot of the time. And that part of the book is is in a sense, saying but that’s okay, you know, you rewrite not feel great some of the time, because, you know, humans didn’t evolve to ride this is our we’ve tried to do is fit something to you, which we think will take the potential into kinetic energy. Is that a rate translation device? No, enough? Of course it is. And because of the heritage and associations over the last 100 years, it’s now romantically, you know, kind of, you know, our DNA, it’s certainly a mine, and that’s fine. But, you know, we shouldn’t run away with the idea that bicycles are a modern, devised and honed over over centuries and decades. That isn’t the case. Cycling dynamics are exactly the same 130 years ago, as it is now, very, very different.

Carlton Reid 24:02
You make a very good point in the book about the UCI, if they had been if the UCI had been in existence in the 1880s, then very possibly, they would have frozen the bicycle at the pennyfarthing and said this is this is it, we you know, we can’t have any more

Carlton Reid 24:21
changes to this, we’ve got to every race on this thing. We can’t have, you know, even kind of even pneumatic tires. And that would have that would have had a path dependence in its own way that would have totally changed many parts of a world history. So kind of good that they didn’t exist. But with the same coronary, you then talk about when they did ban a product so that was when they banned in the 1920s when they banned the Egg recumbent so my question is, do you genuinely think that if the UCI didn’t exist and we’d have been able to design a bicycle in any way

Carlton Reid 24:59
and it could have kind of gone into any direction. Do you think we would all be on recumbents now?

Phil Cavell 25:04
No, that’s not really the point? That’s a good question. Not really the point because it’s not for me to say what would have come after it is only for me to say that nothing came after it. You know, there was an incident in the 20s when the UCI banned the Mochet bike by

Phil Cavell 25:20
that Francis Faure won the Egg record on in the 1920s.

Phil Cavell 25:26
Now it’s not, it’s not for me to say what would have come after, because what that event is, essentially is preserving aspect, what the basic architecture of bicycle is going to be.

Phil Cavell 25:39
I do think Mochet, if you look at Mochet, not much is known about him. But what what, what I would say is that his dream, and I do think he was ahead of his time, was to try and incorporate human power and mechanical power. So you know, the idea that you pedal a bit, and there’s a little electric motor that helps you out, his idea was to revolutionise transport, away from a heavy internal combustion engine, something that was a bit more fitting into a minimalist family life.

Phil Cavell 26:08
And we’ll probably circle right round and come back to that dream at some point, you know, we already kind of our electric filters and E bikes already coming around there, it’s just taken us a lot longer, I would suggest because there was this event froze the designer bicycle.

Phil Cavell 26:25
And it’s only they’re really out of contact with people, you know, not writing something, which is leading or cutting edge, in the sense, you know, of modern computers or, you know, or modern surgical devices, where, you know, maybe you’re designing with a little bit more freedom.

Phil Cavell 26:46
UCI describe what a racing bicycle is. And because competition and racing is so

Phil Cavell 26:53
influential, you can’t deviate from it. So you know, the price that we ride, the architecture is described by racing

Phil Cavell 27:03
formula, like,

Phil Cavell 27:05
and that’s what’s constrains it. Now. What What, what would be if we didn’t have those constraints? I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, yeah, yeah, I think recumbents have got some legs, like he ran over, he had some great ideas. You wouldn’t necessarily design a device, you spent most of your life in the same position as if you were actually in an office chair.

Carlton Reid 27:30
But isn’t there like,

Carlton Reid 27:33
there are ways of actually making the human body on a bicycle or a wheeled vehicle more efficient. And like the famous one is that the head first, where the person I’m sorry, I don’t know that the name and have to Google it, but is physically lying down forwards. The legs are coming backwards. There’s no being, as you say, in the book, constrained by, you know, this Victorian architecture, you’ve got the full gamut of movement, you’ve got to flex a bit, you’ve got everything there. It’s incredibly powerful. It’s incredibly fast because you’re low to the ground. But who the hell would ride it because your your your your forwards? So is it not the case that yes, the bicycle has absolute imperfections in the way we ride it and the way we’re constrained by riding it. But if it had been literally had been allowed to just explode into all sorts of different flavours, then it might have been some really weird flavours and the fact that we actually consolidated and froze it at what does this actually 95% perfect, let’s just keep it at that actually allowed bicycling to blossom.

Phil Cavell 28:38
I think. I think it probably allowed. Yes, bicycle racing is

Phil Cavell 28:45
it’s a game if you like, you know, it has rules. It’s like, you know, it’s like monopoly has rules and you play by the rules and you have an out winner. It’s like a racing is a game of bicycle is part of that game.

Phil Cavell 28:58
And it’s good enough. You’re talking about the Graeme Obree bike, I mean, Graeme Obree. I think he was probably nearly 50 when you broke the world record of doing something like 50 miles an hour bicycle, you know,

Phil Cavell 29:11
simply by capturing human mechanics, human biomechanics better, and then and then making aerodynamic. So I think you’re right, you know, we’ve got we’ve got this whole culture around science being inherited around. So I think it’s very exciting and very emotional. But we we denied decades and decades and decades of people saying, Well, actually, if we just absolutely re

Phil Cavell 29:35
innovate

Phil Cavell 29:38
no constraints whatsoever. What, that’s what we can deny.

Phil Cavell 29:43
Don’t do that. What would they do that? And so, if, for example, there was an event, a blue ribbon event, which is a Tour de France, and you can design without strain, just doesn’t matter. Here’s the rule rules are you have to use the human body. Other than that, everybody has that.

Phil Cavell 30:00
I mean, and it was big and the prices were huge. And it was, you know, who knows what we will come up with, it wouldn’t be a winner not be on a standard racing bicycle. It wouldn’t even be in the, in the, in the running the bicycle that one wouldn’t look like a modern racing bicycle if that event existed. That’s what you have to think about. How much of that then spilled out into a consumer product? Unknown, Unknown? No, not for me to think about really only saying from a mechanical perspective, there’s a lot more performance efficiency out there. And you know, it’s not for me to design that.

Carlton Reid 30:41
But it did bring us back to bicycles being perfect again, you do then say but you know, despite all of these, these these known problems,

Carlton Reid 30:51
it is the physios friend. So lots of people are actually brought into cycling, despite these these problems. So why is despite these problems, why is bicycling? Why is the bicycle the physios friend?

Phil Cavell 31:06
It’s true? Yeah, that’s true. Because again, it goes back to being good enough.

Phil Cavell 31:13
Had hip surgery or knee surgery or even ankle surgery. And of course, you know, we see a lot of these people because of what we do. The classical, if you if you get it right, can be a primary rehab by certainly the hip patient. And one of the one of the people are using the book, as an example, Nigel, you know, he was he was, you know, he had a very serious hip injury, very, very serious crash, and very, very difficult. third hip, nail going straight down his femur, essentially running back. He was pedalling at cycle fit, he did it ten days after surgery, and I set him up in a rehab position, we weren’t together going forward.

Phil Cavell 31:55
And, you know, he had a good team behind him, not me. And he was fine. He went back to full strength for four months in that in a three month, four month maximum. In that sense, he used the five squares he had both we really had, I think the physios friend thing is , slightly tongue in cheek with it is not as easy as just saying, here’s a bicycle fit on it, and you’ll be fine. If you’ve had hip surgery or hip knee surgery, it does actually be between really fitted.

Phil Cavell 32:26
Yes, it won’t be load bearing, it doesn’t mean it won’t load points adversely, if you don’t get the knee extension angle, right. And the hip angle, right, all those things need to be considered. And we can be the best rehab or, you know, as good as swimming. Unlike swimming, you are interfacing with a machine and all that needs to be considered.

Carlton Reid 32:48
So, Phil, before we go into chapter three, the infamous chapter.

Carlton Reid 32:56
Which

Carlton Reid 32:57
is it the longest, it must be the longest chapter in the book, isn’t it? It must be before we go into chapter three film so that if you’ve got a few minutes in which to compose yourself, and to do maybe there’s two forms of your yoga, which you talk about in the book, and the square breathing, all that kind of stuff, you talk in the book, you This is your chance, because we’re going to go to an ad break. And we will go across to David, take it away, David.

David Bernstein 33:23
Hey, Carlton, thanks so much. And it’s it’s always my pleasure to talk about our advertiser. This is a longtime loyal advertiser, you all know who I’m talking about. It’s Jenson USA at Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. I’ve been telling you for years now years, that Jenson is the place where you can get a great selection of every kind of product that you need for your cycling lifestyle at amazing prices, and what really sets them apart. Because of course, there’s lots of online retailers out there. But what really sets them apart is they’re on believable support. When you call and you’ve got a question about something, you’ll end up talking to one of their gear advisors, and these are cyclists. I’ve been there I’ve seen it. These are folks who who ride their bikes to and from work. These are folks who ride at lunch who go out on group rides after work because they just enjoy cycling so much. And and so you know that when you call, you’ll be talking to somebody who has knowledge of the products that you’re calling about. If you’re looking for a new bike, whether it’s a mountain bike, a road bike, a gravel bike, a fat bike, what are you looking for? Go ahead and check them out. Jenson USA, they are the place where you will find everything you need for your cycling lifestyle. It’s Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. We thank them so much for their support. And we thank you for supporting Jenson USA. All right, Carlton, let’s get back to the show.

Carlton Reid 34:48
Thanks David. And we are back with Phil Cavell and we are discussing “The Midlife Cyclist” and instead of what’s on the front cover, I’m going to go to Phil’s favourite quote on the back which would be

Carlton Reid 35:00
On the front, Bloomsbury, please put on the front for the second edition, and that is “Grow old. Get fast. Don’t die.” now that don’t die bit

Carlton Reid 35:10
is kind of leading into the infamous chapter three in Phil’s book and it’s an arguably wonderful title for a chapter. It’s just when I die question mark. Now, I when I was reading the book, I was wondering when these touchy subjects were brought up, and lo and behold, he was a was a whole chapter on it. So despite the fact that Phil is maybe groaning because I think he’s had some feedback on this particular chapter.

Carlton Reid 35:39
But let’s let’s set this up. For the listeners who are all going to rush out and buy your book Phil, but let before they buy the book, and then listen to this.

Carlton Reid 35:48
It basically, you get this bit out of the way? Absolutely, straightaway, as a first paragraph, you’re talking about the risk of cycling. So basically, your risk of dying on a bike by getting killed by one of these or four motorists that we will hear about constantly, is just incredibly slim. It’s like

Carlton Reid 36:10
you got to be pretty unlucky, in effect to die on a bike from from that kind of, of trauma. So what this chapter is all about is not you know, bike lanes not that topic at all. Not they’re not the the dangerisation of cycling topic at all. This is a whole chapter on

Carlton Reid 36:31
how dangerous is it as a midlife cyclist and you can maybe give us a definition of where you you think that starts fail. But how dangerous Is it because there are lots of scare stories out there in the media of, you know, studies that the media, the mass media, the mainstream media, the tabloid press, in effect, have taken kernels of and twisted to basically say you really shouldn’t exercise. You should be a couch potato, because exercise is bad for you. So So take it away on this chapter filled by But first of all, tell us when you say midlife, how old are you talking about?

Phil Cavell 37:07
Yeah, so midlife is the title of the book? It’s a fair question.

Phil Cavell 37:13
Bear in mind that none of us would be even read 35 until probably 140, 150 years ago, and in the ancestral environment, we never made it past 30 or hardly ever vanishingly rare. A midlife, if you were going back 1000 years would be 15

Phil Cavell 37:33
midlife now for this for this book, I think it’s 40, 45. and above, I think, and then 40, and I widen that band, going forward at 90 is still my life, as far as I’m concerned. In terms of things like bone density, and testosterone and muscle density, all these things he could 30

Phil Cavell 37:56
No, that’s not an accident at all. Because in the ancestral environment, you know, you plants to breed and then bring up your offspring, and then hopefully, they will start breeding again. And that will happen by 30, there’s evolutionary pressure in the ancestor of you alive. 30, I think

Phil Cavell 38:15
any evolutionary psychologist listening, this will be coming on death. You know, that’s very broadly, the selective pressure to keep you alive to 30. There’s no selective pressure at all, in terms of genetically to keep you alive to 40, 50. Genetically.

Phil Cavell 38:33
So essentially, this book is about from that moment we become genetically irrelevant.

Phil Cavell 38:38
You know, modern medicine, we’re all still in very good health. But there’s a new study out, isn’t it? It’s just come out. I mean, I didn’t see that study, obviously, it’s just come out, where a third of 40 year old now, and a fourth third of 40 year olds, sort of, you know, serious underlying health condition. Diabetes, high blood pressure, etc, etc. So that kind of, you know, that’s kind of the age group I’m targeting, you know, if you’re not, if you’re not doing something about this, before, it is, you know, you should be thinking about

Phil Cavell 39:13
maybe there’s a long answer to a short question. So I think 40, 45 onwards, Carlton. And the new data research seems to bear that out.

Carlton Reid 39:22
So even though this chapter is quite dark in parts, there’s lots of humour in there at all, and you’re very self effacing in the book, there’s quite a few nice gags in there in quite a tough chapter. And it is hard reading for men. Yeah, it’s probably quite elevating for women because women can it seems can can do what the hell they like, and they ain’t going to come across from from, you know,

Carlton Reid 39:51
pitching over from a heart attack. So would you say it’s fair that women can pretty much got off scot free here?

Phil Cavell 39:59
Yeah.

Phil Cavell 40:01
appears so. Ultimately you don’t don’t want to run away with this and say, okay, and every woman, you know, you could whatever you want, and because you know, there are things and there’s lifestyle issues. In terms of self selecting group, we’re looking at people who seek to exercise moderately, women not seem to be really at risk here.

Phil Cavell 40:23
Right. And much cardiologists who are doing all this research for Gemma Parry-Williams, who featured in the book a lot, and it’s quite excellent.

Phil Cavell 40:33
And Ahmed Merghani, with his research worries me, they’re all desperately trying to find, you know, when some boxes that women are implicated, and they can’t find it

Phil Cavell 40:44
doesn’t mean it or not. It doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. But right now the longitudinal studies can’t seem to find any friends, for veteran women athletes having audio.

Phil Cavell 40:59
So, you know, that’s about as far as we can

Phil Cavell 41:03
see, women are not in

Phil Cavell 41:06
now, I guess that feeds into the next question is with Why? And I don’t know, I don’t think anybody doesn’t know. It’s hypothised, you know,

Phil Cavell 41:19
things like the protective effect of Oestrogen, you know, decades and decades of oestrogen, you know, being used around the women’s bodies

Phil Cavell 41:29
means less atrial stretch Heart of the kinds of stuff, you know, and the fact that women have got two X chromosomes, men have only got one X chromosome, one Y chromosome, a lot of the

Phil Cavell 41:42
immune system information is carried on the X chromosome, does that mean they better?

Phil Cavell 41:48
You know, their immune system for men? Well, yes, they certainly do have better immune system and

Phil Cavell 41:54
or does it men seem to lack a central governor? You know, we think about it in horses, where resources, some resources cannot raise themselves to death. And that has given this this title, central governor is about men, you know, that we lacked the, you know, somehow the capacity or the, you know, the way we will say that in

Phil Cavell 42:17
and stop,

Phil Cavell 42:19
you know?

Phil Cavell 42:21
Or is there some other thing of men’s lifestyles that we store our information and incrementally just layer on inflammation on inflammation, and makes us vulnerable to the problem.

Carlton Reid 42:33
And talking about the cardiologist you interviewed for the book at a good place made to mention that you have got these wonderful experts in there, and an awful lot of them seem to be midlife cyclists to? Is that is that a fluke that they are? Is that how you came upon them? Or is cycling something that they were attracted to? For health reasons? Well, how come you met all of these fantastic cardiologists through cycling?

Phil Cavell 42:59
Well, I mean, most of them I knew before. For Nigel (Stephens) I knew before.

Phil Cavell 43:07
And Audrius (Simiatis) is a client who I met, so you know, obviously I’m pleased to meet these people aren’t are they coming for a weekend chatting? You know, I invite them to come and give a lecture at Cyclefit at or, you know, whatever, you know, so Cyclefit was a driver there, then I would just seek them out, you know, you know, if I was doing research, I was interested in Ahmed Merghant. I called him up and he said like I’m really busy.

Phil Cavell 43:33
You so he I interviewed him both a few times. I wouldn’t go over to sit in the I would go visit in the lobby at Guys hospital and sit there and in the lobby with the you know, with a recorder and just ask him as a question between patients. You know, so Audrius Simiatis he’s a he’s a cardiologist and a cyclist and an immoderate one, he exercises hard. Nigel Stephens isa cardiologist, very well known. European Champion, obviously exercises and immoderately both of those do say, exercise hard, because they enjoy it necessarily, because they think it’s good for them.

Carlton Reid 44:13
I’ll go straight into a part of chapter three, you basically talk about the Lancification of cycling. So it’s again, this is a point that maybe we don’t raise often enough and because of Lance’s doping background would you do point out elsewhere in the book as you are acerbic elsewhere in the book about his doping background, but here you’re just talking about how in 2000 and with you know, his book, “It’s not about the bike” that brought a whole bunch of new people into cycling, a new cohort, more women came in into cycling, partly because of Lance. It wasn’t his Tour de France success, per se. It was the coming back from cancer success. So let’s just let’s kind of park to one side that

Carlton Reid 44:59
doping side of Lance Armstrong and just focus on you know what he actually did for cycling. So you presumably a positive on that side of the Lancification?

Phil Cavell 45:13
I am. I am very positive on that side. I mean to be fair, I was actually quite positive. On the other side for a long time I thought he’s winning 93 in Norway in the rain, you know, was astonishing when he won

Phil Cavell 45:29
absolutely phenomenal.

Phil Cavell 45:32
I think he was younger that year than the junior world Champion. And I’ve got clients who, you know, who were very ill with cancer, and their oncologists, American oncologist had prescribed them cyling.

Phil Cavell 45:48
And

Phil Cavell 45:49
that’s coming. And so my, my oncologist has told me to get a bike.

Carlton Reid 45:54
An awful lot of people in the bike industry right now, probably wouldn’t be in the bike industry without that, that backstory he. Absolutely, yeah, we’ve got the bike boom now, but we had also, back then we had the Lance boom, so the road bike boom, was was almost singlehandedly down to Lance.

Phil Cavell 46:12
That’s right. That’s right. And it’s just not often is it? I mean, I, you know, I almost was like, there’s an omerta about it, you know, about you can’t discuss this. Yeah, and I totally agree with that. I think that’s right, I don’t think you know, I don’t, I don’t think I would have a business without there. I said, I have a very different kind of.

Carlton Reid 46:29
Let’s change the subject anyway, and get away from that, cos I know that’s a, that’s a red rag to a bull for lots of people, many people might have turned off by now. So let’s,

Carlton Reid 46:38
let’s change the subject. And that is a no no HRV so that’s heart rate variability. So you mentioned that in chapter three is a big, big splurge on it in chapter three. And then you come back to it even further into the book in which you basically say, you know, all the the FTPss all the all that, you know, the TLAs the three letter acronyms in the book, this is perhaps one of the the most important for and we’ve got a stress for an midlife athletes or somebody who’s trying to either get good or stay good on a bike. So So describe to me as a layman and you’re a layman, but describe heart rate variability and and why it’s now considered to be that’s that’s the kind of the gold standard.

Phil Cavell 47:27
Okay, well, heart rate variability HRV is just a measurement of the difference in spacing between your heartbeats. That’s what it is simply, we know we often think our heart is racing, you know, 67 to 130 beats per minute. And the spaces between those beats will be equidistant. They’re not there anything.

Phil Cavell 47:50
And, and the differences spacing carries a lot of information.

Phil Cavell 47:55
Life Science can use that information to improve their performance and their overall health well being.

Phil Cavell 48:02
The context of this book is, is I desperately want you in life athlete, to look after themselves,

Phil Cavell 48:09
be healthier, be more productive, to achieve the goals they set for themselves on the last ride in a tablet, or or a European Championship and roll this book is to say, Okay, if you’re going to do these things, look after yourself. You know, and that really is, despite the as you say, the irreverent humour in the book, there is some irreverence during the book. You know, overall, I hope the message of the book of course, is I want people to look awesome. And the reason I come back to HRV in the mindful slackers chapter, the end, I want to find a way to try and help people feel better. And heart rate variability, the way they do that, and one of my friends, very good friends within the book few times in Mandeville, who is a consultant is, you know, was was was, you know, I chatted about this a few times, he they use eight HRV. Some people take charge in intensive care, or they’re they charted hospital. And it gives some predictive information. And that predictive information is something we can use, I mean, back in the day, going back 40 years or 35 years, and I would get up in my heart rate. And I would do that and I would in the mind working hard and having an indication of how rested I was or how fatigued I was or information was only minimally useful because a lot of endurance athletes are what are what’s called a cardiac or heart just fall through the floor. So you know, a lot of us have heart rates within the 30s and early 40s. So, you know, taking our heart rate even if a virus are not very well in the morning, isn’t an exceptionally useful. However, HRV is a much more honest and nuanced metric. It will tell you how fatigued you are, how rested you are, how ready you are to punish your body with heart opening.

Phil Cavell 50:00
I think that’s true for all athletes. But it’s, it’s especially true for midlife athletes, because we’re intrinsically swimming upstream, swimming against the tide of nature.

Phil Cavell 50:13
So we need to know this important information and have the presence of mind the characters say, HRV is not looking great, you know what I, I shouldn’t think I should go to yoga class, eat properly, you know, hydrate, rest, and then train tomorrow. You know, that’s eminently sensible.

Carlton Reid 50:34
So what that was in chapter three, and it was, but then, because we’re getting done on TLAs, let’s go to the next one. And because you’ve got an interesting bit of research there, and that is functional threshold power. So FTP, a lot of people

Carlton Reid 50:51
who were into their, you know, performance sport, will, we’ll know FTP, but what in the book you’re backing this up with, with research, is the bizarre sounding anecdote or not anecdote finding, I should say, Sorry, that your hardcore amateurs are probably redlining, probably

Carlton Reid 51:13
going through that, compared to pros, and people think, obviously, Pros will be, you know, absolutely at the limit there. And they’re not so so what’s happening there? And what can people do about it?

Phil Cavell 51:26
Yeah, you can all the point they want. The FTP or functional threshold protocol,

Phil Cavell 51:34
is a number which has gained in popularity. And it’s now become the only metric if you like. And the point about this is not to say that FTP doesn’t use or you should use it, or you can reference it. My point is, you shouldn’t be meeting the reference. Because, let’s be honest, at some point, your FTP will plateau, you know, you’re not a robot, you know, you know, so you can’t keep expecting to ratchet up your FTP, you know, it’s not a one way street, it’s either gonna have, and at some point is likely to go down. So, you know, if you make if you view your cycling enjoyment contingent upon,

Phil Cavell 52:15
I think you’re, you know, you’re in for disappointment, there’s a, there’s a broader basket of things that you can look at, reference, your performance enjoyment, that’s really what I’m saying.

Phil Cavell 52:28
With FTP is the one is doesn’t actually, it doesn’t present any physiological markers, and

Phil Cavell 52:36
it doesn’t, it’s one to actually track accurately, and it’s impossible to track accurate, you’re on your own, but you’re not actually a blood. So you know, what you’re doing really doing on your own section. So what what the coaches that I found, and the three or four in the book is that most people, you know, overstate their FTP. And, and if they then use that as a predicate for the training levels, through the year, they end up training, they end up going too hard most of the time. And the, as you say, the this is all just data. And if you compare that to professional cyclists, they spend, proportionally less of their time, anywhere near the line that we do. Their bodies are on tick over. And we’re racing away like a hummingbird.

Phil Cavell 53:27
And that’s, you know,

Phil Cavell 53:29
I told you all you need to know, you know, these guys race for a living and yet they’re nowhere near their red line. We go on living and we’re twice their age and we’re passing off the red limit.

Carlton Reid 53:43
So what can people do what is it just is that basically just don’t overtrain is that is that the giveaway there?

Phil Cavell 53:50
It’s just the structure is different. It’s about saying look at your training, you’re looking at providing and reviewing and if you actually go back to through our my and Jules’ career at Cyclefit, and also in writing this book, let’s go back to first principles. You know, what we design to do, you know, so essentially human are extremely good at endurance, we’renot very fast. There’s no other mammal in the world that we can out run? We can’t even out run a badger you know we’re not great you know what I mean? We can’t there’s no there’s no mammal in this country you know, you can Out Run I mean all me You know, we’re just we’re not far we are is endurance. You know, we write endurance animals we were we were born and evolved to persistent hunt. So you know, those endurance those are the those that go with our evolution in

Phil Cavell 54:46
healing our endurance themes if you like, and all of the coaches I interview with saying the same thing it’s like well, lets you know what you really want to do. Not only the midlife cyclist, but certainly more than the life side

Phil Cavell 55:00
This train, oxidative system, aerobic system, those are the ones you want, you actually want make that the most efficient machine, you can make it before you even think about,

Phil Cavell 55:13
you know, looking at pure high end form. And I think that’s absolutely right. Well, what happens too often on with my clients is that I’ve got, you know, it’s not like I can say that they’re not there to their coach that can come into the sport, absolutely loving it, come to this set up number, and they just want to elevate the FT number, if I will, not necessarily all guys, it’s guys and girls, but, you know, hold on a second. You know, you’re ignoring a whole background there of aerobic capacity training you should be doing, you know, you’re bypassing all time you’re on the red line, you’re not working at the system.

Phil Cavell 55:57
And the coaches data backs it up, they’re looking at they compare their amateur clients with a professional client, that professional clients are more rested, more rested, having an easier time but you know, less near the red line less overtrained, lift higher listed beat us.

Carlton Reid 56:14
So there are some great training myths that you do bust in the book. And I’d like to focus on on on one here. And it’s kind of less like almost two in one. But anyway, and that’s like the pedalling in circles and the souplesse the way that you’re meant to, or that was one point 20 years ago, and it’s still absolutely lingering when you call it the cycling’s Flat Earth movement. And that is the upstroke So are you saying forget the upstroke, upstroke is just a complete non-starter because, if I am right in saying, the hip flexor?

Phil Cavell 56:55
I will start with that presumption. Yes, there are times when you will be pulling away from a traffic lights as fast as you can or you know, start riding a mountain bike race, you will pull up the first few pedal stroke. Yeah. And on top of the climb standing up, you

Phil Cavell 57:14
may also block all that’s fine. I’m not saying you never pull up. What I’m saying is that when you’re pedalling at tempo,

Phil Cavell 57:23
on a climb or on the flat and you’re at your, you know, your your sustainable power, if you like you’re really working quite hard. There is no such thing as a non event. Because going back to first principles, Catherine, you evolved to be powerful in extension. Running, you’ve already got parents playing with ground contact. And ground contract means that you’re going to be using your, your extensor muscles, your glutes, your quads, and your path those your primary extensor muscles. Because those are the muscles that come back to when you come back, maybe a little bit of a hamstring as you push away from the ground. But that’s it. Once you’re free of the ground, that’s when your flex has come in to move the lever system after you take the next ride. So you’ve evolved to have our ground on time, which means you’re extensive.

Phil Cavell 58:17
That’s how that’s just human evolution. And if you if you ride a bike and actually just try and switch off the push down and just pull up your you know, in about 40 yards you’ll realise that’s not good, right? You’re trying to use lean muscle

Phil Cavell 58:35
evolved to fulfil that role.

Phil Cavell 58:39
And one of the you know the hip flexor muscles is is is primary amongst the hip flexors are essentially reflectors and stabilisers. And, you know, the only ever evolved to lift the weight of your leg forward for you can then take the next stride.

Carlton Reid 58:58
And that’s an example of us being harnessed to a Victorian contraption, leading us leading us into bad habist.

Carlton Reid 59:07
It’s a Victorian contraction that as you say in the book is quite constrained. And the motion on the pedalling. It’s not circles, as you say there, it’s basically I think one of the weights when you describe Armstrong’s pedalling technique is basically mashing on the pedal. So just hammering up and down forget the circles. Yes. Now I’m Phil, I’m in absolutely no way shape or form an athlete. I have done races in the past, but I tend to do

Carlton Reid 59:41
24 hour solo events just because I can then get into the top 20 because people just drop out anyway.

Carlton Reid 59:47
But I do remember friends who are athletes, and when they’re trying to get me to train which I never used to do at all, but they would they would give me exercise and they say you should do this. And one of the ones I remember and this is when

Carlton Reid 1:00:00
During the book, I was thinking, hang on, I was told to do this at one point, which is no, you’re quite down on indoor cycling. But anyway, is this an indoor cycling technique where you’re meant to actually use one leg and pull up, you’re actually meant to be training your pull up muscles. And I’m sure a lot of people are probably still doing that. But you’re saying, basically, for God’s sake, don’t do that. It’s giving you no benefit whatsoever. In effect, it’s actually probably harming you.

Phil Cavell 1:00:27
I think, I think you should definitely do one legged pedal drills, if you intend to go and do one legged pedal races. If that’s what you intend to do, then that’s a reasonable thing.

Carlton Reid 1:00:39
I could win them, I could win them.

Phil Cavell 1:00:42
If I agree with you, it’s, it’s essentially

Carlton Reid 1:00:46
not very helpful and possibly can really hurt you. Because the hip flexors are quite a delicate muscle group and they pass through the hip. There’s not a lot of space there. It’s definitely not a muscle you want to over develop. And if you look at the architecture, the architecture architect that part of our body is very, very constrained. hip flexor is not a muscle you want to mess with.

Carlton Reid 1:01:07
So mash, mash, don’t try and do circles. Okay? Now that’s that’s that, if we don’t take anything else from the book, if it’s only one thing we take away, and in fact, I’ve printed actually picked out lots of things I’ve taken from the book. But anyway, if there was only one, then that’s a pretty good one to take away. Yeah. Yep. Another one, which

Carlton Reid 1:01:29
was basically unclipping. And you call that “pedalling paracetamol”? And that’s for people who come to you with all sorts of

Carlton Reid 1:01:37
different issues. And then you do this one simple trick, you know, like this YouTube thing, one simple trick cures, and then you find that that helps a lot of people. So just, in effect, stop being constrained. Is that is that what you’re saying with with peddling paracetamol?

Phil Cavell 1:01:52
Yes. bicycle, the humble bicycle, Victorian architecture, as you said before, it’s what quite constraining, and if you can remove one constraint, and you can give somebody a different sort of feedback from the bicycle. So one of the things we do, someone comes in, they’re injured, or they’ve got a problem.

Phil Cavell 1:02:14
Head problem, kneew problem foot problem, one of the things, we look at the pedal scan, and we see that the scan is very dysfunctional, one of the things we’ll do is take off the pedal, put some flat pedals on, put them in their trainers and sit back on the bike

Phil Cavell 1:02:29
and pedal the new trainers on the flat pedals. And more often than not covering 90% of the time, you just get this kind of transformation in both pedalling activity, motor patterning, but also in their own their emotional mood, like they suddenly feel relaxed, and they feel efficient, they feel powerful, they feel productive. And all you’ve done is you’ve unkept them, frankly, and stop them being able to pull back and pull up.

Phil Cavell 1:02:56
And could they just feel again, they can just start to feel repetitive again. And it happens all the time. And it generally happens with clients who’ve been injured. Not always, by the way, but clients who’ve been injured, and we’re, and we’re trying to rehab them. And it happened the other day, it happened the last week. Last Monday, I had a client ex pro cyclist, and he’s now been sent away with, you know, a couple of months of three times a week, he has to eat for five minutes, either indoors that pedals on his mountain bike without pedals.

Phil Cavell 1:03:28
And he’s going to do it.

Carlton Reid 1:03:29
So, Phil, the the obvious question is, well, why don’t we just unclip all the time?

Phil Cavell 1:03:34
It’s a really good question, because that isn’t isn’t why we have pedals in pedals because they can provide a lot of efficiency having a stiff carbon soul which disperses the the pressure across the whole soul of foot. Pedal holds your foot in the right position relative to the pedal spindle, the maximum efficiency and power and also because you want to move around a bike, and if you’re moving around a bike, you need to have your foot clipped in, you know, it’s very hard to send fast or paddling back or get out the saddle and pedalling in time. If you’re not, there’s plenty of reasons to be clipped in. You don’t clip into pull up your clipping for for stability.

Carlton Reid 1:04:13
Hmm, okay, takeaways from the book. Okay, so I’ve got a little box out here, fill, and we can go through them.

Carlton Reid 1:04:21
And if I just if I just say what it is, and then you give me a quick, why, why you why I picked this up from the book why I think what I think is important, but you tell me why you put it in the book. So don’t drink booze.

Phil Cavell 1:04:37
Because Because ethanol alcohol ethanol is an obligate oxygen.

Carlton Reid 1:04:42
it’s a poison.

Phil Cavell 1:04:45
It treats it as poison and is obliged to metabolise it first, so it recognises as a toxin and it’s very excited about it wants to get it out your body quickly. If you’re trying to train the next day after

Carlton Reid 1:05:00
looked at many things. Your body is still frantically trying to metabolise the alcohol and won’t metabolise the very healthy breakfast you have continues to order all the alcohol. ethanol is not recognised as the body’s fuel is recognised as poison. I should say that. I’ve got no you know, I was a very, very I used to basically drink a lot of red wine. And still would, you know, I’m somebody, I’m a sinner not somebody who is abstemious by nature, we are

Carlton Reid 1:05:30
you have actually made wine recommendations in the book, there’s a couple of points where you talk about Italy,go you know, this particular vineyard to go here. So, yes, you have you’re not totally you’re not a teetotaler from from from day one. You do make wine recommendations, but that’s good point. Okay, so that’s don’t drink booses, but do drink cherry wine, sorry, cherry juice? Why would you drink cherry juice? T

Phil Cavell 1:05:53
hat’s been shown to have some points

Phil Cavell 1:05:56
have some effects in terms of sleep and recovery? So cherry juice is has been shown to be quite beneficial.

Phil Cavell 1:06:06
That was

Phil Cavell 1:06:08
it’s been out for a few years that research. I mean, certainly cherry juice seems to be a bit like whoever was taking

Phil Cavell 1:06:16
on what they it was. A few years ago. Everyone was

Carlton Reid 1:06:19
Beetroot

Phil Cavell 1:06:20
beetroot juice, weren’t they? Same thing.

Phil Cavell 1:06:23
There are certain certain chemicals in the in beetroot and in cherry. It used to seem to have some beneficial effects. Yeah.

Carlton Reid 1:06:31
And it’s also good for sleep, isn’t it? Usually you say it’s

Carlton Reid 1:06:36
melatonin at night and stuff?

Phil Cavell 1:06:38
Yeah. So it stimulates

Phil Cavell 1:06:40
Which which which secretes melatonin, which helps you sleep.

Carlton Reid 1:06:45
Okay, now you’re a big fan in the book of cross training. So you do say you know don’t it’s not Yeah, it’s about the bike but don’t be on the bike all the time. One thing and this is actually something I do all the time anyway. And so you said about walking over uneven surfaces and that’s for bone density. So you know, don’t take just your dog on the canal towpath, you know, go into the woods a bit and get a bit of off roading in. But then you also mentioned something I don’t do that. Maybe I should and that’s paddleboarding so it seems you’re you’re kind of like a big convert into paddleboarding?

Phil Cavell 1:07:20
Yes. I’m into anything? Yes, I think the older you get. It’s almost like the less cycling you need to do to be faster at cycling you won’t be fast at cycling. The older you get the more you’re gonna have to drop out cycling in something else. Your photo you’re fighting bone density sarcopenia which is muscle loss. So your for you need to exchange your cycle sessions with something else. What do you what do you exchange them for? so chaotic walking? That is great man listen describes a great friend of mine physiotherapist because it walking is just a way if you can’t run for one reason or another. Healthy walk is a really good idea. So walking, probably walking poles on rough ground every step it’s different for bone density for balance for strength. paddleboarding is great for cyclists because it works on several things we really add

Phil Cavell 1:08:10
strength, lower trap strength, and also keeps us an extension of not flexed. Or an office chair. We’re an extension so paddleboarding It is really really very good for scientists is almost a perfect antidote sight out one session and put in something else something like a boarding or walking with all or something.

Carlton Reid 1:08:33
Okay, next, you kind of pre dismissive on most supplements but then you do say vitamin D

Phil Cavell 1:08:43
Yes, between these a hormone, it’s not a vitamin. So it provokes the body to do something.

Phil Cavell 1:08:49
And vitamin D i think is without, you know without

Phil Cavell 1:08:55
proselytising saying say you’re watching run out and buy vitamin D, it doesn’t have a role in in provoking middle aged athletes to you know, to increase density things to have some function of the immune system. We live in the Northern Hemisphere, supposedly getting the same sunshine that we used to, you know, seems to make sense, which is long overdue it

Phil Cavell 1:09:19
supplements seems to be what seems to be pretty much universally accepted, I think between these as you get older and still trying to hang on performance.

Carlton Reid 1:09:30
And that than maybe cod liver oil, you kind of you say you take that as a supplement too.

Phil Cavell 1:09:34
Cod liver oil Yes, it’s cod liver oil obviously it’s it’s, it’s it’s good because it is you know your lipids and your blood

Phil Cavell 1:09:45
is HDL but also it is also anti inflammatory because fish oil actually has an anti inflammatory role.

Phil Cavell 1:09:55
So you know, cycling essentially high level Cycling is inflammatory

Carlton Reid 1:10:00
And, you know, he fish oil will actually be a mild anti inflammatory.

Carlton Reid 1:10:06
And then a big I’ve actually put this in caps a big takeout from the from the book which you mentioned a couple of times a few times. And that is sleep.

Phil Cavell 1:10:14
Oh yes, this is a big one. I mean, I, we didn’t go into this enough and I wish I had. But I think the fall asleep is underestimated it’s underestimated with older people, older athletes, we just underestimated we just try and burn the candle at both in and then you know, make a sandwich out of it. It’s just like, we’re into March. And sleep seems to have the thinktel role every year studies and the research seems to suggest sleeps role is more and more crucial. I think midlife people, you know, panting profession, family exercise responsibilities, you know, the first thing that we can get rid of, it’s sleep. So, you know, it’s an extra hour. And we need, you know, we get up earlier, you know, so we sacrifice it willingly to try and try and tick off the rest of its responsibilities. But there seems to be interest.

Carlton Reid 1:11:07
Zwifters have now got a turn away here. Now that turn off now, because you’re not really a big fan of indoor cycling, are you?

Phil Cavell 1:11:16
No, I think I think I’m, I think that’s fair to say, Carlton.

Phil Cavell 1:11:20
Yeah, I can’t deny that.

Carlton Reid 1:11:21
So why Why? I mean, you mentioned in the book, but tell us now why you’re not a big fan of indoor cycling.

Phil Cavell 1:11:27
I’m not a fan of it because

Phil Cavell 1:11:30
I think people go too hard, in a poor position in poorly ventilated rooms. with not enough hydration, it’s just this this alarm authority for me, because an indoor cycling generally and this is an assumption and I might be wrong. But generally speaking, these days, indoor cycling seems to be about going very, very hard and very, very far pain cave stuff, isn’t it? So the even the pain is saying, you know, we’re going to hurt ourselves. Yeah.

Phil Cavell 1:12:04
Yeah. And I to me something star side where the topography in the road and the terrain and limit your effort, you know, you go up the hill, and you’re gonna go down a hill, you know, there’s a natural kind of flattening effect. If you like, your south side, so there’s fresher air and slightly, okay, and, you know, all these things. And there’s something about the way people are wired in or, you know, when they’re really riding hard, I think, form on the bike posture, and then muscle recruitment and their motor patterning. And they seem to kind of fight, right, which itself is completely stationary and mobile, so it’s not moving with you. And that’s what we forget, when we ride a bike out on the trail. You know, that moves us soccer dance, isn’t it, it’s moving and you’re moving, moving together. That doesn’t happen, you move in.

Phil Cavell 1:12:53
And guess which one’s gonna get thought.

Carlton Reid 1:12:55
So there’s a nice quote in there from from Dr. David Hulse. That’s on page 169. For anybody who’s reading along with this podcast. And that is “cycling mile upon mile in scenery.” I thought that encapsulated a lot. It’s like, you can actually go a lot further than you think when you’ve got nice things to look at.

Phil Cavell 1:13:19
What page is that?

Carlton Reid 1:13:20
Page 269. So it’s in one of the it’s in one of the final bits where

Carlton Reid 1:13:29
and I just thought that was excellent. Because it that Yeah, because my son’s just done a video of Scotland, his trip in Scotland recently. And just the the scenery was wonderful. And you’re just looking at it. And it’s probably one of the reasons that video do quite well is because a, he’s done some great drone photography of him and his girlfriend cycling, the weather was beautiful. So you can see for miles and miles, you can see the road snaking away. And you can just think, yeah, I could do 60 miles through that kind of stuff pretty easily. Because it looks so beautiful. So get out there and ride that’s actually the way we end the podcast. But that that is actually something that is quite important that that part of cycling, you lose that, no amount of computer generated graphics can can bring that that part of cycling into reality.

Phil Cavell 1:14:21
I agree with you. Dave Hulse writes beautifully. He writes beautifully.

Carlton Reid 1:14:27
And so yeah, it towards the end of the the book, you’re talking about how your next book in 20 years time when you’re that old is going to be called “The Twilight Cyclist”. So I absolutely look forward to to reading. I get to that age And I’m sure we’ll have another podcast even though I’m sure when we call that of course something weird and wonderful. In the future where we’ll we’ll talk about that book. But let’s come back to the present and the Bloomsbury book, Bloomsbury Sports. £14.99

Carlton Reid 1:15:00
It’s got $20 on the back here. How can people get hold of the book? Phil? How can they get hold of you? What are your social media handles? And give us your

Carlton Reid 1:15:13
website so people can go to your corporate side?

Phil Cavell 1:15:16
Yes. So www.cyclefit.co.uk

Phil Cavell 1:15:20
You can buy the book

Phil Cavell 1:15:23
I’ve got you can follow me on twitter if you want my content.

Phil Cavell 1:15:28
I think it’s just about anywhere you can search me on Twitter.

Carlton Reid 1:15:32
Thanks to Phil Cavell and thanks to you for listening to the spokesmen cycling podcast show notes and more can be found on the-spokesman.com. I know I’ve already said the usual show sign up. But as you’ve heard from Phil and Dr Hulse it bears repeating. So

Carlton Reid 1:15:55
get out there and ride and “there”, of course, is outside …

If your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

20th June 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 276: From San Fran Bike Courier to BBC Journalist Via the Great North Road

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUEST: Steve Silk

TOPICS: The Great North Road. Coaching inns. Spitfires and warm beer. Wherries. Brexit. BBC impartiality. Beaming about Beamish. Forgetting about being a San Francisco bike courier. Chamois cream. Bonking. Norfolk Broads. Being a bloke on a bike but not being Alan Partridge. Cycling to work versus cycling for leisure.

LINKS:

“THE GREAT NORTH ROAD London to Edinburgh – 11 Days, 2 Wheels and 1 Ancient Highway”

Greatnorthroad.info

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:14
Welcome to Episode 276 of the spokesmen cycling podcast. This show was recorded on Sunday 20th of June 2021.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the- spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:08
Steve Silk was a San Francisco bike courier in the late 1980s which, if you don’t mind me saying so is the absolute epitome of cool, but then he forgot all about cycling as he forged a career as a BBC regional journalist. I’m Carlton Reid and it turns out I’ve got lots in common with Steve, including starting at the same university in the same year, also living and canoeing in Norfolk, and having an abiding interest in history. And it’s our shared interest in the history of that most iconic of ancient highways — the Great North Road — that brought us together for today’s episode, sponsored by Jenson USA. Steve has written a travelogue about a bicycle journey along this road, and on today’s show we discuss the book and wax lyrical about sleepy coaching inns. As he’s a BBC journalist I also asked him about the corporation’s recent forays into anti-cycling rhetoric. That was unfair of me because there are new rules on impartiality and social media that I know BBC employees have to follow but check out how Steve handled my unsubtle prods.

Carlton Reid 2:34
Steve, can we get the Alan Partridge bit out of the way immediately, because you must get this I mean, any journalist in involved in either radio or TV in Norfolk and especially Norwich is going to get that. So how do you cope with the Alan Partridge question?

Steve Silk 2:53
Oh, God, I cope with it by having had it so many times. I’ve forgotten about it. I’ve genuinely forgotten the link. And I’m actually surprised when people mention it. So yes, I guess shrugged off with a bit of a laugh. People that I’m not from Norfolk, which I think perhaps helps here. I think occasionally, some people in Norfolk, perhaps in the old days used to get a little bit offended by that. Whereas of course, the what we should actually do is is champion Alan Partridge and make the most of it and enjoy the fact that there’s a whacking great picture of him talking about our sanctuary in the Norwich Waterstones and just take him to our heart. That’s the spirit, I think

Carlton Reid 3:38
So you’ve landed in Nowich because you were from Maidenhead originally, yes?

Steve Silk 3:42
Yes. A long time ago. Yes. Yes. I landed in Norwich very accidentally. I’m a journalist. And I was working in the northeast. And suddenly a job came up in the on the evening news an awfully long time ago. And I thought that will that will get me halfway to London, which was my plan then. And so I arrived here in the mid 90s and have come and gone since. But yes, Norwich is is very much an adopted home rather than me having any proper roots here.

Carlton Reid 4:13
So we have gone in slightly different directions here in that. I went to Norwich, from Newcastle. I really kind of see you because you went to university in Newcastle and I after reading your book, I discovered you joined the University at exactly the same. Yeah, so we both landed in Newcastle University in 1986. So what did you read?

Steve Silk 4:40
I read history at Newcastle and I really enjoyed doing that. But my passion when I was at Newcastle was the student newspaper so I probably spent about twice as much time on the newspaper career as I did during my studies. And I think that was actually whilst I still obviously love history, which I hope comes across in the book. I used uni as a really good foundation for for the career that I’ve had since and I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed being my own style of cub reporter making goodness knows the most basic mistakes but doing them with from the comfort and the safety net of a student newspaper rather than a real one. But I wanted to go to Newcastle from Maidenhead. I mean, they they’re very different places, you know, Thames Valley, South, I really wanted to go up north to escaped. The minute I went to Newcastle for the first time I absolutely fell in love with the place. My daughter is a student there now. And I don’t need any excuse to go up and, you know, buy her a meal or walk on Hadrian’s Wall as we were doing this time last weekend. I still love the city and love the surrounding area. So yes, going through Newcastle and Northumberland was an undoubted highlight of my trip.

Carlton Reid 6:03
So we’ve absolutely got tonnes in common here. It’s always amazing that we haven’t probably met and we haven’t come across each other a huge amount previously. Because at the history angle is absolutely right up my street. So I did enjoy your book with from that, that the many historical angles in there. And also, I’ve got to say the coaching it in angle I love because that’s what I love about the Great North Road is these fantastic coaching and so you didn’t stay in the ballot Stilton, which I did recently. But you did stay in the George at Stanford, is that right?

Steve Silk 6:41
No, I didn’t stay at the George at Stanford. I I, what did I do that I think I had a coffee there. I’ve been I’ve been to all these places several times. But no, I didn’t stay. I mean, one thing actually, is just the cost of them. They’re all gorgeous ends, aren’t they? And they’re, they’re probably going to cost you if you I couldn’t tell you a figure for the George but you’re probably talking a good 100 150 quid a night, and a times 10 that was slightly within the budget that had been agreed with Mr. Silk in advance. So I was taking the cheapo view that, you know, nice to pound at flat white from all of these places was wasn’t more cost effective of way of experiencing the ambience without necessarily staying the night. But one day, you know, if I did this again, and I don’t rule out during the whole bike ride again, that would be the way to go. The Golden Lion at northallerton was the one pocket coaching in that I stayed the night in and that was because I just pitched up there at lunchtime with Oh my god, this is just great. I can’t be bothered to cycle anymore. It was a Sunday there was a nice Sunday roast going. Change of plan. stay the night there. And I’m very glad I did that.

Carlton Reid 7:54
Huh. And then you mentioned again, this is the spooky yet that kind of things that we’re crossing. But I was at Beamish, just recently, the Northeast cultural museum. And I was also very much taken by the concept of the recreation of a 17th 18th century coaching in on site, which hasn’t happened. But and in your book, you mentioned this, and it’s like, Yeah, I thought that also piqued my interest that that’d be a fabulous place to stay, because you can’t stay at Beamish currently, but just to be able to go into a really yield. coaching, it would be fabulous.

Steve Silk 8:33
It really would. And the idea, because I did have a chat with one of the senior guys there, he was talking about how they would try to recreate the beer from the past and the meals in the past and they’d be somewhere in the corner. On the Northumbrian pipes. It does just it just does sound magnificent, doesn’t it? As I understand it, it’s all on hold. I’m not entirely sure what the latest situation is there. But I do think that at some point that that vision has to be created. And of course, they’ve had loads of problems, as lots of companies in museums have as far as COVID is concerned. So hopefully it’s just a case of that plan being on hold rather than being abandoned forever. I mean, Beamish let’s just say is a magnificent Museum in its own right already, isn’t it? It’s got so much it, I just love their approach to things when I was hanging around waiting to speak to someone there, which I you know, turned up with my notepad as a as a writer so to speak, rather than as a paying punter. On that occasion. There were people wringing their, you know, grandma’s old record player, or whatever it was in and their attitude is, we will take everything. We’re not going to be sniffy about what’s out there and what we decide is history and what we decide is an artefact or not. If you think it’s worth it, we’ll have it. That’s such a refreshing approach, isn’t it? I’ve got all the time in the world for Beamish. I think they’re doing a super job, I love the place.

Carlton Reid 10:02
So coaching in Great North Road, it almost has a flavour of like, kind of like a pre bit Brexit fantasy of, as I said before, like the olde England. So is there a danger that we’re kind of recreating a past that perhaps never actually existed? You know, like Spitfires, warm beer. How much of the of the writing of your book do you think is, is kind of going into that for kind of of Englishness that perhaps isn’t really true?

Steve Silk 10:40
Well, I’d argue with Englishness because this is a book that covers England and Scotland. So you’ve got to have that in mind as well. So it can be it’s a I guess it’s a British book rather than an English book. When it comes to Brexit, I’m a serving BBC journalist, so I will stay absolutely on the fence when it comes to that big and controversial issue of our times. But yes, I am. I am probably guilty of romanticising the past to some extent. And you know what I’ve got form for that a previous book that I’ve written looks at the worries of which is an ancient cargo boat of the Norfolk broads. And I can’t, myself perhaps from talking about how these guys operated in the past and perhaps having some rose tinted spectacles on there. Whereas the reality was, they were probably the HGV drivers of their day. As we’re coaching. Coach drivers. To a certain extent life was tough. safety standards were probably non existent all the rest of it. So yes, pretty much guilty as charged, Carlton.

Carlton Reid 12:00
And Charles Harper, I mean, many people on here won’t have heard of him. But he’s important to me. He’s clearly important to you because of what he did. Back when he did it, as you say, there’s no biographies. You can’t find out exactly his life story. But he was a cyclist, or he became you almost became like you in that he was he became a cyclist later in life. And he did it for utilitarian reasons, because he was researching all his great road books. He didn’t just do the writing was really did all sorts of the great highways of Britain, we did from a bicycle saddle. But then of course, his books came out in later editions when murdering had taken over. So tell us a little bit about what you have gone at about this cycle. touristy became a motoring tourist.

Steve Silk 12:49
So Charles Harper is a Londoner who started as an illustrator but quickly developed a taste for writing books as well and started off by writing histories or travel logs of the shorter coaching routes out of London, mostly to the south coast. So London to Brighton, London, to Hastings, London to Portsmouth. And for that he could walk because the distances weren’t too involved. If you think I’m bad at romanticising the past, Mr. Harper really goes for it. And the interesting thing about him and I think it’s an era that we forget about now is that there was this great coaching era that lasted till 1830 1830s. And then you’ve got the the motorcar doesn’t really come along until after the First World War, in terms of becoming a mass means of transport. And in that intervening best part of a century, roads go become unfashionable, the railways takeover. So as far as Harper was concerned, he was writing a history of these roads that were in inevitable decline. And that shapes how he writes about things. And I think is why he’s so fascinating for us now, because at least in those first editions, he in no way predicted that all of these coaching ins were going to get a second wind, for example, they were saved by the motorcar a lot weren’t saved, but many were so that by the time his second edition came along, he was actually able to report that various inns had reopened. So he is, I find him fascinating. He’s very old. He’s very of his time. He’s, you can’t call him old fashioned, but he’s, he’s probably slightly curmudgeonly old so and so. He was certainly very conservative in his views, but he writes beautifully and descriptively about what he saw along that road, but Pretty much a southern English view of the world. Once he gets past about Grantham, you can feel him starting to become a bit uncomfortable. He was very critical stroke snobby have anything to do with coal mines for example.

Carlton Reid 15:17
Yes, he didn’t like coal mines did he?

Steve Silk 15:18
He really didn’t like anything that wasn’t a majestic old highway of old, anything industrial and of course, the road was still being used and certainly went through many a pit village along the way. You could almost you can almost see him recoil in horror at some of the cottages that people were living in, etc, etc. But he is a very good eye witness of that time at the start of the last century. And as well as being an eyewitness in terms of what he says his illustrations, albeit perhaps, slightly sanitised are also really valuable. And they are used now by heritage England as a resource to sort of illustrate what Britain looked like before development around town centres before bypasses, and as such, I think he’s quite an important eyewitness to history of that period of England and Scotland, basically.

Carlton Reid 16:22
Hmm. Now, in your book, you do say in in in the press release, it says that this is a route that other people could follow. But we actually if you look at the maps that this is, this is a tough route, because you have got long stretches, where it is the A1(M) is the original route, it has been built over the old Great North Road. So it would be quite difficult to follow an exact route. So even you’ve had to, you’ve had to meander haven’t you, can’t follow the whole thing from from St. Paul’s Cathedral all the way to Edinburgh, you’re life is too valuable.

Steve Silk 17:04
Yes, you cannot go on the A1(M) by law, you would not want to go on the a one not m out of choice. You are able to go through town centres and the approaches in and out of lots of town centres that were the Great North Road in the old days. And there are plenty of other short segments that if your dog good enough with your research, you can find. But in another way, I wouldn’t describe it as a difficult route. In that I find that when these new cycling, projects, trails, etc, are set up quite often, they’re really challenging in terms of gradient. What I’ve done, I am not a hardcore cyclist. I am a cyclist who likes to go from A to B to C to D rather than round in a circle. Because I just like the sense of adventure. But I don’t necessarily want to do 3000 feet of ascent a day, I want to have a coffee, I want to have a nice lunch in the market square. And if there’s a stuffy old museum that no one else is in in the afternoon, I’ll stop off there for an afternoon for an hour as well. So I’m the sort of guy that doesn’t want things to be really tough in terms of the cycling, I just want to see see a bit of this country. So there’s different senses of what difficult means aren’t there? I do in my mind’s eye. I do wonder if we really could create a great North road cycling route that would roughly do what I did. ironing out some of the mistakes. But I guess that’s probably pie in the sky at the moment. There’s one there’s one place where this really got me as I was cycling off on the approach to Stilton in Cambridgeshire, Stilton has a high street that is now marooned from the a one m next to it so that you have to approach Stilton from the north then go south to go down. It’s magnificent High Street. With the bell, that’s one of my certainly in my top five great coaching into the entire route. I would love instead that on that approach right from the south, they just put a bridge across the a one there, and then we as cyclists could enjoy that as it was meant to be. And I’m sure that would be a massive use to local people as well. So yes, I’m asking for the moon and I’m wanting the government to invest in a bridge here or an underpass there. I guess it’s not gonna happen is it but I think that it would be I think there is so much enjoyment to be had from whipping through this 400 mile stretch of England and Scotland without having To be a hard core, lycra clad cyclist, you could just do it relatively gently, with a bit of help.

Carlton Reid 20:08
Because it’s the opposite a very, very historic journey and yet most cycleways, most kind of like guided cycle routes in the UK do tend to be honest, I’m generalising massively here but do tend to be East West West East rather than, you know, north south. There’s very little that actually does follow. See, you couldn’t get the Sustrans Great North Road route, in effect. So you’re saying that could potentially be something that could help?

Steve Silk 20:37
I Yes, I think so. Because I loved it. And I, I quite liked the idea of connecting up various unfashionable parts of the country, as well. And I think I was coming at it from the point of view of i’d recently done 100 mile bike ride around Norfolk the first time I’d done one of those. And I was thinking, right, what’s next, but I would never do Land’s End to john o’Groats, that just that the whole or around that just just isn’t me. Whereas the idea of doing London to Edinburgh is sort of nicely pitched in the middle there with the added advantage of two great cities at either end. So I just think it’s got something going for it. Yeah, I would love to see that happen. Even if it didn’t even if it took 20 years. Certainly what was happening and I could see in front of my very eyes was that I think even if I’d done this trip 10 years ago, there would have been fewer psychopaths. I was to some extent I planned it by I never need an excuse to buy maps. So I’d planned what I could, but to another to other other parts. I was having to make it up as I went along. And quite often there was a what looked like quite a recent psychopath in quite a useful place. So Britain is undoubtedly getting more bike friendly. year by year, almost month by month, isn’t it?

Carlton Reid 21:59
Well, on the on the Barnet bypass, which is, you know, South Mimms, basically the service station there. There’s a stretch of the old day one as the Barnet bypass, did take over there. And that’s a stretch of road that has been as you say marooned it’s no longer part of the motorway at all, obviously. And that’s the 1930s cycleway right next to it. And this is your big passion, isn’t it? Right I haven’t seen that. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah. So I’ve just got I’ve now discovered that just literally just about a month ago and went to have a look when I went and did my migraine over and then I so you took a bicycle I actually took a car which is which is crazy thing for me to do, which is cheating. Face it exactly. As you don’t even know the hills are there because you’ve got a sports car to do it. But I took I asked Morgan to supply me a car and wonderfully they did so I put a Brompton in a passenger seat and took a Morgan and didn’t much of the same journey as you but obviously had a much, much easier time of it. But then when I was driving along the a one where it’s not a one end, there’s lots of bits that I’m looking at. I know that I kind of probably see cycleways 1930 cycleways, where they perhaps don’t even exist. But I did see lots of bits that looked in a period. So they they did put an awful lot of cycleways down next to the a one. So I don’t think anybody would want to cycle on those bits. But technically, there are lots of bits of the road which you could probably connect up and you could create a route and then it’d be a historic route and it wouldn’t be Land’s End to john o’Groats. You’re right. It’ll be this historic north, south or South North route, which which is, clearly the reason you’ve written the book is because that’s incredibly historic. And we’re ignoring that by doing these routes that are meandering, but not quite as important. Absolutely.

Steve Silk 24:01
But what I’d add to that is that if they’re if the alternative to doing a mile two miles directly alongside but safely alongside the current a one if the alternative to that was a massive meander that took you 10 miles out of your way, because there simply isn’t an alternative, then I’d be happy to do that. And and indeed, I did do that on one or two parts during the book. So I think as a means of just connecting somewhere safe to somewhere else safe, that where there was some sort of separation between you and the traffic, I think that would work perfectly well. So and of course, your 1930s cycleways are them, which I haven’t heard of until you brought them to my attention are themselves historic, aren’t they? So you could argue that’s, that’s actually adding to the history of the Great North Road. It’s it’s a 1930 slice of history. They’re just waiting to be rediscovered.

Carlton Reid 24:54
Hmm, there’s a slice up in Durham which I know you. I’m reckoning you must have diverged. away from the road at this point, cuz you in your book you went actually went into Durham where of course, yes, the Great North Road, obviously the a one of the 1920s didn’t go there. But there’s one stretch, which is actually the original 1930 cycleway that though I first discovered and first realised was what was going on here. And that just outside at Durham, and there’s a beautiful one mile stretch of former a worn it used to be a service station. They’re called Cock of the north. Yes, I know. Exactly. Yes. They’re talking the North pub there either anymore. And that was just a housing estate now. That’s right. Yeah. I haven’t got a copy of the North housing estate. But that would net that that cycle way that was put in on the Great North Road back in 1937. probably didn’t get a great deal of use back then. But we’ll get used now because it’s it has it anyway, where we’re diverting away from your book a bit here. So the book is out in in July July the eighth is that writes correctly. Summersdale is the publishing house. I’ve got a pre publication, uncorrected book proof here in front of me so I read it all yesterday. And I’ll tell you why I read it yesterday, I had my second job. Yesterday, I had other things to do I was going to be doing. But I was feeling a bit under the weather. And I just sat down in the kitchen with my dog and just read the whole thing from from from start to finish so so in one sitting so I immensely enjoyed your book and people who get to see it get to read it in on July the eighth will will enjoy it to that end the book. I think you’ve come across, either deliberately, or, or maybe not deliberately as somebody who’s almost a beginner cyclist because you’re making like rookie mistakes like you’re like you’re not eating correctly. So you’re talking about the cyclists bonk, you’re talking about going into a bike shop at one point, and having to get emergency Shammi cream, for instance, again, like another rookie mistake, yet, as you said, You’ve done 100 mile rides in Norfolk. And now I want you to tell away from the book, I would now want you to tell me about your your student days when you were in effect a hardcore cyclist because you were on Mission and Sixth in San Francisco. Delivering packages as a bicycle messenger in the most romantic place. You could possibly be a bike messenger in the 1980s and pop maybe London or New York and San Francisco just a wonderful place to do it. So you are hardcore cyclist?

Steve Silk 27:46
Well, you say that and It does sound really cool now doesn’t it? But I didn’t. I genuinely didn’t see it like that at the time. And I didn’t see that I was going there to be a cyclist. It was a couple of other mates from Newcastle uni we we ditched in the day job that was at some sort of summer camp, we’d got our visas and we thought right sorted. Let’s take a car across America. So we were just being classic students with us with three or four months of summer in front of us. And we did one of those driveway things where you drive a car from east to west for someone who’s moving. And then we just all three of us pitched up in San Francisco. And by complete luck, not because I was this hardcore bike geezer at all. I ended up as a cyclist as a cycle messenger, delivering what we would now call JPEGs, or emails. And it was it was fantastic. And I’ve never been fitter in all my life. But I see what you’re saying. You’re saying, well, how’s this guy who had this seemingly really cool job knows all about cycling? How’s he making rookie errors all these years later? Well, one, it was just one hell of a summer summer. Two, I then forgot about cycling. I can’t explain or justify this for about 20 years, until picking up a bike again. I don’t know how old I was 45 or something. And it’s only in the last 10 years that I’ve just started messing about on a bike again. And even when you do that, and I go out we religiously four or five, six of us go out on a Saturday morning here in my village in Norfolk. Even then we’re only just having a laugh. I’m not someone who’s ever been part of a of a cycling club. Yes, there’s a bit of lycra now because you end up with it, don’t you but I’ve never done anything more serious. So those rookie errors aren’t Let me tell you absolutely genuine there is no there is no there is no way that I’ve exaggerated that all these things happen because I was just Learning as I went

Carlton Reid 30:02
and that bike shop very kindly to to smother it upstairs. It was a room that was just basically an open room. It didn’t sound as though they said go to the toilet or just upstairs in this bike shop.

Steve Silk 30:19
Oh, do we have to do this bit but yes, it’s a very small lovely lovely bike shop in in a one in a yard in Darlington upstairs will sort of have more of the area sort of semi storeroom feel to it. And yes, I, I applied my new purchase up there. And I instantly benefited please let’s move on before there’s any more detail about that for your poor listeners.

Carlton Reid 30:49
Well, it’s gonna be cute because if people are gonna be buying this book aren’t gonna be hardcore sign because I’m assuming it’s more of a travelogue. That general interest is going to people you don’t have to be a cyclist to buy this book is what I’m trying to say. And

Steve Silk 31:04
coming at it. Yeah, the bike just happens to be the best method of exploring this road.

Carlton Reid 31:11
Yes. So people are going to find that they’re gonna find this incredibly funny, because this is an alien world. To most people like me reading this book about you put what and you put it where I didn’t know this. So those are kind of anecdotes that jumped out at me, because I find this completely normal, but other people are going to go. What? I’ve never heard of this stuff before.

Steve Silk 31:39
I guess so I guess and the other thing you just mentioned on is the word bonking which we must explain to non cyclists means when you absolutely run out of energy and you almost collapse on the roadside, which is what happened to me just north of Grantham. That’s the other one where I it wasn’t that I hadn’t heard of that I heard had heard of it as a concept that cyclists run out of fuel. It’s just that I was learning as I went on exactly how much fuel I need to keep going. And I use the word fuel advisedly, it doesn’t become food anymore, does it? I have just come back three mates and myself from doing three gruelling days in Mid Wales on the trans Cambrian way on a guided route with a group called MTB, whales who are magnificent By the way, and I’ve learned my lesson from from the Great North Road. And all the time going up these ridiculously steep mountains and hillsides in Wales, I was just eating flapjack I didn’t want to eat flapjack I wasn’t even hungry. But I knew that if I didn’t eat stuff now, I was really going to suffer in an hour and a half’s time. So from that point of view, I have I have learned since but yes, that’s something that you do need to know about, don’t you but I guess even if you’ve heard of the concept, you don’t know exactly how much fuel you as an individual will need. If it’s day four, when you’ve done 55 miles the previous day, and decent manages the previous two as well.

Carlton Reid 33:15
Hmm. Now I noted before that when we mentioned the nasty B word, or maybe the lovely B word depending on your your point of view, it didn’t really get into politics because of your, your your BBC employment. But if you don’t mind and and then let’s see how far we how far I can push you here. The BBC does get a lot of stick at the moment for introducing what in effect are anti cycling topics and that can be local, and it can be national, it can be on, you know, mainstream, you know, radio programmes where they’ve mentioned stuff, which does tend to buy into the concept of you know, Britain not being that much of a a positive cycling nation. So what kind of feedback have you had from your colleagues about the fact that you are I’m using air quotes here, a MAMIL?

Steve Silk 34:18
I would say that my colleagues just know that Steve’s a cyclist they know that if he’s come back off a week away it’ll be a good thing to say. Where have you been on your bike then Steve that that’s that’s the level of it there’s no opposition to it. There’s nothing that’s particularly pro it’s just a thing they know that that this this I do. I still think that steering clear the BBC as ice will consistently throughout this interview. I still think that Britain is getting better. I live on the outskirts of Norwich. Norwich has introduced a lot of wew cycling paraphernalia just over the recent two or three years or so, I think we’re definitely moving in the right direction. But I am gonna because it is the day job and because I have to be really, really careful when it comes to any of the politics around that I’m afraid you’re not going to tempt me at all.

Carlton Reid 35:17
I understand that I’m going to carry on, I’m going to try on, I’m going to I’m going to poke you. And it’s not because at the end, this is what I want to talk about this and not your book. But just It is interesting, because the whole cultural woke agenda, or anti woke agenda does very often use cycling as as a as a as something to really, really go out because it does go some people. So you in lycra, benign. Me in Lycra, benign. A granny on a bike, benign. And yet the mainstream media does seem to recognise that by mentioning the word cyclist, it does. You know, it does touch a lot of buttons. And that’s not a BBC thing. That’s a mainstream media thing. So what can you do, if anything to combat that, if you even want to combat that?

Steve Silk 36:14
I do agree with you that many’s the time when I’ve had conversations, even with my relatives, and they’re bemoaning the fact that they’ve been delayed by all of 20 seconds, because there was a group of four cyclists in front of them on the B road, and I’m saying yes, well, that could have been me. And for goodness sake, you know, I’m Scott just as much right to the road as anyone else. So you’re dead, right, that there’s still a lot of opposition, I within the last two or three months, I’ve had a situation where I gently with my right hand, just said, with an up and down movement asked someone to slow down as they sped past me. And the response was absolute foul mouth abuse by a driver who got out reverse came back looking for trouble. And that can be absolutely terrifying. And completely over the top. So you’re dead, right? It’s still absolutely out there, isn’t it? what we do as a group with the with the guys that I go out with every Saturday is we’re obsequiously pleasant, and thankful to every single motorist who even gives us the time of day. And we shout and we smile to every single passing dog walker, and we try to be personal ambassadors for it. I mean, we shouldn’t have to, should we but that’s the stage I think we’re at that I go out of my way every stage to look. Motorists in the eye smile, be humans show that I am a human being and I’m just having a nice time on my bike. That’s my personal approach. And that I have to say works quite well. On the on the streets of Norfolk. It’s probably slightly more tricky in a big city.

Carlton Reid 38:09
And do you think that this book which doesn’t mention cycling in the title, it doesn’t really even make it big style into the into the subhead, it’s just as two wheels? Do you think that potentially has a mollifying effect, in that it’s a travelogue? You just happen to be on a bicycle? And people might just devis a slightly just think it’s a bike, it’s a normal thing to do? Or do you think it’s, it’s still seen as a quite a bizarre thing to be doing?

Steve Silk 38:38
I hadn’t thought of that at all. So what that’s really interesting, and the one thing I’d say about the cover of the book is that it features a bloke who is me on a bike, it’s an artist’s impression. So it is clear that it’s a cycling book from the, the, it might not be in the actual words, but it’s clearly there in the in the cover. I hadn’t seen it as playing any kind of ambassadorial role, perhaps because I’m not quite so feel myself on the on the front line of changing opinions and any kind of culture war that’s out there against cyclists which I I think you’re much more aware of than I am but if it did, well magnificent and I suppose I can see the logic of your point of view in that I am I am far from being hardcore in anything i’m i’m open about my limitations out as a cyclist and open about the mistakes that I make. So yes, from that point of view, perhaps I don’t feel like I’m from a from a different planet, which I think is sometimes the impression that you get certainly the the guy on this Norfolk street that was effing and blinding me a few weeks ago and just made it clear that he thought we were all just a completely alien. He was a considerably less articulate in his use of words than that. But yes, it can have a small impact. Fantastic.

Carlton Reid 40:08
See hidden Riverside Norwich to go back to one of your other books where were you where you’re in effect you’re a canoeist. You’re an “ist” there there’s no conflict there. Because if you’re you’ve got a canoe you’re not gonna be holding up anybody apart from maybe, Oh, I didn’t know you could

Steve Silk 40:29
you could be conflict with anglers land landowners can be very, very fussy about it. And my view on that is that if you’re on the water you you You’re okay that I don’t think is the precise legal position everywhere and and I always do my best to to obey the laws of trespass although it can be complicated and difficult and you can stray into unintentionally into difficult areas. So no, they can always can get some can get some grief too.

Carlton Reid 41:01
I did I did even when I said that I thought I shouldn’t have said that because I before I became a cyclist and I am that is very much that is. I was a canoeist. So I actually sold to get my first bike which I bought in Norwich in a bike shop was no longer there. I sold my canoe so I did an awful lot of canoeing on the Norfolk broads as many whitewater rapids as I could get in Norfolk, which wasn’t that much. So I started as a canoe is doing an awful lot of this stuff that you’ve probably done in your in your book, sort of like a hidden river seidner it’s I’ve done tonnes of canoeing in Norwich, it is a wonderful place to do it, but yes, you’re right. I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve now blanked out all of that conflict that was there I was I was it was almost like a full history that I’ve created for myself on the the blissful canoeing when there was an enormous amount of conflict and you’re right there’s tonnes of trespass conflict with canoeing twos, and it wasn’t a very good analogy at all I do apologise but

Steve Silk 41:56
but look, you’re you’re it’s really interesting because you you are defining yourself as an investor. Again, I hadn’t seen that before. I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself as either a canoeist or a cyclist I am just a bloke who does those things rather than defining myself as them so there’s a subtle difference there isn’t there this weekend I’m I want to go out my canoe because that’s the nice way to get out and explore the countryside and switch off from work next week. It might be a bike the following week, it might be a you know 12 mile walk or something so yes, I guess I’m not pigeon holing myself if that’s the right term labelling myself quite as you say it but I hadn’t even seen the difference till you described it like

Carlton Reid 42:40
the I’m very guilty obviously in my line of work I’ve pigeon holed myself, but then other people will will absolutely pigeonhole me which is probably one of the reasons why I did the Great North Road not on a bicycle like you did it, but in a Morgan so that when I do get attacked, I do get attacked on social media from from, from motorists who are like hardcore, then I can say, Well, look, you know that I’m not this this this pigeonhole person on a bicycle only, I also use the form of transport you love to. So that kind of, you know, trying to not get pigeonholed is probably a good thing.

Steve Silk 43:26
And, and did it work with the Morgan?

Carlton Reid 43:29
so far on social media, I haven’t really been attacked. But I was dallying in actually changing my profile on Twitter and all sorts to just me and a Morgan just to see if it confuses people. Because obviously, I am known as being ultra, ultra ultra cycle ist. And I am I can’t get away from that fact. But that doesn’t mean to say, I can’t enjoy other forms of transport, too. And that is that we do get pigeonholed. And people make assumptions about people that aren’t always correct.

Steve Silk 44:09
Yes, absolutely. And it’s only you know, a part of your life. You’re on this one was transport and that form of transport. No, I quite agree. I have to say I, I only dabble in the the paddling pool, end of, of Twitter. But I’ve never had any bad experiences, which is, I guess, given that I’ve got a little cycling emoji there. And I all I talk about is great North Road and a bit of cycling. I have to say I’ve been mercifully free of that, and long may that continue. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 44:41
So let me just say that. So say, we know you’ve been to San Francisco, which is hardcore. But we know that you went to a bike shop to put on chamois cream when you should have been having a rotten beginning. So that’s a rookie error. So we know there’s these two very different aspects of your cyclist life. But do you do use a bicycle in any other part of your life apart from going touring? So for instance, you live in about 12 miles out of Norwich would you cycle to work for instance?

Steve Silk 45:18
I have cycled to work, but I don’t do it routinely and I probably should do. I think if I lived well,

Carlton Reid 45:27
not too bad, Steve. Sorry. 12 miles is not too bad. It’s you know, it’s

Steve Silk 45:34
no, it’s not it’s perfectly doable. It’s perfectly doable. I think what I probably am moving towards is cycling to sorry, driving towards the outskirts of Norwich and then having some kind of fold up bike that I would then do the last two or three miles on I everyone’s got an excuse haven’t laid but I quite often don’t finish my working day till half past seven at night. So for much of the year that means coming home 12 miles in the dark, which I don’t quite fancy every day but hey, look, maybe that’s a pathetic excuse. I haven’t I normally as you say I am a leisure cyclist but with chucking in the odd cycle to work journey in there as well. Hmm.

Carlton Reid 46:20
We’ll see. But it’s been absolutely fascinating talking to you. I’m sure we could reminisce about our Norfolk and Newcastle backgrounds until the cows came home. But let’s find out a bit more about your book. So if you can give us a website for the book give us your Twitter handle and and your publisher’s details. So let’s let’s get all that stuff on on tape.

Steve Silk 46:45
Yes, so the best thing as far as the book is concerned is to go via the summerdale website or at some as Dale on Twitter. I have a personal website that is great North Road dot info. But Twitter is the best way to keep in touch with what I’m about. And my handle for that is @greatnorthroad2. The book comes out with Summersdale on July the eighth and it will be available in a lot of the book shops up and down the 400 mile length a one as well as all the other usual places.

Carlton Reid 47:25
Thank you very much and can I ask who was @greatnorthroad1 or who was @greatNorthRoad on Twitter?

Steve Silk 47:30
Someone who’s who’s 15 followers and has only posted about twice and it’s very frustrating that that’s I haven’t got it off him or her maybe I should try harder and do a do a deal there maybe often a couple of copies of the book and maybe I could we could swap handles

Carlton Reid 47:48
Thanks to Steve Silk there and thanks to you for listening to the Spokesmen Cycling Podcast. Show notes and more can be found on the-spokesmen.com. It’s the start of the Tour de France next week and you’ll soon hear some Grand Boucle Bonne mottes from the Spokesmen regulars but meanwhile get out there and ride.

If your podcast catcher not showing in links above (black circle with three dots)? Loads more on PodLink. Show is also on Spotify. and Google Podcasts.

9th May 2021

The Spokesmen Cycling Podcast

EPISODE 274: Curbing cars with Chris and Melissa Bruntlett

SPONSOR: Jenson USA

HOST: Carlton Reid

GUESTS: Chris and Melissa Bruntlett

TOPICS: A 65-minute chat with Chris and Melissa Bruntlett, authors of “Curbing Traffic” from Island Press and published at the end of June.

LINKS:

Book promo codes

Island Press

Dutch Cycling Embassy

Mobycon

TRANSCRIPT:

Carlton Reid 0:13
Welcome to episode 274 of the Spokesmen cycling Podcast. This show was uploaded on Sunday 9th May 2021.

David Bernstein 0:24
The Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast is brought to you by Jenson USA, where you’ll always find a great selection of products at amazing prices with unparalleled customer service. For more information, just go to Jensonusa.com/thespokesmen. Hey everybody, it’s David from the Fredcast cycling podcast at www.Fredcast.com. I’m one of the hosts and producers of the Spokesmen cycling roundtable podcast. For shownotes links and all sorts of other information please visit our website at www.the- spokesmen.com. And now, here are the spokesmen.

Carlton Reid 1:07
In 2019 Chris and Melissa Bruntlett moved from Vancouver — often billed as one of the world’s most attractive cities to live — to make a new life in the Netherlands. They’ve just bought a house in Delft and, as you’ll soon hear, it sounds like this famous urbanist couple will be staying in cycling paradise. I’m Carlton Reid and in this one-hour show I asked Chris and Melissa to describe the premise of their great new book, chapter by chapter. I was hounded to learn that I was one of the first to get a hold of a PDF of the book, which doesn’t come out until the end of next month so this is fantastic sneak preview for you, and listen on because there’s also a promo code where you can save a chunk of cash of Curbing Traffic, which will be published by Island Press on June 29th.

Carlton Reid 2:03
Chris, Melissa, fantastic. And thank you ever so much for coming back on on the show, because you have been on the spokesman podcast numerous times. Probably previous books, you have got this, this this, this new book, curbing traffic now that will be excellent for the people who listen to this. Because it’s not just about bikes, because your previous book we can talk about that was about bikes. And this is just the basic of getting rid of cars. Now I don’t know how we want to do this. Are you going to be because you’re in separate rooms in your in your in your fairytale house in Delft. But how are we because previously you’ve been like sharing a laptop, but you’re actually in different rooms. And you can come in here. So what do you want? What should I say, Melissa? Chris? Or you’re just gonna we’re gonna do this freeform? How do I do? How do you answer the questions?

Melissa Bruntlett 2:58
I think we’re both pretty good at figuring out who wants to say what or jovially interrupting each other? So if there’s any, I think I think if it’s a specific question for one of us, that probably you know, if you want to direct it, that makes sense. But yeah, I don’t think we’ll leave you with any too much dead air. Right, Chris?

Chris Bruntlett 3:21
No, exactly. And I think usually one of us will start answering a question and the other one will finish it. So whoever gets in first gets the lead. And we usually both are on the same wavelength, even if we’re not in the same room. So I don’t have any concerns.

Carlton Reid 3:37
Let’s in that case, let’s kick off with a question that links to that. And just how do you physically write books together as a married couple, and be just as somebody writing one sentence, and then somebody completes the other one? What is your writing method as a couple?

Melissa Bruntlett 3:56
That’s actually an excellent question that we get a lot. Because a lot of people will say it’s impossible to work with your partner, let alone write a book with them. I think for Chris and I, with the first book, we took a very pragmatic approach, we because we had been writing blogs for so long, individually, we approached each chapter as for individual blogs, and we each selected which section of that we were going to focus on, and then basically married them together. And both reading over making sure that the styles flow because I obviously will write a little bit differently than Chris does. But for this book, we sort of approached it because each contain each chapter contains a story of part of our experience in the first two years living in Delft. We basically took ownership of each of those stories. And so if it was something that I experienced more prevalently than Chris, for example, with the feminist city chapter, then I would leave the writing of that chapter or for Chris, the experience of the sound difference in the sound quality and delve has had a much stronger impact on him. And not that it hasn’t on me as well. So that was one that he took ownership of. And then yeah, at the end of the day, we we go through the chapters, at our little pieces here and there to make it flow to make sure that it has the emotion along with the hard facts with with that and with the data. And overall come up with what what we’re always quite proud of, I think.

Chris Bruntlett 5:30
Yeah, I think you’ve, you’ve said it, well, most of you bring the emotion and a lot of cases and I bring the the wanke the policy focus. And so yeah, and so we not only do we complement each other, well, we bring each other’s writing back to the middle, I think. So Melissa will write a segment and I’ll go in and kind of polish it up. And vice versa, I’ll write something and she’ll dewonkify it, you know, make it less technical and more approachable. So it’s, it’s kind of divide, as Melissa said, dividing the chapter up into pieces, each taking a piece, but then going back and rewriting each other sentences and putting your ego aside and just trusting each other to kind of make make the pros better. And eventually, you know, the whole the finished book has probably been read over and revise the dozen times. But we’re finally reached a point where we’re ready to let it go with and that it’s happy. It’s suitable for a while not just an urbanism audience but a mainstream mainstream audience. We’re always writing for the the casual reader if you will.

Carlton Reid 6:37
So let’s let’s get into into the book a little bit more. So it’s it’s Curbing Traffic. And it’s another Island Press book. So that’s that’s the disclaimer here that that’s also my publisher, who did buy my couple of books and you’ve now got a couple of books with them. Quickly, when is it out? If I got like an advance copy? Or is it physically going to be out?

Chris Bruntlett 7:01
Yeah, the official release date is June 29. So it’s still a couple months from when we’re speaking but the the pre orders should start shipping late May early June because the the publication date natural physical manufacturing date is about a month before the release date. But you have most definitely have a early review copy Carlton, one of the first people to see it in its final form.

Carlton Reid 7:26
In which case, I’m very honoured. Thank you very much. And ite’s an excellent, excellent book and it’s it’s just packed and packed and packed with both the emotional part and the statistical but the the wonky the kind of the transport professional part, when you both transport professional anyway, but that it’s just full of meat is what I’m trying to say. So it has been a fantastic reading. I’ve really, really enjoyed it. And one of my questions is gonna be before actually physically read the book was going to be and we’ll get into your biographical details and when you moved to the Netherlands and a second, but it was gonna be you know, is this a stage of your life that you’re going through? And eventually you’ll go back to Canada. And then I read that the last few paragraphs in the book and the photograph of you on the stoop on the on your outside of your your wonderful 130 year old canalside house. And when you’ve bought a house there, and you’re pretty much saying you’re living here for the rest of your lives, that’s your fairy tale. So would that be you you put that in the book? Had you thought about that? Or do you did you talked about that before? putting that in the book? Or was it something that the book has crystallised for you?

Melissa Bruntlett 8:43
I think from the moment we made the decision to move to the Netherlands, I think we both approached it as this could possibly be a very permanent move for us. As we say in the introduction, you know, we we reached sort of a moment in Vancouver where we absolutely loved the city. We love living in British Columbia and being surrounded by all the natural beauty and the city itself is such a wonderful place to live and to raise kids. But we really needed to downsize, we’d reached I guess, that proverbial point in your lives when you’re at your late 30s, early 40s. And you want to settle down a little. And we found ourselves prior to making the decision to move to the Netherlands, struggling to find a city that we could enjoy the quality of life that we did in Vancouver. Being car free, in terms of our living circumstance, and being able to walk in cycle and enjoy the city without having, you know, to rely on cars to get us around. It was really hard to find a place that could mimic that in and around where we were living in Vancouver or even returning back to Ontario in more central Eastern Canada where our parents and siblings live and so we knowing we were coming to a country where we were going to be able to enjoy a similar quality of life in terms of how we moved, we sort of knew that this is likely going to be a rather permanent move for us. And yes, that was solidified a, you know, when we decided to buy a house here and really set some roots down. But I think even before we got here, we knew that this could end very well might be a permanent stay for us.

Chris Bruntlett 10:29
Well, the very last chapter of the book is about the idea of ageing in place and building Age Friendly cities. And I think that the very end of the writing process helped us understand that we wanted to live in a city that allowed us to age in place that didn’t force us as our, perhaps our parents and other relatives, to either become reliant on other people for our transportation, or move elsewhere in the city so that we’re more conveniently located to the services that we need. We knew we had everything we needed in Delft within a 10 minute walk. And as Melissa said, just purchasing this home on a canal, the five minute walk from the city centres is crystallised everything we’ve been thinking about. And we really see ourselves getting old and living forever in this house, because it’s perfectly located perfect size. And we don’t see ourselves in the future. You know, having to be necessarily moving to as if we’re looking for proximity, mobility, or other compromise to make other compromises in terms of the location. Delft is a city where people from young to old can can exist quite comfortably.

Carlton Reid 11:53
The book is a love story, then it absolutely you as a couple, of course, and then just you falling in love with Delft that that’s absolutely there, of course, and getting rid of cars, which is a lovely concept. But the book is about getting rid of cars, but might you just the book actually be you should move to that Delft if you want to live the lifestyle that you’re describing in Delft, this lovely story, shouldn’t you just move to Delft?

Chris Bruntlett 12:21
I wouldn’t say that. No, I mean, not everyone has the privilege, the ability, the means the and in terms of physical space, it’s impossible to everybody to move to the Netherlands. And it’s certainly not what we’re advocating, we’re quite open in the book that we do have this who have had this privilege to move here. But there’s little do we know when we decided to move to Delft that it was really kind of this this place in the 1970s, that tried a lot of different policies, from the corner to the traffic circulation plan, to the low car city centre. These are policies that can be implemented virtually at anywhere, and they are starting to be implemented in places of the world like Barcelona and Auckland. So our intention was not to say, you know, everybody come here to experience this quality of life, it’s to build this quality of life into your own city simply by treating cars as guests, rather than as we have in the last 40 to 50 years treating them as the guest of honour in our urban fabric.

Melissa Bruntlett 13:26
Yeah, I think, I think what’s I think what I really wanted, and what Chris and I think both really wanted to sort of challenge is that it shouldn’t involve or shouldn’t be a prerequisite that you have this privilege to be able to move to a city like this, which it shouldn’t be that you have to leave where you are to experience a higher quality of life. And so you know, both of us in our day jobs, were so focused on exporting a lot of this knowledge to international cities to really help everywhere start to realise the benefits and also start working towards creating these more human focus cities. So we understand that, you know, for example, the suburb of Ontario and Kitchener Waterloo that we grew up in, is never going to be exactly emulating Delft, for example. But there are a lot of things that can be done to help lower car usage, provide people with other options, connect them with their community in a better way, that, you know, they don’t have to move across the Atlantic to a Dutch city to be able to enjoy a better quality of life. These ideas should and can and are being applied in order to make sure that for those that don’t have the ability to pack up their family and move to another country, another city, that their city can start to enjoy some of these same benefits that we’ve come to enjoy having lived here.

Carlton Reid 14:50
Hmm. Melissa, you mentioned your careers there. So that’s a good time to introduce the fact that you’re working for Mobycon. And then Chris, you’re working for the Dutch Cycling Embassy. So, Melissa first, tell me what Mobycon is. And you kind of briefly touched upon it there. But just tell us again. And then Chris, you follow that up by telling us a bit more about the Dutch Cycling Embassy?

Melissa Bruntlett 15:15
Yeah, sure. So Mobycon is a Dutch North American consultancy, that focuses on sustainable mobility. So here in the Netherlands, there’s a lot of focus on all aspects, whether that’s walking placemaking cycling, or public transport, how do they move to more sustainable choices, obviously, there is a lot of sustainable sustainable mobility here in the Netherlands. But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement. But for my part, I work with our international team in exporting a lot of that knowledge largely focused around cycling, but also placemaking. And walking, both elsewhere in Europe, so across the continent, but we’ve also done some work in the UK. And then we have offices in Canada and the US where we are taking a lot of the ideas that Chris and I presented, for example, in the first book in building the cycling city, and applying them in context, through design through planning through policy in cities and towns throughout Canada in the US.

Chris Bruntlett 16:15
Yeah, so I find myself in the very strange position that I am a Canadian, advocating for the Netherlands as the world’s leading cycling nation. But the the, the fact of the matter is, as a Dutch Cycling Embassy, it’s a organisation that public private partnership that the national government here in the Netherlands started, basically to export the knowledge and expertise that exists here in this country, and it’s been built over the last 50 years or so. So, we have about 80 different organisations within our network. They are private consultants such as mobicom. They are bicycle manufacturers, like Gazelle. They are the various municipal governments, universities and bike parking manufacturers, all looking to work overseas and help cities and regions become more bicycle friendly. So we bring teams around the world to host workshops, webinars, training. And then inversely, we also do a lot of study tours and welcome groups from elsewhere in the world and take them for tours and classroom sessions to learn from the the amazing conditions here. And so yeah, as I said, I’m marketing and communication manager selling Dutch cycling as as this foreigners is international outside voice but I think it just speaks volumes to how normalised and mundane cycling has become here that that most people who live here don’t think it’s it’s special or recognise it as something that’s should be spread or or exported around the world.

Carlton Reid 17:52
In your book, you mentioned it on that point that you know, when you go you have been abroad. And then you come back you kind of hear the birdsong. You hear the quietude of Delft, of course, a lot of people have roughly the same thing. Even in the most busy, you know, urban cities with with COVID-19 Coronavirus, where people in cities heard that song again. So we kind of all had that that brief glimpse of what you’re getting on a daily basis. Do you think that COVID-19 might actually help urbanist people interested in getting rid of cars to actually get rid of cars?

Melissa Bruntlett 18:37
Right, think for Chris and I that’s certainly the hope. And we found ourselves in this interesting position. We were writing the book. So we had pitched it to Ireland press hadn’t had everything approved. And it started the initial writing process before the pandemic hit. And we actually had several moments that when we’re writing the first few chapters where we’re like, is this even going to be relevant anymore what we’re writing because everyone is experiencing exactly what we’re trying to promote. But I think and Chris would probably agree that I think the challenge now is to not return to the status quo, which we have seen happen in a few cities, as things start to open up again, that this return to car use, or for busier cities, it losing some of that quality that a lot of people experienced. And so we really hope that with that knowledge with that experience, plus what we’ve written in the book, it helps to really solidify why it’s really important because yeah, that that birdsong we have we remember Clarence Eckerson in New York, commenting us in the heart of Manhattan, Manhattan hearing birds. And you know, who wouldn’t want that on a much more regular basis in New York City to be able to hear the natural world around you and so yeah, I guess the challenge now is to record Notice how important that experience was and should be continued. But yeah, I I remain pessimistically optimistic. Maybe Chris feels a little bit differently. But yeah, I, I was amazing that that was all happening as we were writing this. And I really hope it helps to reinforce what we were saying.

Chris Bruntlett 20:20
Well, I think you know, historically much is made of the Netherlands, experiencing the OPEC oil crisis in the 1970s, in the six weeks where they suddenly had a gasoline shortage and the sale of bicycles doubled. It was kind of this lightbulb moment as a society when they realised they had to build a more resilient transport system and, and look at their streets a little bit differently, both in terms of the politicians, but also in terms of the general population. We’re seeing sparks of that light bulb moment now in cities around the world. We always joked beforehand that to make these changes, people would need to come to the Netherlands to experience them firsthand. But they really experienced them on their front porch and on their front doorstep. For albeit, you know, a short period of time, but suddenly, they were out on their street, sometimes playing tennis, interacting with their neighbours for the first time, breathing the air, smelling the ocean, if they lived by the sea, hearing the birds seeing what their city looked like with fewer cars. zooming around, and now as Moses hinted is, is capturing that momentum, supporting elected officials that are going to implement some of the puppet changes that have been made, whether it’s puppet bike infrastructure, or pop up dining terraces, but making sure that this moment turns into a movement for cities that are prioritise the people that live in them, rather than the vehicles, the motor vehicles that they drive.

Carlton Reid 21:51
Now, Island Press is, of course, a climate change specialist publisher. So it must have been a relatively easy pitch. I mean, it’s never an easy pitch ever, but it must have been relatively easy pitch to say to a climate change publisher, we want to write a book about getting rid of cars. Was that something that just went? Oh, yes, we absolutely need a book like that. How was that that publication? process? How did that go for you?

Chris Bruntlett 22:21
Actually, it was quite difficult to be honest, I don’t think we always package this as our personal story. That would include some of the anecdotes of us moving here. And I don’t think I’ve impressive really published a book like that before. I think they’re very kind of policy nonfiction. technical stuff. Exactly. Exactly. So we had some convincing to do to be honest, to get them on board and you know, ultimately, we didn’t know well, we didn’t want to write building the cycling city to we didn’t want to just you know tell the same story or or slightly different story. We wanted to make this project personal we wanted to make it emotive use our engaging the reader user help them to experience what we’ve experienced here bring them along for a journey that also includes some some technical facts and figures to backup our case. But yeah, it was a bit of a pitch to get them to come along for the ride Not to mention you know, we were promotion for this book is going to look a lot different than the first book with us both working day jobs and having relocated to Europe. There was not going to be any kind of multi week tour of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand as it was the first time around. So a lot has changed since since we wrote our first book and so we’re having to adapt and also bring Island press along for the ride but we hope their their faith in us will be rewarded again.

Carlton Reid 23:54
It’s tough to say that this is one of my favourites because it’s certainly my favourites Of course in in your book, it’s it’s wonderful. But I found especially cute, the the bits of Dutch that you put into the book, and I’m very pleased that you’ve put those bits of Dutch into the book because it really adds a lot of flavour. Yes, you’re learning the language, of course, but you’re also learning in a really cute part of the language, you know, these kind of, you know, aphorisms and and words and phrases that are just so wonderful. Now one of them I picked out was and of course you’re gonna be able to pronounce as much better than me. Uitwaaien is wind bath?

Melissa Bruntlett 24:35
Yes.

Carlton Reid 24:36
So describe what a wind bath concept what a wind bath is and please correct my pronunciation.

Melissa Bruntlett 24:44
Yeah, so that would be uitwaaien. Which, funnily enough, Chris and I seem to be experiencing everyday. It’s been a very windy April and May or, you know, year here in the Netherlands. But essentially, that’s the content of going out and getting fresh air or frisse neus. You know, having the wind in your face sort of washing away any of the stresses of the day or the week or the month. And, you know, it’s, you know, in Canada, we would talk about going out to get a breath of fresh air. Similarly, but in this case, you have quite heavy winds in your face. And it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s an experience to have the first few times, but I understand why that now having lived here for as long as we have, why it’s important for people because it’s just this like removal of Yeah, just the stress that most of us experience, you know, being whether you will have a family or you’re working full time or however you might experience stress. It’s just a way to wash that all the way in what is a very prevalent force of nature here in the country. And I think in the book and I like Chris. Yes, exactly. No hills, lots of wind.

Chris Bruntlett 26:01
Yeah, I just realised, though, that you use the term frisse neus without actually translating it. So we Oh, yeah. brilliant, brilliant, turn a phrase from the Dutch, which literally means “fresh nose.” So when they say that they’re going to get fresh air, it’s actually kind of, they’re going to get a fresh nose. But yeah, I mean, it just comes back to this connection with nature that the Dutch have in their cities because they haven’t paved over every square inch of it. So by having fewer room for cars, fewer lanes, more roundabouts that are vegetated, they’ve got room for more trees, more grass more. And then the compact cities allow for a greater proximity to the surrounding polders and forests and nature. But you’re never very far from greenery or water. And this acts as a therapeutic sensation that improves people’s mental health and overall well being. And again, I think it’s something that we we often neglect when we talk about city living, we assume that it has to be stressful and, and, and bleak, and Asheville everywhere when we can, if we simply reallocate the space on our cities create greenery that’s inter woven with the the streets and intersections and the public spaces.

Carlton Reid 27:21
I’m gonna pick out another phrase and you can give me the Dutch I’ll give you just the English because I absolutely guarantee I’ll murder the Dutch but the phrase is “we’re not the same, but we’re worth the same.” So what’s the what if you can remember what’s that in Dutch? And then just describe roughly was talking about? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 27:38
I don’t, don’t remember the exact that’s turn of phrase because it’s slightly different. But this is in the, in the context of a really egalitarian society. So we make this point that the streets are accessible to everybody, whether they have a, you know, a 50,000 Euro Mercedes Benz or a 50 Euro bicycle, and it’s really ingrained in the culture here that there’s a real sense of equity. And so there’s not this class spaced, reinforced class reinforced system that permeates all levels of society, not the least of which are there their streets and cycle tracks and public spaces. So welcome coming

Carlton Reid 28:27
So did you find the phrase Melissa?

Melissa Bruntlett 28:28
I’m now I’m googling it, because now I can’t remember it. I’m even searching in the manuscripts. And of course, it’s not finding it for me. And I know the phrase, yeah, it’s this. But yeah, forget that, carry on.

Carlton Reid 28:39
No, that was very cruel of me to throw not just one word, but like a whole phrase. But where I guess where I was coming at it from and the reason why I picked it that was so that’s, that’s a cultural norm in the Netherlands. So my question is, you know, to curb traffic to get rid of motorcars, yeah. You need certain things you need cultural changes, not just physical, you know, concrete and curbs and, and Lane width, all those colour changes, you need a cultural switch as well. So, is that not the most difficult thing to actually fix? You can fix engineering, but can you really fix how people and nation a group actually think about mobility, about priority on the streets? And isn’t just not the fact that well, the Netherlands have got this dialled in, and you ain’t gonna be able to translate that fully anywhere else. Yeah,

Melissa Bruntlett 29:48
I would. I would say that it’s absolutely possible. And I think one of the benefits I think we have of having lived in a city like Vancouver, is that we watched as things changed. So as that infrastructure started to be built, and more and more people started to experience getting around the city more on bicycle on foot or, or a combination thereof with public transport, we saw a cultural shift. And it’s but the thing is, it’s not going to be fast. And this is one thing that Chris and I say all the time is we’re talking about change, cultural change, overgenerous a generation, which, for a lot of us working in mobility and an urban ism can be quite frustrating, because we can see we know what the benefits are, we’ve seen it in action and in various places, but it’s to not see it immediately, or have that immediate gratification and in our own cities can be very challenging. But I see it as possible. And, you know, as you were speaking, Carlton, it made me think of when we were interviewing one of our friends in the US who was talking about women in cycling, and how, you know, oftentimes when they build new cycle tracks, in cities, if if they don’t see anyone using it, or they only see it used once in a while, then it’s deemed a failure. But for her, she says that, you know, if you see one woman cycling on that cycle track with a child, that is a success, that’s proof that this is something people want, and it’s just going to take time to build. And, you know, we saw that in Vancouver, where, when we first moved there, cycling was definitely something nice, something for the fit and the brave. And then over the course of the 11 years that we lived there, we saw more and more families cycling more and more people of various ages and abilities and races cycling. So I think it’s absolutely possible. And I don’t think you necessarily have to have that pragmatic culture that we have. We see people have here in the Netherlands, it can be done. It takes patience, unfortunately. But I think it’s absolutely possible. And AI just takes showing people what is what is possible when we start building safer streets with space for fewer cars and more space for public life.

Chris Bruntlett 32:04
It’s sorry, so I found the expression and I’m going to try and pronounce it. It’s so it’s “niet gelijk, maar wel
gelijkwaardig” we’re not the same, but we’re worth the same. And it I think you framed it one way, Carlton, is it does there need to be a cultural change to facilitate a structural change, but maybe we can we can look at it the other way and and looking here in the Netherlands, were the structural changes that were made to the streets in the 1970s. Did they influence the cultural changes that we’re seeing today, and this is what we explore in the chapter about the trusting city is how more people on foot and bicycle making eye contact, having to collaborate with one another to negotiate intersections and share space, how that builds, and we’re a trusting society, of people that are accepting of other people’s differences and cultures. And it’s really interesting to think how our transport systems and our mobility systems may make our society more egalitarian. Rather than sitting back and saying, well, only eat out there in societies could undergo these changes the chicken and egg and hopefully we can, we can pick a place to start and rather than pointing at external factors as reasons why we can’t integrate these, these important measures.

Carlton Reid 33:30
Lots that’s very good to hear. If that’s the case, so we can change. I’d like to now cut to an ad break. But after the ad, I would like to go through your book chapter by chapter because you mentioned the trusting city there. And there are there are 10 chapters and the conclusions. I want you to describe each chapter we need to give like a short precis of each chapter, I’m going to give one to Melissa and wanted to create as your forewarning. That’s why I’m going to ask him for next. But right now let’s go to an ad break with David.

David Bernstein 33:59
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Carlton Reid 35:24
Thanks, David. And we are back with Chris and Melissa Bruntlett. And they’re in their fairytale house in in the in the fairytale city of Delft in the Netherlands. And they’ve been telling us why they moved there, how much they’re loving it. And before we get on to going through and getting a precis of each each chapter in the book, I want to talk about their kids. Because that’s absolutely a key component. We’re not doing any privacy issues here because Chris and Melissa your kids are mentioned throughout the book and their experiences are mentioned throughout the book, which which is which is very, very inspiring and heartening, but let’s just talk about Coralie and Etienne now, I’m assuming that the ages of 12 and 10 so Coralie 12, Etienne 10. That was when you moved in 2019, so they’re now older?

Melissa Bruntlett 36:15
Yeah. Coralie is now 14 and a half and Etienne is 12. And yeah, we’ve got well, Coralie started right in high school, we’ve got another child about to join them in high school as well. So yeah, it’s it, they’re doing well, as far as, as far as they tell us anyways, you know, having a teenager and a preteen, they certainly start to keep a few things from their parents now and then. But yeah, it’s been an interesting experience for them. I won’t lie and say that it was rosy from the start, we had, you know, a bit of melancholy when we first moved here, they certainly miss their peers that they had built relationships with back in Vancouver. But we did actually do a check in we were on holiday last week, because we’re currently on there, may vacation for two weeks, and we went away and asked, you know, it’s been two years, how are you feeling? Do you still hate us? Did we make the worst decision of our life is taking you guys here? And they both said emphatically that they’re happy that we’re here. They of course, still miss their friends. But they, they’ve come to appreciate living here, which is good. We’ll see if that continues. You know, we’ve still got a few more years before they’re adults and fully appreciate where we’re at in life.

Melissa Bruntlett 37:31
But

Melissa Bruntlett 37:33
yeah, I think I think they’re doing okay, as much as they tell us anyways.

Chris Bruntlett 37:37
Yeah, I think Melissa and I both did similar moves as children of around 10 years age. I’ve actually moved from the UK to Canada, she moved from Eastern Canada, French Canada to Ontario. So we’re kind of familiar with the circumstances. And we were quite careful about giving them the time and space they needed to adjust and integrate. They went straight into a Dutch language school in the middle of the school year in February, and which couldn’t have been easy but they really I think surprised us with how resilient they were how quickly they made friends how quickly they learned the city. And of course as we write in the first chapter, the the traffic concentrates and the the cycle tracks really just gave them this freedom that we anticipated, but never really understood how quickly or how amazing it would be that to give them suddenly this this autonomy and independence of getting around a to be without mom and dad at your side.

Carlton Reid 38:43
Because you you quote Lenore Skenazy in the book, and she’s famous for the free range kids, you know, no helicopter, parenting approach, and you’ve basically taken that concept. And you’ve you’ve, I’d like to say ran with it, but you’ve cycled with it, you’ve given your kids the freedom the kind of freedom that kids in the US kids in the in Canada, kids in the UK do not have.

Chris Bruntlett 39:08
We actually flirted with that freedom in Vancouver, you know, we would, within reason allow them to walk to the corner store or to their school or to the community centre. But the problem was the built environment would not support that. That freedom and so we found ourselves worrying about faded crosswalks that drivers would ignore about footpaths that would disappear every time they cross the side street about six lanes of traffic that was cutting through our neighbourhood that they would have to cross and that made giving them that freedom and independence a very difficult choice. And, and more often than not, we found ourselves supervising them for short trips, when we really wanted them to let them spread their wings and, and get around independently. So we’re I think, are quite relieved that we now live in a place a built environment that supports That freedom and it speaks volumes to how the prevalence of car traffic really has robbed children of their freedom, and forced them to be constantly under supervision and rely on their parents for their transportation needs.

Carlton Reid 40:17
So that was chapter one in effect in your book. So the child friendly city is chapter number one after the introduction, of course. So if I can ask you, in turn to describe the other chapters now, I’ll mention which chapter obviously will go chronologically. If you could just take it in turn to tell us what that chapter is about, you’d have to like, give the whole game away. But just you know, briefly, what that that that chapters about so chapter number two is the connected city what’s what’s, what’s the thing going on there? And I’m gonna, I’m gonna give this to Chris.

Chris Bruntlett 40:49
Yeah. So I mean, unbeknownst to us when we moved to Delft, this was a city where the runner was invented the living Street, this concept of reclaiming the space outside your front door for play social activity, gathering and interaction with your neighbours. And for a long time, we’ve been aware of the Donald Appleyard and his really groundbreaking research in the 1970s, about how the volume and speed of traffic outside your front door really limits your connections on your street, your friends, acquaintances with your neighbours and the time you spend on your street and the sense of ownership that you spend on your street. So we really want to explore how prioritising the speed and volume of cars, outside our front door impacts our social relationships with our friends and neighbours. And we interject with some personal experiences, unexpected encounters with people living on our street to that kind of reinforces this research, and makes the case that that perhaps we should be looking at, well, what they’re implementing in London is low traffic neighbourhoods. But this idea of not banning cars altogether, but treating them as guests on, particularly on our residential streets.

Carlton Reid 42:10
Okay, Melissa, chapter three, the trusting city.

Melissa Bruntlett 42:14
Yeah, this this chapter, I think it’s it’s really about it takes the concepts of the first or the last chapter of the connected city and extrapolate that to the broader society. So the way in which people move around their city, if it’s a much more human scale way of living around whether that’s walking, cycling, or some other form of human mobility, it forces you to start connecting with the people you’re moving around the city with, and really creates a social trust. Because here, especially here in the Netherlands, traffic lights are often removed, there’s no traffic signage, and so you’re forced to interact with the people that you’re moving around the city with. And that does include cars, you know, having an what the design of the street really forces people to make eye contact to acknowledge each other. And that leads to a much more interactive experience, but also much more trusting. You know, if you look at someone if you’re forced to make eye contact, that how they react to you that they acknowledge you being in that space will ultimately affect how you navigate around each other in the space in which you’re moving. We interviewed Marco te Brömmelstroet for that, for this chapter, who talks a lot about how speed really impacts our ability to be able to approach our society and the way and our interactions in the city in a much more calm and trusting way. And so when we’re moving in fast cars, whenever things racing bias, we become very insular, it’s about our trip and our journey and anything that gets in the way becomes a very negative, whereas when you start to slow the way we move down, you’re forced to interact with people you’re forced to suddenly acknowledge the existence of the people around you and it just creates much more trusting environment and we obviously get much more into what that means in terms of the city itself and and society at a larger scale because of these forced moments of interaction with our fellow human beings.

Carlton Reid 44:22
And I should just say that Marco there is @CyclingProfessor (@fietsprofessor) so people on Twitter who follow Chris and Melissa on Twitter, I’m sure they also follow Marco the cycling professor. Chris, the feminist city, Chapter Four.

Chris Bruntlett 44:37
I think I’m gonna defer to Melissa because this is a her, er …

Carlton Reid 44:42
No, I constructed the way we started the child friendly city. I knew I actually can’t get Chris to do chapter four. So no, no, no, no, you can’t. You’ve got to tell us about it, Chris.

Chris Bruntlett 44:54
Okay, sure. Yeah, no, I think the way that we have built our Our urban fabric or our cities, our transportation networks up to this point has been very male centric, and men tend to disproportionately drive motor vehicles, they take longer distance, single purpose trips. And inversely, that leaves women out of the equation and doesn’t take their travel patterns in into consideration, which are often more sustainable foot bicycle or public transport. They’re usually shorter distance trips, they’re usually Multi Purpose trips, because they are still doing predominantly that the care work. And so we delve into this idea of care trips, and which are again, disproportionately made by women, and how we can build transportation networks that facilitate those care trips. And as you can imagine, it comes down to fine grain cycling, that works, that comes down to great walking conditions, it comes down to giving children the freedom so that their their moms don’t have to necessarily take them pick them up to drop them off at school. So a city that doesn’t just accommodate the the single purpose one way commute for a predominantly male driver. And that’s largely historically been done, because the people in the decision making chambers are affluent men, that, that we’ve, we can look at building more equity in terms of gender equity, by simply building more walking and cycling and better, faster, more frequent public transportation to support those trips that they’re already making and make their lives a lot easier.

Carlton Reid 46:46
Okay, nice summary, chapter five, Melissa, that will be the hearing city. And I guess we’re gonna have some birdsong here?

Melissa Bruntlett 46:53
Yes. Well, I mean, I think we’ve talked a lot about the benefit of you know, when we remove excessive numbers of cars in our city, and we really reduce the sounds that they contribute to in the city, you start to hear a lot more of the natural world. But one of the things that I think is really important in this chapter is not just the ability to hear the beautiful bird songs, but also the impact that has on us as individuals on our mental state and our overall stress by reducing the amount of ambient noise that we experience. And I think it’s actually funny because I was just watching, pretended to city on Netflix with Fran Lebowitz. And she refers to the the noise of New York City. And that’s just a part of it, you know, we don’t want to escape the noise. This is our noise. But I think there’s not that recognition that goes along with that of the stress of that noise creates, in terms of just us as individuals, if you’re constantly in this hyper noisy environment, you’re always on alert, you’re always at attention, you’re always in that fight or flight kind of mode. And so what this chapter, what I love that it delves into is that when we create these calmer ambient environments with lower decibels of noise, what that means for the citizens in general, not just the ability to hear the nature or hear the bricks, as people cycled by or hear people enjoying a beer on a patio, but overall in you know, really increasing that enjoyment of the city itself, and a sense of calm for us as individuals. And so I love that, you know, birdsong is so much a part of that or just the natural sounds of of the city. But you know, what that means to us as individuals, I think is an important conversation and emerging conversation, and we delve into that in this chapter.

Carlton Reid 48:47
Okay, Chris, you’re up next, because you are going to have to talk about the therapeutic city.

Chris Bruntlett 48:52
Yeah, so building on this idea of calming environments, we do a bit of a dive with our friend Robin Mazumder, who recently completed his PhD on this exact topic, mental health in the urban environment. And look at the way that car dominated environments really diminish minister mental health as a source of stress as a source of noise. And really well as we were talking about earlier, reduce the amount of green space we have access to, and really have these subtle ways that they are testing us as human beings, for lack of a better way to put it. And this was a chapter we wrote, just after lockdown started, where again, I think everyone in the world suddenly gained a newfound appreciation for the ability to just get outside, move their body, have some kind of a social distance, social interaction make, talk to people from a distance. And this was a key way that they kept their sanity, if you will, under some very stressful conditions, and otherwise they were locked down in their home. So I think we, like everyone gained a newfound appreciation for especially in Delft here, being able to get outside for a bike ride or walk into the city centre, a meandering, pedal through the polders all of them have a means to unwind. And de stress from, you know, we were still working jobs, we were still trying to make ends meet internally, but those little breaks that we have, it is possible to build them into our cities, to give people that opportunity to, to de stress and re energise and, well, it’s a form of therapy, as we said, The this, this wind bath or variety of cultures have their own versions of it. But at the end of the day, it’s about a means of improving your mental health.

Carlton Reid 51:09
This next chapter, chapter seven is the world’s shortest chapter, the world’s most obvious chapter, because it’s the accessible city.

Melissa Bruntlett 51:18
Excellent point. But I think, you know, one of the things with this chapter, there’s two parts of this, in that being mostly able bodied, most of the time, I had a brief stint recently with a broken leg that reduced my ability to move around. But we really felt compelled to speak to somebody who has experienced a Dutch city as someone with limited mobility. So we interviewed a wonderful woman named Maya [Maya van der Does-Levi], who shared her story of living with multiple multiple sclerosis, and getting around in the Netherlands. And, you know, in talking to her, there are things that we didn’t realise, including the fact that, you know, we enjoy traffic, calm streets, and we enjoy walking around on the street once in a while. And it’s a bit of, for us liberation, and not having grown up in North America where there’s no way you would remove walking in the middle of the street in the middle of the day. But she points out that that actually enables her to be more independently mobile. And that’s something we also delve into more with Dr. Bridget, for debt from New Zealand who, who really talks about this idea of when we’re thinking about people with disabilities, and how they move through the city, there’s so much focus on making sure that we have roads in order to allow them to be able to transport more freely in cars or in public transport, when in fact, that is the adverse of what a lot of these individuals want. They don’t want to be dependent on somebody to move around, they want to be independent, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is to have ownership of your own mobility is to have a sense of freedom and joy in terms of how you get around. And so this chapter, I totally agree, it could be simple and say yes, make your cities accessible, period, end of story. But understanding why it’s so important. And you know, how cars do limit how people with various disabilities, whether that’s mobility disabilities, or sight, hearing any of these things, by reducing the ability or the possibility of conflict with motor vehicles and enabling more independent mobility, we are inherently telling these people you are not other, you are not separate from society, you are a part of it. And we want to facilitate you owning your ability to be a part of society.

Carlton Reid 53:39
And as a guidedog puppy trainer, I am absolutely anti car on that particular aspect, because so many cars are parked on sidewalks on pavements. And it’s only when you really you get a guide dog and you have to walk around that you really realise that this is so selfish, so entire door. And so blocking for anybody that doesn’t have, you know, feet to walk and an eyes to see because it’s make cities incredibly difficult to navigate. If you’ve got these big four wheel vehicles parked from the infrastructure that’s actually meant for pedestrians, which I’m guessing you don’t get that much of in the Netherlands, they kind of design that out. We do get that

Melissa Bruntlett 54:25
I you know, we have our own set of challenges. I think your historic cities have had mind boggling mind bogglingly narrow sidewalks and footpaths. And so yeah, that’s one of the things that my actually says is I don’t I never use the footpath. It’s too hard for me. There’s either assign a sandwich boards on it or they’re too narrow or they’re old and a bit crumbly. And so the road infrastructure is is how she gets around. She uses the cycletrack she uses the traffic calm streets, and not just for getting around Delft, but forgetting even further outside of the city. So, yeah, hearing her story and and hearing how motor vehicles through the rest of the chapter are really helping to not to enable these people but really hinder their mobility is is an important topic that anyone working in mobility and urban design needs to hear or read, I guess, in this case, in terms of changing their thinking.

Chris Bruntlett 55:23
And I unfortunately, I think it has become a bit of a counterpoint when you start talking about restricting car traffic, removing car parking, and that you’ve seen it, especially with the low traffic neighbourhoods. In London, the first thing people say is what about the disabled is if you are restricting the mobility of everyone with a disability that they rely solely on a private automobile to get from A to B, when the statistics that you pulled out prove actually the exact opposite, I think 60% of the people with physical disability in the UK do not have access to their own motor vehicle. But the physical disability has been used as this as an excuse to build in more car dependence, unfortunately, when the facts and figures Don’t, don’t prove that out, and it’s usually able bodied people that are using the disabled as a bit of a trope, unfortunately, to argue that cities should not limit their automobility

Carlton Reid 56:29
if we’re going to build back better. And your thesis is that what to do that you curb cars, you’re going to get a richer city. So chapter eight is the prosperous cities how we’re going to get more prosperous cities, Chris?

Chris Bruntlett 56:43
Yeah, this was a, again, a chapter that we had proposed before refer to the pandemic. But for us, it really came down to access to opportunity, I think, coming from Canada, and also, you know, spending a lot of time in the United States, we saw how codependency was really robbing people of their access to opportunity, or their society required the the expense of a private automobile, which is now 20 or $12,000 per year when you take all expenses into consideration. And that’s really inequitable and unfair burden to expect for people, especially low income, and so but that’s only because the options, the alternatives, the more economic alternatives do not exist. And so we look at the kind of public transportation system that exists here in the Netherlands, in combination with the Cycling Network, how the two really reinforce each other, support each other to provide a broader cross section of the population with access to affordable housing, to steady employment, to education, to healthcare, to all of their daily needs, without necessarily the the financial burden of their own private automobile. And so we can speak to this ourselves, okay, where, you know, not in a low income bracket, but without the expense of a car, we suddenly have more money to spend in our community on small businesses. And, and I think, yeah, yeah, exactly. And we are actually, you know, we’re in this very privileged position, actually to walk work four days per week instead of the traditional five day workweek, which is something more Dutch companies are doing, but we probably couldn’t do without the, if we were paying the monthly car payments and parking in gasoline and

Carlton Reid 58:43
Okay, Melissa, chapter nine, the resilient city,

Melissa Bruntlett 58:46
what does it mean to create a resilient city, and we interviewed Dr. Judith Yang for the herb Wang sorry for this chapter. And she really helped to change our thinking a little bit, because when we look at a resilient city, we think, Okay, this is a city that can sustain itself long term despite potential natural disturbances or unnatural or manmade disturbances. But what she argues in this chapter, and what helps to open our eyes a little bit is that there’s two ways for a city to be resilient. One is that you’ve designed it in a way that even if you have impact be that something as small as construction or something much larger, like a natural disaster, the city can easily returned back to you at status quo. But one of the things that we need to look at really when we’re talking about resiliency is can we adapt? Can we change? And can we flip that regime to be stable or resilient in a different way? So that’s the way we sort of reflect that is looking back at this OPEC oil crisis, and how here in the Netherlands, it wasn’t a matter of when that oil reserve became available. Again, they just went back to the status quo, but rather found A different way of thinking flipped the way that they were designing their cities the way that they were managing them to a different stability regime to allow for much more human centred travel. And so it presents these opportunities and really reflects on the idea that As humans, we evolve, we adapt, our cities evolve and adapt with us. And so resiliency is not about making sure that your city can stay the same, but that you can adapt in a way that leads to arguably a higher quality of life and a better city overall, for its citizens

Carlton Reid 1:00:35
Tell me more about the ageing city.

Chris Bruntlett 1:00:37
Yeah, I think, as I hinted at earlier, we’ve watched our parents and our grandparents get old in fairly car dependent places. And in some instances, they’ve really been trapped in their houses, for lack of a better way to put it completely dependent on when there, there is a period of our lives inevitably when we cannot drive safely. The American automobile says it’s on average 10 years for a US senior citizen where they outlive their ability to drive safely. And in that 10 year period, we’re left with very few options, we’re either relying on a public transportation system that that’s infrequent and unreliable, or we’re forced to rely on our children, our adult children or neighbours for transportation, or we are trapped in our homes in in our neighbourhoods or we are institutionalised in a care home. And I think there’s a lot to be said about neighbourhoods, cities, largely, you know, low car places that actually allow people to age in place comfortably without being reliant on others, external forces for their mobility. And so we tell the story of Pater, one of our neighbours here in Delft that has been born and raised his entire life on the street. He was born there. And now in his 70s, he’s retired, they’re living in his own house without a car, able to get around by foot or bicycle everywhere he needs to grocery store, the community centre, the schools, that he volunteers that to stay active in the community. And that’s all supported, again, by the the infrastructure and the policy decisions that were made many years ago to build a city that’s not car dependent, and car dominant. So when we look ahead at this baby boom generation, that’s retiring and ageing very quickly, we suddenly find ourselves with an entire generation that’s going to be tracked in the neighbourhoods that they built, the car dependent places they’ve built. And I think it’s very urgent to to start looking at that as a challenge in this kind of emergency that it is, and giving them means of mobility. And, of course, we talked about Cycling is, is one route, but it is not an option for everybody. But there’s a lot to be said for the fact that the age group of 65 and above cycles more than any other adult Group here in the Netherlands. So it’s Cycling is a means of participating in society. It’s a means of staying healthy, active, and, and part of society. And we often elsewhere in the world, perhaps think of cycling as a young, able bodied activity, but in a lot of sense, it benefits the ageing population much more and gives them an alternative drive when they can no longer drive.

Carlton Reid 1:03:39
Hmm, I will thank you ever so much for going through those 10 chapters with us. And I know people are going to be absolutely now busting a gut to want to get this when it comes out in in June. So to wrap up this show, if you wouldn’t mind, Chris, if you could tell us about all your social media, because you have got quite a few. So all your social media hats where people can actually get in touch with you. But then, but first, Melissa, if you could tell people where people are going to be able to get the book from, tell us again the exact publication date, give us the price, give us how many pages but give us give us that kind of information.

Melissa Bruntlett 1:04:19
Price? That’s a great one. I don’t know. It’s a affordable book. That’s what I know. But you can buy it directly from our publisher Island press from Ireland press.org I believe Chris, correct me if I’m wrong.

Chris Bruntlett 1:04:34
Listeners in the UK, we actually have a pre sale promo code set up with Marston books, which are the US so the UK distributor of Ireland press. So if you go to their website Marston.co.uk. And site the promo code ISCT you can get 30% off of a copy of Curbing Traffic and 30% off of our first book Building the Cycling City, which is significant savings to say the least.

Carlton Reid 1:05:06
Cool, I will actually put that in the, in the show notes if you if you send me the absolute perfect link, so I get that. And also we’re gonna put in the show notes are all your social media handles. So tell us about that, Chris.

Chris Bruntlett 1:05:17
Yes. As you hinted, we are quite prolific on social media.

Carlton Reid 1:05:23
This is the next half an hour of the show …

Chris Bruntlett 1:05:28
We have a shared account @modacitylife on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I am doing the social media for the Dutch Cycling Embassy these days at cycling_embassy again on all four of those platforms. And likewise, Melissa is doing social media for Mobycon at Mobycon. Oh, and and, yeah, you can get your daily dose of such inspiration from all three of those accounts.

Carlton Reid 1:06:07
Thanks to Chris and Melissa Bruntlett there. And thanks to you for listening to the Spokesmen cycling podcast, show notes and more can be found on the-spokesmen.com Meanwhile, get out there and ride …