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just to cap it all

over the past six or seven months, due to various lockdowns and furlough, i have found myself responsible for the content of our local newspaper, not a position i've ever had desires upon. but then, many of us have had to do stuff we hadn't planned on over the last few months, so i can do little else than suck it up and get on with it. it has to be said, however, that residing on a small island off the west coast of scotland, in the midst of a world pandemic, is probably one of the most fortuitous locations in which to live. throughout every restriction imposed from westminster or holyrood, we have still been able to undertake the same set of parcours as has always been the case.

granted, for reasons of public relations, to begin with, we would cycle alone, perhaps ten to fifteen minutes apart, meeting up at an agreeable social-distance for a coffee at debbie's when pedalling was almost done for the day. however, as the situation became more relaxed, we started going out in twos or threes. yet, even in the early days, the most common remark heard was "if we didn't see you out on your bike every weekend, we'd know things were bad." quite the opposite of received admonishments heard by even individual cyclists in mainland locations, for which we are most grateful.

then, towards the end of last week, it seemed that things might be about to improve. holyrood lifted some of the retstrictions applied to the argyll and bute islands (of which islay and jura are but two), allowing meetings of up to six people from two households indoors from friday (18 december) onwards, with a view to placing the entire region at level one at the weekly review this tuesday. for many weeks now, the western isles, orkney, shetland, and moray have been at level one; though there have been vague promises of moving argyll's islands on previous occasions, it now appeared that such was about to occur.

then saturday happened, with the announcements from north and south of the border that the 'new' strain of the coronavirus was 70% more capable of transmission through the air, so more stringent restrictions were required. therefore, instead of the promised five-day break over christmas, we now have christmas day only. come boxing day, mainland scotland moves to level four, while the isles shift to level three. disappointing for everyone to say the least, just when we'd all hoped progress was being made.

however, at the risk of viewing this seriousness in an entirely self-serving and superficial manner, my immediate reaction was to check how this might affect the available cycling opportunities. happily, it appears that it will make no difference to us whatsoever, the subject of much discussion over coffee and mince pies following sunday's annual mince pie ride, when time came to arrange for next week's sunday morning ride. and just to prove that our enthusiasm for cycling's great heritage knows no bounds, we clad our noggins in authentic, robert millar peugeot/shell caps from the wonderful people at prendas.

until now, peugeot jerseys have often been confined to displaying bp logos, as have the matching caps, unlike the signed wool peugeot jersey taking pride of place on the upstairs landing, only a few metres from a commemorative robert millar poster, celebrating his victory in the 1984 tour de france king of the mountains competition. however, andy storey has been relentless in pursuit of licensing the shell variant, in which success has now been achieved, shortly to be followed, i'm led to believe, with an accompanying jersey.

cycling may have substantially changed for many during the last seven or eight months, but we never forget from whence we came.

peugeot michelin shell retro cycling cap

monday 21 december 2020