Outside in CHILLY Green Space™🥶
Wrap up warm and ride with Warm Hands® this January. Expect a crisp morning through (believe it or not) a man-made lake, another ancient Milton Keynes wood, a pub, a medieval toot, and finally another pub.
No coffee stops this end of town so bring a flask of tea, coffee or mead– as long as it’ll keep your fingers and toes warm.
MEET: 11:00am – Station Square
RIDE: 11:30
STOP 1: Prince George, Tattenhoe
FINISH: The Talbot, Loughton
Friday 26th December
Tis’ the Season.
MEET:10:00am – Lloyds Court outside @milkandbeans.coffee (Carlo’s probs gonna be shut but we ride nonetheless)
RIDE: 10:30
Stop 1: The Victoria Inn, Bradwell
Finish: 12:00 – Campbell Park
Seasons greetings gang – We’re closing out the year with some lovely stuff for you all. I’m gonna be honest, there was deep contemplation on having the entirety of the ninth instalment of HIYE being exclusively the Charlie Brown Christmas album, but I’ve exercised restraint.
Regardless, there’s some warmth to get you through the shortest days of the year, and with a yule-tide frosting sprinkled throughout. Personal stand outs from Papo2oo4, Half Man Half Biscuit, Cameron Winter and Moin again.
Love to the Blog-set™, Happy holidays and see you in ’26. Thanks for keeping tuned in x
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Welcome back to the soggiest season of them all everybody. It’s bloody moody out there right now and I can assure you it ain’t any cheerier in here! Well – if you’re into moody guitar music, then maybe you might be in luck this month. We’re not gonna list of any notable mentions this month because from the couple people I’ve spoken too, you’ve either heard half of this already or yet to come across it some how (big up the ML Buch & Moin crowd).
Anyway, enjoy – send me some shit if you hear anything good.
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Hands® turned 1 today – officially, not publicly. It was the day the first lot of stickers arrived and we’d decided to go for a little ride around the city as i’d just quit my job, it was my birthday and my best mate had come up for the day to get some coffee/beers. I wasn’t in the best place mentally and it was looking like a shit winter was on the way. I needed something to focus on to get through it all so I made the logo, ordered some stickers, and started telling people about it. Not at any point back then did I imagine it turning out the way it has so far. Barely anyone I knew then rode a bike or even had one, and the ones that did lived far away. Neither did I expect anyone to understand what a bike club is or does (and I’m still figuring that out).
I put up a little video on Instagram this morning of all the videos I’ve recorded since that first day and you can see the seasons change, the group getting bigger, the rides longer – and everyone smiling. I’d lost a lot of hope this time last year and I personally wasn’t doing a lot of smiling, so to be sat here 365 days later and have all of this to look back on feels really good. We’ve done nine group rides, met a billion new friends and gone camping more than once.
So for that reason, I just want to say thank you to all of you. This whole thing wouldn’t exist without you, the effort you put in and the fact that you show up. Real people IRL are what powers this thing and that’s the way it’s always going to be. To borrow a quote from Jan and Michael, It’s just ‘People on bikes, doing things’.
This isn’t it for the year also: we’ve got another group ride (hopefully two), Map deployment into local Caffeination Stations®, longsleeve kit for the chilly heads and I’ll finally get round to rescheduling that Coffee Outside as the weather has been Naff™ for the last couple weeks. Fingers are getting pulled out too as the blog has been asleep for some months now so expect updates in your inboxes soon enough. Finally, Hands® is making its first movements into long-form video formats, we went camping and filmed it all. Give it a watch if you’re in need of a ATB bikecamping fix.
Have a great weekend x
There was no way in hell that I couldn’t put this months playlist up without some acknowledgment. Crazy. D’Angelo special this month. Tribe, Dilla, Slum Village, Jill Scott, The Roots, Badu and more.
(more…)Saturday 11th October
Weekend Warriors, Saddle Sniffers®– it’s time.
“We ain’t dead yet…😵”
MEET: @milkandbeans.coffee @ 11:00am
RIDE: 11:45
Stop 1: The Cross Keys (half’s only🧏♂️)
Stop 2: Bogotá Coffee
Finish: @blackenedsunbc + @baristacultureuk
Nope, I didn’t forget – just needed some time. How are we at 6 playlists already? Either we are doing the most or not enough; either way, just in time to keep those ears toasty. Fender fall season is upon us so expect icy bits with a little sunshine in-between: Oneohtrix Point Never, Braga Circuit and Henry Earnest with Earl Sweatshirt, Duster and Dwight Sykes.
Enjoy x
(more…)Thursday 4th September
Hands, feet, arms and legs: whatever gets us over the line.
Say sayonara to summer with a 7mile loop through Green Space™. Notable features include the Grand Union Canal, Noddy Line® and Linford Wood – finishing off at our usual resting place, Campbell Park Hill.
Arts and Crafts brought to you by resident rider @fszweda – neue kit incoming for final ride so lock in for the Product Toss™
I’ve spent so long deliberating over what to write alongside photos from this trip, and I honestly have no idea why. It’s not like it wasn’t fun or hard to recount, but more of a ‘why bother you with the detail’. The images do enough of the work that I thought the writing would do, and what I really want is a home for them on the blog somewhere finally.
Uploading this at the end of summer, I had no idea how much of a deal ‘bikepacking’ would become over the last 4 months – maybe that’s why it felt weird writing about it then. It felt a bit surreal at the time, putting this all together as novices and setting off from the Velodrome. It looks like Summer 2025® really was the year everyone packed up their bikes and went camping, and I’m here for it.
So – instead of trying to be clever, here’s a dump of pics from the Hands® and Peak Magazine: Swift Campout 2025. Love to the entire Happy Camping™ crew for making it happen.
Photos by me, Tom Frimley and Matteo Lucherelli. More snaps from James Sofokleus over at Peak Magazine
