The Clouds Factory

I wanted to share what we did at the weekend in the hope to inspire other people to try what my partner and I ended up doing. A few days ago we were walking the dogs late in the afternoon and on the way back, in this big field, we noticed an elderly woman walking slowly leaning on her stick. We asked if she was ok as she seemed tentative and a little confused. The very first thing she said, almost without realising that's what she was going to say was: "You are the first people I've spoken to all day". Neither of us expected that so we stayed with her, chatting away for about 40 minutes. We ended up walking her back to her house, exchange numbers and invite her for a Sunday roast. She was going to be 89 a few days later and it seemed a nice thing to do. She was really touched as she didn't have it in her to cook a roast for herself (and she admitted she hated cooking).

The Giro, like any Grand Tour, is a race of attrition, grit, resistance, luck and sheer determination that goes on for three weeks. The mental and physical demands are huge and some riders can deliver under this pressure. Others, albeit talented, crumble under the weight of expectation. So it is that every year it becomes a lottery for the lucky and the healthy and the fit. Results, or lack of, before the race is not always a good indicator. This article is not about Nibali, Roglic or Mollema, who are expected to do a good job as leaders and they have. This is about those athletes who have impressed the most or underperformed according to their skillsets (no comment on those who have left). THE GOOD RICHARD CARAPAZ (Movistar) Although 4th last year, the Ecuadorian tends to be quiet the rest of the season, so his rise in the general classification is never a given. He climbs faster than anyone else and his initial brief might have been to be Landa's right-hand man on the...

As classics go, Milano-Sanremo is the longest of them all (almost 300km) and one of the oldest (1907). Eddy Merckx has won it a record 7 times. It has been marred by late snow at times and its route has been modified here and there, but at its core is the length and flatness, so one for the sprinters traditionally but not so much of late. There are a few lumps, but although short and not very steep, they usually come at the end of a long day on the saddle and have been decisive in the outcome of the race. In recent times, the climbs of Cipressa (added in 1982) and Poggio (added in 1960) have been the theatres of all-out attacks. The breakneck and twisty descent from the Poggio especially, induced some of the most entertaining racing... and some awful crashes too. The finish in the town of Sanremo has moved posts a few times but whether it was in the false flat of Via Roma or on the pan flat promenade by the sea, many a time it has ended in a bunch sprint.

Women cycling has grown in popularity exponentially in the last few years. There is still a long long way to go to reach equality in terms of wages, recognition and exposure in comparison to the men's: wages are way too low, with some riders getting pittance, others paying for equipment, only the very top getting a reasonable (but risible in comparison to the men's) pay packet; most organisers set a huge disparity in terms of podium money between men and women; all the races are kept shorter than the men's for absolutely no reason; even ASO (Tour de France) supremo Prudhomme has stated that a Women Tour is "impossible" to organise; misogyny is still rife and too few men's top teams sponsor a women's team counterpart. The more we follow and the more we support, especially in social media and by tuning in when the rare race is televised, the quicker we can close the gap. My favourite races last year were La Course by Le Tour de France and the World Ch...