roads of stone

216. Geneva

Roads — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:43:52 +0000

It’s 6 am and raining. Mid-summer has somehow ended in the night, and a different kind of July stands waiting for me as I step outside.

The street is chill and almost empty. A fine wet shimmer is wrapped around the tramtracks as I cross them, and even now, in my first few strides, I can feel the morning washing clean the heavy dreams of last night’s dinner.

I turn my collar to the cool and damp, and kick my heels slowly east along the lakeshore.

The first minutes of a run like this are always hardest. A body short on sleep but not so short on years is slower than it should be to get going.

My feet are heavy, and my stomach feels heavier still, with a not so faint taste of Swiss Gamay red lurking somewhere down inside.

I raise my eyes and look around. Across the grey lake, the city lies serene and timeless. Geneva is exactly as I remember her. Unchanged, if just a little wetter.

There’s no plan within my mind, and on trips like this there doesn’t always have to be. I’ll run to sense a city — and turn my legs wherever they choose to take me. With the lakeshore to my left and a flat promenade beneath my feet, there are no decisions calling. I keep running.

A blustery, ineffectual drizzle is falling, and I listen to the crinkling of my rain jacket and the raggedy breathing which follows wherever I run without my iPod.

A damp kilometre goes by, and dimly I recognise this as the route to last night’s restaurant. A leisurely five or ten minutes in a taxi — but how far is that, when you’re running just a few hours later? I’ve no idea.

The rushing traffic is thicker now. A stream of commuters is heading in from the eastern suburbs and across the French border from Evian beyond.

Ten minutes go by, and the scenery doesn’t change until I reach Genève-Plage. It may not appeal for sunbathing now, but a half-full bus pulls up here, the driver watching road and runner cautiously from high behind his wipers.

A few passengers jump off, and I stop to join them waiting by the kerb, pleased to breathe and read a sign ahead, pointing the way to Cologny.

When the signal changes, my run resumes around the corner, and then uphill. A lot.

How far was it to the village, in my taxi? A minute, two minutes? I can’t remember. Is there a brief dash ahead, or a long mountain slog?

It turns out in between. Far enough to walk before the top, but near enough to wish I hadn’t. That’s often how it goes.

The restaurant car park is empty, and the panorama across the lake towards the League of Nations building is wet and drab, the Jura Mountains beyond a greyed-out mirage of last night’s purple pyrotechnics. I take a picture, then turn my tail again.

It’s ridiculously easy, trotting downhill from here. The slide back towards the lake fills just three shameful minutes, all spent rueing defeat by such a paltry climb.

But that’s only running, and this journey is about something else these days. By the time I regain the lakeshore, the rain is pelting but my spirits have lifted to an unexpected degree. Here I am, in the heart of central Europe. It’s only half past six and I could be still in bed, but instead Geneva is all laid out in front of me.

I’m running towards Switzerland’s second city on a fine soft morning, with a clearing head and a spring within my step.

Geneva creeps nearer, and soon I can see the flags draped all along the Pont du Mont Blanc just ahead. I cross the bridge, and jog beneath the neon signs for expensive watches and still-solid banks — the old and modern industries which have made this tiny, beautiful and astonishingly diverse country into the unlikely economic success story of Europe’s post-war years.

For a minute or two I race the River Rhône, her waters running quickly on this dull morning towards the sunny summer Mediterranean several days away.

I take another bridge and head for the old town, stumbling onto Rue Calvin as it meanders towards John Calvin’s church, these landmarks recording Geneva’s role as the unofficial capital of the Reformation.

This city may be prosperous and rich, smoothly cosmopolitan and yet still intensely conservative and parochial, but above all, like the whole of Switzerland, its streets are as clean as the guiding principles which founded it.

By seven o’clock, I’m back at the hotel, my tour around another corner of this country I know so well complete. The Jet d’Eau fountain will start up soon, and this city will gleam beneath the sunshine to smile at tourists on one more day.

And I know they’ll see her lovely face, but they’ll never sense the essence of Geneva through soft rain beneath their feet.

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215. Waltz with Bashir – from Lebanon to Gaza

Roads — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:10:19 +0000

Tomorrow, President Obama will meet Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, bringing the Arab-Israeli Peace Process stuttering back into life.

Let’s wish success to them all as they begin that great endeavour.

Meanwhile, the UN Report on the War in Gaza was finally published last week, reminding me of this brief review that I wrote in March 2009 of the animated film Waltz with Bashir, directed by Ari Folman.

Time has passed since then, but the sentiments still apply.

* * * * *

What an incredibly timely movie this is — coming so hard on the heels of the recent massacres in Gaza — and it’s the first time I’ve seen the Arab-Israeli conflict covered in any kind of movie, let alone a stunning and inventive animation.

The pointlessness of war — that’s what the film is about. But what makes it unique is its recognition of regret and remorse for the chaos of conflict and the pointless loss of life within a different war.

There have been no Vietnam movies set in this war zone — and as far as I’m aware this conflict hasn’t been treated in many (if any) movies at all.

This isn’t quite a Born on the Fourth of July for disillusioned Israeli veterans. But it is a worthwhile step along that road, and for that reason I hail the film as an outstanding cultural (as well as a purely technical) achievement.

There has been worldwide criticism of Israel’s excessive brutality in Gaza, so cynically timed for the lame duck weeks of the Presidential handover, and a growing condemnation of its obstruction of humanitarian aid ever since.

And yet Israel doesn’t seem capable of seeing the irony of extending self-defence to cover unacceptable civilian atrocities, the murder of children, the virtual imprisonment of an entire people and the use of illegal battlefield weapons.

It’s always hard to influence inflexible and destructive mindsets within a society until that society is willing to look inwards and be critical of itself.

The reflections within this film may then appear as just one small step towards an essential enlightenment within an increasingly isolated nation.

But I wouldn’t for a moment underestimate the significance of this film in offering to open that debate and catalyse the start of that journey.

12 March 2009

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214. Three years of Roads of Stone

Roads — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 16:57:52 +0000

Things have been slow around here, for a little while now, and in more ways than one.

I’ve had less time for running, and less still for writing. I’ve been unfit, distracted and slow.

And yet — there’s been real progress, too, hidden not far beneath the surface.

Our 95,000 visitors this year may have found only 22 new posts to read, but it’s been a momentous year of change, both in London and abroad.

The great crash formed the backdrop to the year, but it was in America that destiny was decided.

A changing political landscape marked the 2008 US election and the new opportunities that brings, for America and the whole world beyond.

My critical writing in the divided by an ocean section has now given birth to an entirely new chapter entitled united in a future. And let’s hope that we are.

The war in Gaza was the year’s lowest moment, pointing to new hazards ahead and mistakes not far behind us.

Yet there are some signs of a new mindset emerging. As the Arab-Israeli Peace Process begins once again, a reconciliation of the past may yet hold hope for the future.

Change in the world of sport gave us a glimpse of a new world order at the Beijing Olympics, and a return to the dominance of the US in the Ryder Cup.

Much closer to home, a new office location last autumn has seen me running and racing in a new town, whilst reflecting on the geology of my own.

February saw me chase Sussex shorelines, and run through rain and desert landscapes in Spain, before returning to the wintriest weather seen in England for two decades or more.

After blizzards came a Snow Patrol concert, and a pure nostalgia-fest from Radio Luxembourg — the most popular post of the year.

I ran beside Shakespeare’s Avon from winter into spring, and then before a long summer break, I explored the extended impact of the economic crisis on the energy market, as well as wider concerns about peak oil ahead.

The fourth year of Roads of Stone sees us awaiting an end to the recession, whilst pondering the future of London as a financial and banking centre for the world.

Across the twelve months ahead, I’ll continue my Cuba series, and fill in some footsteps left this year without write of passage. You can expect to return to Houston, to run by the lake in Geneva, and to climb the Chalk downs with Tennyson.

It may not run fast around here, and it may not always run pretty. But I’ll keep our feet moving forwards, as we run on towards the future.

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213. The price of risk – a City of London view

Roads — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 14:43:49 +0000

High flying, adored
What happens now –
Where do you go from here?

For someone
On top of the world
The view is not exactly clear
Evita — Rice & Lloyd-Webber (1976)

I spent much of the summer visiting financial institutions in the City of London.

The fallout from last autumn’s global economic meltdown is still drifting through our streets. The world didn’t end last October, but it felt a close call at times.

For the moment, it seems as if the worst is behind us. The dust is clearing slowly, and yet in the City uncertainty still clouds a faintly growing optimism. For many in the Square Mile, waiting out the storm a while remains the wisest game of all.

When recovery comes, what will it look like? Or is it here already, lurking in the lunchtime swagger of those traders who survived the carnage, and the evening calm of bankers working now for different masters?

Looking back, the causes of this crisis are clear to see. It was all about the price of risk.

In 2007, the City thought it had abolished risk, or at least knew how to measure it.

That was an age-old mistake, repeated in almost every global financial failure that ever happened, from the South Sea Bubble of 1720 to the collapse of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management during the Russian Financial Crisis in 1998.

JK Galbraith’s excellent primer The Great Crash of 1929 provides a clear account of the most famous stockmarket meltdown of them all.

And reading Galbraith this summer, the parallels between 1928 and 2007 were quite uncanny. A new financial product (for the Investment Trusts of 1928 you can read the CDOs of 2007) had opened up an endlessly rich seam of money.

Leverage grew on the back of leverage, in the safe knowledge that financial risk had been abolished. Except, of course, it hadn’t.

Financial memories are famously short, and reports of an improving economic environment this autumn suggest that even the hard lessons from last year may yet be soon forgotten. Or will they?

The Great Crash was followed by almost a decade of economic suffering. The stock market reached its lowest point in 1932, three years after the crash began.

The aftershocks from collapse of Japan’s asset price bubble continue to this day, two decades after the slide began.

So if economists think they can glimpse an end to this recession already, what’s the difference, this time? Two things.

The first of these is policy. We’ve learned (at least in theory) from mistakes made in the past.

Our leaders have recognised that in times of crisis, economic prudence must be balanced out with pragmatism.

They’ve understood that the banking system must be supported, and the economy stimulated towards recovery if deflation is to be avoided.

But policy has a cost, as we’ve seen through all the bail-outs. Estimates last week suggested that the US national debt has now risen to $29,000 for every citizen. That must be paid for somehow, by higher taxes and cuts in public services.

The same applies in Britain. We’ll safeguard the jobs of teachers, doctors and nurses as best we can, so the NHS and our schools and universities will survive. But investment will be slashed, and there’ll be cuts in services and investment right throughout the supply chain.

And there’s the second difference that I can see. This time, most pain will be felt not in financial services, nor even by investors. The slow stock market recovery now underway may yet claw back the losses of all but the unluckiest speculators.

No, the axe will fall much further down the tree, in the public sector and amongst smaller companies and their employees — especially those who offer support and supplies to government and public institutions.

This new and wider wave of pain is only now beginning.

Meanwhile, atop the towers in the City of London, the horizon might not look exactly clear, but it’s certainly much brighter. The banks may be lending cautiously, for now, but they’re back on the path to profit.

Policy has stemmed the tide. The banking system was saved, and the City was rescued from ruin to invest another day, if still cautiously for now.

The bail-outs have seen the pain passed from investors to governments, and the cost will be paid for over years to come, by many ordinary employees in wholly blameless occupations, far removed from the financial sector.

So there we have it. The global financial crisis of 2008, like nearly every crash before it, was all about misjudgement of the price of risk. But as the view from the City of London clears, who will pay the price of so much miscalculation?

It’s not the banks — not really.

Because the cost of a systemic financial failure, this time, has been transferred transparently to all of us — and that means you and me.

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212. Cuba 1: Just imagine

Roads — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:13:54 +0000

Just imagine.

Picture a beautiful country of fertile green plains and lush, forested mountains.

A country washed by warm tropical seas, blessed with the finest beaches in the world.

A nation with a proud history extending across three millennia and more. A land coveted by great empires and fought over for centuries — where the fate of our planet was decided, many times more than once.

Think of a country rich in art and architecture, with nine World Heritage Sites for culture and nature.

Wander streets at the cradle of music and dance, listening to rhythms echoing all around the world.

Dream of stunning cities, beautiful towns and remote villages, set across a landscape unblighted by shanty towns or ghettoes. A land where men, women and children of all different colours live side by side, and where racism is confined to the past.

Envisage a country with excellent health care which is free and accessible to all. A society where life expectancy rates equal those in the United States, and where infant mortality rates are significantly lower.

Imagine a nation with more doctors per head of population than almost anywhere, which provides thousands of medical staff each year to humanitarian missions in developing countries across the globe.

Think of a small, poor country which has achieved the world’s highest literary rates, and where university education is free.

Envision a people and a government committed to preserving their natural environment, in a nation with one of the smallest carbon footprints in the world.

Imagine a society built on dreams of equality, set firm against corruption and crime. A fiercely independent country, founded on utopian ideals and principles written in blood. A land where the past meets the present, and the future looms uncertain. Think of a nation which has proved infinitely adaptable, whilst standing staunch and uncompromising to a fault.

Close your eyes beneath palm trees. Scent the warm breeze of paradise, and feel hot sun on your skin.

Open your mind for a moment, and dream far across the gates of freedom. Listen to gunshots, drowned long ago beneath the blue waves of a faraway beach.

Capture the vision of this incredible, contradictory country. Immerse yourself in its beauty and charm. Steal a taste of its fascination and flaws.

Picture this country you’ve never seen, which lies just a few miles away.

Imagine Cuba.

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211. The price of oil: 4 – a rising road ahead

Roads — Thu, 28 May 2009 02:11:50 +0000

As the world begins hesitantly to emerge from this downturn, when and how strongly the recovery will manifest itself is still unknown. There are huge uncertainties remaining.

So why should energy costs be rising again already? Last week’s post about the oil price shock of 2008 described a fall from a $147 peak last summer to $34 in February 2009.

In concluding, I noted that although a $60 oil price looks ‘low’ today, in relation to past prices, it’s still way above the average.

In fact, the oil price has only exceeded $60 for some 15 months across the whole of recorded history. What has happened to keep the oil price high?

The answer is simple, and depressing. What’s happened is that another year has gone by. Another year when we did almost nothing to transform our energy infrastructure. Another year of oil depletion, with no meaningful initiatives or much co-ordinated action to diversify supply.

The economic news has been dire for months. All around the world, we’ve driven less, manufactured less and made fewer flights.

Energy demand now stands around 2% lower than in 2008, but — and this is important — that only puts it back to 2006 levels.

Look at it another way. In the deepest recession we’ve seen for decades, we’re still using 98% as much oil as during the biggest of all the boom years in 2007.

Despite the bleak economic news last winter, when I looked outside the window there always were cars driving up and down the street. We kept our houses warm, and our factories running (well, most of them).

The truth is that even within an economic downturn, our energy resources continue to be used up, on a daily basis, and at almost the same rate. But what’s more worrying is that we’re now making even less effort to replace them.

Amidst plummeting energy prices, investment in renewables has fallen. Several large companies have withdrawn from new wind farm projects altogether.

Across the hydrocarbon industry, exploration has been hard hit, too. The number of active drilling rigs is down by a quarter. But for all the technological advances of recent years, you still can’t find hydrocarbons unless you drill.

It might seem surprising that an extractive industry with a 20-30 year production cycle should think on such a short-term basis. But the cash that global energy companies can invest across the year ahead largely depends on the amount of money they can pump out of the ground in the year before.

That’s why falling energy prices kill new investment. As profits fall and capital funding dries up, companies are forced to become more risk-averse.

Without exception, over the past five years the majors have quietly dropped their production growth targets — focusing instead on maximising returns from within their established production base.

The implications of that are easy to miss — but let’s state them clearly: amongst the likes of BP, ExxonMobil, Statoil, Total — none of these giant companies now expects to produce more oil tomorrow than they are pumping today.

Over the past decade, exploration for new reserves has increasingly been carried out by smaller independents. But offshore drilling is a capital-intensive business, and several of the more aggressive and innovative explorers have gone bust as their production earnings fell and credit facilities were withdrawn. Many others have struggled to raise new capital for exploration.

Exploration drilling is a risky business, and today’s chastened banks are unsurprisingly reluctant to lend on projects without a sure return, especially when oil looks ‘cheap’ today.

And so another year has seen us draining our existing hydrocarbon reserves, whilst exploring less and canning new alternative energy projects which could replace them. With declining demand, the focus on diversifying and renewing our energy supply has fallen with it.

For now, the world produces enough oil to meet its needs. But the headroom between supply and demand is not great — and so the oil price is rising once again.

How far will it rise? A straight repeat of this year’s rise could see $100 oil by the autumn. Although a modest correction below $60 seems more likely, the signs are that once economic activity begins to recover, then $100 oil really will be here again before too long.

If demand starts to rise again in 2010, the certainties of continued oilfield depletion and reduced investment mean that energy supply will still be limited. It’s within this timeframe that a return to $100 looks more likely.

Looking ahead five years from there, we might expect oil prices to hit $200, with $400 in sight within a decade. And after that, you can just keep on going.

Those figures won’t arrive tomorrow, and a steady rising trend looks unlikely.

As political and economic events unfold, there’ll be more troughs and peaks, driven by speculation and the ebb and flow of sentiment in parallel with the daily flow of news.

But the fundamentals will remain the same. We’re using up our oil, and making increasingly scant attempts to replace it.

That sounds depressing, yet there might be a flicker of hope as well. Perhaps the most hopeful news to emerge from the past year’s shocks is that rising energy costs have belatedly led consumers to start changing their behaviour, putting them far ahead of governments and industry who for now are doing very little.

Over the past year, new car sales have slowed dramatically. And behind the appalling UK figures lay one tiny hidden gem — that the average fuel consumption of new cars sold fell by 4.1% within the last year alone.

That compares with an annual decline of only 1.5% across the preceding decade. 2008 may have been the year when we finally made a gearshift towards greener vehicles.

One year of high energy prices has done more to focus consumer minds than the three decades of government initiatives which came before it. Consumer demand is finally forcing manufacturers to build more fuel-efficient cars.

Beyond a certain point then, economics still has the power to change the world. But as the calendar unwinds — can our consumer attitudes change still further?

The answer is — they’ll really have to.

Because higher oil prices are coming soon. And after that, they’ll likely keep on rising, far along the road ahead.

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210. The price of oil: 3 – energy economics and the financial crisis

Roads — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:31:18 +0000

The highest ever oil prices.

The fastest and greatest fall in energy costs in economic history.

A lot has happened since early 2008 and my last essay on the oil price.

This article will explore events in the oil markets since then, and in the next I’ll take a look towards the future.

* * * * *

Early last year the oil price lay close to historic highs at almost $100 a barrel.

Supply was tight, I said, and getting tighter. Prices could fall to $60 later in the year if the credit crunch really bit. But long term, the trend was clearly upwards. And a world of $100, $200, $400 oil prices was not that far away.

Perhaps it’s rash to make predictions about the future. And according to Nassim Nicholas Taleb, it’s not clever to review the past if we insist on constructing linear narratives from chaotic and essentially random events.

That’s a healthy warning to historians, but for now let’s take the risk.

So what did happen next? The oil price kept on rising, all through spring 2008, and speculation drove it higher. It reached $147 in July, leading several analysts to say that $500 oil was coming.

Forgive me if that reminded me of 1998, when the oil price stood below $10 and The Economist looked out on a world awash with oil to predict prices of $5 just ahead. They never happened. Because sometimes when the analysts buy a trend, you know that the bubble (for that’s exactly what it was) is almost over.

The downturn was manageable, we thought then. Far East demand would suffice to keep the global economy turning. But it wasn’t, and it didn’t.

Once the trend was turned, a horrifying slide began as those long oil positions unwound. By early August, the oil price stood at $120, and the following month it fell through $100. After Lehman Brothers collapsed in mid-September, the oil price steadied for a while, but two weeks later the dizzying plunge renewed.

The scale of the pending economic meltdown was vast but as yet unknown. Amidst The End Of The Financial World As We Knew It, the shaky, scary $70 of mid-October looked like mere illusion as prices fell through $50 in November. On such a downward trend, who ever would buy oil futures?

No one. Traders shorted oil. Downward movement pushed the slide still further.

Falling consumer demand made an impact, too.

With gasoline prices bursting through $4 a gallon, Americans had driven 10 billion fewer miles last summer. And as the year progressed, declining consumer confidence offset the falling prices.

The result ? A new mindset amongst consumers — a reluctance to buy new cars and especially the larger gas guzzlers built by US manufacturers.

American car makers began to fall apart, reaching a collapse later in the autumn. More jobs were lost, across the industry. Consumer confidence fell still further. We bought less, around the world, and manufacturing production plummeted, leading to yet lower energy demand from consumers and industry alike.

The oil price fell further, and by year end US inventories stood completely full.

The US oil price (West Texas Intermediate) recorded a $10 discount then to European oil (Brent Crude), instead of its customary $2-3 premium. In mid-December, WTI fell to $34, and hit that level again just three months ago on February 15th 2009. All that time, Brent crude hovered around $40.

Looking back now, it seems that $40 was the floor. Once the slide was halted, with downward speculation unwound, there was only one way for the trend to reassert itself. Upwards. And that’s exactly what has happened since then.

Oil has climbed quietly to $58 today — almost 70% above its winter lows.

The rally still looks uncertain, and there’ll certainly be more shocks to come. But longer term, if we can think that way, a $40-60 range seems sustainable. And although a return to $147 looks some way off, modest gains are likely.

The oil price has seen a horrifying peak and slide as the economic crisis has played out. But that rollercoaster hides a simple truth. Cycle to cycle, the oil price floor stood at $10 in 1999, $20 in 2002, $30 in 2005, and $40 in 2008.

Through the past decade, the oil price has risen $10 around every three years and from trough to trough. That’s a doubling every five years, more or less. Today’s ‘low’ oil price remains higher than in nearly all of economic history.

So that’s the oil price past. Next week, I’ll assess the outlook going forwards.

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209. A dragon slain on Doomsday – Horsham 10 km

Roads — Tue, 12 May 2009 00:14:19 +0000

Dragons used to roam in St Leonard’s Forest, or so the local legend goes. Today it’s only runners, and me amongst them, burning with limbs afire in the 25th running of the Horsham 10 km.

We’re on my regular lunchtime route, or at least the tricky part of it, where the Lower Cretaceous clays of the lush Arun Valley rise eastwards towards the sandstone plateau of the forest.

We gather on Horsham Rugby Club’s playing fields in bright spring sunshine, and when the siren goes we head off dutifully around the touchline of the first team pitch.

The scrum has thinned out, and we ruck through a hedge to hit a pleasant, leafy stretch of lane beside St John’s Church. They say on dark, lonely nights the church is haunted, but for now the only cries come from two lone spectators in the graveyard.

It’s uphill here, and so I rein it back a bit. Try to breathe, and just relax as best I can.

I’ve found that works. Running too hard too early will kill your legs, I’ve found. Well, maybe not if you’re really a runner, but it kills mine.

My preparation for today? A little worse than nothing. Slowly around a 10km route of Lincolnshire hills last week, and a couple of lunchtime trots since then.

But yesterday I cycled 30 km of Surrey trails in training for the London to Brighton Bike Ride next month. That’s what I had to do, but now my legs remind me.

And so I let them cruise a bit. A minute’s plod brings us to the mighty Sun Oak, and a sandy bridleway for a gentle kilometre between the trees. I stop to take a picture, and pretend to take it easy. And perhaps I do, at least for now.

We find another lane, and follow it downhill. Past 2 km, and then past 3. Into a narrow valley, with rhododendrons pressing tight on every side. ‘What goes down, must come up,’ muses the lady runner by my side, and sure enough — a shortly steep and breathless climb arrives to test our lungs.

We keep going, through a housing estate and then down a fast descent to Doomsday Green.

It would be great to link this place to the Domesday Book, the census document compiled for William the Conqueror in 1086 which formed the basis of tax demands for centuries to follow.

Tempting because William landed in Sussex and defeated King Harold’s army in 1066 near Hastings, just an hour away from here. But although Horsham dates back to 947 AD, some 140 years before the Domesday Book was written, the town isn’t mentioned in it. And this hamlet isn’t either.

The fiscal ‘Domesday’ referred to was a day of reckoning, but I hope it won’t be one for me. Because from here, the course rises relentlessly towards the forest.

We climb along Hammerpond Road, and I ponder another intriguing name — describing the blacksmiths who used to work here. The Tilgate Stone which forms the ridge was mined for iron ore since the Romans’ day. The forest provided charcoal, and before the age of steam the headwaters of the River Arun were dammed to drive the bellows and hammers of the local forges.

It’s quiet today — this geologist is scarcely hammering up the hill. We pass the start and set out along a second loop. A two-loop course is good for fast times, I’ve heard. But maybe not this one with its ‘undulating’ (read: hilly) profile.

Eventually I reach the Sun Oak again, and walk ten steps to slug a drink. Then repeat the course, but with faster legs and much more rapid breathing.

Another ten minutes go by, and almost before I know it, I’m racing through Doomsday Green once more towards the doom of a final climb ahead. And from the 9 km marker, the road rises, exactly as it did before. I struggle, much the same, but louder.

Inside the final furlong, I save something for a last lap around the rugby field, but as we leave the road there’s just 100 m left to run. A last sprint takes me past four puzzled fellow-strugglers and then I’m in the funnel, and someone is handing me a mug. Not inappropriate, surely.

The time ? I didn’t check because it didn’t seem to matter. Something close to 54 minutes, perhaps. Not too fast, and not too slow.

It’s another race behind me, on local turf. A few hills survived, on a sunny day. Superb organisation within a friendly and warm event.

Ten kilometres of Sussex sandstones, ancient iron ore, and expiring hammers. Another landscape travelled and a distance run — and that’s the dragon slain today, for a happy mug like me.

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208. Radio Luxembourg

Roads — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:48:46 +0000

Play: Radio Luxembourg 208 Great Britain

208 — that was the number of radio, back then.

And as the spring daylight faded behind the bedroom curtains, the hour would finally come for the first hesitantly crackly sounds to arrive across a cooling atmosphere.

With a single earphone invisibly in place, and my tiny transistor hidden deep beneath the covers, I could be happily in bed at bedtime and yet secretly lie wide awake through an entire chart show still to come.

Nightfall was moving slowly northwestwards across another summer evening. And Planet Earth’s biggest commercial radio station was playing with 1.3 million watts of power, bringing rock music to my ear from half a continent away.

I didn’t know then that Radio Luxembourg had been broadcasting across Europe since the 1920s.

Fifty years on, Luxy was a pioneer of international commercial radio. The most powerful transmitter in the world pumped music every night from the heart of Europe into millions of teenagers’ bedrooms across the Channel.

Broadcasting on 208 metres medium wave, English language programming didn’t start until 7 pm European time (8 pm in the UK) because the radio waves could only reach their audience in the stiller atmosphere after dark.

Play: Top of the hour on Radio Luxembourg

Luxy claimed to be Britain’s only national commercial radio station, with devoted listeners from Kent to Caithness, yet living in the Midlands at a hundred and fifty miles from the coast and almost four hundred miles distant from Luxembourg, the signal suffered from atmospheric interference and would often fade in and out for seconds and sometimes minutes at a time.

Tuning to the station was a delicately frustrating operation which required endless patience and almost constant readjustment.

And yet, still we listened to Luxembourg, as British youth had already done for many years before.

There had been no dedicated pop music stations within the UK until a series of pirate commercial radio ships began broadcasting throughout the day from offshore waters in the early sixties.

Remarkably they fell respectfully silent in the evening and early morning hours, leaving the airwaves and commercial revenues clear for 208.

Play: Radio Luxembourg — The rhythm of nightlife in Great Britain

The wide popularity of the pirate radio stations hastened the government’s determination to shut them down, but soon after the closure of Radio Caroline came the launch in 1967 of BBC Radio 1, which blasted a non-stop volley of pop across the country all day long. Throughout the time when I was at school.

But for some unfathomable reason, Radio 1’s evening schedule always featured much more esoteric music, most of which I had never heard of. For a young teenager following the mainstream charts, it was time for Radio Luxembourg. They had all the best DJs, anyway, and better chart shows, too.

Only on Sunday night would my sister and I revert to Radio 1 for the “official” UK chart. With my first primitive cassette recorder at the ready, we waited patiently to press ‘record’ as the chart counted down towards the songs we liked to hear.

The microphone was set up optimistically on the living room floor to reel our favourite song onto a new C-60. But those recordings were always hopeless, limited by the technology and inevitably interrupted by domestic life.

We’d wait two hours for a new Number 1 to play, before the phone or doorbell would somehow insist on ringing half way through.

And then the dog would likely bark as well — which made for interesting playback later on.

Listening to Radio Luxembourg fulfilled different dreams entirely. With static and commercials to contend with, there was no hope of a good recording (and remember, I was supposed to be asleep, anyway).

But the station’s playlist was tight enough that we still heard all our favourite records through as many illicit listening hours as we could stay awake to hear.

The station stayed with me as I grew. As soon as I could drive, Luxy found its way onto the radio in the car. Often I’d listen late at night as I drove back from parties or a girlfriend’s house.

Later on, at university, I spent more evenings listening to the juke box in the beer cellar and to my record player when I made it home again.

But I must have listened to Radio Luxembourg whilst studying late at night as well, since I can still remember all the jingles even now.

Play: Radio Luxembourg — Station of the Eighties

The Station of the Eighties seemed unassailable then, but the revolution in music radio that Luxy had spun would soon play its final tracks towards a close.

Advertising revenues fell steadily as competition from television and local radio grew and by the time I returned from a few years abroad in the early nineties, 208’s fuzzy signal had shuffled off the atmosphere for good.

Exciting new FM commercial broadcasters such as London’s Capital Radio and a new AM station offshore Ireland, Atlantic 252, proved fatal competition.

A doomed foray into satellite broadcasting followed for Luxy, but eventually failed to find a new niche beyond the dial.

The Luxembourg group still lives on today as the Pan-European television broadcaster RTL, which quietly owns Britain’s Channel 5 TV.

And these days the radio legend is back. A new Radio Luxembourg is broadcasting online with a classic rock playlist, for anyone nostalgic enough to try an early bedtime.

Yet really I’ll never need to, since Luxembourg’s beam extended far beyond one station.

Almost anyone who was ever anyone in radio learned their trade with Luxy — Jimmy Saville, Tony Blackburn, ‘Kid’ Jensen and Alan Freeman… And Chris Moyles and Neil Fox are still on air today.

In that way, the legacy of Radio Luxembourg still lives on across the airwaves, and not only through the memories of another era in music. Luxy defined everything about the way that music and the charts are presented, and provided so many of the voices that still present them, too.

And now I’ll leave Luxy legend Bob Stewart to sign off from the heart of Europe, in his own inimitable and transatlantically continental style:

We sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed the music you’ve heard…
… And a good night and good morning, wherever you may be.

Play: Radio Luxembourg — Nightly shutdown by Bob Stewart

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Radio Luxembourg links:
The Story of Radio Luxembourg
The unofficial 208 picture gallery
The world’s most famous radio station
Radio Luxembourg jingles of the 1980s
Radio Luxembourg online today
Radio Luxembourg – Your Station of the Stars

207. Running back on track — the train on Stratford’s Greenway

Roads — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:35:50 +0000

A sunny April morning, and the view across the River Avon from the cantilever bridge is fresh with scents of spring.

The Greenway lies cool and long before me — a mile of empty old railway track to bring me back to town. Except — it isn’t empty.

Far ahead, where only a dog walker, another runner or a mountain bike should be, I could swear I saw a train. And yet, this railway line closed 33 years ago.

I keep running, and disbelieving, but finally it’s true.

Up ahead, there’s a new piece of shiny track, carrying two old railway carriages where no carriages have stood for three decades or more.

A piece of railway history — a museum display, surely? But there’s something more afoot.

Inside the second carriage I see tables, and spoons and old-fashioned sugar pots. There are ramps leading up inside. And on the doorstep, there’s a youngish bloke standing, watching, and smiling broadly.

I take my courage in both hands, and walk up to introduce myself. It’s good to see interest in this railway line, I offer. Let’s hope it opens up again, some day.

And that’s how I hear the story. This is no museum at all — these carriages are home to a cycle hire business and a brand new cafe, housed inside.

I can remember now, hiring bikes one time from an old railway carriage in Brockenhurst — the perfect place to start a cycle exploration of the New Forest.

Here — beside The Greenway — with its views across the Racecourse, the floodplain and towards the Cotswold Hills beyond, yet just a mile from Stratford-upon-Avon — this is the ideal starting point for any cyclist keen to discover Shakespeare Country.

What a fitting reflection of this site, combining practicality with a nod to history and just the smidgeon of some hope that the line might one day yet reopen.

Vic shares that view, and it’s no small undertaking that he’s taken on.

Finding two railway carriages to buy, and hiring a pair of 70-tonne trucks to haul them here — you can’t exactly tow them behind a Mini down the motorway.

Laying hardcore for the lorries. Buying rails and sleepers and ballast to build a stretch of railway track where the carriages can stand.

That takes planning, and organisation, and money.

We talk about the future. Vic tells me that today will be busy, with a meeting at the racecourse. I venture that next Sunday afternoon will be busy too, since the Shakespeare Marathon will be running down The Greenway.

And once I raise that subject, Vic stops talking about his business. He wants to talk about the running.

Vic ran in London last year, and the year before as well. Each time he ran in Stratford one week later (and if one marathon is hard, then back-to-back is murder — and I know because I tried it once). Yet Vic’s disappointed as the 2009 races fall on the same day.

I almost say that with a 9.30am start in London, a 1pm gun here, and a hundred miles of fast driving between, it might just still work … but finally I keep stumm. As a Stratford man, that’s his race, and nothing should come before it.

Vic’s aiming to beat his 3:01 PB, to earn him an automatic qualification for London next year. But actually, he says, I’m training for a big triathlon in July. And for the triathlon I’m doing, a marathon is only training.

It’s then I realise — that’s no triathlon — that’s an Iron Man.

The morning is lazing into a perfect warm and sunny Sunday. A pair of runners appears along The Greenway. They pause, and wave, and Vic waves back.

Not too far today, he calls. Just eight miles. Or maybe ten.

More marathoners, training for next week, with legs as fresh and fit as they’ll ever be. And I can remember exactly that feeling.

Another group appears. Another smile from Vic. The same advice. The trainer, passing out good advice from on board the train.

And with that, I know it’s time to go. If I stay here, I’ll be searching out a place for Stratford next week, even with no training. Because once run, the marathon can call you back at the unlikeliest moments.

I turn off the river bank and run home through town today. Beside Holy Trinity Church, and the Black Swan — the pub you might know as the famous Dirty Duck.

Past the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, taking shape at last out of its rebuilding. Across the Bancroft Gardens, still desolate after their recent savage remodelling.

As I cross the Avon for the final time, I reflect that Stratford looks different today, and yet it’s still the town I know and love so well. I didn’t expect to find a train astride The Greenway — but I’m very glad I did.

The world we think we know looks just a little different each time we set out running.

And even in historic Stratford-upon-Avon, history can turn up on unexpected tracks.

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