Pedalling the delights of the Barnstaple branch

In my travels promoting my latest book, I found myself in Appledore on the North Devon coast a couple of weeks ago at a wonderful book festival.

I confess that when invited, I had to look up where it was, and I found that to reach the little town there was a ten-mile cycle route from Barnstaple along the Torridge - called the Tarka Trail.

So, I squeezed my bike into the worst cycle facility on the planet - the terrible little cubby holes on Great Western Railway’s Hitachi trains, which involve hanging the front wheel from a hook (not an easy task for anyone with a heavy bike, or who is less than my 6ft height).