Category Archives: Cycling

Indistrial brownscape

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18°C, strong winds (West); 56 miles cycling

Very strong Westerlies all day, though warm & dry. It must be tough in the northern apporaches, sinkings happen on days like this.
Oh what now- another picture of Mugwort. It’s becoming more obvious which are mugwort and which are wormwood. As the mugworts mature, the top surfaces are getting darker, while the workwood keeps that silvery green on both sides. they will flower soon, one is white the other yellow.
/unramble.

Wormwood in Staffordshire

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25°C, 1/10 cloud; light NE; C=79 miles

Absinthium: after stopping by the road for a bike adjustment, there it was – a clump of Wormwood. It really does like sandy soil, by the roadside away from other plants; or is it stiffling the others with that Thujone? I brought a piece home to make sure of the identity. You know what it’s like, after spotting one, seeing them everywhere is easy. I want a sample in the garden.

Willington Power Station: only has 5 cooling towers, and nothing else, no generator hall, no chimneys no other buildings. No wonder it looked so ugly last time I passed it- it’s being demolished. It looks like there are plans to put housing on there (as there is everywhere in the UK).

Beautiful day; 79 miles but not very fast.

Third

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27°C, unbroken sunshine, quite humid, no wind: C=78 miles

Portishead : Third
I have really fallen in love with this album, one track in particular.
The Rip:
 As she walks in the room
Scented and tall
Hesitating once more
And as I take on myself
And the bitterness I felt
I realise that love flows
 
Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow?
 
Through the glory of life
I will scatter on the floor
Disappointed and sore
And in my thoughts I have bled
For the riddles I’ve been fed
Another lie moves over
 
Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow?
 
Wild, white horses
They will take me away
And the tenderness I feel
Will send the dark underneath
Will I follow? 

Well wild horses they will take me away
and the tenderness I feel
will send the dark underneath
will I follow?

Seems to express the mood here this weekend; well, you know me & melancholy. The album follows on well from PJ Harvey’s "White Chalk" release recently. Some bits are going to challenge some listeners with their discordant passages. That is why I am so curious to know others’ opinions.
Cycling: I’ve  been a good lad and ridden for 5 hours but got no sunburn, not even a little missed bit or the bald patch! The route was a roundabout one to Ilam Derbyshire, having called in at Dovedale which was far too crowded. Coming home got hard though, I got hungry, and possibly teetering on overheating as I got near home. Moral: take snack-bars next time.
 
FSX: Finished the River Angara, now just adding a few river ports before I release it.
 

another avian meeting

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13°C, cloudy, lighter winds C=33 miles.

Climbing a sunken lane, there was a crow perched in the left embankment. Strange place for a crow so I stopped. He looks injured but didn’t fly away when I approached. See the photo. Poor creature seems to have a head injury, perhaps he was concussed. The other worry is that he has a disease, West Nile virus affects crows in the USA.
He stood there for a while, looking around and blinking but otherwise quite still. So I picked him up and took him over to a nearby field. Like other biords, he was quite calm once covered in a raincoat, even wild animals seem sedated by darkness. On letting go, he flew a short distance but crash landed in the undergrowth. I left hime there, at least he couldn’t get run over there. I wished him well and continued my journey, there really is nothing I could have done.
Good luck…

Coniine

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Cold strong N Wind, some rain, 41 miles on the bike.
Riding in the rain wasn’t so bad this afternoon. Perhaps I have physically adjusted to the colder weather after four days hiking in the driving rain and snow of North Wales. The house we stayed in was damp and draughty which made drying clothes difficult and keeping bodies warm impossible. The sea was distinctly green and covered in white horses, visble from the kitchen.
It was a great trip though, Cader Idris looked fantastic covered in snow, but we didn’t get up there- the snowstorms were drawing in at a time when sunset was getting near. At this point we hatched the idea of a hiking holiday in the Pyrenees. Hannah is fit enough to really enjoy this on equal terms.
 

Anslow Emus

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8°C, grey, plus a band of rain at 2pm. Cy=54 miles.

Odd the things you see, riding through a rural farming area, passing houses on the edge of the village of Anslow, I heard loud bird noises, and looked over to see 2 large grey Ostrich shaped birds. they were grey so must have been Emus I presume.
 
I took lots of photos of Rugeley power station. There is somethig mysterious, slightly menacing but intriguing about that place. Maybe it’s the industrial architechture, designers must have a field-day when they come up with ideas for them. It is a mixture of old Art deco, and new age sci-fi, but all covered in soot & dust.

Handlebar ice

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-2 to 3°C, freezing fog but some sun.

It’s hard to keep warm on days like this.On arriving at school today, the handlebars felt oddly slimy. It wasn’t until I took my gloves off that it was obvious that they were covered in a layer of ice. The rest of the frame must have been similarly afflicted too. It was as if the air itlsef was freezing and forming ice crystals, looking like snow.

Black swans

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7°C, grey & rather windy. C=54 miles

Got it wrong today, I was quite warm setting out but the wind-chill soon got to me. By half-way I was regretting not wearing that woollen tee-shirt.
Laid eyes on two oddities today: 1- a pair of black swans ( post photo later) 2/  two scrambler motorbikes only seperated by a piece of rope. I’ve never seen a motorcycle towed on a rope before.
Still haven’t warmed up properly.
I’m deeply shocked and disgusted by this: BBC story "Indian Rhino looses fight for life"
There is not a thread of evidence that the far east’s "Chinese medicine" has the slightest foundation in fact. I can see it getting worse as China’s wealth becomes  greater. There is a noble creature, making an honest attempt at bringing up its youngster, and both their lives are taken for some arbitrary fantasy, a pseudo-science that is closer to religion.

"The conflict between rangers and poachers has claimed the lives of 60 people
over the past 20 years"

I hope none of those lives lost were the rangers’.

That photograph is going to haunt me.