Les Woodland has been writing about cycling (“the only thing he ever stuck at,” according to his mother) since 1968. Three years later it became a full-time job when he joined the staff of the British magazine Cycling.
Since then he has written two dozen books about the sport, published in several languages and on four continents. The most recent is the encyclopedia, The Yellow Jersey Guide to the Tour de France.
Les lives now in southwestern France. Never one to trouble the judges as a racer, he rides with his local club and has toured by bike in the U.S. and many European countries. On one trip he and his wife Steph cycle-camped their way the width of Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea coast of Romania.
So, another Tour de France is on the road – pedaling fools racing madly, unflaggingly, for the greater glory of things you never manage to find in the supermarket at home. It wasn’t me who first called them pedaling fools, by the way. It’s a long-known term here in Europe. And it was Henri Desgrange,…
We have a charming weather lady here – “weatherperson,” you probably have to say these days, although her gender is not in doubt – called Evelyne Dheliat. She is German, or at any rate she was born in Cologne, but because she moved to Paris in her childhood, you would never know it. Anyway, Evelyne…
by Les Woodland A friend of a friend was marooned by the roadside once with a flat tyre. It was the dark and windy night on a remote country road that the best tales are made of. Not a house in sight, a low wailing noise and maybe wisps of mist. You know the kind…
Like you, I have several bikes. I have a black one, a blue one and sort of red one on which the worst of the scratches are covered in mud. I try not to wash the mud off for that reason. I had several bikes when I lived in Belgium, too. That was the end…
