So, this weekend there was a video of Richard Armitage on his Freigeist bike for Berlin Station and a little interview to go with it.
Gotta say, I don’t only like the look of Richard on that bike (and in that little interview), I like the look of that bike as well!
As you may or may not know, the Netherlands is a biking nation. Seriously, bikes are everywhere here. There are bike paths everywhere and bikes everywhere you look. We have 16 million inhabitants and I read somewhere that we have 22.5 million bikes in this country. There is a whole bicycle infrastructure here, up to what can best be described as bike parking garages, like this huge one next to Amsterdam central station:
Seriously, bikes everywhere, and no one wears helmets (except for an occasional kid on a bike). I think they tried to advise people to wear them once a few years back but no one bothers with it.
I live in a town and when I want to go to the town center the bus service isn’t all that. It’s much quicker (and cheaper) to just take the bike. All kids here, seriously every kid, bikes to school. When you get on a bike on a school day at around 8 am in my town, it’s one of the busiest times of the day on the bikepaths.
Recently more and more people have been getting e-bikes, it’s the new rage here, even though they are quite expensive. I know a few people who have one, but I’ve never actually ridden one. To hear Richard speak of riding this Freigeist e-bike is almost like talking with people I know here about the same subject! So, this video was extra fun for me as the topic of biking felt familiar.
I couldn’t resist and made some screencaps from that video. It was sweet seeing Richard prepare and warm his hands for the bike ride (yeah, your hands can get really really cold when you don’t wear gloves and it’s a little chilly out)…
… and then the man took off! I’ve gotta say, I love the confidence he seems to have on the bike, he’s going really fast which will make for nice, dynamic shots in the TV series and I love the flapping coat-tails!
And they also got night shots in as well, where Richard smartly does wear gloves. He looks like he’s really enjoying riding this bike! I think I would too.
Richard was apparently interviewed on the day he wore that grey suit a couple of weeks ago. Lookin’ good, I love seeing him in grey… and with beard, of course. 🙂
So, I was watching all this this weekend while trying to figure out what to make for my friend’s birthday on Sunday. She does this high tea every year where she asks her girlfriends to make something and bring it and we all indulge in all the goodies together. It’s really fun! This year, however, she made it a little more challenging by asking everyone to make something with unrefined sugar or no sugar. I was stumped there for a bit, no clue what to make except that I wanted to ideally bake an easy cake (easy being key because I don’t do kitchen fondly), and was naturally distracted by the above bike-goodies. So, I had “Cakes” and “Richard” swirling around my laptop and in my mind and then it suddenly hit me – didn’t Guylty post something about a vegan chocolate ‘Armitage’ cake a few weeks back? Why, yes she did! I checked out the recipe, she even mentioned unrefined cane sugar! In the store I also found some biological strawberry jam made with unrefined cane sugar and one of those mini bottles of red wine (as naturally we never have left over wine in this house once a bottle is open).
My daughter and I set to baking (the girl loves to bake! I swear she doesn’t get it from me…). We didn’t have a round tin, but I figured a regular cake tin would do as well…
The result turned out good! Richard (hanging in my kitchen/dining area) took a sniff and I think he approved…
My friend approved as well as did the whole high tea party when they had a taste! I love the twang of wine you can taste along with the chocolate in this cake. Truly, this is an Armitagean cake if ever I saw one! So, thanks for the recipe, Guylty, and for (unbeknownst to you) saving my ass figuring out what to make. I recommend this cake to anyone, it really was easy to make; my daughter had fun and I had fun because she had fun.
We couldn’t finish all the cake at the high tea, so, oh torture of tortures, I had to take leftovers back home with me again… Needless to say the cake-supply here is quickly dwindling. 🙂
I discovered biking again – after 10 years -, but Freygeist was a bit expensive – so I am searching for a normal bike =)
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Even they can be quite expensive. Have fun biking! Do you have any good bikepaths where you live?
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Thanks. Well I live in the north-western part of Hessen between Taunus and Westerwald, so we have some hills, some forests, meadows. The last decandes there was not much effort in keeping the bikepaths up, but now the invest for biketourists and some sportevents like “XY on the road”. Last time I enjoyd some way around, and had views which remind me abou The Shire.
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Sounds lovely! Hills can be exhausting for biking, though. I’m not good at hill biking. The good thing here in NL is that it’s all pretty much flat! The downside is that for some reason or other there is always, always a headwind, which, believe me, is exhausting. They have a yearly biking into a headwind championship here, by the way, which is held when there are storm winds blowing here. No fancy bikes allowed. 🙂 Not for me, but fun to watch.
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/the-worlds-toughest-time-trial-returns-the-2015-dutch-headwind-championships-video-202847
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Oh yes, but i’ll get used to it. The headwinds… I have the pleasure every year in Spring when I am at the coast, so I believe this need training and devotion – but looks really fun. But it’s nicer watching the landscape or enjoy sun and wind just for the pleasure. The area here get’s also sometimes very windy, 600 metres above sealevel, so sometimes it gets stormy, especially in autumn.
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I’ve been a bit bemused by the helmet discussion. I was trying to think when I saw an adult in Germany riding with a helmet and I think it was almost only cases where it was someone who was riding a racing bike, i.e., going out for a bike ride and specifically for speed. I googled for a statistic and found varying figures, but all around 12-14%, i.e., only about a tenth of Germans normally wear a helmet when biking. He’s a spy — you don’t want people looking at him! You see little kids with helmets all the time, though.
Besides if he wore a helmet we either wouldn’t see his face, or if we did, it would look funny. I’ve got my priorities in order!
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LOL! Yep, I’m with you there!
Here helmets are a no-no as well. I think statistics for peole wearing them here (other than kids and racers) may be even lower than in Germany.
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What a cute post, RA fandom to the rescue! I will have to try that cake someday. The amount of bikes in your pictures is staggering! There is only a few months of good bike riding weather where I live so I try and get out there on mine when possible. Sans helmet though, which is a bit of a no no in Canada.
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The climate is mild here, so people bike all year round and in all weather, except maybe when there is a LOT of snow (and that very rarely happens).
Yes, the amount of bikes you can find here is staggering! I am used to it but when I have foreign visitors here, they often take pictures. 🙂
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[…] on a blogging roll today but then there are so many goodies to share! So, I was eating my Armitagean cake today and checking instagram which offered mostly new Colin Firth […]
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Bei dem high tea wäre ich gerne dabei gewesen. Richard darf mir gerne mal auf dem Fahrrad entgegen kommen 🙂
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Nicht nur entegegen kommen sondern zusammen eine Fahrradfahrt machen wäre schön! So mit Picnic, in der Natur, ganz alleine… 😉
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Those eBikes are all the rage at the moment, in Germany. And I hate to say it – but it’s a lot of pensioners who have them (my mum included 😂). Freygeist is obviously a luxury version of them – a regular, good one costs about half of what Freygeist charges.
And I am delighted to hear your tried the Armitage cake and liked it. It can, admittedly, be slightly dry. The sooner eaten, the better, I think.
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Used to be here as well, about e-bikes only for the elderly, but now it’s becoming very popular with younger, working people as well, who use them to travel to work.
The cake – yes, it is a tad dry but it really tastes good. So, if I wanted to make it less dry (and un-vegan it), would I have to add an egg to the batter?
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Not sure whether the egg will do the trick. That might upset the chemical make-up of the cake. I would probably do some “post-production” on it, i.e. either cover it in chocolate or drench it in fruit juice. Cherry juice would work very well with it, I think.
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MOAR WINE!!
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Actually – drench the thing in cherry liqueur! That’s the business!
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ROFL! Oooh, another great idea! This cake is getting better and better… 🙂
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Total alco cake. You somehow have to make that vegan stuff edible…
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Hahahaha! Actually, it is surprisingly edible already but yeah, these improvements can certainly help. More wine, liqueur and chocolate, forget the juice… 😉
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My initial suggestion was to serve it warm, with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream and/or hot stewed berries… But the alcohol might also do the trick…
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Plums in red wine sauce. Maybe a little Quark. Stop me before I lose it here … I need to make dinner, obviously.
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My daughter asked to have whipped cream with it (which I didn’t have in the house). That may do the trick as well. Getting even hungrier yet, Servetus?
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Yes, in fact I just went grocery shopping 🙂
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The possibilities are endless. (As are the associations with Armitage – this cake is clearly only the beginning…)
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Schnapsdrosseln unter sich… 🙂 🙂
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Wir trinken uns den Kuchen (und den Armitage???) schön…
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Hmmm, Schnapps bringt mich auf eine Idee… vielleicht noch etwas Wodka dazu? Das trinke ich gerne seit ich es letztes Jahr in Tschechien ‘entdeckt’ habe… 😉 Muss dann nur aufpasses, dass die Kinder das nicht essen.
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Ja, das liest sich schon seit einiger Zeit nicht mehr allzu “kindertauglich”. Den Herrn Armitage finde ich allerdings auch ohne einen Tropfen Alkohol sehr gutaussehend, doch wirklich – sogar äußerst gutaussehend. “totalnüchternguck”
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Oh ja, finde ich auch! 🙂
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Die Zeilenumbrüche sind kreativ. Bemerkenswert 😉
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ROFL! Great idea! Essentially that is fruit juice of sorts…
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Drench it in fruit juice? Hmmm… I think I’ll opt for chocolate, you can never go wrong with chocolate!
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Das Coole an diesem Rad ist ja gerade, dass man ihm nicht so leicht ansieht, dass es ein E-Bike ist. Obwohl man in Deutschland gerade viele Rentner mit den typischen E-Bikes sieht, lässt diese sehr stylische Version Männerherzen offenbar höher schlagen. Mein Schatz war ganz hingerissen. Er interessiert sich sonst eher wenig/nicht für RA bezogene Erzählungen meinerseits… 😉 ABER bei der Erwähnung eines schicken E-Bikes, mit dem ein Agent durch Berlin düst, da wurde er hellhörig – das musste dann doch gegoogelt werden.
Er freut sich über das Rad und ich … 🙂
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Ha! Schön, dass Dein Schatz jetzt auch hellhörig wird! Mein Mann hat’s noch nicht gesehen, aber es wird ihm bestimmt auch gefallen, wenn er in Kürze dazu kommt, um diesen Blogpost zu lesen. 🙂
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[…] only object/prop that has prompted its own blog post on here was Daniel Miller’s bike on Berlin Station! Loved seeing Richard speed around on that bike. I felt it wasn’t featured enough on the […]
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