Someone recently asked me why I cycle tour!

First of all, it combines two things I'm very passionate about: cycling and freedom.

I love to travel, for all the usual reasons, and in light of the climate change issue - amongst others - a few years ago I resolved to cease traveling by aeroplane *except* where no reasonable alternative exists. Naturally cycle touring is one of the most sustainable forms of transport, whilst still allowing respectable distances to be covered each day.

I love to meet people and see how they live, commune with them and share their hospitality; I love the way complete strangers invite me into their homes or tents, feed and entertain me - often with much hand gesturing because they'll be speaking a language I'm not fluent in! I send them all postcards a bit further along the way. Call me a hippie but I really do find this kind of contact enriching, life-affirming.

I love the way touring teaches me to be resourceful and creative and to make do with just the few things my bicycle and I can carry together; there is a sense of accomplishment not only in the distance travelled but in making do with the basic necessities, and the clear mental state this seems to bring about. Satisfaction also comes with the crest of every hill; the vista a reward for the climb and the lungs drink in the fresh-smelling, untainted air as the bike rolls down the other side.

The physical fitness that develops, especially in a longer tour, really helps to lift the mood... not to mention the appetite! Every meal pure delight with the healthy hunger that develops over a day in the saddle. And with nightfall sleep, as deep as it was supposed to be!

And then there's all of that BEAUTY - the scents, sounds and life - the things you are oblivious to as you zip past in a train or glide above in an airliner. Every day a feast for the eyes: the mountain-tops, valleys and rivers, ruins, the sky, the stars! Wild animals and birds. Yes, there is still a whole lot of beauty outside the cities, almost everywhere you go in fact!

Of course there's a degree of uncertainty and spontaneity about this business, it must be said - often not knowing where to pitch the tent each night. The adventure of stealing a night's sleep in a forest park or the wild grass of a neglected pasture. With the setting sun, the bodyclock, in a fashion normally denied it beneath artificial lights, is allowed to function naturally for a change and under darkened tent in evening stillness, tired bones take deepest sleep and awake rejuvenated in light of morning. Rising with purpose to breakfast, and washing in a stream before getting underway again... or taking a day to rest and enjoy the surroundings - even do some touristy things perhaps.

You haven't lived! you haven't lived, I tell you!