Things you never knew about Easter Eggs.

With Easter on the horizon, thoughts turn to chocolate naturally, but why do we give eggs? The custom celebrates new life and like any excuse to indulge, we have taken to it with gusto. But eggs are not just for eating it seems.

Pace Eggs are hard boiled eggs with patterned shells, they are traditional in northern parts of England at Easter, with local variants in the name, such as Paste Eggs. The name is derived from Pesach (Passover). Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter was a common custom in England in the middle ages. Eggs were brightly coloured to mimic the new, fresh colours of spring. The practice of decorating eggs was made even more famous by King Edward I of England who ordered 450 eggs to be gold-leafed and coloured for Easter gifts in 1290.

Egg rolling is very popular in England and is an Easter Monday sport. Hard-boiled eggs are rolled down a hill. Customs differ from place to place. The winner's egg may be the one that rolls the farthest, survives the most rolls, or is rolled between two pegs.

Another activity that takes place on Easter Day is the playing of a game with the eggs known as "jarping", It's a bit like playing conkers, with players tapping their opponents' eggs until one breaks. The winner goes through to the next round, and so on until there is only one egg left unbroken. copyright of projectbritain.com A good hit by a jarper is called a "dunch". The game is popular in County Durham, where it is played on Easter Sunday.

Canterbury and Faversham like many UK towns are holding Easter Egg hunts over the holiday. The perfect excursion from our Gourmet Tour which begins and ends in Canterbury. Chocs away!

Easy Cycling to The Olympic Park

I would recommend the ride I took this week to the Olympic Park.  It's so easy, traffic free and gives a view of the capital most people have never seen. It gives away how startlingly near the Olympic Park is to central London.  Hop on your bike at Tower Bridge and pedal east through St Katharine's Dock and on to St Katharine's Way.  Ahead here, you pick up the waterside route to Shadwell Basin which leads back to the riverside. Don't overshoot the zigzag bike path taking you under the road. Follow the north bank of the river - some say this route is for pedestrians only;  even if it is, its a great walk with a fabulous view - until you reach Limehouse. Take a left here into the mega basin where canal boaters prepare to enter the tidal Thames (yep, I've done that too - choppy and a bit scary). Exit the basin following signs to Bow and ride for 20 minutes or so along the inelegantly named Limehouse Cut. You'll fly over locks and slide under the approach to Blackwall Tunnel before reaching elegant Three Mills (Britain's oldest Tide Mill and biggest film/TV studio) and the massive new locks round the back, designed to aid Olmpic Park construction, but never put to use. Cross the canal here and continue northwards and shortly you will reach The Stratford Greenway and Olympic Park.
From here you can explore all sorts of other fascinating areas of North London without any traffic at your backside. For our self guided circular rides to the Park. email us.
And the conclusion is: Don't/ do not/don't even consider reaching the Park during the Olympics via Stratford station with all the other thousands of people trying to get there by underground.  Pick up a Boris bike - there's got to be a docking station near the Park, although as yet I've not seen one and enjoy a quiet pedal.

How a tandem can open up the world

On the pm radio programme yesterday, a thrilled blind lady was featured - she had just been cycling on a tandem. Through Companion Cycling, a charity based in Surrey, people with disabilities are able to take to a bike and enjoy the wow feeling we all get from pedalling away.

Last summer, we had our own tandem wow, when Erik Weihenmayer took his young family cycling with us in Oxfordshire. Erik, who lives in Colorado is the only blind man to have reached the Everest summit which he did in 2001. His life reads like an action man Oscar and his autobiography, Touch The Top of the World is a source of inpsiration to all of us.  Now married, his wife took the front saddle of the tandem and with their two children following, they rode out of Oxford along the rural Thames to start their adventure with us. We had made some adjustments to the tandem before their arrival as the front rider is not usually the smaller of the pair. All went well and we were left standing in awe and viewing the crudentials of the tandem in a new light!