Fast Features

Link to the slideshow The Guardian ran of my Syria pics is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2012/apr/11/free-syrian-army-in-pictures

Smashing!

Got to ride the Olympic mountain bike course at Hadleigh Farm in Essex last week for Sunday Times ‘Ingear’ section, despite northern England being under six inches of snow the south-east was dry and sunny. Made the mistake of looking like I knew what I was doing with my shiny Specialized bike and matching riding gear, obviously everyone there made me look like the wheezing old fart I really am.

It’s only 4.7km long but one lap is enough to make your lungs burst, they’ve packed a huge amount in and one obstacle directly follows the next so you don’t get much time to relax. Vicious rock descents, steep technical climbs and some super-fast grassy sections make it a swooping, sweeping ride, although I admit I did chicken out and take the ‘easy’ option on a couple of the rock sections. Huge slabs of Glossop rock play with your mind and make the obstacles look worse than they are – it’s unlikely the Olympic athletes will have the same problem.

Did quick interviews with Annie Last and Liam Kileen, who are ridiculously fit and professional. But for the 20,000 people who are lucky enough to have tickets, the Olympic MTB event will be a smashing day out in August. So long as it doesn’t rain/sleet/hail/thunderstorm, etc…

Like going toe-to-toe with tanks in Saraquib, that was fun.

And skulking around with a keffiyeh around your face so people couldn’t recognise you as a westerner. That got edgy after a while.

Or when we passed a checkpoint who waved us straight through, although everyone in the car thought they were government militia.

In Syria you went from bored out of your mind to anxious, there was very little in between. It’s a peasant’s revolution being fought in the poorest parts of the country for now, and until they can get their hands on serious money or weapons it’s unlikely to change anytime soon. One thing’s for sure, though: Assad may control the ground with his tanks and brute force, but in the north he appears to have completely lost control of the people. In which case, he’s no longer president but just some cronie sat at the head of other cronies. When you look at the long and foul history of the Assad family, that’s about right.

Western media have lost interest in a story that doesn’t deliver instant thrills-per-page. Syria’s off the front page for now. We largely ignored Libya until Tripoli was on the cards, then we all rushed out there in our masses. Now journalists are stood in Turkey and Beirut ringing their hands saying it’s too dangerous to go inside, and so the story doesn’t get reported, and so media interest dries up. With the rebels now having to adopt more hit-and-run tactics (one rebel described it as “Tom and Jerry”) everyone’s waiting to see what the next big move will be.

Idlib province was very beautiful in a rustic kinda way, and the people were great, every meal a banquet and sometimes they’d keep you talking for five hours. If you weren’t politically-minded before you went in you sure were afterwards.

Here’s a few pics of pretty Syria and a couple of mates I made inside.

And it

The news that six British soldiers, mostly from the Yorkshire Regiment, were killed by a large IED on the Helmand/Kandahar border is tragically sad. But why were they in Warriors?

We were in exactly the same place on Highway One in Argendahb a couple of years ago with Stryker Brigade, the American equivalent of Warrior, and they’d been taking a beating. 24 soldiers killed in six weeks by IEDs, the medevac crews that used to pull out the pieces nicknamed them “Kevlar coffins,” it was that bad.

The reason? Flat bottomed vehicles are no good in Afghanistan or any place where the threat from mines or IEDs is so high. You can have all the exterior armour you like against bullets, missiles and grenades, but if your bottom is flat then the shockwave of any explosion goes straight up through the cabin. That’s why the MRAP and MATV vehicles with their V-shaped hulls are so survivable in Afghanistan, the blast from an IED goes up and around the cabin and not straight through it. I’ve been in an MRAP that was hit by a 50lb IED and it didn’t even blow the wheels off. They’re mostly developed in South Africa and are incredibly tough vehicles.

Flat bottomed vehicles like Warriors, Abrams, Strykers and Bradleys have little place around FOB Ramrod near the Argendahb valley, where the sand is deep and soft and only a stone’s throw from Mullah Omar’s home town – a Taliban haven.