Category Archives: Travel

cold shirt

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9° to 4°C, rain then cleared

I didn’t mind the ride to work in the rain, it fell a little thicker than drizzle & blew my road speed downwards. However, I was comfortable. The heated pipes that can be relied on to dry my clothes, ran less hot as we approach the start of spring. Putting on a wet, cold shirt in preparation for the journey home is the bit I react to. It’s a kind of physical jolt from the part of us that does reflex actions. It only took about 3 miles before body warmth raised the temperature of the water that had soaked through every layer of clothing this morning. Body heat is good at that, and you generate more of it at speed.

Shining Tor

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0 – 6°C, Snow , wind & sun

Drove from Macclesfield to Buxton on the way to Alstonefield for a foodie feast. In the village pub has an excellent range of food including the amazing pudding pictured below. That snow shot was taken in a layby in Deryshire. I pulled the car into a stopping place and I got out with my camera-phone. Just as I was turning the snow yellow- a couple of heavily wrapped cyclists rode by on thin tire, racing bikes. They did look rather nervous at the top of what must be a big big climb, and not because they’d spotted me. The fog was too thick for that.

Here is food that I’d journeyed through snow for. Look at the photo from left to right- there is honeycomb, chocolate mousse and lemon sorbet. All of that was presented on a skid-mark of chocolate sauce on the square plate. The most spectacular part was found inside the mousse. The brown cylinder of rich chocolate was rather rich but once cut inside- it bled from the wound a yellow-orange thick sauce oozed. That alien blood was rich and tangy and countered the rich sticky body of the pud.
Most striking.


Go and try some!

Crying Shame

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+9 to 0°C, Sun, wind & snow

Rosie has a good 2 hour run on Formby Beach. She slept well in the evening but woke with a haunting mournful howl. A dog nightmare? I’ve written about them before here, but it’s impossible to confirm. I claim dog-owner’s intuition.

Two weeks on

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9°C, sunny. CR56 miles

After 12 days I am recovered. Today’s ride was far better than I expected, I have lost less form though gained some weight (it seems). Anyway, spring is in the air, flowers out and the sunshine bright enough to show up how much cleaning is required.

12 mph

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-4 to +1°C. Light clouds. No ride, 40′ on turbo.

Drive to work. It’s far too icy after last night’s fog dropped to the ground in the early hours. Then it froze. Traffic was thick which meant an average road speed of 12 mph. That is crap, if I did a speed like that on the bike, I’d be ashamed of myself and would keep quiet about it.

The car wasn’t entirely happy about today either. When I start it, the radiator fan runs on full even with ambient temperature at -5°. Does that mean a temperature sensor has failed?

My moment of maths glory today. A guy at work showed software that draws graphs and he placed a circle on the origin with X^2+y^2=4. His question was how to double the radius of the circle. And, it was me that got it out of all the staff. Then, warming to the subject, I got the expression that moved the circle along the x axis too. My moment of glory you must admit.

Hard underfoot at Hulme End

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-5 to –3°C with snow

Hard ground, hard mud and hard cowpats is what we found in the White Peak area. The grass crunches and rock sold mud ridges jarr underfoot. The temperature has barely been over 0°C all week. I’ve been up there for a Duke Of Edinburgh Award related course which went well. We did a short walk which had a route that would prove tricky for the kids doing their expedition. At the half-way point, we stopped for sandwiches. This is when the snow started. Firstly light, but it fell on hard frozen ground and stuck immediately. Some of the flakes were visibly perfect little hexagonal starfish. We were all well wrapped, so no discomfort.
It’s like this kids; all the paths are marked white on the ground, so they’re dead easy to follow.

The drive home was a different matter. I had to drive at about 25mph after sliding about behind a lorry that was floundering sideways up the hill at Draycot. I’m not so worried about crashing and getting hurt, not at that speed anyway. I really don’t want to wreck my car, that’s all.

Anyway that’s enough for tonight- a lot more of the white stuff to come, we’re told.

Sunrise, 07.49

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-3.5 to 0°C, light ENE, thin cloud, very low humidity

I had to pull over on the drive to work today. The sun was poking its orange bald head through a forest on the horizon and more remarkably, beaming an orange shaft of light upwards to the clouds. It looked so striking that I found a layby and jumped out with my camera. The light was still low so the picture is blurred by camera-shake. Even on the drive to work, you have to make time for something like this. There are islands poking out in the ocean of mundanity.

Infamy, infamy, everyone’s got it in for me.

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-1 to 3°C. Clear, CA:43 miles

Three hour ride today. I really needed this one for its de-stress effects. The start was hard though, legs felt empty and riding hills was a disproportionate effort. I don’t really know what caused that so I rode along puzzling over plausible causes. Was that the stress causing the weakening too? I will never know, but it’s possible. It’s also possible that last night’s supper was guilty- too much cheese and not enough of the usual carbos.

Here we are, a new week. This one comes with a dark cloud hanging over it however. Maybe that will clear on Thursday.
Maybe not.