Sorry to be late with my copy this week ....a matter of complicated travel logistics, bad timing, and downright tiredness. But I'm almost through now,though it's not yet time for the popping of champagne corks. In fact, the most challenging section of the ride may yet be to come. More on that later.

I crossed from Arkansas to the state of Mississippi last week into the port of Greenville, a quiet town that has known better times and a place that is striving to know them again. Funny, but I expected each river port down the line to be more or less the same but they are all very different, each with their own particular calling cards and characteristics.

Greenville, once a thriving steamboat port, is now using its excellent blues museum as a base to get the place back on the map. Also,that main-man moppet, Kermit the Frog, exerts his influence, for it was in Greenville he was 'conceived' by his creator. Consequently there is a sort of shrine dedicated to this ridiculous creature,that pulls in visitors in droves during the holiday seasons.

And it is home to an oddball restaurant called Doe's. Oddball because its patrons (who come from miles around to gobble up gi-normous portions of steak and shrimp) have to enter the premises through the kitchen itself. This is due to the days of Deep South segregation, when the front part of the building was a honkytonk for local blues players. The rear section gradually became an eating house for whites, who came to listen to the black music of the day through paper-thin walls while enjoying the very best of dining. These days it is open to everyone, but the tradition of entering and leaving through a kitchen clanging with pots and pans remains.

Music apart, Greenville is not a placewhereyou'd particularly expect to find literary culture. But it exists - and how - in the form of the McCormick Book Inn, an old-style bookshop specialising in southern fiction, folklore, history, law, politics, and so on. In business since 1966, the bookstore's owner, Hugh McCormick, is perhaps one of the south's most erudite personalities; a quiet, unassuming man who has the distinction of having read every single book up there on his shelves. Furthermore, he is one busy invidual. Buyers and browsers come and go every few minutes, and his phone never seems to stop ringing, from all parts of the USA and from overseas. It is the sort of place where booklovers could spend all day (indeed, some do just that, reading and relaxing in rocking chairs). The McCormick Book Inn is a juicy oasis in what is otherwise pretty much a cultural wilderness.

He showed me to the back of the store where outside, he has a tiny bottle-tree. It's a real-enough tree alright, but its branches are made from bottles of assorted size and colour- representing southern superstition that is supposed to protect the tree's keeper from evil and harm.

Evil and harm exist on the roads down in this neck of the woods, by God they do - though sometimes they're created by nature itself. In my case, the most evil presence along this wonderful ride down the Mississippi River has been the almost constant battle with headwinds, truly the cyclist's number one nemesis. If it isn't a headwind, then it's a side wind which is almost as bad. And in these-prairie like flatlands of the Deep South, they blast at you as if trying to ride through a wind-tunnel.

Look, I'm only human, right? So when I've had enough, I literally pull the bike to an angry halt, and explode at my invisible foe to stop; to give me an effing break; to go away and bother someone else instead. Of course, it doesn't do much good, but it makes me feel just a little bit better.

And so on through all that stuff to Vicksburg, via a little drop called Rolling Fork.Just before entering Vicksburg from the north, a rather strange sight filled my eyes on the right hand side of the road -a multicoloured bungalow that conforms to no architectural discipline whatsoever. Beside it, is an abandoned bus, also painted out in every colour of the rainbow. It is here that the Reverend Dennis, aged 92, hollers and preaches until the last of his congregation have fainted from sheer dizziness.

He delivers his sermons anywhere, at any hour of the day, and on any day of the week:on the roadside, inside his wife's grocery store, and of course, inside the bus where he's erected a pulpit. Sometimes it is hard to understand exactly what he's saying. The Lord's Word spills into words of his own, tumbling on top of one another, without punctuation and without one single second's break. But you get the gist alright. His final words to me were "You get sex outta your mind boy, and stay offa them gamblin' boats'.

Margaret, the Reverend's lovely old wife, also 92 and thoroughly compus-mentus, still cops the lot when there's nobody left to preach to. Whenever that happens -and with a resigned sigh - she says to him "Pipe down there, Reverend. I cain't hardly hear the news."

Vicksburg is a lovely old town, well worth the visit. The civil war oozes from every crack on the sidewalks, as it was probably the most difficult city for the Yankee forces to penetrate. In a silent, defiant sort of way, that war is still going on today. A popular saying down here goes, "If a yankee comes to visit, then he's just a yankee. If he unwisely comes to live here, then he's a damn yankee."

The river has seen it all with the passage of time: the plantations, the slavery, the civil war, the frontiersmen, the steamboats. All the stuff that built a nation, of which the Mississippi is this country's lifeblood bandits essential artery. Today, the heroes of the river are the towboat pilots and their crewmen, without whom North America would be utterly overrun with 18-wheeler trucks (and believe me,that scenarios bad enough as it is).

So at Vicksburg, I swapped the saddle for a commercial 'cruise' down river on board the 'Dennis C. Bartthoff', owned by the Ingram Line of Nashville, Tennessee. It was an education and an experience to be aboard a tug pushing 24 loaded barges, all linked together by hawsers, and the entire combination stretching 1,172 feet. This one load however, has alleviated the highways of a staggering 960 semi-trailers.

Going up and down the Mississippi, 24 hours a day, six hours on, six hours off for four weeks at a time (without ever going ashore), is commonplace and simple routine for the 10 person crew that runs this boat. But to me it was another highlight of my ride, and one thatoffereda huge insight into the ways and workings of this extraordinary waterway.

For instance, observing Captain Dwight Shinleycalmly manoeuvre his barges through an especially difficult spot in the dead of night to avoid going up on a sandbar was as much a thrill as an experience. For him to pull this offisnot simply a question of common-sense steering; it is knowing the movement of the water itself, feeling the river's every little irritation and moodswing.The skill required to do this takes years and years of learning. As man of nautical leanings myself, I am abound with admiration for the likes of Dwight Shinley, a charming inpidual with a pronounced Arkansas drawl and a love of the river he navigates.

When it comes to writing a round-up of this trip., I'll talk more of this man and his capable, friendly crew mates. Meantime, you'll have to use your own imagination via the photos.

The boat dropped me off after 24 hours at Baton Rouge, the somewhat clinical state capital of Louisiana, so that was 200 miles I didn't pedal. Frankly, I was glad of the rest - and so, I suspect - was the eZee Torq.The pair of us have taken a real battering from some of these roads out here - not least yesterday while wheeling into New Orleans.

Everything was fine until we hit the endless outskirts. Then the shoulder ran out and found myself doing just about anything to avoid the hurtling traffic coming at me from every which-way. I rode along grass verges; I deliberately went the wrong way over a flyover with oncoming traffic; and I even pedalled down a nightmare of an underpass along a length of concrete one-foot wide with a three-foot drop .Eventually I made it downtown, to the warmth and welcome of the Holiday Inn,just about next door to the Superdome, home of the New Orleans Saints, the stadium that housed all those unfortunate victims during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

I had the privilege of working in this city back in the year 2000, and though I've not yet had time to look around properly and see how things have changed, I can already FEEL the difference. More on that next week.

I now face the last dash....80 or so miles down into empty Cajun country and a place called Venice, which is at Mile Zero on the Mississippi River. From what can gather, there are few or no services en-route (gas stations, stores, motels etc), Katrina has seen to that. Most people tell me that New Orleans is far enough south anyway, so why bother with a piddling little place like Venice?

Because it is what I set out to do, I reply. From the very top to the very bottom. But who knows what lies in store for the final spurt? Experience tells me that the last miles are so often the hardest; ask any marathon runner, and he/she will tell you that much.

So until next time....

Kindest wishes to all

Quentin

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Keep up to date with Quentin's travels by reading his blog here on Pedelecs, by visiting his site below or listening to the once-weekly broadcast on Radio 5 Live Up All Night programme.

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