Locked out in Llangollen

On Wednesday I had a mission. To take photographs for a piece I’m doing for Cycling World on riding along the ridge top of Offa’s Dyke in Flintshire. The road is the B5101 from Treuddyn to FFrith Hall. It’s only about four miles but it has two unique features. There are few sections of the original Offa’s Dyke that have been metalled so vehicles can travel along it, and to my knowledge it might be the only stretch that hasn’t been widened with the original ditches on either side. King Offa, in the 8^thcentury, built the ditch either as a boundary, defensive line, or as a power statement to his Welsh adversaries. Generally it runs between England and Wales and was formed by digging a ditch and piling up the waste dirt and rocks into a ridge. The B5101 – I wish it had a more grandiose name. For example in Coedpoeth is Heol Offa, which also runs along the dyke though it isn’t so obvious.  The second point of interest in this road is a red sign warning drivers of “Cyclist in road – Beicwyr ar y fford” wonderful. I want one – preferably two suspended in front and behind me! Not seen a notice like that before. The lane is so narrow there, because of it being perched on top of Offa’s Dyke, that there are traffic lights to permit vehicles in one direction at a time. The lights change too fast for my short fat hairy legs, and obviously for other cyclists too, hence the sign.

A wider section of the B5101

I filled my digital camera with views of the road – enhanced by blue skies and gorgeous woodland and hillsides, plus the two pretty villages of Llanfynydd and Ffrith – with its going-nowhere-mineral-railway viaduct.

The photo here is of a wider section of the B5101 and there are ditches either side behind the trees. I love the way the tree branches curve over as if to meet and grab passing cyclists…

At the T-junction with the Minera Road I veered right to Coedpoeth to see if my pal, John Marchant, and his wife, Rita were in. We had a long chat during which he effused about how wonderful the Escape Velocity: The Anthology was – see earlier blog. Heading away from Coedpoeth, through Minera, I tackled the steep lane up World’s End. Love the bleak treeless landscape on the plateau – it’s like going from Deciduous woodland below to the tundra in just a few miles. A few years ago on the way up I felt a wind fly past me and saw it was Chris Boardman and his North Wirral Velo cycling club. They all helloed as I puffed up the incline and waved back. My brakes held as I whizzed down through the water ford at World’s End.

In Llangollen I couldn’t go to the YHA hostel because it’s one of the hostels sold off – along with all the others in a 20 miles radius, including Chester, Bala, Corwen… so sad. However, there is an independent hostel – Llangollen Hostel. No chores, friendly staff, reasonable rates, clean duvets, well-equipped lounge, kitchen and dining room. Breakfast is thrown in. I met Peter Williams, who had cycled from Chapel-en-le-Frith (this Frith, Ffrith business is getting well used in this blog – wonder what it means?). Some of his route coincided with mine from Chester to Nottingham so we had much in common. After the proprietor (I suppose he’s not a warden as in YHA?) left – we thought to go shopping or whatever – we also left to get some tea. Problem. We didn’t know the code to get back in! Never mind we assumed it wouldn’t be long before the owner returned. It was on my way to the shops when I realised I’d lost my wallet. The hostel was prepaid but I always carry some spare coins. I had 6 pounds to buy enough for dinner, supper, midnight snack and the next day’s sports drinks and food. I guessed that my wallet fell out of my rear pocket near the Royal Oak in Kinnerton when I stripped to remove my vest. Do I use some valuable rare coins to report the card to Lloyds bank, but I don’t have the number of the card, nor of Lloyds – all would take even more money especially as Vodaphone have no signals in Llangollen. I bought some food and returned to the hostel. Peter and I arranged to leave the door ajar but someone had closed it. I assumed he was still in town, maybe gone to a restaurant or a pub. I knocked but no reply. A note on the door said to call  a landline number if no one was in. So the min charge of 60p of my diminishing cash called said number – voice mail. Back to the hostel. I knocked and waited for two hours.

What would you do? Suppose, as actually happened, the ‘warden’ had left until breakfast and you had insufficient funds for another hotel? It was getting cold and my bike and belongings were locked up. I could a) find a bush to sleep under, b) report myself as destitute to the local police, or phone home. I’m sure my wife would have loved to arrive home after a long day in London, to jump in the car to drive the 20 odd miles to get me. And I would have had to return the next day to collect my bike. Eventually another guest turned up and he had the door code. Then I wondered about Peter. How would he get in? I stayed in the lounge writing up my SF story, Target Practice, until 11pm then shrugged and went to bed. At breakfast he said he was already back in the hostel when I’d returned but didn’t hear my knocking. Hah. Oh well.

Hey, thanks to the man who picked up my wallet in Kinnerton. He phoned my wife, so she did have a journey to make for me after all. Life, eh?

My first published fiction story was called World’s End, and involves a cyclist and spot of mystery. Read it free here.

Award potential? Quick

I’ve just returned from a cycling marathon puffing up Welsh mountains visiting names such as World’s End, Heol Offa, Horseshoe Pass and Llangollen. A non-writing friend  in Coedpoeth, Wales, I dropped in unannounced, for a cup of tea en route was keen to tell me how much he enjoyed Escape Velocity: the anthology I’d given him a few weeks ago. He’s been reading SF for over 40 years and pressed upon me that it was by far the very best collection he’d ever read. Wow. I know I’d spent two years going through thousands of submissions, selecting the best from our Escape Velocity mag included. One of mine is in there to lower the standard but he liked that too. Then he said why not enter it for the BFS best anthology? I said I don’t think as editor that I am allowed… but perhaps another member of the BFS could.

Details: Escape Velocity: The Anthology contains stories from 40 contributors including Jaine Fenn, Sonny Whitelaw, Ian Whates, the controversial Rebecca Latyntseva, TTA’s Roy Gray, Rob Harkess, Catherine Edmunds, and so on. A mix of hard SF, time travel, thoughtful ponderings, a cartoon…

Published 8 April 2011 by Adventure Books of Seattle, (owned by Robert Blevins) edited by Geoff Nelder and Robert Blevins ISBN-13: 978-0982327197

or Kindle on Amazon see http://amzn.to/H04ZqB

pub website http://adventurebooksofseattle.com/

Between you and me I’d hoped that by involving 40 writers that they would have bought copies for themselves and friends but few have done so. It really is an excellent collection and even though I plugged it here and there a lone voice isn’t enough. If you are a member of the BFS I would be very grateful if you would consider nominating our Escape Velocity: The Anthology (31 March 2012 deadline -  aaarrgh)  http://www.britishfantasysociety.co.uk/british-fantasy-awards/

for the category of best anthology collection of short stories.

Mars a day

Mars in fiction was aired at Saturday’s Chester science fiction library book group meeting. As I walked up to the library I saw the group had grouped outside in the sunlit wide paving and thought a decision had been made to go al fresco. Then I saw a picket line outside the library doors. The local Conservative council had changed the weekend-work contracts for librarians, care-workers, staff in schools, care homes and residential establishments effectively cutting their income. Picture here is of the Chester main library. It used to be a factory making motor cars. If you can zoom in on the decorative top of the building it says Westminster Coach and Motor works. Didn’t they build factories grand in the 1920!

Chester Library

We supported them by not crossing them and instead walked to a local pub that has a large garden. Drinks, and outdoors – perfect for us, and support for a good cause. Ironic too, because there are two SF book groups in Chester and it is the ‘other’ rebel group that started off by meeting in the same pub garden. In practise everyone but a few are in both groups and enjoy the chance to discuss SFF books twice a month!

The ‘rebel’ group discusses agreed individual books while the library group probes themes and tropes within the science fiction and fantasy genres. This week it was the turn of Mars. In an earlier blog I gave my review of my chosen book on Mars – Philip K Dick’s Martian Time-slip, which was more a fictional study of Schizophrenia than about Mars. Similarly, most fiction seems to be about people – allegories on politics, philosophy and sociology (Ben Bova, Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear) than Mars itself. Early works written before the 1960s, when they did use Mars, thought the canals were real and that Mars would be easily colonised, once the natives there were made friendly. We couldn’t find a book that addressed the terra-forming of Mars seriously – ie solved the problem of the solar wind stripping most of the atmosphere because of the lack of a magnetosphere on the planet as it is now. Some of the group regarded Mars as an uninspirational place for future fiction now it is thought to be sterile and arid. However, I and a few others feel there is scope for imaginative tales to make use of such apparent futility. Hidden life beneath the surface, for example. Us writers are always up to a challenge. For example John Rennie in our group suggested (tongue in cheek but he IS a scientist) dropping a mini black hole down to the core of Mars to generate sufficient heat to regenerate convection, and induce a magnetic field again. The stuff of fiction.

Our leader, Alex Greene, had read more widely than the rest and was able to quote episodes of Star Trek and many other books.

Squash Pizza Hut

Our two grandsons have left our home. The first visit for Nathan. I do hope he enjoyed his stay, he only complained a couple of times but then he is less than two months old. Oliver at just three, is a delight. He commandeered my summerhouse and wouldn’t let us in… unless we knocked. He isn’t brilliant at eating all his meals but when al fresco, he did much better. He helped me in the garden, moving one lot of soil to the wheelbarrow even though it added to my workload later. His favourite book for the last three days turned out to be Squash the Spider! By Nick Ward. No, the spider isn’t squashed (but it was a close call). We read it to him at least ten times and he was quoting phrases from it in the right places… eg Tee hee, Boo, I’m not scared. Wonderful. Thanks to our former neighbours, James and Lindsey Musker, for giving us this book, among others, when they migrated to Australia. As my daughter drove them down the road I recited to myself, missing them already.

I’ve been able to avoid entering pizza restaurants for several years. Being vegan my choice is limited to salads, pasta or some kind of dry pizza based round thing. However, as a kind of belated Mothers Day celebration I was driven to a Pizza Hut and found myself pleasantly surprised. Yes, the pizzas have cheese but it wasn’t compulsory. There was much more salad choices than I recalled and lovely sunflower seeds to enrich them. Then it became clear that the CEO had been watching Come Dine With Me or Master Chef. The plates came as flat, matt black with rounded corners. Two issues presented themselves immediately: how do I stop the cherry tomatoes shooting off the plate with no rim? You can’t stab them with forks because they invariably both implode and explode in such a way that my tie (or whatever) has changed colour and wetness. The second issue slowing the start of my meal and making me hesitate worryingly throughout, is the hole.

For some unfathomable reason the plate has a 2 cm diameter hole in the bottom left corner. How can one expect to enjoy shovelling the wonderful salad, tomato-base, olives, peppers and assorted primary colours around the palette when there’s a hole in it? Pressure I can do without. Maybe it’s a test. To verify my wife’s allegations I can’t keep food on my plate. Or a game, to prove the converse.

Luckily I managed to eat my fill – about half the pizza – without any food disappearing over the rim of the void. When the waitress arrived I enquired after the hole. She didn’t, at first, understand my query but finally asserted it was to make life easier for carrying. I didn’t get that. Ordinary plates don’t have holes, and usually come with a little lip to prevent wetness and cherry tomatoes escaping. As a chaser question I enquired why my hole was bottom left while my wife’s was top right. “Nothing significant,” she replied, suspiciously.

“Are the plates matt black to promote heat absorption under the food to make it cool quickly?” I asked, “or to radiate infrared from the uncovered parts of the plate to warm us up?” She refused to respond.

Which brings me to a short story I’m preparing to write. An asteroid on its way to smite Earth is deflected by courageous astronauts, but it re-directs itself back to Earth. Asking my Chester SF book group, pal, Alex Greene, he tells me there is Star Trek Voyager 61, called Rise, which has a similar plot. Ah well, at least mine is directed at Earth, and called Target Practice, and will be humorously written. Wonder if the asteroid is big enough to house a Pizza Hut?

I’ll be glad when plates are back to normal, and won’t be drilling holes in our grandchildren’s plates any time soon.

I knew mysterious holes meant something subliminal to me and then I remembered them appearing in mystical places around Earth in my science fiction novel – Exit, Pursued by a Bee. Read about it here – ebook and paperback.

What I do with my spare bike

I am back in Chester after cycling 100 miles (should be less but got lost) over the Pennines to Nottingham to loan son my spare bike. Thanks to Ilam Hall Youth Hostel chef for the vegan dinner and brekkie! That’s even though the nut roast he first offered had milk in the recipe and he had no soya. However, he made vegetable fingers and vegan gravy that just melted in my mouth. Having said that I was so hungry after cycling off 6k Calories I’d find anything vegan delectable!

Ilam Hall photo from West Leigh Junior School

There were 50 junior school kids at the hostel with their amazingly calm teachers, but I was put in a family room in a separate building so wasn’t disturbed at night. In fact I slept in a double bed with quilt, and the room had an en suite shower room. No chores these days.

Ilam Hall was originally built many centuries ago but rebuilt in early Victorian days as a mansion with gothic towers and crenallated battlements set in beautiful grounds in a picturesque limstone village in the hiking honey spot of Dove Dale in Derbyshire. I felt as if I was on holiday even though I was really on a family mission. Here’s their webbie.

Whether I am hiking all day with all my staying-over chattels or stamping on pedals with all I need in my panniers I have a dire need to keep everything to a minimum. My toothbrush is sawn in half, laptop – if brought – is tiny, and I’ve done my best to lose a kilogram before hand – not always successful. So I often don’t take a book to read, hoping that there is something SF or interesting on the games and books shelves in the hostel lounge. There usually is, however, they are often too big to read overnight. Wouldn’t be great if short story anthologies were acquired by hostels and guest houses? Good examples, of course would be any of the ones I am in or edited – haha – Escape Velocity: the anthology, Dimensions, Northern Lights, Monk Punk anthology, M is for Monster, and many more. Many of them are listed on my Amazon page here. I should really have bought some thin anthologies that slip into my pannier. They don’t have to be science fiction and fantasy. I love the writing of A.L. Kennedy and Julian Barnes and they produce shorts. Perhaps you, dear blog reader, can suggest slim anthologies I should buy to take on my trips.

Of course I could get an e-book reader but would I risk it bumping over cattle-grids at breakneck speeds?

I would have benefitted from having a Kindle or Sony e-reader, Kobo, etc on the homeward journey by train. I expected to see some as I usually do but not today. The cheapest train journey from Nottingham to Chester was via Derby and Crewe. At Derby the train filled with naked legs… until I looked up and saw it was just high hemlines. Must be a big wedding, I thought, but they’d brought aboard bottles of champagne and copies of Racing Times. Yep, they all disembarked, giggling, at Uttoxeter race course. At Crewe, the passengers were more track suits and even Shell suits. Oh well.

Coming back home

Spent a splendid week in the Northern Lake District. Some family members warned of ongoing winter weather and we did see snow on the first full day but all it did was to enhance the look of the mountains. We walked up by Carling Knott to hike around and above Holme Wood and back along the lesser known Loweswater Lake. Cool weather but the exertion warmed us as did the views. Of course Keswick was as delightful as ever and wife enjoyed her fish and chip dinners. Sadly, we found the tea and fancy cakes at Brysons’ to be not up to their usual high standards. More hikes in Borrowdale and finding little cafes such as in Grange, more than made up for Brysons’ shortcomings.

The photo is taken on the eastern shore of Derwent Water and shows an unusual sculpture. A large rock split in half and a maze-like carving on the polished faces. It’s known as the Centenary Stone – details here

I visited a pal, Les Floyd, at his home in Carlisle where we caught up with each other’s writing news, and publishing. Good to meet again his mum and brother.

I popped into Waterstones books in Carlisle where the manager invited me back to do a book signing once ARIA is published. Also he’ll stock Exit, Pursued by a Bee – yeay!

Speaking of Exit, I found while I was away that it was the highlighted book at Beyond Worlds here  Brilliant!

Part of the holiday was for Gaynor to get on writing her Masters and me with ARIA volume 3. Both of us succeeded in both hiking, writing, and resting.