The Party’s Over – a tale of two cities.
What’s this?
This is a sponsored bike tour to celebrate the Age of Carbon Fuels. The astonishing advances our world has achieved at great cost to the natural world and a chance to reflect on one of the great challenges facing us.
It starts with a trip round selected places in London where it all began 250 years ago.
Then a journey from London to Paris visiting sites highlighting the advances made.
Finally a tour round Paris where, by hard won international agreement, the world committed to ending that Age of Carbon Fuels.
Plus a chance to make a contribution towards a very practical project – helping Kenyan smallholders buy a tractor so they can adapt to the challenges of the disrupted climate.
What is this ‘Age of Carbon Fuels‘? A patent issued in London gave James Watt the confidence to install the world’s first efficient steam engine 250 years ago. It ushered in the Industrial Revolution that propelled us forward from the basic technologies of the Pre-Industrial age. It has granted us the wherewithal to move on to a future that is less damaging, more Sustainable and has far less need to exploit carbon fuels to progress. If we have the will.
What’s to be celebrated?
By burning coal, oil and gas we’ve industrialised and built today’s amazing world.
Anything else?
Sadly, the party’s over, it’s time to call it a day. The pernicious damage we are doing to our environment relentlessly ratchets up even as we tire of hearing the same old story. It’s time to move on to a less damaging Sustainable Future. Our nations’ leaders can only navigate all this while they are confident they have our clear, enduring support.
Confirming that support is our first aim.
At the same time we can think about our need to share those benefits more equitably. The benefits and costs of burning billions of tons of fossil fuels haven’t fallen equally.
Our second aim is to Encourage and enable Climate Adaptation initiatives of smallholders in Kenya. We’re raising money to buy a small second-hand tractor to help them up their game – they need to double farm yields to match population growth without claiming yet more wilderness. Attainable? It means reaching the levels already achieved in India.
Click the thumbnail here to chip into our tractor fund. There are more details of the project HERE.
Curious for chapter & verse on the background facts? Click HERE.
Where? When?
- The trip starts 10:30 a.m. April 16, 2026 outside the Globe Theatre, for a trip around iconic sites in London.
- April 17-21, a journey through southern Britain & northern France with more landmark sites ….
- To finish, April 22nd. Earth day, (the 10th anniversary of the signing of COP Paris Agreement): a tour starting at Le Bourget where that agreement was draughted, ending at Parlement Francais.
How?
By bike of course! The most environmentally friendly transport devised by mankind.
Who?
Anyone, on any bike is welcome to join us – or take on any bit of the route you like. Detailed Google Maps routes are HERE. Do it any time! If you do post pics of you &/or your bike at any calling point to petersbed@aol.com – we’ll post them on this site.
Here’s the route:
In Britain……..
Day 1 part 1. London Bridge to Parliament Square. 10 miles
The Calling Points:
The Globe Theatre. Sam Wanamaker’s faithful 1997 reconstruction of Shakespear’s 1599 original. Timber frame, thatched roof.
1577 Golden Hinde (1973 replica). Drake’s wooden galleon.
102′ deck length, 150 tons
Speed 8 knots, 80 crew.
22 cannons, 3/4 mile range.
385 sq.m. sail, max speed 8 knots.
Fuels. Renzo Piano’s ‘Shard’, (2009-12). Height 310m. 14,000 tons of steel, 100,000 tonnes of concrete (over 110,000 tons of CO2 generated).
HMS Belfast (1936). Steel-built cruiser.
613’long, 11,553tons
32 knots, 800 crew.
12 six-inch guns. 14 mile range – now aimed at Scratchwood motorway services.🤭
Oil-fired boilers 4 steam turbines, 80,000 hp.
30 tons/hr of fuel – 120 t/h CO2.
Fuels. John Burnet’s Adelaide House (1921-5). London’s
1st steel-framed ‘skyscraper’. 13 floors, 43m height.
Wren’s St. Paul’s London. 35 years to build (1675-1710). Dome height 111m. 65,000 tons of Portland stone.
Buro-Happold’s thin-shelled roof (2000). 3,312 double glazed panel enclosing the Great Court within the 1827 British Museum’s neo-classical building.
Personal transport (well, bikes anyway).
1818. Working from 75 Long Acre, coach builder Denis Johnson’s wood framed/ iron wheeled ‘pedestrian curricle’ similar to that introduced in Germany in 1817 by Baron Karl von Drais.
1885. The Science Museum shows Starley’s ‘Rover’ safety bike. Chain geared tech from the factories made a safer & faster bike than the ‘Penny Farthings’ that preceded it. Cheaper too– affordable mobility reached the masses.
2026. Brompton foldable electric city bike. No place on the city streets for cars now?
Brompton’s showroom is at 69 Long Acre, next to Johnson’s workshop of 200 years earlier.
Power from coal.
Science Museum: Watt’s coal-fired steam-powered beam engine started it all in 1766
Leadership
Westminster Hall. 1094-1398. The Court of Chancery, seated here, awarded Patent 913 to James Watt on 5/1/1769. The Industrial Revolution began, slowly at first then gathering pace from the mid 1900s
Houses of Parliament. 1837-60. Pugin, Barry. Pompous Gothic Revival style glorifying Britain’s superpower status. Within, our elected leaders grapple with the issues of long term direction in the face of short term electoral survival.
London to the South Coast
Day 1 Part 2. From London into Sussex. 42 miles.
Day 2. East Grinstead To Newhaven. 36 miles.
(1724) One of about 100 watermills on the river Wandle, combined power 300-400 kW. Calico then
silk processing and printing for Liberty’s
Outwood mill (1665), England’s oldest operating windmill. Output limited by the wooden gearing, 2-3 kW.
Negligible CO2 emissions
Battersea power station (1935-82), super-sized, coal power for London’s growing electricity demand.
Peak output (1955) 503MW ~167,000 windmills.
Coal consumption 1 million tons/yr,
CO2 emissions about 4-500 tons/hour.
Chiddinglye Solar Farm
5 MW
Rampion Windfarm
(2017).
116 offshore wind turbines x3.45MW=400MW ~133,000 windmills Negligible CO2 emissions
Mass Transport
Dorset Arms E.Grinstead (C1550). A change of horses & overnight stop when London to the coast was a 2-day journey. An entrance wide enough for coach & horses.
Class 4 steam loco at E. Grinstead.
Coal fuelled, 1500kW
Class 700 train at E.Grinstead.
Electrical power.
3300kW
Safeguarding our future.
Onward through France……
Day 3. Dieppe to Neufchâtel-en-Bray 58 km.
Day 4. Neufchâtel-en-Bray to Vernon. 90 km
Day 5. Vernon to Saint-Denis. 92 km.
Day 6. Saint-Denis to Le Bourget then Paris. 40km.
The Calling Points:
Leadership
Palais Bourbon.
Built 1722-1728, façade added 1806.
French National Assembly.
COP 21 Venue
Le Bourget conference centre, Paris.
Climate Change Agreement finalised 12/12/15.
175 Signatories 22/4/2016.
Now 194 – Iran,Libya,Yemen declined.
USA withdrew again 20/1/2026
Iconic buildings
Pre-industrial
Notre Dame, Paris.
Built 1163-1260.
Spire height 96m.
Limestone, marble & wood
Eiffel Tower, Paris.
Built 1887-9.
Height 330m.
Prefabricated wrought iron
Built 1984-9
Height 21.6 m
673 steel-framed glass panels
Transport
Stagecoach Terminus.
Rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, Paris
(Louis Leopold Boilly)
Gare St.Lazare
(1837, rebuilt 1889)
Trains to Rouen, Le Havre (Monet 1877)
A Sustainable Future
Gare St.Lazare
1960s. French rail electrified
Power generation
The Old Watermill on the Seine at Vernon
The Age of Carbon Fuels In the 1970s France generated about half of its electricity from fossil fuels. Since the 1973 Oil Crisis it has switched to nuclear (70%) and hydro electricity (12%). Coal, oil & gas now account for only 4%
Penly Nuclear Power
station. Commissioned 1990
2×1364 MW, (a quarter million water mills)
Negligible CO2 emissions
Sustainable Travel
Cycle-friendly route between London and Paris
Chapter & verse on the back story.
1712 Steam power arrives.
Cornish tin and copper had been valued since Phoenician times. But now the miners were following seams miles out under the sea bed. Flooding was one challenge, getting miners down to the seams was another – horse-powered treadmills could no longer keep up. Dartmouth Ironmonger/engineer/inventor Thomas Newcomen knew this well. He also knew of Savery’s experiments with steam. He designed the first working engine – a piston drew steam up into a cylinder. Water was then injected, the steam collapsed, drawing the piston back down. Clunky, slow, costly to run – no more than 12 strokes a minute, pausing each time while the cylinder was reheated. But if it kept mines from flooding it was worth it. The same problems beset the coal & iron ore mines in the north. The first Newcomen engine was installed at a coal mine in Tipton. It worked. Word got around, over the next 60 years about 100 were installed, mainly in England but also in Europe. Coal and iron started to become more plentiful.
1776 Fossil fuels ignite the Industrial Revolution.
29th April 1769. James Watt was granted patent GB1769/913 “A method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire engines.” On to 1776, exactly 250 years ago. America declared independence. Jane Austen turned one. Captain Cook started his fateful final voyage . Just as tumultuous as all that, James Watt installed the world’s first economically viable beam engine for the Carron company, near Falkirk. Soon, with Boulton’s gearing, it delivered rotary power.
This disruptor triggered the Industrial Revolution. By collapsing the steam in a separate condenser the piston and cylinder stayed hot, ready for the next steam charge. The condenser was kept cool ready to cause the next steam collapse. It needed half the coal to do the same work as Newcomen’s. It was a big advance.
Did that halve the demand for coal? Not a bit. Boulton added epicyclic gearing to the nodding beam. Watt coined the term ‘horsepower’ to convey the potential. Suddenly factory owners no longer had to use ponies in treadmills, or build their works where rivers could drive paddle wheels. Millers could grind corn at will, not just while the wind blew. The world moved on from the era of wind, water and horse power, into the Age of Fossil Fuels. This fuelled the Industrial Revolution. With a head start on the pack Britain steamrollered the world, built an empire and briefly stood as the dominant superpower. After WW2 energy demands sky-rocketed as we embraced car travel and centrally heated our homes. Coal then oil and finally gas have been devoured to power our needs.
1838 J M W Turner symbolised the transition from wind power to a coal powered future as the proud, veteran ship-of-the-line “The Fighting Temeraire” was hauled at dusk by a smutty steam tug to the breaker’s yard at Rotherhithe.
What benefits fossil fuels have brought to our world! Today we take for granted skyscrapers, ships, railways, lorries, cars, tractors. Electrical power at the flick of a switch. Potable water at the turn of a tap. Waste gone at the flush of a cistern. Cars to take us daily to distant workplaces. None of these would have been possible without extracting and burning billions of tons of the coal and oil locked away beneath our planet’s surface. The revolution didn’t stop at making things and transporting things. Enormous ships have laid undersea cables across the world. Satellites have been launched. Communications too has been revolutionised.
There has been an unsustainable price to pay for burning all that coal, oil and gas. Approaching 2 Trillion (yes, 2,000,000,000,000) tons of CO2 have spewed into our atmosphere. Unimaginable!. The damage to our world is apparent. This tour shouts out that we care about the world we bequeath to future generations.
Our hunger for energy.
Terrawatt hrs per annum.
Today our world supports a population 10 times greater than it was at the time of Watt’s 1776 engine, with immeasurably better living standards. But burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon, it reverts to its origins as atmospheric CO2. That’s destabilising our weather. It’s time to draw the curtain on the age of carbon. Paradoxically it’s our very exploitation of those fossil-fuels that has brought us the ability to take the next step and leave them behind.
2016 A commitment to move on.
Nuclear power stations, wind & solar farms, tidal barrages, electric trains & cars – once unimaginable. all realistic now – if we have the will to get on with it. April 22nd (‘Earth Day’) 2016 saw the nations of the world sign up to the Paris Agreement on climate change.
2026. Progress?
- We’re 250 years on from the first steam engine, time enough to take stock.
- 10 years on from the Paris Agreement, time enough to judge progress.
Power Generation: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix
Great progress. Still, it’ll take a long-term effort.
If the trip from London to Paris seems a long haul on a bike, that reminds us that there’s a long long haul ahead to shake off our addiction to carbon. Volcanos erupt then fall silent. Earthquakes rupture then settle. Wars horrify us then grind to an end. As each crisis subsides, our attention is distracted elsewhere. Meanwhile the climatic damage of burnt fossil fuels ratchets steadily up year on year. Have we the bottle to head off problems right now? The persistence? Or will we kick the challenge into the long grass until it becomes so damagingly acute we can stall no longer? Time will tell.
Developing nations have contributed least to climatic problems yet bear the brunt of them, especially the millions of small scale subsistence farmers living on the margins. Small wonder that conflicts and mass migrations result – right now there are over a million Somali and Sudanese refugees camped in Kenya. That presents an enormous challenge on top of the feeding of a population expected to double within the next couple of decades.
Local farmers are rising to the challenge, upping their game, using social media to freely share their learning as widely as they can. We can listen, encourage, pitch in, enable.
Why bike it?
- Energy efficient transport. One slice of cake fuels a bike for miles.
- Health giving. Stay fit !
- Sustainable. There’s so little energy expended making a bike.
- Minimal maintenance. So little to go wrong.
- Enduring. A 50-year old bike can roll as easily as it ever did.
Google Maps:
London to East Grinstead
East Grinstead to Newhaven
Dieppe to Neufchatel en Bray 54kM
Neufchatel to Vernon 90kM
Vernon to Saint-Denis 92 km
Saint-Denis into Paris 40 km
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Paris+Le+Bourget+Exhibition+Centre+TexWorld/Le+Parlement/Le+Moulin+de+la+Galette/Rue+Notre+Dame+des+Victoires/Louvre+Museum/Notre-Dame+Cathedral+of+Paris/Saint-Lazare/@48.8811095,2.3135621,13.76z/data=!3m1!5s0x47f112d46c2f6eef:0xfb8a933f53aec2c6!4m60!4m59!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e66664dfcb055b:0x40b82c3688b36d0!2m2!1d2.2466847!2d48.9472096!1m10!1m1!1s0x47e61423545865ff:0x9585625d72033a32!2m2!1d2.4300174!2d48.9441442!3m4!1m2!1d2.3919621!2d48.9141631!3s0x47e66c3fb42ab725:0x926c3e82a5c3a6a6!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e66e58679a74bd:0x437855b264257af1!2m2!1d2.3386886!2d48.8954273!1m10!1m1!1s0x47e66e5ab88298f1:0x953592d68753f8ca!2m2!1d2.3371292!2d48.8873961!3m4!1m2!1d2.3345489!2d48.8800801!3s0x47e66e4898b7e31f:0xb57949f444e9db53!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e66e3cefdbe53f:0x51f35e40ff3b803f!2m2!1d2.3417706!2d48.8682129!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e671d877937b0f:0xb975fcfa192f84d4!2m2!1d2.337644!2d48.8606111!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e671e19ff53a01:0x36401da7abfa068d!2m2!1d2.3499021!2d48.8529682!1m5!1m1!1s0x47e66e359d9d0083:0x5b6b5970603d3000!2m2!1d2.3253114!2d48.877243!3e1!5m1!1e4?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTEyMy4xIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D
Timetable details, France, 2026
Sun Apr 19 Newhaven – Dieppe – Neufchatel 60 km
- DFDS Ferry Newhaven check in by 08:15
- Disembark Dieppe ferryport 14:00
- Neufchatel-en-Bray 19:00 60km .
- Overnight Neufchatel
Mon Apr 20 Neufchatel – Vernon 90 km
- Depart Neufchatel 09:00
- Overnight Vernon
Tuesday Apr.21 Vernon – Saint-Denis 90 km
- Depart Vernon 09:00
- Arrive Saint-Denis 16:00
- Overnight Saint-Denis
Wed Apr22
- Depart Saint-Denis 08:00
- Conference Centre, Le Bourget 09:00
- Parlement Francais, Palais Bourbon 13:00
- Gare St. Lazare 14:00
- TNO #3117 to Rouen 14:40-15:59
- TER 851725 to Dieppe 16:08-16:57
- Return ferry DFDS check in closes 18:16 arr. Newhaven 22:30