Articles by Lucy Denyer

The first was a punked-up stereotype version of what it is to be tough. Big shoulders, man-wrestling, and a pretty blonde cheering from the sidelines.The second was an infinitely more thoughtful version. Quiet, cultured with a deep appreciation for the land.The two cowboys encapsulate the contradictions of Texas. On the one hand it’s all rugged hills, hearty ranchers, and straight talking. On the other it is softer and strangely beautiful – this is the Texas of rolling slopes and pretty stone houses tucked in to the corners.We're nearly at the end of our tour through the state and it has been an eye-opening experience. There is more to Texas than first meets the eye.Beneath it’s tough exterior is beautiful country which is full of a strange, wild passion. You can see why Texans are so proud of where they come from.Follow the FORD FIESTA WORLD TOUR here!

But artwork, mosaic walls and elegant entertainment areas? Not so much.

The stars were fading and the grey dawn slowly started to lighten.  Sipping tea from thick china mugs we watched the world wake up, before piling into the cars and setting off for the long drive to San Marcos.And despite the early hour, it was stunningly beautiful. We passed through proper cowboy movie terrain – rough peaks that plunged into low valleys where, if you squinted, you could almost make out the Lone Ranger silhouetted against the skyline on his trusty Trigger.The road twisted and turned, carving its way through the hills, until we emerged onto a flat plain which was bathed in a milky glow that crept to the distant hazy mountains. Overhead an eagle soared lazily and we felt like the only people in the world.Of course, this being Texas, the road was not entirely romantic. Every so often we would come across a squashed animal of some kind: a coyote, some racoon, a skunk. And we’d pull through yet more one-horse towns where crumbling buildings rotted gently on the outskirts.But it was a good drive today. And we made it to San Marcos in plenty of time for Scott Wade to do his thing. Altogether satisfactory.Follow the FORD FIESTA WORLD TOUR here!

But most of us are content to scrawl ‘wash me’ and leave it at that.  Not Scott Wade. This self-proclaimed ‘dirty car artist’ actually draws on cars professionally. Based in San Marcos, Texas, Wade, who is primarily a graphic artist started doodling on cars some seven years ago when he lived “on a long dirt road where you just couldn’t wash your car every day”. What started as doodling turned into something of an obsession and now Wade can spend hours at a time drawing the most intricate of artworks in dust. We pitched up with the Fiestas to see what he could do. And, having dirtied the car sufficiently with a special blend of thick dust stuck on with oil, he got to work, scratching an outline with a whittled stick then filling in more detail with fine sable brushes. Just over an hour later, one car was adorned with the most intricate drawing of two Texas longhorn cattle, staring mournfully out at the world. It was fabulous. Alas, as he was finishing, the rain started to fall, and by the time the drawing was done it was chucking it down. Upsetting? For us, perhaps, but not for Wade. “The impermanence of this art form is something that really turns me on,” he says. “There’s something liberating about it because you’re free to just have fun with it. It’s not going to last – nothing lasts – even the greatest works of art are crumbling.” And with that, this latest work of art is driven into the rain and trickles slowly away. http://www.dirtycarart.com/ Follow the FORD FIESTA WORLD TOUR here!  

As the sun gradually sank, all we could see was endlessly stretching prairies with distant blue mountains silhouetted against the sky in the background.

We’d left El Paso several hours earlier, but stopped en-route to get some arty shots of the cars against the mountains, and to pull some tricks in the dust. When we eventually arrived in Marfa it was pretty quiet – everything’s closed on Monday’s apparently.Luckily for us, the local pizzeria hadn’t yet shut its doors, so we sat outside and watched the stars come out while tucking in. And we mused on Marfa, and how this small, one-horse town nevertheless has several art galleries, and some beautiful old architecture, even though it is a place that, when the train pulls through with its mournful whistle, feels like the last stop on the road to nowhere.Nevertheless, we all liked its small-town charms. Marfa might not boast bright lights and pounding music, but everyone is friendly, it’s a pleasant place to stroll and it feels like a nice place to be. And they do damn good pizza to boot.Follow the FORD FIESTA WORLD TOUR here!

So of course we couldn’t pass up the chance to see how they’re made and maybe try a few pairs on.First stop was the Lucchese Boot Company, one of the oldest outfits around, which has been running for 127 years. These guys have made boots for everyone from Johnny Cash to John Wayne and boy is it an intricate process.We took a tour of the factory, where the leather – everything from ostrich to elephant – is painstakingly selected, cut and handsewn together by master craftsmen who have been doing the job for generations.Small wonder a pair of custom-made boots can run well into the thousands, and takes almost two months to make. My favourites were the Kansas state boots – part of a series of 50 made about 27 years ago featuring every state. But at $8,000, somewhat beyond my budget.Tres Outlaws boot company is an altogether more modest affair, operating out of a small building with a handful of employees and producing about 15 pairs of boots a week. Still, they count Arnold Schwarzenegger amongst their customers, and their boots can also cost several thousand dollars, so it can’t be all bad.Nevena Christi and her husband Marty Snortum have only been running Rocketbuster Boots for the past 20 years, but they’ve already made an impact on the cowboy boot scene by creating the largest pair of cowboy boots in the world, which have held the Guinness record since 1999.Marty, a photographer by trade, swapped his 1953 Cadillac hearse, a shooting location, for the company in 1980 and hasn’t looked back. All their vintage-style boots are handmade and again, they have a pretty sterling range of customers, from Roy Rogers to Whoopi Goldberg.“We’ve made so many crazy boots,” laughs Nevena. “We’ve done portraits of people’s dogs, every kind of imaginable crazy pinup girl, musical instruments, a cowboy Adam and Eve, Japanese fish, tons of tattoo art – it just never ceases to amaze me what people think of and want on their boots.”It was a brilliant morning, and made me want a pair of cowboy boots even more than ever. But I think I might have to become a celebrity first...Follow the FORD FIESTA WORLD TOUR here!

Spaceport America, site of Sir Richard Branson’s much-hyped Virgin Galactic is still a construction site, but in October they open the runway and by this time next year passengers will hopefully be entering weightlessness in sub-orbital space. So far, Branson’s got some 350 signed up – at a cost of $200,000 a ticket. We were supposed to visit it today, but sadly the weather conspired against us: flash flooding halted us in our tracks. Nevertheless, we learnt a lot about the site and what goes on there – new rocket development as well as the Virgin project, for example. So why New Mexico? “Location, location, location,” declares David Wilson, the marketing man for the site. Broadly speaking, it comes down to the proximity of the White Sands missile range, just over the mountains (Spaceport America benefits from its restricted airspace), not too many people living in the area and an enormous amount of available land – 18,000 acres in all, thanks to a deal with the state government. “It’s exciting times,” says Wilson. “This operation is bigger than just people going to space for five minutes.” He reckons that ultimately, space technology will be used to shorten flight distances from, say, the US to Australia, which may soon be do-able in two-three hours – with a spaceship, that is. For the rest of us mere mortals without thousands to spend? We’ll be able to come as tourists and have a look – for a reasonable fee. Thank goodness for that.

We had a fairly long haul today: six and a half hours from Scottsdale, through the arid Arizona desert where the horizon stretched miles ahead, shimmering in the heat, all the way to New Mexico.