So I’ve had some more notes about the ‘God stuff’ on this blog – which is really really disappointing but not totally surprising. I don’t want this blog to become a mish mash of my life as it’s served me very well for the last goodness knows how long as a platform from which to espouse motorbike travel, cooking and reviews – so let’s keep it that way.

In the same way that I keep work as far away from this blog as I can I’m going to move the God stuff away to a place where I can explore that in a much more open way – you’ll not get bombarded with it (because for the most part I guess you’ve come here for motorbikes, cooking and travel) and I’ll feel more free to write nice long pieces that I’m sure will be very cathartic for me but somewhat boring for you.

If you do want to follow along on my journey then you can head over to Matthew’s God Blog here.

In biking and travel news I’m speaking – well I’m running four workshops – at the Adventure Travel Film Festival in August later this year on ‘cooking on the road’. If you’ve not booked your tickets I’d get in there now as it’s going to be a stormer of an event. Sadly I missed the HUBB UK event this year when my grandfather passed away just a few days before – the people at HUBB were totally lovely about it and I want to say thank you to them for being quite so cool.

Back on the road in 2014 once I’ve served my one year off the motorbike after Edmund was born

Hi all – yes, I know – it’s been a little while since I last posted. I have a very good reason for that – he’s called Edmund and he’s rather taken over my life!

Now, before you read any further this post is not about camping, cooking or motorbikes. If you’re looking for that then I’ll have some posts very shortly about Europe’s biggest overland traveller event – HUBB – and the Adventure Travel Film Festival (I’m speaking at both). This post is very personal and concerns God. Now – given the last time I wrote about God here I had a bunch of comments along the lines of ‘great blog, shame about the God stuff’ I’m giving you fair warning – this one is about the God stuff.

Today marked a very import day for me. I’ve been on a journey over the last year or so that’s brought me closer to God and left me exploring a calling to vocation within the Church of England – I appreciate that means very little to most people – but it’s very important to me. One of the first steps on that journey was to deliver a sermon – to preach – to my church family today. I spoke about Christian Aid week and the unity which all people of faith share in trying to make the world a better place. I recorded the sermon and pasted the text below – I’d really appreciate any thoughts or feedback. Over to you.

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Sermon John 20 17 to end MP3

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Lord, grant us the peace and grace to hear your word, your message, both here and in our actions throughout the coming week.

We’ve heard this morning about Jesus praying for believers and praying that as believers we are one. That’s a very simple thing to say of course – in our faith in Him we are one – of course we are – through His word we spread the message and in spreading that message we bring new people into our faith and into our unity.

Each Sunday we sit and we listen to the word of Christ. We listen to His message and each Sunday someone stands here and helps us to try and understand what Jesus is trying to teach us. But ultimately God speaks to us directly. The message that we understand is very individual – God speaks to our hearts and minds directly and we take that message out into the world, outside our church, and spread His message. When we do that, we are bringing other people to God’s message – and as Jesus prays here: ‘I have given them the glory which you have given to me, so that they may be one, just as we are one.’ We have brought people into our unity with Christ and each other.

That’s not to say that we must all go out and evangelise on street corners or to our co-workers by quoting the bible on some profound, mature understanding of that we have come to. Our actions are just as important in bringing people to faith – and therefore to the unity of our faith – as our words are.

This unity isn’t just us here in this Church, or even in the Church of England – it’s the unity of every Christian around the world. The unity Jesus talks of is so profound that it mirrors the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. ‘So that they may be one, just as we are one’.

It’s interesting that in a report by the Charities Aid Foundation in February of this year it became apparent that religious respondents – of any faith – gave an average of £576 in the previous year, those with no religion gave £235. Religious people donate more than twice as much to charity as those who are not.

The director of research at the Charities Aid Foundation said that, “The survey shows that there is a link between associating with a religion and charitable behaviour, even when people aren’t actively practising their faith. Their giving is not uniquely focused on their own religious activities, if anything, people of faith broadly give in line with the rest of the general public – to a variety of different appeals – primarily medical and overseas aid.”

I would argue that donating to charity – whatever that may be – is an active practising of faith – going to Church on a Sunday is not the only way to hear the word, to listen to and spread the message – that can also be done through our unity – through our actions.

Through everyday acts of kindness and generosity to others we practice our faith. Every time we think of others first, every time we take a step to bring people into our unity with Christ we practise our faith.

It could be argued that all people of faith are held together in unity and when brought together by the love of Christ we see beyond borders, beyond race, sex, gender or other dividing lines and want to help where we can. Faith helps us see the world through unity – not division.

All of this is very timely of course – it’s Christian Aid Week. The stories from Christian Aid – from all over the world demonstrate that even in the midst of debilitating scarcity, people of faith work together and demonstrate they can transform lives for a common good.

Again and again we hear of lives being changed through the empowerment of those who are most vulnerable – of those most desperate. The bible shows us time and time again that God is not impressed by national or racial identity. Rather His concern is for those who are powerless, the starving and suffering, those living in fear and anxiety, those drained of time or energy.

Those of us blessed with wealth, with time, with food and comfort should, through our unity, help others with understanding, patience, and of course through financial donations!

Christian Aid Week starts today and runs to next Saturday. The focus this year is on hunger – indeed the tagline for the week is ‘bite back at hunger’ – I see what they did there! If all of us play our part, if all of us nibble at the problem then we can make a massive difference – see what I did there?!

There is more than enough food in the world that everyone can eat – that no one needs go to bed hungry. This isn’t about food parcels or hand-outs – it’s about intelligent ways of helping people in the long term. Christian Aid is about helping people to help themselves.

For example we all take the weather forecast for granted in Britain – in fact it’s almost a national sport, never mind the first refuge of small talk. But living here in rural Buckinghamshire we also appreciate how important the forecast is to our farmers. Without detailed knowledge of rain, wind or sun farmers would struggle to know when to plant – when to harrow – when to get the combine out! But in Kenya farmers are experiencing increasingly erratic weather patterns and without detailed, scientific forecasts they can be left unable to feed or provide for their families. Planting seeds at the wrong moment can be disastrous when you only have one sack of seeds.

Christian Aid, through their partners, have helped farmers in Kenya by providing detailed forecasts via mobile phone. Most families have no access to a radio or television – but nearly every family has some sort of simple mobile phone – it’s often the only means of communication a farmer and his family has.

By sending small-scale farmers scientific weather perditions and forecasts via text message, translated into their local language, they enable those farmers to plant armed with valuable information. Farmers can respond via text with follow up questions or to share crop information that they believe may be valuable to others beyond their own community.

With training provided alongside the forecasts, farmers have been able to adapt their farming techniques and crop choices to the changing climate and provide food for their families and community.

There are many many stories of this kind from Christian Aid – it allows us to remember that we are part of a broad Church, that we are part of a united world where our belief, our faith, our unity can help those most in need.

Through our actions this week, let us make Christ’s name known, so that the love which God has for Jesus and for us may be in them and in us – uniting us against social injustice and poverty.

We can make a difference – however small – we can donate this week to Christian Aid (£576 seems the right amount according to the research) or even by just filling in the Gift Aid details on our donation slips for collection.

As Jesus said, “I am praying that they may all be one” – today I ask us to pray together: Lord, through our unity in faith, through our fellowship with you and each other, enable us to give freely of our gifts so that others may be empowered to live in your glory. Amen.

This season’s MotoGP – or Road Racing World Championship Grand Prix – has been up and running for around two months now, and will continue until November. As this is the top level of competitive motorcycle racing it draws more audience and betting interest than any other form of the sport – with many of those who watch the MotoGP also being the ones placing bets on it. Most of the top bookmakers are offering betting and odds information on the winner of this title, so which riders are currently considered a good bet for the 2013 MotoGP?

Perhaps surprisingly, the rider who currently holds the title – Jorge Lorenzo is only the second favourite in the bookies odds at the moment – although it would be fair to say that there is little between him and first placed Dani Pedrosa. Indeed you can get the same odds of 5/4 on both riders at a number of sports betting sites, suggesting that most of the bookies expect it to be a pretty close run thing. The third placed odds of 9/2 on Marc Marquez may also attract a fair amount of betting interest, because this offers the chance of a better return, without having to risk betting on a rank outsider. Alternatively, you may simply opt to watch the races for fun and bet on a motor racing game at an online casino like www.jackpotcity.co.uk/online-slots/ instead.

If you do, then you could make far worse choices than Good to Go; a five reel video slots game with nine pay lines and brilliant maximum jackpots of up to $50,000. This game has been enthusiastically embraced by both motor racing and casino fans, as the former are attracted by the motor sport theme that runs throughout – including reel icons of flags, drivers, pit girls and rev counters and sound effects of tyres and engines; while the latter enjoy the jackpots, the cheap game play and the fact that the wild symbol (the pit girl one) boosts the odds of you winning a payout by filling in for missing reel icons to complete a winning reel.

If feels a little soon to be writing this note but opportunities like this don’t turn up very often. I’m properly excited to share that on November 12th I’ll be joining the board of Blackwell’s as the new Digital Director. It means I’ll be leaving Hachette shortly before – a company that I’ve had a great time with, and learnt a great deal from.

I’m genuinely sad to be leaving a company that gets digital from the very top down. The people I’ve worked with have been fantastic and I feel as if I’m leaving a family behind. But that’s balanced by moving to a company that is starting to do pretty cool stuff digitally – a company with a history that is threaded into the very heart of books, publishing and academia in the UK.

All of this means, of course, that I’ll be leaving London and heading for Oxford – a mere 16 miles from our cottage – it’ll be a hard commute but I’ll do everything I can to put up with it. Stiff upper lip and all that.

Here’s the press release from Blackwell’s that went out on Monday 8th October.

NEW APPOINTMENTS AT BLACKWELL’S

Blackwell’s Bookshops, the academic, professional and specialist bookselling chain founded in 1879, today announces the appointment of a digital director which supports its strategy to capitalise on the growth of digital books.

Blackwell’s is delighted to announce the appointment of Matthew Cashmore as its new Digital Director. Matthew will have a key strategic focus in managing new opportunities, transitioning and integrating physical sales to digital through bursary and Blackwell’s Online.

Matthew joins us from Hachette UK where as Digital Development Director he has taken a leading role in digital research & development and digital operations across the group’s publishers.

Prior to that Matthew worked for the Lonely Planet where he was Innovation Ecosystem Manager – overseeing the travel publisher’s engagement and development of new and exciting digital propositions, including augmented reality travel guides.

Matthew has also held a senior role with BBC Research and Development.

This new role provides a framework to support Blackwell’s in delivering their business plans.

Matthew says; “Joining Blackwell’s is truly exciting. Its historic place at the heart of so many universities gives it a tremendous opportunity to explore a world in which the physical and digital worlds collide. I’m looking forward to being at the heart of that transformation and helping more generations of students, and academics, discover Blackwell’s”.

Commenting on this appointment, Managing Director, David Prescott said:

“This new appointment represents a key and necessary driver in us delivering our business plan and returning the business to profitability. It is an exciting time for our bookshops – particularly in the digital arena – as our recent partnerships with nook, Course Smart and others have shown. Matthew’s appointment will help us to harness these digital initiatives to help us define and deliver a compelling offer to customers across all channels. We’re thrilled that someone of Matthew’s calibre and experience has chosen to join us at this critical time.”

It’s been very quiet here of late – that’s because there’s lots of news – lots of things going on that I can’t wait to tell you about… but for the moment need to remain on the QT.

The biggest news of course is that Catherine and I are expecting our first baby – Edmund, for that is his name – will be joining the world on or around December 31st later this year. That means that Kazakhstan is off the cards and that I’m going to start posting a lot of irritating stuff about Children, the role of fathers and doing video reviews of baby monitors rather than tents.

First off though… justdaddies.com is now live – it’s my new blog – dedicated to re-posting the most inspirational stories of fathers from around the world. Enjoy.

I first came across Robert Fulton back in 2007 when I was seeking inspiration for the upcoming Russia trip. I wanted to understand what drove people to want to explore the world on two wheels – I was trying to understand what this strange obsession was; what was it that had so thoroughly taken over every waking moment of my life? I wrote about it briefly on my blog – the title was ‘Searching for a Hero‘  – in Mr Fulton I’d found one.

If you want to find out why this one man inspired so many great overland travellers (Sam Manicom, Lois Pryce, Austin Vince and others) then come along to the Adventure Travel Film Festival where Mr Fulton’s film is a pick of the show.

Find out more at www.adventuretravelfilmfestival.com/uk-festival/

–Update here–

I’ve started planning for a six week run next year out to Kazakhstan and Russia. What that means in practice is that I’ve sort-of asked my boss for permission to take six weeks leave, I’ve sort-of thought about dates, I’ve sort-of thought about money, and I’ve sort-of cleared it with Mrs Cashmore.

That’s a lot of sort-ofs – but the most important thing is that I’ve definitely started drawing lines on maps and making spreadsheets. This is how my trips start. Just 15 months to plan!

The Map

View Kazakhstan 2013 in a larger map

The Dates

The Money

When I went to Budapest I spent an extra day ‘bunged up’ in the hotel. When I was feeling better I took a walk across the road to the famous cave church. I love visiting places like this – and when I was still feeling under the weather the quiet time and reflection really helped.

On the way out the gentleman who was looking after the place noticed I wasn’t a local and asked where I’d come from. I told him my story – a short run out from the UK on my motorbike – I’d hardly finished the sentence before he was digging around in a pile of pendants… he gave me a St Christopher and told me to take it home to my local church and a