Young manual worker, Mick seizes the bicycle as a way to transcend his industrial life and to escape to one of beauty and joy; and which, in turn, offers him the opportunity to compete - to become a road-racing cyclist. His ambitious yet modest talent, carries him far, but not far enough. To compensate for his shortcomings, his mentor, Jack - an old ex-professional rider - takes him in hand. Unfortunately Jacks methods may not be quite legal. Jack helps Mick to overcome his vulnerability to infection; but such help brings prosecution by the cycling authority, the Federation. Some of the...

Happily, jokingly - and ignorantly, they clambered aboard their magic-carpet. And the world opened like a flower to offer its vast invitation to adventure and success. It is a time of the Vietnam War and the Swinging Sixties, both of which seems to have passed them by. They leave - on their beloved Champ, a Second World War jeep, and take their little world with them, while the big one can only look on and smile. Language and cultures might change, an innocent foolishness might survive, but the big, bad, beautiful world is round for a reason, and they will have to stumble and blunder abroad...

Separated - psychologically and socially from what he once was, Michael Blake, a cynical and unsuccessful self-employed teacher of English as a foreign language is in Rome trying to sell his services. On hearing of the impending death of his mother, he returns to the north of England, from where he had left some 30 years before, in a confused search for a legacy. Many years before, Blake had been involved in a Christmas Eve street fight, where his assailant had been wounded, and such incident was the trigger for him to decide to leave England and put such a life behind him. In his attempts to...

A celebration of the bicycle - and a warning A comic and sad satire of the bicycle, sporting and otherwise. Joy, doubt and suffering - and an awakening await five friends who take up the challenge of a 200 mile mid-summer day Sportive ride from London to York as they try to stay off the fading light of middle-age. Their preparation and subsequent journey through an England of delight and despair gives a warning to all those who might wish to wear the Lycra.