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Click here for DIARY ENTRY 10/03/07

Click here for DIARY ENTRY 06/03/07

Click here for DIARY ENTRY 02/03/07

Click here for DIARY ENTRY 30/01/07

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DIARY 10/03/07

We're now at the end of the trek, lodged overnight in Las Vegas. This is only the second time I've had access to the internet to send this report. But we have trekked and struggled for five long days and most must be feeling tired. I am. And then tonight the adrenalin will recede and the fatigue will kick in and replace it. As I write, at 6:20pm (8 hours behind UK time), I feel that sleep is likely to be the choice after dinner. The tables, through which I'll be strolling as I head for my room, will attract my eye for sure. And I may play a hand or a fist of blackjack. But see a show? No chance. And the truth is that I don't like being in this city. Never have. It is full of fat suburbans with no sense of culture and it is too noisy, so incessantly noisy, for me. After the amazing solitude and peace we all felt through Death Valley, this is a culture shock, and that's the one and only time you'll see me use the word culture in the same sentence as the words Las and Vegas.

Check your atlas, or go Google Earth and see where we've been. Beatty Junction to Stovepipe Wells and Panamint Springs, and Furnace Junction; tiny settlements in an arid land, all pioneer locations, and off the road, a few miles off, ghost towns once thriving with '49-ers, but run down since the gold rush; and the mines were finally abandoned in the 1920s. There is much to tell of this fabulous trek, but this isn't the time. I shall raid my copious notes when I get back and write in more detail.

Some of the volunteers here will find it difficult to explain to their families and friends and sponsors what they have been through out here - 60 miles a day on a cycle, uphill for an unrelenting 16 miles on more than one occasion in blistering heat ... It'll take a while for it to properly sink in, I reckon. This is a fine group of people, from all walks. It's been a fine and life-enhancing experience. Next week, Cheltenham; the greatest festival of racing imaginable, and I will be there for the Gold Cup. That'll be something, but little will compare with this trek. Little is likely to come even close for quite some time. I love an adventure. You know what I say: the answer is yes, what's the question.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for? Many here have probably exceeded their own grasp several times over. They will read this (I hope) and know what Mr Browning was meaning.

More to come

DIARY 06/03/07

This is the first time I've been able to connect to the 'net. No mobile signal at all. And NO PHONES in bedrooms in these cowboy hotels!

I am fine. It is an arduous trek. 56 miles today for most (some, myself included due to tandem limitations, took refuge in a support vehicle for some time, though never for long and one at least was carrying injuries from a fall) in very high temps. Reached mid-80s mid-afternoon, and no shade. None anywhere. It is phenomenal country. But all is beauty through geography. Little or no bird life - some saw an eagle today. I missed it. It is barren, forbidding land, and several suffered mild sunstroke today. Tom, my pilot, is good and I can cope well through my own brand of insouciance. It is hard, this one. Hard even for some very fit men. The 7 women cyclists are formidable. All have finished the course so far, with great courage, determination and dignity - rather as wise men have come to expect of women really.

No mistake, this is tough. But so are women. We're not halfway through, but I can be sure this will live long in the mind.

DIARY 02/03/07

Been writing songs and recording demos. Something is happening, but I have no idea whether it's magic or mere mediocrity as yet. Time and my own nervous judgment will tell.

To Las Vegas Sunday to start the MAG trek across Death Valley on the California/Nevada borders. It's a comfortable 24-29C at the moment, but could get hotter at peak times. All precautions taken, and all and any happenstance considered, but still you never know. It is an adventure all right. And I am a betting man. There will be lessons learnt and experiences that will eventually find their way into songs and stories. I have been apprehensive and distant over this, but now am feeling that tinge of excitement, the one you feel a day or three before the holiday starts, before Christmas, before the big day. It's something like nervousness, but in a melange of so many emotions it's never going to be pinned down. The adrenalin is starting to pump, I guess. It's not performing, but it's something like that.

50+ strangers to live amongst for several days in a semi-wilderness: arms-length for a time these days, if only because with the immoral chequebook journalism that pervades old Fleet Street now, together with the world wide web, there really is no hiding place, no matter how honourable your intentions. I will have to put my trust in a lot of people I have never met and may never see again once the trek is completed. A man has to watch his step these days, when a man is in the public eye.

The Paul Horton painting is complete and framed (it is a substantial 42 x 38 inches in size) and I am overwhelmed. It is a fabulous image, a wonderful metaphor on the theme of struggle, honour and commitment. "Onward and Upward," it is. The rolling hills, almost human buttock-like, and the factory smoke evolving into dark and threatening clouds give it an air of foreboding, but our hero must soldier on, bike at hand on the long, steep incline, his destiny mapped out in industrial geometry and nature's own testing-grounds, the verdant slopes innocent and benign but at the same time challenging.

The challenge is on. Many have given support to my trek. A good sum has been gathered for MAG to help train young men and women as de-miners in the blighted plots of SE Asia and Angola. I've been there and seen the sadness of whole villages unable to send kids to school, where the men can't fish from the river-banks or tend sheep or grow crops, where street sides and banks and fields are mined with dirty unexploded ordnance left behind as a farewell gift by retreating armies, mostly courtesy of the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot is long dead; yet, I am almost ashamed to admit that even as a Christian I have no compunction in believing he will by now have rotted in that peculiar Hell assigned to the truly evil.

It is not too late to give support to this cause. If you share concern with me, to any degree, you are welcome to show it by donating to MAG. This website will lead you to the form, as will their own. Or send a wee cheque to MAG at 47 Newton Street, Manchester, M1 1FT. Every fiver counts.

My intention is to report to this diary every night of the trek. But we are talking cowboy country and there is (allegedly) no cellphone signal. But a stopping-place or three has WAP connection, so my laptop will be up and running each night a connection is available. I'll do my best. Keep in touch.

Yours, saddle-sore from training,

DIARY 30/01/07

I've been presenting Sounds Of The 70s for BBC Radio 2 for seven years and the depth of the decade's musical talent continues to surprise. We re-discovered poor Nick Drake a couple of years ago and found more than a few gems and cool oddities along the way. Now Judee Sill. She didn't live a long or happy life and her sombre melancholy is etched deep into her well-crafted songs. "The Kiss" caused a stir among listeners. We received a large block of emails after that was aired. And "Jesus Was a Cross-maker" has recently had much the same effect. Look out now, she'll be all over the radio 2 airwaves 'ere long, and they'll all be claiming her for themselves.

Dylan's "Theme Hour" is good radio. His speaking voice is now as melodic as his singing voice, both inflecting in the strangest places, and both packed full of character and charisma. Occasionally, I've been thinking he was speaking in verse, a la Mo Ali of yore, but then the song kicks in and I realise the wily old bird is reciting its own lyrics, thereby filling both the airtime dedicated to speech, and entertaining the listener. Wily Bob. Poetical Bob, who knows all about cold coffee in the china.

I've allowed myself a quiet start to the new year. The long touring miles took something of a toll last autumn, even though I took a thrill-a-day from it all, as ever. Some stick more permanently than others, of course, like returning from the big Bospop Festival in Holland, way down on the German border. We travelled overnight by ferry to The Hook, and returned next day to a bomb scare on Harwich docks which left the ship treading water in the North Sea for an hour or more which allowed us to see the World Cup Final through to the end. Saw the Zidane head-butt Live and thought it typical of today's game and the men who play it. I mean, by that, that the way the victim went down, in all that sorry melodrama, was more sinister and damning than Z.Z's own act of aggression. One French, the other Italian. In the heat of the moment, what language do you think they shared? English? Both men were victims, of course, but then so is football itself. It's a victim of greed and avarice. I used to love the game, but now I have so little respect for those who play it, those who run it and those who run those who play it (the agents) and run it (the supporters ultimately), that Pele's famous tag "beautiful game" seems now somewhat twee and affected. I shall stick to Horse Racing: a real man's sport, where everyone is scrupulously honest. Yeh, I'm kidding. But the attitude overall is much more worthy of respect than most major sports can claim.

The midnight sun near the Arctic Circle when we played Bronnoysund Festival, north Norway, stays with me plain and clear, too. The Modigliani exhibition at The Royal Academy in July: stupendously sexy. And the show of 60 Chagall lithographs in a small castle in Beveren, Belgium, was a wonder. The Curator had been at our concert the previous night and came backstage (friend of the Promoter) to chat and she understood immediately my passion for Chagall and she offered to open the Castle and allow me to take a private viewing next morning. It was Sunday, and the last day of the exhibition before it was to move on to another room in another city. What are the chances of that happening, eh? And she was delightful and gave me and a few others from our team a guided tour of the magnificent Schloss and its great collection of antiques, art and wood carvings. As well as letting us loose among the Chagalls for all the time we could afford.

Cockney Rebel the racehorse won his debut race and ran 2nd and 3rd (twice) in extremely valuable races later in the summer. He is generally 33/1 for the 2000 Guineas, the renewal to be run at Newmarket, May 5th, and word from the stable is that he has wintered well, grown into himself (he was dwarfed by most of his conquerors as a two-year-old) and is something of a good punt at the odds, each-way. Take advantage now, because if he gets there, he'll do justice to your faith.

"The Anthology" release was the equivalent of the gold watch for long-service, but gave me a lots of warm feelings. (Now we are recording new tracks, but the writing process, as ever these days, is slower than it ever was for the young man in the fur collar.) Then we covered 3,000 miles or so in 12 days in Germany, thrashing the autobahns in the big V12 7-series. Boys' Own, I grant you (you've read it elsewhere in these diaries), but it needed to be done. Then another special moment was to tread the boards again after 30 years at The Carre Theatre in Amsterdam. Some hall, and some night. Then all the fine nights in the UK. The date list for the coming year may look pretty sparse at the moment (empty bar one, to be accurate), but behind the scenes, beavering away, is a dedicated agent, phone against ear hour in, hour out, dealing and negotiating and building up that list. We think the UK will have to be put on hold until Spring 2008, when we'll tour the theatres again with a new studio album, but the summer weekends may bring outdoor shows my way.

Meanwhile, retired Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Dickinson and I pound the lanes of Suffolk to build up physical strength to resist the battering which the 350 miles we'll be cycling on the tandem through Death Valley in March are likely to inflict. Tom looks the part, all lycra and glow-in-the-dark strips on yellow jacket and crash-hat with a point at the back, so that I feel quite slovenly in jeans and trainers and a peaked cap. But, hey, it's for Charity and an exceedingly good cause. And what an adventure lies ahead! Check out the website to read all about the work MAG does and maybe you'll consider sponsoring me. Sponsor me to help me help to save a village. It's a slogan, sure. But they need us. Suck it and see.