Monday, 6 June 2016

Cycle, cycle CYCLE!!!

3rd to 5th June light to fresh N One day of cloud and drizzle, then . . Sunshine . . what is that blue stuff in the sky? Warmer …. to 20C

3rd June to Brandon

To Dave's bungalow at Brandon via a cycle ride of 47 miles. Car-nage, WW1 memorials, WW2 pillboxes and interesting weather vanes punctuate the journey as I stop to photograph them all.

Hares, pheasants, blackbirds, foxes, rabbits . . all dead and mangled by the side of the road. How many creatures are killed on our roads?

WW1 memorials show slaughter of humans and one day I will put all of them onto a facebook group/community page. I have been photographing as many as I see around Britain for the last seventeen months. Horrific lists of the dead; “For the Glory of God and for Country/King” Variations on a theme. Sons, brothers, fathers, uncles . .

The pillboxes I photograph are for a man I met in Kent last year. Another reminder of war. In a lighter vein, the weather vanes show a household's main interest.

Brandon reached, laundry, shower and an early night.

4th June to Frampton

Blue and yellow, the sun is a shining to welcome the day! Warm t-shirt weather, the vagaries of the British weather, it was only a couple of day since I was wearing thermals and waterproofs.
61 miles today, though not all of it intended. I thought I would reach Long Sutton and camp there but the weather is so conducive to cycling that I carry on.
Retracing the tracks of a few weeks back, I reach the final A17 bridge before the turn off towards Frampton. Realising that dusk is falling I think about the possibility of a little owl being on a telegraph post.

Around a corner and there on the very next telegraph post, a little owl. It stares at me in the gloom.
A mile or so on after the sun has gone down, another one.


5th June Frampton to Lincoln.
Close avocets, one pair with a lone tiny chick, grebes and gulls; after chat with Sarah, the resident staff member in the visitor;s centre, I am off again and once more into the wind. 

When will this constant northerly turn? Day after day of cycling into this is not doing my mental state any favours. Sun is shining again though so count blessings and get on with it. Flat landscapes and reasonably empty roads, I reach a fabulous nine mile cycle path that follows adjacent to two large canal like features. With a tarmacked surface, theis is the best cycle path I have been on since the Exe Estuary one way back when.
A weasel comes out in front of me and stretches his neck to check me out. Unfortunately I am not quick enough to get photograph but my mind's eye will remember this smashing little creature. With yet another forty mile plus cycle ride completed I find a hotel and what a hotel, The Old Palace behind the cathedral. Luxury room and screaming peregrines around the cathedral tower. I am asleep by eight!



3 day mileage . . 149.79

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