David Hartley
Film
Photography
1.2.3.4.
Random Acts
Youtopia
North / South
Information
Instagram
Everything that has ever been could have been prevented, and none of it was. The only thing you can mend is the future. - Kaliane Bradley.
NCN 1 - North Sea Route
NCN 2 - South Coast Route
NCN 3 - West Country Way
NCN 4 - A Celtic Trail
I started riding without thinking about why and where. Just to keep my body turning over and my mind free of the everyday clutter it collects and doesn’t actually use. It’s a meditaion on wheels, but the experience of immersing myself in nature began to have a really profound effect on me. I also realised that I was regularly coming across small blue signs with a number on them, seemingly at random. On doing some research I discovere the National Cycle Network (NCN) and it’s numbered routes around the country. Run and maitained by Sustrans, which has created 12,763 miles of signed cycle routes throughout the United Kingdom, including 5,273 miles of traffic-free paths. Not only did this network transform my slow travel experience, but because of it’s very nature it seems to get under the skin of the local towns, cities and areas of beautiful countrside and even to lonely desolate environments far from other people. Ity seemed to me to pass through the edgelands of the human environment, squeezed between other infrastructure, private lands, public spaces and byways. As I explored this hidden world behind the curtain of normal life, I felt the need to study and document it as it spoke to me in a way that is hard to define. The effect was cumulative, rather than direct, subtle and poignant. It seems like I have caught a glimpse of what goes on back stage of the world, that most don’t normally see or notice. This is my portrayal of that journey.
NCN Route 1 - North Sea Route
I first started riding this because it passes right by my house, and follows the Lee Valley canal out into the countryside. It is my main training ride, sun, rain, snow, whatever the conditions I can get out of the city and in amongst nature within a short time.
