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

12°C, bright and dry. Light wind.

The sea defences are made of muddy clay. Today the surface is firm gum and deeply rutted by cattle hooves. That’s quite a difficult surface for a ‘cross bike even with 38mm tyres. I had to walk some sections. If you have front suspension, you wouldn’t have any trouble with this surface.

12°C, light rain, N.

What is that thing? I features in the background of some of my beach shots. From a distance, especially in poor conditions, it can look sinister.

This rain is an escape from the severe storms south:

This picture is from much later, so glad I got out in time. Those heavy.rains have caused havoc in the south. Think of the DofE groups out in that

6°C, E wind, sunny and dry.
Cold with a piercing E wind. The ground is hard now so a bike with some suspension would help. There are sections where the ridges in the dyke forced me to get off and walk. It’s gorgeous here with a feeling of vast space.

After this section, I headed along the Southport sea wall to the green machines. There are only 4 that I use. Anchor points are visible in the concrete ground, at least 4 have been removed over the years. I can’t imagine them being replaced even with a local coastal funding package from the lottery fund.