About this blog

NoVisible Lycra is a blog that is predominantly about cycling, although it has developed somewhat into a travel blog and occasionally it mixes travel and cycling – for example, when I travel somewhere and enjoy the delights of the local bike share scheme. This has happened in San Antonio, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Montreal in Canada; Essen and Berlin in Germany; and, course, Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I should have hired a bike in Los Angeles, but didn't, I was too busy in Rio de Janeiro and it was miles too cold in Moscow.

Yours truly in Indianapolis, USA, May 2014

I update the blog every week without fail and sometimes more frequently. When I'm away on business, rather than sit in the hotel bar, I much prefer to be in my hotel room writing up what has happened during the day as I find writing a therapeutic exercise. I never talk about my line of business but I do discuss the cities where I'm staying and I pay particular attention to the food and drink and the hotel. I've even developed a specific page for photographs of most of the hotel rooms I've stayed in and avid readers will know that I always take a photograph of the view from my hotel window, which invariably is not that impressive.

Cycling around Berlin, Germany

If you scroll down the right hand column of the blog you will find links to articles about all of my travels and, further down, links to numerous articles, some funny, some serious.

The majority of the writing that takes place on this blog is mine (unless otherwise stated) and I share the photographic duties with my pal Andy who, along with Phil and my brother Jon make up the NoVisibleLycra team.

My Bixi bike in Montreal, October 2013

The blog is so-called because we don't wear Lycra, it's that simple. It was started by me back in September 2009, some three years AFTER we, that is Andy and I, started cycling on a regular basis.

As I mentioned in one of the very early posts, the whole thing started with a curry in Whyteleafe in Surrey, during which Andy mentioned that he'd been out cycling and I told him that I often ride to Westerham at the weekends. We decided to meet up one Saturday morning and have never stopped. My brother Jon joins us occasionally and now my neighbour Phil is involved.

Yours truly outside Amsterdam's Centraal Station

Somehow I managed to convince them all to buy a Kona bicycle. Andy has a Kona Blast, Phil is considering a Kona Smoke, my brother Jon bought a Kona Fire Mountain and I ride a Kona Scrap. Jon recently bought a Canondale mountain bike after the bottom bracket went on his Fire Mountain and it worked out cheaper to buy a new bike.

On Copacabana Beach, March 2015

Most importantly, we ride our bikes throughout the year, but we tend not to go out if it's raining or snowing, although there have been times – April 2008 springs to mind – when we did go out in the snow. It was fun at first, but soon got very cold and now we avoid it like the plague.