Daily Photos No. 5: Baths to Bikes

A couple today, seeing as it's a holiday, and they're both taken in the forbidden Outside.

This rural scene is a variation on a theme: I always take pictures of baths in fields, because they seem to be such a common motif in the UK and Ireland: I hope the same is true in other countries. Whether it reflects farmers' canny recycling or a generation move towards jacuzzis, pretty much every dairy or sheep farm has al fresco bathing facilities. The author and farmer Lloyd Jones once told me that 'proper' farms only produce two things in major quantities: 'shit and scrap metal', and I always look out for them (Mr Vogel is very funny; Y Dŵr (Water) is elegiac). Richard Mabey's The Unofficial Countryside was a revelation when I read it twenty years ago, and I've had an eye for the scruffy and marginal every since - that's where the magic happens, not on the pristine agricultural land that's actually little more than a 'green desert'. There's a huge range of bathroom suites to be found in various fields: this is an old steel bath somewhere near Church Stretton, and effort has been made to plumb it into the landscape.

The shots below are taken at Rás Mumhan (Tour de Munster/Tour of Munster) in 2011. I'm a keen cyclist myself – I like the speed, the ability to get out of your own familiar area quickly, the ratio between effort and fitness, the geeky technical details and the nicer side of cycling culture (proper cyclists don't care how slow or uncool you are, they say hello). I also love and hate professional cycling: I like the bikes, the routes, the inhuman distances they're expected to cover in a short space of time, the cosmopolitan nature of European cycling, the meandering commentary, especially Seán Kelly's pronunciation of 'classement', the local support, the crashes, the doomed solo breaks and occasional outburst of honourable behaviour I hate the sports-washing that sees various dictatorships and polluters sponsor teams, the one-eyed supporters and detractors, the drugs, the machine tactics and the commodification of a noble art by capitalism. 

The Rás is a couple of rungs below the Tour de France - its competitors are a mix of high-performing amateurs, semi-pros, local heroes and stars of the future (such as Mark Cavendish, who didn't win), all forcing themselves round Ireland's most mountainous terrain. I'm not always in Killorglin when the Rás comes through town, but the start/finish line is the ideal place to catch the riders giving it their all on the uphill drag to the line. It should be going through town this weekend but like everything else, has fallen prey to the 'Rona, so here it is in all its glory.