HEAVEN

My study opens off the corridor by the front door. Both the door and my windows are open. I sit at my desk and breathe the scent of roses. Shade and sunlight on the trees continually shifts in the breeze. Herefordshire is heaven on such a day...

ANCIENT OVERWEIGHT TOAD HITS SEVENTY-EIGHT

Thoughts when in bed this morning whilst Bernadette wrapped my birthday gifts - each gift a romantic treasure: firstly how blessed I am in Bernadette and in my four sons, my daughter, my daughters-in-law and out-of-law, my son-in-law. And how truly blessed I am in my divine grandchildren (of whom Shane is baking a chocolate birthday cake which he will eat as I am home in Herefordshire UK, and he is home in Duchess County NY).
SHANE AND GRANDPA OOPS

Second thought: 78 seems so much much older than 77.
Third thought: 79 will feel old old old. However 80 will feel young again (if I make it), a new beginning. Hopefully I will be completing the final lap of a planned celebratory circumnavigation of the planet - probably on a Honda 125. So here is a Happy Birthday to me, Brmmmm Brmmmm!

NEW YEAR

A New Year's resolution: to Blog at least once a week.
What have I been doing?
Loving my wife and enjoying home life in Herefordshire, England;
drooling over my Brit grandchildren and loving their parents;
missing my US grandson and my US daughter and son-in-law;
signing books at the NEC motorcycle show;
preparing new book for publication.

PINE PLAINS AND COLWALL

Pine Plains in Dutchess County, New York, is much the same size as Colwall in Herefordhsire, though houses are more widely spread and on big lots. Trees shade the streets. Architecture is white clapboard with porches to rock on in summer twilight. A few small buildings rub shoulders on Main Street each side of the sole intersection regulated by traffic lights. The Stissing Bank occupies one corner, the pharmacy another and The Stissing House Tavern and Restaurant a third. The Stissing House is the biggest building in town; it has an upper floor though no rooms to let; the owner/chef is French. The Colwall Park has a French waiter and does have rooms. Both Colwall and Pine Plains are set in a gentle country of small valleys, wooded hills and grass paddocks. In my youth this was dairy country. No longer. Farms are too small to survive in today’s market place.

GUARDIAN SPELLING

Telegraph readers and Private Eye mock the Guardian for its spelling errors. Dyslexic, I am no judge of spelling. However I can spell my own name - thus my irritation at finding in the Guardian's The Full British supplement today a double spread on Herefordshire under the byline, Simon Gandalfi.
Ah, well...

BRAVE YOUNG LADY

Our eldest son, Josh, and his girlfriend, Jen, have been visiting. Jen is brave to visit. It must be scary. All those How-do-you-dos with strangers. How awful will they be? You know? The boyfriend's folks? Are they really weird? And what do they expect? Commitment to a relationship? Planning for a fifty year future? Or, worse - conversation?
We are weird. Maybe not weird weird - but definitely unusual.
As for our cottage, romantic from the outside, great as a picture postcard. Bernadette and I love to live here. Through other eyes? Primitive, crumbling, a 300-year-old wreck...
And Hamish doesn't help. He is over enthusiastic as a greeter, jumps up at people, scrabbles at them with wet muddy paws.

EASTER/PASSOVER

Yesterday we drove our Dutch friends to Hampton Court. On the banks of the Lugg river near Leominster, Hampton Court is a lovely Tudor castellated manor house parts of which date back to the early 15th century. We continued to Ross on Wye where the Dutch canoed on the river for a couple of hours while Bernadette and I read the Sunday papers in the gardens of the White Lion pub. We drove home on country lanes that wind through the Herefordshire hills - glorious sunny weather and the Dutch playing with buying a holiday home.

BOOKS ARE NOW AVAILABLE AT http://www.simongandolfi.com

HEREFORDSHIRE

Katrina Larkin is a co-founder of the Big Chill music festival. I will be covering the festival for the Guardian. Katrina will write a piece prior to the festival on my Herefordshire, the Herefordshire that I dream of when away traveling. I spent today visiting favorite sites for Katrina's article. Great day...plus having our Dutch friends here and celebrating both Easter and Passover week. I refer to the Dutch as our friends - not true. They are our family. Waking this morning, I lay in bed and listened joyfully to their voices rising from the kitchen.

LEDBURY, HEREFORDSHIRE

Ledbury's Mayor and the Town Crier watch as I sign copies of OLD MAN ON A BIKE in the Three Counties Bookshop. I am dyslectic. How embarrassing to make a spelling mistake in front of such august witnesses!

LEDBURY, HEREFORDSHIRE

Ledbury is a small charming town once famous for its cattle market (Herefords, of course). Bernadette and I were married in the Tudor market house. New Year approaches. People are out there buying Christmas presents. OLD MAN ON A BIKE is a fine stocking-filler and readers enjoy having a copy signed by a local author. One of the two books shops in Ledbury, BOOKS & MAPS, has sold 30 copies; I signed a further 14 for them yesterday. I did a public signing last Saturday in the other shop. We ran out of books (an order for fresh stock hadn't arrived). However I had my photograph taken with the mayor and the town crier which I will post in due course.

HARPER COLLINS

COLWALL, HEREFORDSHIRE: TUESDAY, JULY 9
A publishing disaster delayed my posting the completion of this journey. The journey was planned to end close to publication date. My publishers declared bankruptcy. Harper Collins have cherry-picked the corpse. I have agreed a new contract with Harper Collins (though, if a cherry, I must be over-ripe). OLD MAN ON A BIKE will be published September 1 and I reappeared in public last Saturday to give a presentation at the annual UK meet for bikers organized by Horizon Unlimited.
The presentation lasted an hour. Listeners expected highlights of a ride from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego followed by a question and answer session. I short changed the audience. One hour and my account had reached Panama.
Those frustrated might buy the book.
Meanwhile I will tidy up my notes and post the final week of the journey.

A RIDE THROUGH TENNESSEE

TENNESSEE: MARCH 27
I am due in Franklin, North Carolina, tomorrow. Franklin is the far side of the Appalachian mountains. Today I ride east from Nashville on country lanes that dip and twist through green hills topped by woodland. The countryside is similar to my native Herefordshire. Cattle are the same breed: Herefords. Locals call them White Faces. Even today's weather is a reminder of home with low cloud and spits of drizzle. Lack of hedges is the prime difference; erecting fences is quicker; as is building in timber as opposed to brick or stone.
The houses are pretty when freshly painted, yet, to European eyes, lack permanence. Agriculture has changed. As at home, dairy herds have been superseded by fruit and vegetables. Our brick barns are converted into luxury homes. Here, out of use, they rot. As do houses and trailer homes.

HEREFORDSHIRE

I am leaving the English summer for Tierra del Fuego in mid winter. Insane! Our garden here in Herefordshire, at the foot of the Malvern Hills, is a perfumed heaven of roses and lavender. The view from our garden across two cricket fields to the hills is divine. Jed (17) is at Hereford Junior College. Josh (21) is studying Spanish and International Affairs at Leeds Metropolitan University. I will miss my sons, miss that small part of their lives to which they permit entry. And I will miss my wife, Bernadette. I will miss her every moment of our separation.

HAVENS

Reintegrating after a long solo journey (in this case, six months) takes a while. Journeys have direction and imperative: Get up, get dressed, get on the bike. Each day brings new people and fresh interactions. The countryside changes as does the climate.

Now I am static.

I am back home in England. We - my wife, Bernadette, Jed (17), and Josh (20) - live in Herefordshire at the foot of the Malvern Hills. Jed is a freshman at junior college. Josh is a freshman at Leeds University – Spanish and International Relations.

Our home, a 300 year-old cottage, lies down a narrow lane. The cottage is set in a large garden. Roses, clematis and ivy compete for wall space The lawns need mowing (right now, the ground is too wet). A gate opens onto the village cricket field. A cedar tree shades that corner of the garden. A line of oak trees divides the cricket field from surrounding farmland.

Idyllic?

Yes - though my judgment is prejudiced.

And I have been lulled into inaction.

The great American essayist, James Baldwin, wrote: Havens are high-priced. The price a haven dweller must pay is in deluding himself that havens in fact exist.