Stuart Maconie

Reader, I confess; I’ve had a brief affair with cycling. But thankfully it was only digital…

FEEL THAT I am amongst friends here, so I can admit to something quite shocking these days; I’m pretty ambivalent about cycling. I’ve nothing much against the activity itself, in the right place (not on the pavement!). Ay, there’s the rub. It’s a certain kind of cyclist, rather than biking itself, that prevents me being a velocophile, a lovely word I’ve just made up.

But get this. I’ve been doing quite a bit of cycling of a very particular kind of late, and that has led me to a new and strangely addictive kind of walking. So please indulge me while I tell you about my Davina McCall Static Exercise Bike for a few sentences.

A nice shade of pink and bought at a knockdown price from the Discount Office Furniture shop near me, it has come into its own recently. Every morning, I place the iPad on the bookshelf in front of me, search for ‘virtual bike rides’ and pretty soon I’m struggling my way up trails in Gisburn or Hamsterley Forest or descending at speed along the rutted tracks of Loughrigg or Ribblehead. The clothes are distressing, naturally, as is the endless fist-bumping with fellow enthusiasts. And I recognise the look of disdain on the face of every walker who was forced to step out of the way as I roared along.

I began to feel like I was being a traitor to my people. So I dismounted with care and began to look for ‘virtual walking videos for treadmills’ (bought from same discount shop at similarly low price).

It has to be said that these long trudges, whilst often through sun-drenched paradisiacal spots, are far less thrilling but very good for ‘cardio’ and ‘glutes’ or what have you. They are clearly no substitute for the real thing, but they’re much more fun than the mindless thumping of the gym multi-trainer.

Once you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of these videos, you’ll start to recognise certain authorial names. Many come from an Aussie company called Run Downunder although very few of them are actual runs. Mostly they are long treks through

IIt’ll be while before I’m taking the plunge but by Suzanna Cruickshank will keep me cool and refreshed till I pluck up the will to go back in the water. Don’t hold your breath. Hear Stuart on Radcliffe and Maconie, BBC 6 Music, weekends, 7am to 10am. various bits of the Lucky Country. While exertion is nicely high, drama is often low in the mix. Take the Lake Illawarra Loop Track in New South Wales: the first 17 minutes take place on the pavement at the side of a busy road before turning into a sort of park. These film-makers are clearly the realists of the genre; the Ken Loaches, the Mike Leighs, the John Cassaveteses, intent on capturing not just the jawdropping side of walking (the Crib Gochs and Striding Edges), but also the mundane ‘one foot in front of the other’ stuff that less brave directors would have left on the cutting room floor.

The Lake Barrine Rainforest Track, Far North Queensland, Australia, is a classic of the genre. After a trudge along a forest path for 70 sweaty minutes, I began to find the sheer repetition strangely pleasant, if tiring. One should note that films such as this are the ideal scenario to understand the true point of John Cage’s thought-provoking piece 4.22. Often wrongly thought to be ‘silence’, it is actually whatever happens during the 4.22 minutes of the piece’s duration, in this case the scrunching on the gravel tracks, the tweeting of the kookaburras and the occasional ‘Careful, this bit’s slippy’.

Not all reviewers are as sensitive as I. In the comments section, one reviewer had written

“Oh wow, a tree, and look over there, another one. Oops, I almost missed that one way over there. It has leaves on it like the others. Oh my god, more trees…”

Philistines. These are the people who mocked the great artistic leaps of John Coltrane’s Giant Steps and Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, preferring the easier pleasures of Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. Wait till my GoPro arrives and all this is over. I cannot wait for their crass remarks about my three-hour avantgarde traverse of the Clent Hills in the manner of Ingmar Bergman, culminating with me having a bacon butty at the café to the sounds of Gregorian chanting. A masterpiece in waiting.