9th March 2010
Do it Again [Steely Dan]
Next morning I woke up in a cold tent and immediately realised I had got a major problem. My lower back was causing what one might call – jip! I could hardly move and could not straighten up. A cold night in the tent at Godrevy Head, I had fallen asleep watching the stars. Yet I had awoken up cold and stiff with a seized up back that would not ease up. I had got to March without any other health problems so this, I considered, would add to the experience. I would rather have been without it though.
The lack of cloud and being sheltered from that keen east wind had meant that there was a frost when I woke up in the morning. Still I had to get moving and so I packed up everything and bent double over my bike, gently pushed it down to Gwithian Nature Reserve. This time I found the bird I had failed to see the day before. In fact I found two of them; cracking males, Northern Wheatear [151].
Cycling was very painful with me pushing the bike whilst bent double over the saddle for much of the way but I eventually made it to Portreath. “You got a bad back. Do it again. Wheels turning round and round. You got a bad back. Do it again.”
One
bright moment was when I had a remarkably close encounter with a stooping male
Peregrine whilst going along the coast road near the National Trust's North
Cliffs.
I
manage to get to Redruth and here I saw a doctor and booked into a bed &
breakfast. Every step had been excruciating and at no time could I get on the bike and cycle. Ouch!
10.9 miles
791 feet up 446 feet down
