8°C, strong SW, mostly sunny

Kona Jake: it’s such a good bike for me. The fit feels natural and it’s light and reasonably quick. There were a few placesa where I had to carry it over fallen trees (felled by one of the recent gales. We’ve had 3 named storms over the last week. There is debris everywhere. The beech is a mix of dead grass torn from plants and masses of human rubbish.

It’s been a worrying time at home for the roof. Last time it was like this, i had to climb a ladder and replace missing tiles. It’s fun riding in the wind at times. Some directions I can on ly do 6mph standing on pedals and then I return at 30 mph with no effort.

7°C, sunny with light wind

Coming to the end of the wettest autumn I can remember. Black gritty mud coats most roads and puddles hide portholes. When I get time, I’ll put CX tyres on the commuter.

What about this little painting? It’s acrylic onto A5, painted while the others were watching Strictly. That makes it about 1 ½ hours or so. It needs a little work around the left eye and hand; about another half hour.
I found this quite tough in comparison to oil paint.

• Sometimes you go back to a colour on the palette and it has dried up,
• blending is rough when applying new colour to dry paint,
• the colour changes as it dries,
• the surface is chalky,

Most of these problems could be solved by using a slowing agent, the problem they introduce is that they look milky. All of those problems could be solved by using oil paint.

14°C, bright start but rain later, becoming heavy.

This poor neglected bike needs a service. Most specifically, the gear and brake cables are a bit sticky. It’s still good fun to ride but it’s half-term now. What a dreary day too. After the photo, the rain arrived and turned quite heavy towards the end