Free wheeling
In March 2020 Roff Smith was shooting a story in Ecuador on the last of the great Panama hat weavers, who all live in a tiny coastal village, and only made it back to his home in Sussex, England, the day before the first Covid-19 lockdown. Through no choice of his own Smith could no longer travel on assignment, so he decided to start a project photographing himself on a touring bicycle within the landscapes of the county of Sussex.
Cycling was no new thing for Smith as his 10,000-mile solo bike ride across the Australian outback resulted in the book . He reveals, ‘I was so relieved to have made it home before lockdown. At that point nothing more is gonna happen –I wasn’t going anywhere. Just to keep my eye in I thought I’d start doing this [project] and it became quite addictive. Cycling has always been a really big thing for me. I’ve done a lot of really long solo expedition tours all over the world. I was riding on these lanes in Sussex and thinking, “OK.
