Heads in the clouds

Yates fights back…plus

First village to be taken by the sea 

And they’re off! The GC race in the Giro came alive in the Alps on Sunday when Britain’s Yates quickly followed by the home favourite  Nibali attacked on the last climb of the closing kilometres of the stage, tracked by race leader, Ecuador’s Carapaz, leaving second overall Roglic of Slovenia unable to respond. 

But the leading pair out front for 200 kilometres held them off, and it was Italy’s  Cataldo who won his first Giro stage after 10 years of trying, leading out and holding off breakaway partner Cattaneo to the line.

Desperate stuff.

Well, not really. This is what you call desperate.

This is the story of the North Wales village destined to be the first in Britain to vanish below rising sea levels.  It was in a magazine article, following an interview with a Hollywood star! Opposite the story of the doomed village was an advert for a cream for dry skin.

This is the village of Fairbourne on Barmouth Bay, home to 850 residents, protected by a sea wall but barely above sea level. Gwynedd council reckon they cannot afford to defend the village indefinitely, from storms and the gradual sea rise.

Residents are to be moved out in 26 years or so, to become Britain’s first climate refugees. They are not expected to receive any compensation for the loss of their homes and resettlement plans are unclear.

What I find bizarre is why this terrible story isn't making eadlines on every national newspaper and on TV news.

It’s as if climate change has become just another story, pitching for attention alongside all the usual news stuff…like crime and politics, film stars, and cake baking competitions and sport.

The article said there are 104,000 properties at risk of coastal flooding in Wales.
And along the English coast nearly 530,000 properties are at risk,  according to report for the government Committee on Climate Change last year. Yet the public are being kept in the dark.

They don’t want anyone to panic.  They don’t want anyone to know they haven’t a clue what to do.

Well, we should be fearful. These stories should be the one and only story in the papers and on the television. Blank pages either side.  TV Programmes suspended before and after the announcement of the next place near you to be destined to be flooded for ever, and asking, will you take in these wretched people who have lost their homes?

We need to be fearful. Fearful enough not to use the car for unnecessary trips, such as a few 100 yards to the supermarket.  Or the new breed of overweight “cyclist” who puts his mountain bike on the car to drive seven fucking miles to ride it on some trails and then loads it back on the roof rack to drive seven fucking miles back home again!

Or those twee types who before they set off leave the car engine running on cold mornings, adding to the excess carbon in the atmosphere and down our lungs.  

And yet still there is no indication from government – lost in their political fog of Brexshit - as to what might be done to avert the worst of this.

Oh, and get this.  They say they aim to cut greenhouse emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, conveniently leaving that task to others because they will be long dead and by which time Fairbourne has been given up to the sea! 

Meanwhile, life must go on.

Here's  some cycling news about the much anticipated World Road Championships

in Yorkshire in September.

Nice feature in Cycling Weekly (May 23 issue) entitled “Fans guide to the Yorkshire World’s.

It describes several rides of various lengths which Otley CC members regularly do, each one a route which takes you to vantage points to see the various world championship road races (Saturday 21^st to Sunday 29th September).

Take the train not the plane.

“There’s nowhere I can’t get to by bike, train or boat”

That was the heading on a double page feature in The Guardian telling how growing numbers of travellers are giving up flying and choosing more sustainable transport. Admittedly, not everyone can do this, but the point was being made that many can. Marginal gains, as a well-known cycling team boss would say.

One person went by train from Kiev to Moscow – it took our days.

There are some 15,000 Swedes who have signed a pledge not to fly and instead go by train.  Some 1000 Britons have signed up to a British  section of the same campaign.

Climate Strike Day

September 20 is World Climate Strike Day, when young people will again walk out of school to demand action on the climate crisis.  But this time, adults are wanted, too, says Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl who inspired this movement and who has told politicians around the world they have failed to do anything worthwhile to stave off the worst of climate change. 

“Humanity is at a cross roads," she says.   "We need to decide which path to take.”

*HAVE YOU READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY?

SEA LEVELS to drown coastal areas; 

crops to fail, insects to die, we're to follow.

MAY ENDS IN JUNE

SUNDERLAND THRO TO CUP

ITALIAN LEADS GIRO

Apocalypse and politics alongside entertainment and the trivia of everyday life.

This is the “Climate Emergency”, as The Guardian now calls climate change, recognizing the need to ramp  up the aggro.

Scientists postulate that the countdown for the extinction of all life on earth will begin in 30 or so years from now, unless there is global action to curb the excesses of growth economics which has underpinned our way of death. It began with the Industrial Revolution spewing smoke into the atmosphere 200 years ago and has been exacerbated largely in ignorance by human carbon burning activities ever since.

In view of all this, I’d like to suggest that the looming chaos should be the major story in the media, spelling out what we must do to stave off the worst of it.

And governments should hold public information meetings in every town and city to brief everyone on the worst case scenario unfolding, empowering people with a strategy to get on top of this.

At the moment we’re sleep walking in the dark and the ongoing Extinction protests are designed to wake us up.

So far measures taken to reduce pollution have been woefully inadequate. In fact, major car manufacturers have increased the risk by conning the public into believing diesels were cleaner when they are spewing out more muck than petrol engines.

I feel that the extinction stories lose their gravitas as they compete for our attention with regional and national news, sport, entertainment.

I can hear the breakfast conversation. “I see were all going to be extinct.  Response: Oh, yes, bud did you read how Yates had a disastrous time trial in the Giro?

The extinction story needs a black border on the page and the headline: “We’re fucked.”

Many people remain in denial of course. I’d love for them to be right. But the scientific consensus seems pretty sound and very scary.

Roger Hallam, co-founder of the Radical Think Tank, the organiser of the Extinction Rebellion, galvanised support for the current protests going on around the country when he outlined the bleak current scientific thinking on man-made climate change.

Here’s the link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgFc4Zhvjtg&t=68s 

When I listened to this my heart sank.

To summarise.  The loss of West Antarctica ice means the sun’s heat will no longer be reflected back into the space and instead by absorbed in the ground. So, as well the rise in sea levels, we can expect a huge rise in temperatures.

Lands in the equatorial regions will feel it first. When their crops die it will trigger a huge exodus - millions heading for comparatively cooler climbs.

i.e. That’s us. Here - Northern Europe including this off-shore island.

Meanwhile, holiday companies exhort us to burn more carbon by flying abroad in the pursuit of pleasure - to get away from it all.  If they could get us to the Moon I’d be tempted.

Here’s my random selection of recent headlines illustrating how the impact of the climate emergency stories are lost as they compete for attention alongside the usual fare.

In the best traditions of fake news I’ve made up a couple of them, in a bid to create a laugh with this otherwise crazy piece

 Headline stories of the week.

 POLITICS

Tory grey suits tell May time to go.

“May ends in June” – as The Daily Mirror headline put it.

SPORT

Italians on top in Giro, but Roglic remains poised to challenge for overall victory.

EXTINCTION

Loss of the West Antarctica ice sheet would raise global sea levels by 5 metres, drowning coastal cities around the world.

HOLIDAYS (advert)

Discover Norway’s beautiful coast in 12 day cruise...

At pre-sea rise prices starting at £1,249.

Team Sky lives on because the new sponsor’s name, IEONOS, just doesn’t roll off the tongue. But their dark coloured jerseys are inspirational because they are rendered invisible to the opposition.

HEALTH

 “No jab, no school” policy needed to curb measles.

POLLUTION

Fall in polluting cars entering London’s low emission zone, but millions still dying from toxic air.

BOLLOCKS

Cameron’s Brexshit (Excusing himself from creating Brexshit hell) book due in September.

INSECT numbers down at Chelsea Flower Show.

Brexshit Party ahead in EU election poll …

Brexshiter Nigel Farage - to cheers of “Ni-Gel, Ni-Gel”  at North of England rally - tells fellow drunks the EU can’t tell us what to do. If we want to have round chimney pots we shall have them.

ART

Titan works to be shown together for first time since 1704.

MORE POLITICS

Boris to bid for May’s job.  It’s no secret he wants to park his bike in No 10’s hallway.

British heavy metal put the “snot and piss” back into rock.

Film of the week: “Birds of Passion”.

The “Firm” opens at Hampstead Theatre.

SCARY

Bowel cancer on rise among younger people.

Police tear gas students in Brazil.

FAKERY

Trump pardons fraudster.

EXTRATERRESTERIAL

Vogons, from the planet Vogsphere (in Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) give notice that the Earth is to be destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass.

No one bothers to read the planning consents to register their objection and earth is duly destroyed in a less than a minute. The grandparents of today’s Brexshitters take refuge in a pub where they place paper bags over their heads.

Of course, in that story earth was restored. But that was fiction.

This isn’t.

*From A Day in the Life sung by John Lennon on the Beatles brilliant Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album.

REMEMBERING THE TALENTED MARK BELL

NO discussion about Merseyside – that one time hotbed of UK racing talent - would ever be complete without a mention of the late Mark Bell, photographed here by Phil O'Connor.

 The Olympian’s flashes of brilliance during the 1980s saw him win national road race titles as an amateur and as a professional. Sadly, tragically, Bell died 10 years ago, in January 2009, at the age of 48.

 The Kirkby CC and Mercury RC dominated Merseyside racing some 40 - 50 years ago, boasting that either one of them could field a full team to ride for GB internationally.

Merseyside produced riders with fierce reputations. Men like Doug Dailey, John Clewarth, Dave Lloyd, Dave Rollinson, Pete Matthews,  Ken Hill and the most talented by far, Joey McLoughlin, the most successful of them all, and of course Bell. He was never in the Kirkby or Merc, and neither were a host of other talented riders from other clubs who would give as good as they got.

Bell started cycling with the Birkenhead Victoria, moved to the Birkenhead North End CC, then to Prescot Eagle, Port Sunlight Wheelers and then on to Manchester Wheelers, a club which would rival the two top Liverpool clubs for the breadth of talented riders they could field.

Other good Merseyside amateurs of that era included several from the Liverpool Century whose coach was Geoff  Bewley. Two of these riders, Lloyd and Kevin Apter migrated to the big two – Lloyd to Kirkby and Apter who rode for both the Kirkby and Mercury. Then there were those who stayed, John Spencer, who won the Merseyside Division title, among other top races, Callum Gough and Dave Grindley.

Grindley went on to race in Belgium.

There were top women riders, too, such as time triallists Joan Kershaw and Pauline Strong. And from the Isle of Man (IOM) –  though part of the Merseyside Region the Isle of Man has always had its own distinct development programme– there was Marie Purvis, Queen of road racing during her time, plus a regular stream of top roadmen in the New Millennium.

They are of course the Tour de France sprint king Mark Cavendish and 2015 national road champion Paul Kennaugh, plus Birkenhead’s Steve Cummings.

But in the 1980s, another hugely talented Merseysider was making the news, Mark Bell, from Bebington, a stone’s throw from Birkenhead.

He had made an impression when he was still only 12 years old!

He had a good sprint, and earned his first international selection when still a schoolboy. In 1979 he gained his first senior international selection, for the Sealink International. Two years later he won the British amateur road race title at Colchester. He won two stages of the Milk Race. He turned heads abroad when he became the first foreigner to win the 8-day Etoile de Sud in Belgium.

Bell’s top British victories included the Archer GP International in Buckinghamshire, the Tour of Essex (ESSEX GP) in 1984 he won selection for the Los Angeles Olympic road race, but that was something he preferred to forget. Selected for his sprinting ability, too late it was discovered it was a seriously hilly and not suited to Bell at all.

You might as well have entered a Derby winner in the Grand National.

That episode left him bitter and afterwards he promptly turned pro, which he had delayed doing to race the Olympics.

As a pro Bell rode first for Falcon and then Raleigh. This was in 1980s, when Britain boasted an impressive home based pro class. Bell joined riders of the calibre of Yorkshire’s super sprinter Sid Barras and Keith Lambert, Stafford’s Phil Bayton,   Midlands stars Les West and Hugh Porter, and Colin Lewis who hailed from Wales but lived in Devon.

Despite the home pro calendar lacking a decent programme of long distance races, any Continental pro racing in Britain would be in for a hard time taking these guys on in criteriums, the staple diet the British pro class at the time.

In his first year with the pros Bell won the Delyn GP. But his greatest moment came in 1986 riding for Raleigh, when he won the British pro road title in Newport, Shropshire.

I recall saying at the time that if there was a best-dressed award Bell would win it. He was always clean cut and neat with bronzed limbs the product of his annual racing trip to New Zealand.

Bell delighted the Kiwis when in 1981, having just won the national road title; he went to New Zealand with mentor Phil Griffiths, the multi TT champion and a top roadman himself.  The New Zealanders said they’d seen nothing as fast as Bell since world pro sprint champion Reg Harris, in 1954.

Despite his flamboyant style, Bell wasn’t exactly chatty. He was reserved, serious, a bit broody, until you got to know him.

You had to persevere to dig out information.  Then suddenly he’d open  up with a line which told you everything, rattling out a colourful statement laced in Scouse black humour and always with a sting in the tale which would leave you laughing.

Then you might get a flicker of a smile before he resumed that deadpan expression.

If something had annoyed him and you got the flak, he invariably sought you out later to apologise. Sorry about that, he’d say.

I recall visiting him at his home on the Wirral, interviewing him for Cycling Weekly. We needed a photo and Bell decided we needed a prop. So he wheeled his racing bike out of the shed. It was in sparkling condition except for one thing. It was missing the chain!

What the hell, said Bell. Who needs a chain?

And he posed with the dismembered machine, trying to keep a straight face, one hand on the saddle the other on the handlebars.

Sadly, there was a dark side to the remarkable story of Mark Bell, who admitted being too fond of the beer.

And he eventually succumbed to alcoholism. Though he recovered, and had got back on his bike he had other serious health issues which knocked him back over the ensuing years. On one occasion he phoned me up for a chat. He told me he’d enjoyed his cycling so much he wanted to write about it and wondered if any publisher would be interested.   He wrote me a letter once, as well.

There was not a trace of self-pity in these exchanges, and his one-liners where as sharp as ever. He’d tell me how he was getting on, what he hoped for.  He longed to be well enough to get back into  cycling,  not racing, just to potter out in the lanes, perhaps to the Eureka café, a must stop for local  bikies heading for North Wales or direction Shropshire.

It came as a shock when he collapsed and died in January 2009, aged 48.

His older brother, Tony, also a racing man, said. “Mark needed an operation – it was coming up. He hoped it help him get out walking, help him to do a bit of more cycling. He had a new bike, and had been enjoying riding again.”

It was never to be.

Sheffield’s Malcolm Elliott, Milk Race winner, Tour de France rider, stage winner and green jersey victor in the Tour of Spain, had been quite close to Bell.

“On his day, Mark could do what he wanted,” Elliot told me. “We rode a couple of Milk Races together. Mark was a year or so older than me. I can recall he looked far and away better than the others. He just looked right on the bike, powerful, well-tanned. And the image – on his face there was never a hint of effort.”