Feb 162012
 

An Aberdeen man, set to cycle the entire circumference of the globe, has set off on his adventure. Stephen Davy-Osborne reports.

Kyle Hewitt, 25, of Northfield, boarded a train at Aberdeen on Thursday afternoon to journey down to London where his immense challenge will begin. Mr Hewitt has spent the last year training hard in anticipation of the gruelling task, and even undertook a sponsored stationary cycle through the Bon-Accord Centre to help raise awareness of his two chosen charities, Barnardos and Inspire.

 While waiting to board the East Coast service that would take him south, Kyle was weighing up the challenge ahead.

“I’m ready to go!” he enthused  

“The enormity of what I am doing will probably hit me in a moment of solitary abandonment, and I’ll probably be in the middle of nowhere, but right now I’m raring to go!

“My training has been going well recently. It has mainly been a case of winding it down and eating as much as I can, calorie-wise, although it has been hard trying to find the time to do so!”

The cycle will see Kyle travel 18,000 miles in just 160 days, arriving home in time for the opening ceremony of the London Olympics, bringing the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe back to Scotland.

“I will definitely be home in time for the Games,” he added.

“I’d love to come home within 100 days, but you never know what could happen out on the road, and even just one little thing could slow me down, and end up hampering that.”

Despite not being daunted by the extent of what awaits him on his departure from Greenwich Park, there is one part of his journey which is a cause for concern.

“The big bit that keeps coming up is British Columbia and Alaska,” he confides,

“It’s quite solitary and by the time I get there in around 45 days time it will be time for the bears to wake up! And I imagine they’ll be quite hungry! 
“But that’s the real sense of adventure; I can’t wait to get stuck in there!”

www.inspired2inspire.org.uk 

Nov 242011
 

Voice’s David Innes reviews the new CD by Pharis & Jason Romero,  ‘A passing Glimpse’, with more than a passing interest.

Taking time off from building high quality banjos in a British Columbian forest, Pharis and Jason Romero, both already well-known in their own right in North America, release A Passing Glimpse, a delicately simple but emotional debut as a duo.

Drawing heavily on traditional ‘old-time’ sources and with accompaniment unadorned beyond their own instrumentation, A Passing Glimpse is a triumph of melodic and harmonic simplicity.

Their own compositions, credited largely to Pharos, including the outstanding ‘Forsaken Love’ and ‘Lay Down In Sorrow’, stand tall alongside those of The Carter Family, Leadbelly and others.

In delivery, the harmonising is resonant, intuitive and made to sound effortless, never better than on Dottie Rambo’s gospel ‘It’s Me Again Lord’. Limiting the instrumentation to guitar and banjo and featuring Jason’s considerable picking skills in tight, disciplined solos and an inspired instrumental attack on ‘Cumberland Gap’, adds to the back porch organic atmosphere of an album which has been an ever-present in American and Canadian roots charts since its release.

PHARIS & JASON ROMERO
A Passing Glimpse
(LULA RECORDS)
www.jasonandpharis.com