Christmas Gift Guide: for the cyclist

Salmon-coloured bike lights, Welsh blanket musettes and hand-woven baskets: these gift ideas are sure to inspire more two-wheeled adventures in the New Year

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Bookman Lights, £16.95 (choice of four colours), Godspeed

Functional and stylish, these Bookman lights are result of a clever collaboration with The Deadly Nightshades and they come in four awesome colours with awesome names; Pitch Black, Sea Foam, Velo Yellow and Spoked Salmon. They're easy to attach and have three different light modes.

'Chop 'til you drop' print, £25, Godspeed

For the Chopper geek in your life, this fun silk screen print is illustrated by Harriet Seed on white A3 paper. This is a limited edition of 35 and each one is signed and numbered by the artist.

Handwoven Bicycle Baskets (selection), £45, Godspeed

Jazz up your bicycle with one of these of a kind baskets, woven from tropical elephant grass. Each one is completely unique and made by hand, and comes with the name of their personal weaver stitched inside it. Bring a touch of the exotic to your handlebars!
 

Pocket t-shirt, £35, Pilgrim

These hand-printed t-shirts celebrate the soulful side of cycling rather than lap times and padded lycra. Pilgrim is a Kickstarter funded project and its organic cotton t-shirts are made via a climate neutral manufacturing process solely using green energy from wind and solar power. We love this understated t-shirt with the Pilgrim logo and handy phone pocket.
 

Welsh Wool Blanket Musette, £35, fforest

According to fforest, the musette is used by professional cycling teams the world over, not only to carry food for their riders but also to advertise and market their sponsors and are always designed to be bold and colourful. These Welsh blanket musettes don't fail to deliver on that promise. Comes with an adjustable strap, a reflector tab and an internal pocket to store your phone. Available in six colours and patterns.
 

Embroidered patch, £7.50, Godspeed

Illustrator Carl Partridge produced these ace embroidered 'Shut up Legs' patches in celebration of the recently retired and very legendary cyclist Jens Voigt. There are limited numbers though so get one while you can! 
 

Whittle a fire stick

Not a fair weather camper? Us neither. Dan Scott of Fore Adventure shares a simple little technique for getting your winter campfire blazing

Image: Justin Glynn

A feather stick is a cracking way to kindle your winter campfires with minimal effort – and without cheating and using firelighters. The technique even works with slightly damp wood, as it lets the sparks get to the dry wood inside.

Take a long, thin piece of wood and simply whittle down the stick, with your knife at an angle so you cut tiny strips into the wood, leaving them attached so you get a feather effect. Focus on the end of the stick – you don’t need to whittle along the whole length of wood. Make several sticks, pile them up and throw in a spark to get your fire blazing.

Dan Scott is an outdoor adventure coach and guide at Fore Adventure on the Dorset coast. You can ready his inspiring guide to seashore foraging in print issue 2 of Ernest Journal, on sale now.

The ghosts of Dartmoor

Beware disembodied hands, a blind highwayman and bloodthirsty hounds of hell on the wilds Dartmoor in this dark and dastardly week. Mark Blackmore is your guide...

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Dartmoor is a national park in south Devon, 954 square km of moorland studded with granite tors. It’s an ancient place, long inhabited by hardy souls, and you can still find stone circles, the remains of Bronze Age settlements, among its hills and valleys. Little surprise then that a land with such a rich history, of such isolated splendour, should be absolutely seething with ghosts. Totally infested, it is. One time the Blair Witch visited for a holiday but left early because the place was freaking her out.

Let’s take a tour. It’s safe as long as you take Ernest’s hand, but whatever you do, don’t let go.

We’ll start with one of Ernest’s favourites, over at Postbridge on the B3212. Here, drivers of carriages, cars and motorcycles report their vehicles being forced off the road by the ‘Hairy Hands’, disembodied hands that grab the wheel (or handlebars or reins). The Hairy Hands often remain invisible, a sign of their supreme cunning.

Now let’s stop by the picturesque village of Chagford. The Three Crowns Hotel offers polite hospitality, a great restaurant and the ghost of Sydney Godolphin, a Cornish Member of Parliament who died on the front porch after being shot in the thigh with a musket during the Civil War. Most of the rooms at the Three Crowns have had a visitation or two, but then it is a very nice place.

Over to Beetor Cross, and there’s the highwayman who stands watching the road. Give him a wave and pretend you haven’t noticed the empty eye sockets. We won’t dally at Bradford Pool, because that soft voice calling your name won’t stop until you have drowned. And we’ll keep going past Cadover Bridge, because those sounds are from a battle between the forces of Cromwell and Charles I. Yes, those are the screams of the dying. It’s not very nice, to be honest.

Now, here we are at Chaw Gully. There’s treasure in the pit here, but see that raven? He’ll call to the guardian, should you try to reach it. No, you don’t want to meet the guardian. We’ll head over to Clasiwell, where at night a disembodied voice can be heard giving the name of the next local to die.

Watch your step

Slightly less depressing, though more dangerous, is Dewerstone Woods. Here, should you be caught alone at night, a huntsman will chase you to the highest peak, and when you fall, the hellhounds will be waiting for you. It’s not the nicest way to go, no.

Let’s zip by New Bridge – see the fairies who still live there? You can also catch them at Sheeps Tor – and go straight on to Dartmoor Prison. The jackdaws here contain the souls of dead staff, which I’d wager wasn’t in their original employment contracts.

Widecombe-in-the-Moor is one of the prettiest villages on the moor, though it wasn’t really the place to be the day the Devil visited. A man named Jan Reynolds had sold his soul for seven years of good luck, but when it came time to pay he took shelter in the village church. The Devil struck the church with lightning, and Jan and three others died in the fire.

Ignore Gibbet Hill – that’s the ghost of a murderer, ineptly hung, who eventually died of thirst. He’s begging for someone to kill him. More interesting is the stone circle at Lustleigh Cleave, where you can sometimes see the ancient inhabitants still going about their daily lives.

Pretty much anywhere on Dartmoor, of course, you could run into the black hound. This legend is the inspiration for Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, and the most likely way you’ll see the hound nowadays is under the control of one Richard Cabell, who likes to hunt children with his devil dog. Perhaps best then to keep a child handy, just in case the situation should arise.

Mark Blackmore has written for many diverse publications including Men’s Health, BBC History, Countryfile, Focus, The World of Cross Stitching and Sabotage Times. He recently published The Wager, a novel about a bet between God and Lucifer.

You can read more of Mark's dark tales in iPad issue 4, on sale now.

The Crossing of Antarctica

One hundred years after Sir Ernest Shackleton set out on his ill-fated attempt to cross Antarctica, this book celebrates the expedition that succeeded where he failed. Thom Hunt of 7th Rise and Channel 4's Three Hungry Boys shares his thoughts on The Crossing of Antarctica. 

Fierce winter winds carved a gully behind the hut at Shackleton © The George Lowe Collection

In a world saturated by health and safety regulations, hedging your bets and insurance for every possible scenario, this book smashes through wary modern thinking like a freight train on its way to unexplored corners of the world.

The Cross of Antarctica tells the story of the 1957-58 expedition led by Vivian ‘Bunny’ Fuchs – an epic journey that fulfilled Shackleton’s dream and became one of the 20th century’s triumphs of exploration, a powerful expression of human willpower. 

The book comes from a time when men were men, with beards and dexterity; men who could fix almost anything and would laugh in the face of a blizzard. The photography – sourced from the private archives of Everest veteran George Lowe as well as items from the Fuchs' family collection – is mind blowing and the words and interviews a mixture of poetry, philosophy and downright bluntness. And why wouldn't they be? These chaps had been there, done that and gone back for more. 

I, for one, am thankful that these stories and photos have been discovered and published but I guess the last real test is this: if we read such tales of courage and determination then we close the pages only to remain stagnant, I believe we are doing a disservice not only to ourselves but also to these great men of adventure. Greatness is not reserved for the few enlightened ones, it is available for each and any of us who commit to advancing towards the unknown. This book taught me, just when I needed it, that the extraordinary is but a decision away.

If life is as adventurous as you want it to be then it ain't broke, so don't fix it. But if thoughts lurk in your mind of a life less ordinary, buy this book, read it,  then see how far the rabbit hole goes.

Star rating: 5/5

Reconnaissance foray on the Skelton Glacier, 1957 © The George Lowe Collection

© The George Lowe Collection

© The George Lowe Collection

George Lowe taking a portrait of a penguin  © Jon Stephenson

© The George Lowe Collection

© The George Lowe Collection

Vivian ‘Bunny’ Fuchs’ Sno-Cat Rock’n’Roll becomes jammed nose first in the far wall of a deep crevasse © The George Lowe Collection

© The George Lowe Collection

© The George Lowe Collection

The Crossing of Antarctica: Original Photographs from the Epic Journey that Fulfilled Shackleton's Dream by George Lowe and Huw Lewis-Jones is published by Thames & Hudson at £24.95.

Reviewer and adventurer Thom Hunt runs bushcraft and wild cookery courses with 7th Rise and is one of the Three Hungry Boys on Channel 4.

Ernest + The Good Life Experience

Ernest Journal were beside themselves (what does that mean exactly?) when The Good Life Experience invited them to their inaugural festival celebrating food, culture and the great outdoors on the gorgeous Hawarden Estate in Flintshire. It was a day of craft beer, rabbit stew, woodsmoke, guitar-plucking and hobbit-haired alpacas

The Ernest Journal stand couldn't have been in a more apt spot at The Good Life Experience. We were in the Great Outdoors Tent, cheek-by-jowl with woodworker Hatchet + Bear, bike-obsessed screen printer Anthony Oram and the Scouts and their rope making skills.

When we weren't mesmerised by the sweat-beaded concentration of spoon carving and the spin and click of the rope-making machine we managed to peel ourselves away from our stand and got to see the infamous Mr Natty in action, snipping away at head after head of hair – his scissors a mere lightening flash, the delightful utilitarian wares of Best Made Co and the all-too-quaffable local craft beers. We also saw lots of alpacas, one of whom bore an uncanny resemblance to Frodo from Lord of the Rings. Must be the big goggly eyes.

But what pleased us most was stumbling across the festival's manifesto pinned to a tree. It certainly made us smile:

Manifesto for The Great Outdoors

Toast marshmallows

Chop some wood

Climb trees

Know the birds

Learn your knots

Roll in something smelly

Sharpen your axe

Wear a helmet

Use a real map

Hold hands

Light a fire. Light my fire

Be sure to put The Good Life Experience in your calendar for 2015 next year when it will be a two day festival: 19 & 21 September. We'll be there, too.

Images: Sam Young