LONG, long time no hear. I know, I know. I'm pretty useless.

But you'll be pleased to know, or not as the case may be (Martin and Rene, or is it John), that I am back at work writing again.

It's been really difficult sticking to one topic, since Cycling Back to Happiness was published.

There have been all manner of hare-brained schemes, that I have got all excited about, started researching and tapping away at, only for that inspiration and belief to suddenly fall away.

These failed projects have taken me to Twin Peaks and the Double R (yes, I did have the cherry pie, and it was good), meditation lessons, driving along little known European road networks and a night partying away with the village witches.

Maybe, when I'm dead they'll publish an unfinshed works volume, which will be a massive best-seller. OK... maybe not.

Anyway, book two IS up and running, I'm visiting places and talking to people. And this one won't drown in the dark, despairing pit of self doubt that likes to chip away at me.

All I can tell you is that it involves  a UK tour of Morrisons supermarkets, council estates, souless retail parks and playing fields. Oh, and that little white round thing...

Confused? You want to try writing it!

More to report soon...

But in the meantime, be lucky!

Just a quickie to wish everbody the happiest Christmas and a great New Year.

Sorry, I haven't posted for ages, but nothing really exciting has happened apart from some bloke Obama getting a White House and David Tennant quitting as Doctor 10.

What has been exciting has been all the great reviews, e-mails and posts I've had from people who have enjoyed Cycling Back to Happiness, which, without sounding too cheesy, really does outweigh any financial gains.

So thanks for your support if you bought the book and if you didn't... pull your bloody fingers out in 2009 you tightwads.

Have a great one x

BOOK signing events are wonderful things!

Over the past few weeks, I've been travelling around the country, wedged in tightly between book cases and plonked in front of tills and bulky shoplifting barriers, sat at a table covered in a black cloth, with a couple of pens and a pile of books on top.

Glitzy destinations like Bristol, Dorking, Lowestoft, Southend and Basildon (no, not the last one!) have brought me face-to-face with the people who have already parted with cash for my book, or have taken pity on the Worzel Gummidge look-a-like sitting in the corner and snapped up a copy anyway.

Nobody has thrown a book back in my face yet -  which is good - but there's still plenty of time!

And so far it has been a wonderful experience. Chatting away with people about the joys of cycling, travel and charity work, or just sharing long conversations with old ladies who have become disgruntled by the one-way system in Bath.

They don't want to buy a book, these old girls - they just want a chin-wag, and that's fine by me!

But I have met some great characters and heard some amazing stories sitting at my little table, indulging in my favourite past time - people watching.

The Basildon store was very odd, with strange shaped people, in mostly large sizes, lumbering through the door sweating and making grunting noises, with all sorts of crispy skin afflictions. I think some even had horns! It was like having a beer stool at the Mos Eisley Cantina Bar in Star Wars.

They certainly didn't look like avid readers (having one arm longer than the other, scrapping along the floor, probably doesn't help when trying to hold a book upright), but I apparently out sold Gordon Ramsay that weekend, so maybe they didn't eat or swear a lot either!

But it's the random stories which have made me smile the most. I met a guy in Bristol called Chris, who was a massive inspiration. An infectious sort of chap, he told me he had been given three months to live after being diagnosed with cancer. But he is still here with us, 10 years on, and hoping to write his own book soon, as well as signing me up as a crewman for a Trans-Atlantic yachting trip.

Well, he did run the London Marathon this year, with just one lung, so anything is possible for this for this remarkable man. Watch this space!

A long haired guy asked me to write a message for his partner, whose injured foot was full of surgically inserted pins, promising her she would be back on a tandem with him soon. I also warned her to steer clear of hungry magnets.

He was planning to follow some of the Tour de France circuit this summer, pedalling along the world's longest cycle race route with a copy of my book jammed in between his handlebars. I told him I was jealous and would love to join him for a spot of cycling, cheese eating and wine sinking.

But he can't drink wine. He came off his bike a few years ago and put a pair of handlebars through his stomach. Ouch! And lost one of his kidneys in the process. But he got straight back in the saddle and you've got to respect that dedication to your two wheeled religion

With more Cycling Back to Happiness signing events coming up over the next few weeks, in Watford, Beccles, Hastings and Ludgate Circus (Fleet Street), London, I'm sure I will hear some more ripping yarns. I can't wait and hope to hear some of your stories soon!

* I FELT like I was in travel heaven recently. I was asked to go to Stanford's, in Covent Garden, to sign copies of Cycling Back to Happiness.

Yes, I did say Stanford's, the most famous travel shop in the UK, and, who knows, maybe even the world?

This is the sacred spot where the Godfathers of travel writing, Bill Bryson and Michael Palin, hold their book signing courts. And now I'm in there too, with my six-year-old handwriting squiggled across the author's page, above my cheesy grin, with a signed author sticker on the front, like I'm a somebody or something.

It doesn't get any better than that! OK, it does. Stanford's displayed the book at the front of shop, not just lost in their labyrinth of adventure shelves, sinking somewhere between Chad and Damascus, but in a prominent place where people can see me.

Oh yeah, and the girl working in the shop recognised me before I even had chance to introduce myself as the nobody with the well chewed biro here to sign books.

Apparently, she recognised my glowing bush of highlighted hair from my picture on the front cover of Cycling Back to Happiness. I was gobsmacked and smiling from ear-to-ear. I even had a little sex wee!

"SO, have you come for a glass of Bernie?", the barman asked through a toothy grin, pointing at a wooden shelf packed with different-coloured spirit bottles.

Yes, I was definitely back in Denmark. Back in my favourite drinking den, Pepper's, and back in my favourite town, Ribe. Still, it was the first time I'd ever been toasted in a glass of a liquid named in my honour.

The last time I rolled into Ribe, I was on my marathon two-wheeled slog around the 6,000-kilometre North Sea Cycle Route, the basis of my book, Cycling Back to Happiness.

Ribe is a small town of 8,000 people, on the Danish Jutland peninsula, less than 50 miles north of the German border. It was a place I had fallen in love with straight away. A maze of hemmed-in, cobbled roads and fairytale half-timbered houses, Ribe could have leapt off the pages of a Hans Christian Andersen story.

I'd been invited back to Ribe by friends met on my travels, Gudrun Rishede and Jens Philipsen, who run the town's immaculate green hostel. The excuse was a book signing, but the trip ended up being about much, much more than that.

The main inspiration for my cycling journey was the untimely death of my dear mother, Marylyn from a brain tumour. She was only 56. I ended up doing my cycling trek to raise funds for Cancer Research UK and collected £3,600.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would inspire strangers in a foreign land to follow suit and take up the cancer cause in their own country. I spent 48 hours with Gudrun and Jens, as I passed through their town. Yet not only did they invite me back for a book signing, they planned a whole day of events around it, with all proceeds going to Danish Cancer Research.

I was stunned and a little embarrassed when they told me - all the more so when I arrived in Ribe to find my ugly mug on posters plastered across the windows of pubs, gyms and restaurants. I felt like Forrest Gump when he starts running across the world and random people tag along behind!
But it was a very enjoyable day – conducted in glorious sunshine. Apparently, the weather is always good when I am in town. So that’s three great days a year then!

First up, was a 25km cycle ride, with a pack of sprightly pedalling pensioners, back along the North Sea coast, which preceded the book signing at a local store. I sold books to a Viking with a twisted knot of a beard and the town’s legendary night watchmen. It was a good session, when you think this is an English language book being sold in a Danish town. I think the free red wine and nuts also helped tractor beam people in!

I was given an official guided tour of the town before being guest of honour at a dinner where I had to stand up and give a speech. Again, I was lucky that everyone speaks such good English, as my Danish stinks. Meeting people and hearing their stories was a humbling experience.

After the meal I was approached by an Irishman and his Danish wife. Sam worked on the North Sea oil rigs, operating off Esbjerg, and had read about me in a newspaper. A Geordie rigmate had recently lost his wife to cancer and it had been just like with my mother, the doctors were slow to realise the truth until it was too late. Sam bought a copy of the book for his friend, asking me to write a dedication: "I hope this helps you on your own difficult journey." I was choked.

No sooner had Sam departed than a Danish woman confided in me. She had lost both parents at an early age and like me, she said the experience had changed her life.She got the travel bug and, in her sixties, rode right across the USA on a Harley Davidson.

And so I ended up at Pepper's, my favourite bar, with its ever-smiling owner, Thomas. This drinking hole for farmers, Vikings - and on my last trip, a bunch of hard boozing Faroe Islands fishwives - was also in on the charity act.
Thomas not only named a drink in my honour, but decided to give all profits to the cancer charity, as did all the other event organizers, from the book store to the restaurant.

It was so satisfying to be involved in such an event, joining up with the Danes in such a good cause. After all, it doesn't matter if it's Cancer Research UK, Denmark or Mongolia which makes any medical breakthroughs. We'll all benefit!

It had been an overwhelming and emotional day and I was in a right spin -hardly helped by a few too many glasses of Bernie! And the ingredients? Well it was 40 per cent alcohol and looked like a rainbow in a glass! You’ll have to go to Ribe and find out for yourself!

I JUST wanted to say thanks to everyone out there who has helped Cycling Back to Happiness get off to a cracking start.

The book has only been out two weeks and it has been flying off the shelves - my publisher has been struggling to keep up!

My kicking and screaming baby is already being cradled on book shelves as far apart as Glasgow, Plymouth, Stockholm and bloody Florida. Ernest Hemmingway eat your heart out!

All of this has been down to you, the people who have stuck by me on my Facebook group for the past seven months and those who have had their curiosity tickled by my outrageous star billing in Adventure Travel Magazine, which gave me Book of the Month ahead of no other than Bear Grylls and Dave Gorman! Ha-ha!

And that's not forgetting the people finding me in regional rags and who I have unearthed via random e-mails. All of your support has been top notch!

Also, a massive thanks to all those people who attended my book launches, especially the Southend event, which was a sell out - 100 books in two hours, breaking both the store and publisher's record.

But I'm not getting carried away. This is a good start and now I need it to carry on and I will remain pessimistic until the end.

I climbed up to the giddy heights of 16th in the travel writers Premier League on Amazon the other day, just below Jeremy Clarkson and above a Bill Bryson book, but soon nosedived back to 25, then 45 and 80 something out of hundreds. A reality check is good for the soul.

But the promotion fight goes on and I'm off to the Netherlands, back to to Texel, and Ribe, my adopted Danish home, for book signings next week. Apparently, they're going to name a drink after me in the bar - but I can't think of anything.

Any smart ideas of sickly concoctions would be greatly received!

I'm also thinking a lot about my next book, which will involve Volvos, the Mafia and Polar Bears!

Take care and be lucky x

P.S. If I could afford it I would buy every single one of you a box of Roses.

WELL, it was launch day of Cycling Back to Happiness today and it just felt a bit numb and weird to be honest.

It's exciting to know you're book has finally been published and all that, but this has been going on for weeks, months and years now.

It seems a lifetime ago that I first stumbled across the North Sea Cycle Route on the internet and decided I was going to use it as the basis for a book, inspired by losing my dear, not so old, mum.

Months of e-mailing people followed, begging for free campsite accomodation (and the missus for a two month pass), a lift on a ferry or a bowl of grub and some grease for Erika at the end of the night.

All of course done on company time when I was supposed to be working.

Then setting off and actually doing it. The freedom of those first few kilometres after getting off the boat in the Netherlands, nearly getting run over by a scooter on a cycle path and heading into the green house metropolis outside the Hoek, with stork's, lambs and ducks all forming a welcoming party.

Then after it was finished, almost choking to death, after cycling into the London smog to surprise the other half. It all seems such a long time ago.

Then there was writing the bloody thing. No income, a dark back room, peanut butter sarnies and a little spell of depression, as just what I had done and previously gone through finally started to settle.

Thank God for Red Tube and Championship Manager!

After writing the last sentence, there was proof reading, more e-mailing, home and abroad, for press and it is still continuing now.

It's all very energy sapping and won't be over for a long time yet (I hope) with a second book in the pipeline and signing events underway this week. But don't get me wrong, it is all very exciting!

People tell me I did a great thing cycling all that way for Cancer Research to raise money. And I suppose it was, but I never think of things like that - I just get on with it.

Other people say I am an inspiration, for battling my fears and doing the charity gig, but I find that a bit too over the top. I'm no hero!

But I had a great message from an American member of the Cycling Back to Happiness Facebook group, Nick, who wanted to parachute in and try the NSCR himself this summer.

He can't make it, but said he had rounded up a gang of pals to pedal across the States to raise money for their cancer charity, with a copy of my book in his saddle bags!

Now that's what I call inspirational and I raise a tumbler of claret to you tonight Nick, on the other side of the pond, as I reflect on my first official day as a published author - that really has made it all worth while!

I WAS ascending an escalator in Lakeside the other day, when I almost found my nose prodding around the backside of the young lady in front of me.

Minus any underwear, nearly the whole of her pocked arse was hanging out of a pair of droopy black jeans - she would have put the most burly of builders to shame!

OK, most of us blokes like to do a spot of window shopping from a distance - without buying might I add - but this was up close and personal and just too much.

It was a baking hot day under the glass roof and I'm sure I saw a sweaty dribble riding down the side of the offender's fake tan covered crease, which looked a little embarassed itself to be on full show.

I'm not going to comment on the attractiveness rating of the girl, but she wasn't too bad and had a relatively good body.

But it really doesn't matter. I don't think I'd have been happy if it had been Catherine Zeta Jones going up with her cheeks on full view. OK maybe that's a big fat fib, but it still wasn't on!

Just as bad was bum bird's mate. The stoaty skinny thing's trousers were also closer to her knees than her thighs, with a scabby old pair of creased black French knick-knacks on full view.

Thank God for small mercies!