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@TheBrick(Tommy)
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As mentioned in the last Cycle ...a new TV series will be broadcast later this month on BBC4 ...Britain By Bike ...with Clare Balding ...exploring the halcyon days of 50's-style cycle touring
Here's the book that accompanies the series...
http://tinyurl.com/3799o5r
...more about the prog
CALL OF THE WILD
Britain By Bike Ep 1/5
Wednesday 21 July
9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR
Clare Balding embarks on a pedal-powered odyssey across Britain to rediscover the magical world of Fifties cycling.
Her journey follows in the wheeltracks of compulsive cyclist and author Harold Briercliffe, whose guidebooks – The Cycling Touring Guides – provide an evocative glimpse of by-passed Britain.
Pedalling Briercliffe's own bike, Clare begins her exploration in North Devon following his Cycling Touring Guide to the South West.
She visits Lynmouth, scene of Britain's worst flooding disaster in 1952; travels on the world's steepest railway up a 500ft cliff to the sister village of Lynton; and explores the unexpectedly mountainous delights of a Devon valley known to the Victorians as "Little Switzerland". It even boasts a population of mountain goats!
She then retraces Briercliffe's tracks through Woody Bay, where local publican David Orton reveals a hidden story of criminality, death and disgrace lying beneath the green tranquillity of this coastal beauty spot.
Then it's downhill to the Hunters Inn, a historic off-the-beaten track pub, before heading off to the secret silver mines of Combe Martin – whose riches were said to be a key factor in the historic English victories at Agincourt, Poitiers and Crecy – and on to the neat seaside town of Ilfracombe, once a more important port than Liverpool.
The town is now reinventing itself, attempting to harness the power of its natural environment through wind farms and the second largest tidal rise in the world.
Utilising the gifts of nature, or falling victim to them, has been a familiar story to this coast for centuries – and a constant theme of Clare's nostalgic cycle ride through this beautiful North Devon coastal landscape.
Britain By Bike is part of BBC Four's celebration of the outdoors – Call Of The Wild.